Seeking Coastal Utopia

Ouch! “top view photography of broken ceramic plate” by chuttersnap on  Unsplash You made a mistake! You screwed it up! Now what? . . . Own it! Things happen. If you are not making mistakes, if you are not making a mess of things, then you are not engaged and you are not trying. If you are not making mistakes, then you are just standing on the sidelines, waiting for other people to do something. Consumer. That is not you. “take a leap” by Kid Circus on  Unsplash You are looking for the next thing. Looking to make changes. You are a producer. You are making an effort to better yourself and others. Yet sometimes stuff happens and it does not all go to plan. If you are making mistakes then you are showing the world that you are trying. You are making an effort to do something that you have not done before. Guess what? You are a rock star for trying. You are doing something that most people are afraid to do. Yet now it is time to own your mistakes. ...

Maybe we should even restate it by saying that simple is always better. “eyeglasses with black frames” by Jess Watters on  Unsplash Simple. The word itself is simple. The opposite of complex, the opposite of making it so confusing that it requires three people to work on it. It is as simple as one element, one piece. Simple is elegant in its scarcity. When you say “ wow, that was simple, ” you say it with a smile. When you say “ wow, that was complex ” it is usually prefaced or closed with expletives. Now, this is not a treatise against technology, even though technology is taking over. It is adding more complexity to our cars (e.g. self-driving vehicles) or that our appliances are now connected to the web and have browsers and screens built into them, enabled to determine where you are short on foodstuffs. There are (lots of) times when you want simple. It is recognized that self-driving vehicles are required to be complex because of the daunting task for eng...

“people working inside white and black room” by Venveo on  Unsplash You can’t lead or manage from behind a desk . Yes, you are right, I am not allowed to say the word can’t — neither are you! Let us introduce another way…as a leader or as a manager, you are extremely ineffective when you stay behind your desk. Stop arguing, it’s true . Unless you are managing a group of automation equipment or robots, then yes, your argument is true. However, the last time I checked, we need humans to do most of the work that we do in business today, and in the effort to keep them involved, they require face-to-face interaction, coaching, and guidance. Humans are messy, therefore we require, no, we demand interaction, and if you are or wish to be a leader or a manager, you limit your ability to actively participate or interact when you are camped out behind your desk. “turned on monitoring screen” by Stephen Dawson on  Unsplash The ability to “see” how the business is ...

Sleep is a good thing. We need more of it. We want more of it. But we ignore it. Why are we fighting it? “person sleeping near window” by Maeghan Smulders on  Unsplash We are damaging our brains and we are destroying our health. Do we do these things in pursuit of fame, fortune, and ego, potentially leading to money? I believe we are driving to an unknown need. Sleep is one of the most important things you can do right next to eating . Sleep is the elixir of life and it allows us to accomplish the things that we need to do every day — physically and mentally. If sleep is so important, why are we choosing to forgo it? In pursuit of — one more web page, one more text, one more post on Facebook, one more video on YouTube, one more something? People, people, please turn off your phone and leave it in the kitchen. Turn off your tablet and leave it in the living room. Turn off your laptop. Turn off the TV. Go. To. Bed. And. Go. To. Sleep. Do not say you have insomnia....

Boomerang Effect NO! Not the social psychology term which is best described as “ reverse psychology .” Boomerangs. Everyone has the mental image of the boomerang. The bent and shaped piece of wood with Aboriginal origins? The shaped stick, the one that is designed to return to it’s thrower if enough energy is remaining from the launch? We aren’t going to talk about the hunting versions, but of the returning version. Did you know that the boomerang has the same behavior characteristics as business and relationships? Do you know how bomerangs work ? Have you ever tried to throw one ? Do you even know how to throw one ? Understanding how to exert the right amount of force in the right direction will bring the boomerang back to the thrower. You can’t go and fling it as hard as you can without direction and expect success, it crashes violently or fails to fly correctly. Nor can you throw it lightly , not giving the right amount of energy it deserves as it will not have enough en...

Have you ever sent a flaming email? Have you ever received one of those flame emails? How did you feel when you wrote that evil email? Did you feel powerful?  Did you feel that you were in a better position after sending it, letting the world (your recipient) feel your fury?  Did it make your arguments stronger? How about when you receive one of those emails? How does that make you feel about being on the receiving end of a flaming email or of an angry letter? What sort of flooded feeling did the email give you?  Did you feel the anger boiling inside? The dropped feeling like your guts were liquefied?  Think about the end result, was the objective reached? Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln were some of the many notable figures in history to learn the art of writing this poison pen letter.  Yet most often those letters were never sent.  Each of these men and others understood the purpose and reason of writing these letters.  They also understood the ...

Hawthorne Effect Have you ever had the feeling you were being watched? What did that awareness feel like? When you have that feeling, what do you do — do you change your behavior? Do you modify your routine? I am the boss and I am watching. You are the one being watched, what are you doing? You start working harder, being busy. Maybe not necessarily effective, but more active than you once were before you recognized that I was watching. The Hawthorne Effect is real. Having been in and around the manufacturing world since the mid-1990’s we have all seen and been affected by the Hawthorne Effect . Yet the Hawthorne Effect is not just industrial or business; it is social pressure. Having also been into pacing sports for most of my life like running, swimming and biking, the pressure to keep up with the person you are next to or linked to in social networks is not a random phenomena, but an opportunity to better one another. Whether it reflects the competitive spirit, or the pr...