John TV: Episode #52 DISTRACTION

What on your “must-do” list is really nothing more than a dis-traction?

The Love of Business

Today’s post is the featured article from the August 2011 issue of The Front Porch Newsletter. If you would like to automatically receive The Front Porch e-newsletter on the last Thursday of each month just click here to sign-up for your complimentary subscription.

Of all the nine years of articles I have written for The Front Porch, this one may seem to take the cake for being the softest, most touchy-feely, and syrupy

business articles I have ever written. I can already hear my loyal readers saying … then it must be really touchy-feely! But don’t be fooled. It may hold the greatest potential for the transformation of how you see your work, how you show-up in relationships, how you work on teams and how you serve your clients, customers or patients.

The most powerful tool you have is a gift that all of us have. I am convinced some of us have forgotten how to engage it or have lost sight we even have it. Like a skill, this gift can go dormant. To use it is a conscious choice … even when it is not easy to choose it. In the short-term, it might feel better to not choose it. But it will always work to your advantage toward winning … not only for you, but for all … because it knows no other result but for all to win.

It is called love.

That’s right. Love. I am not talking about an acronym for something like: Leadership, Ownership, Vitality and Excellence. I am talking about the emotion of love. Not romantic love (although there are many parallels) … but rather the love of business.

We develop many technical skills along the way. We are taught the ropes of time management, the management of people and the ways of leadership. There are matrix frameworks, and metrics to measure. There are gimmicks and gadgets … and role plays to model the way.

But there is little on love. So why is it surprising that so few ever become effective at the love of business? Beyond an emotion, love is a choice. It comes alive when we choose to use it.

But, bottom-line, it just doesn’t feel like business.

I get that. That is because, in the justifiable attempt to create efficiency and profitability, we have often made business simply a transaction. Transactions lack emotion and they certainly lack any element of love. I propose where there is lack of emotion there is lack of genuine engagement, long-term loyalty or the potential for anything really meaningful.

In my book, Silent Alarm, Jack Turner (the main character) is recovering from a terrible accident of his own doing. His recovery in his hospital bed gives him more than ample time to think … deeply! Jack is given numerous doses of insight and wisdom along his path of recovery. One of his insights is that “Genuine relationships are God’s greatest gift … love is what matters.” While Jack learns how to reflect more deeply, he still is a very successful professional. He can’t help but to find a way to relate his deep level of thinking back to the practical aspects of his business life. This lesson was no exception.

Jack thought of all the workshops he had attended in his career: negotiating, customer service, team-building, handling tough clients, effective communications, and more. Jack thought it was strange that these workshops represented so many ideas and strategies for developing skills, but that no instructor had ever mentioned love.

He thought the best workshops could be presented in no more than fifteen minutes. He laughed as he imagined this scenario: “You want to give incredible customer service? Love them. You want to retain your employees? Love them. You want to build better relationships with tough people? Love them. You want to have effective teams? Love your teammates.”

I am convinced it sounds so absurd, so un-business like, maybe even unprofessional … and, of course, so touchy-feely and soft because we have never learned or have lost our capacity to do it. We often tend to blow-off and belittle that which we cannot do.

What if our capacity to achieve was limited only to the extent of our capacity to love?

One of my favorite leadership authors, Tim Sanders, captures the practical professional application of the love of business in his book, LOVE: The Killer App. He aptly suggests that love is not an option if you want to make the most of your professional journey … it is a requirement.

Love won’t always solve the short-term business challenges we face, but the challenges we face will evolve our capacity to love if we consciously choose to let them.

The most important skill we can possibly develop, at the core of a business and in the culture in which it operates, is our individual and collective capacity to love. It has the ability to change everything … including your life.

John TV: Episode #47 REALLY NEED

The seeds of your needs are planted in your core values.  If you don’t know your core … your needs and wants get intertwined.  You end-up needing what you WANT rather than wanting what you NEED.  Discover your core … and your needs will be revealed.

What’s the Matter?

