Monthly Archives: February 2017

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Right or Wrong?

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In the context of taking an action, that is making a decision or choice and acting on it, how can you determine if it was right (a good choice) or wrong ( a bad choice).

Feedback recieved during the decision making process can help.  Of course, results from  multiple sources can lead to a variety of input both postive and negative. Confusion reigns.

The goal should be to focus on objective feedback based on tangible metrics, things you can definitively measure.  This requires a clear statement of outcomes.

Strategic or Tactical Time Frames

Analysis can be complicated by point in time outcomes.  Is it about short, medium or long term.  Or even all three or a combination thereof.

Further complicating determination of right or wrong can be underlying moral or value based considerations associated with the decisions results.

For Example

In 1948 the Russians decided to block the Western allies tranportation access to west Berlin, thus starving and otherwise inconveniencing the western allies (and the general population) such that they would decamp and leave Berlin under complete Russian control.

For the Russians this was a moral and just decision.  Not so much for the Western allies.  Was the decision right or wrong?   At