Today’s post is the featured article from the May 2011 issue of The Front Porch Newsletter. If you would like to automatically receive The Front Porch e-newsletter on the last Thursday of each month just click here to sign-up for your complimentary subscription.

It’s a really important question for us to ask every now and then. In other words … does what I do really matter? And do I know what really matters about it? It is easy to get caught-up in the inertia of our schedule, our to-do’s and our endless list of commitments. It is just as easy to get caught-up in our routines … simply going through the motions of each 24-hour cycle, each week, each month and each year.

But with what you do … does it really matter? Does it really matter to you? If you stopped doing “it” would it matter to you? Would it matter to anyone? It must matter or you would have stopped doing it a long time ago. Maybe.

Imagine if you got up each morning and decided to do only what really mattered.

But would you know? Would it be clearly evident to you? Could you make a quick list of your “what really matters” and eliminate your “matterless?” We might have more free time on our hands than we would think!

What we do has the potential to really matter … especially if we stay connected to understanding the matter at hand. That is if we remain intentionally aware of why we do what we do. In a world of endless measurements, it is easy to let reports, results, and efficiency be all that matters. We can get very efficient at a lot of things that really don’t matter. We can also become ineffective at the things which really do matter.

Without understanding what really matters, it is also hard to nurture passion for what we do.

I think this is harder than it appears to be. I know, because I often fail at getting it right. In a profession where I am constantly faced with which projects and clients to invest my focus, time and energy … I can easily get foggy on what matters and go down dead-end pathways.

Part of the disconnect has to do with genuine gratitude for the gift of each day … or I should say the lack of it. Do you get up each day with a keen appreciation for a new day? If we did, I think we would, more often, think harder about what we might be willing to trade for the value of this 24-hour period. We get this when someone asks us how we would spend our time if we only had one day left to live. But that is artificial … it eliminates many of the pressures of our day-to-day life if we are here today and gone tomorrow. I’m talking about truly appreciating today knowing there may be thousands more days to follow … yet seeing each one as incredible in and of itself. For it is incredible … especially when you know that each and every one of them has the potential to matter in whatever season of life you currently happen to be.

Beyond gratitude, I think another disconnect looms. It is challenging, if not impossible, to understand what really matters if we are not specifically aware of the core values which drive us … both personally and organizationally. A lack of understanding of our core values is often the missing link to understanding what really matters day-to-day. Core values exist whether we understand them or not. If we are not intentional about them, they still evolve and drive our daily actions. And without core values being intentionally selected, we still live them but are not passionately connected to them. And they can lead us to do a long list of “matterless” stuff.

Leadership has never been more important. In a world filled with exponentially increasing capabilities of technology to monitor and drive our behaviors, substantive leadership is critical. Leadership gives birth to core values.

Leaders of substance are nothing short of the keepers-of-the-core.

Leaders of substance keep us focused on living from an intentional core that allows us to put our day-to-day efforts around what is most valuable. This is easier said than done … whether as an organizational leader or in leading our own life. Distractions, expectations, metrics and rewards disconnected from the core can easily cause us to drift. Measurements and rewards are a responsible tool when they are connected to the core. They are tragic undermines when not.

Gratitude for each day and an intentional set of core values provide a solid framework in helping us know how to use the next 24-hours on what really matters. They may not immediately eliminate the “matterless” tasks of our life, but they will certainly begin to move you towards a daily life that really matters.

I remember in the 8th grade, when you raised your hand, my teacher would always ask … “What’s the matter?” I think she meant “what’s wrong.” As a matter of fact, today, I see it as an excellent question for asking … what’s right!

This is Your Wake-up Call

Today’s post is the featured article from the April 2011 issue of The Front Porch Newsletter. If you would like to automatically receive The Front Porch e-newsletter on the last Thursday of each month just click here to sign-up for your complimentary subscription.

I forget. I get distracted. Sometimes I just get in a comfortable rhythm. Other times I just get uncomfortably overwhelmed. Maybe you, too, have days or weeks or months like this!

It may be the reason why our bodies were designed to need sleep each and every day. Not for sleep … but rather for the practice of “waking-up.” Both “waking-up” and “staying awake” can be a real challenge. I’m not talking about post-sleep. I’m talking in our everyday life through the circumstances, challenges and celebrations that come our way.

Keeping our eyes wide-open helps us see beyond the veneer of our work and our life. Beyond what appears to be happening vs. what is really happening. The increasing speed at which we move can diminish our ability to think. More importantly, it diminishes our ability to reflect upon and ponder our day-to-day experiences. It has an impact on every arena of our life … family, faith, and formation. It certainly has an impact on our work.

Speed and efficiency can be deceptive.

They can look good on the surface and in the short-term. But they can be the enemy of what is profound. They can also be the enemy of “waking-up.”

A lot had happened just before I began to pen the manuscript of my first book, Silent Alarm. There was Enron, Worldcom, the related implosion of Arthur Andersen, the first bankruptcy of United Airlines, the tragedy of 9/11 and the beginnings of a crisis in the Catholic Church. All of this had happened in a short six-month window. I remember questioning … are we going to learn something from this? Or are we just going to hit the snooze and try to get back to normal? You know, just go back to sleep.

Tragedies are ultimately tragic only when we have learned nothing from them. When we refuse to wake-up and grow from our experience. Silent Alarm was designed to be a wake-up call … and emails, since its release, have indicated to me that the call has rung loud and clear for hundreds if not thousands of people who have read it.

It was certainly a wake-up call for me when I wrote it.

Businesses have worked hard to weather this economic storm. They have strived to become as efficient and effective as possible. But I know how easy it is to fall back asleep … even after we have been wide-awake. We forget … get distracted. Sometimes we just get in a comfortable rhythm and again get uncomfortably overwhelmed.

Just like the need for our daily sleep, we have a need to wake-up on a daily-basis. While Silent Alarm is the parable of a fictional character named Jack Turner … I believe Jack is very real in most of us. It is a story of his terrible accident created by his own doing. Actually his tragedy is the context … the story is really about what he learns about life as he recovers. He clearly has a wake-up moment. Tragedies can tend to get your attention … and wake you up.

But, hopefully, we don’t experience tragedies every day. We experience everyday life. This is possibly why it is so hard to wake-up each day. Often times it is just another day. And what we end-up with is not very pretty. As my long-time mentor, Kevin Freiberg, puts it … we end up with dead people working. Unfortunately, we also end-up with dead people living day after day.

We can all become quite competent in “dead” living!

I am also convinced we can become masters of waking-up each and every day … every hour … even every minute! And it doesn’t take a tragedy to do so.

Last fall, I approached my great friend, Jimi Allen, to create a video experience that, while inspired by Silent Alarm, was really more reflective of our need to wake-up each and every day. Jimi Allen Productions, along with their strategic partners, came back with the animated video of “Life of i.”

We released it on the internet last week. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, I hope you will take the short 3-minutes it takes to experience it (just click here). If you’re too busy to take a short 3-minute timeout to watch it … well, let’s just say you probably have been hitting-the-snooze too long! (And please don’t ask me how I might personally know this to be true!)

Taking the time to do so, is the paradoxical answer to getting more done … or, at least, the right things done. If you watch it and it leaves you hanging (with like a huh?, or a what?), it has likely done its job. It’s just to get you thinking. And unless you hit the snooze, it will likely keep you thinking for a while.

While it may look like a wake-up call, please know it is sent as a gift. Wake-up, oh sleeper, and rise from the dead! Again.

John TV: Episode #42 THROUGH THEIR EYES

No better way to deepen what you understand about what you see … than by trying to see through another set of eyes!

John TV: Episode #41 THE SAME

 

Getting past the blame game … gets you beyond getting more of the same.

John TV: Episode #36

 
Soul-searching is a paradox.  By looking inside … we change how we respond to everything on the outside.  How hungry are you for a little soul-food?

John TV: Episode #35

What is your level of REALLY.  It’s a REAL important question … really!

John TV: Episode #27

Maybe we should have left this on the “cutting room” floor.  But then again, maybe not!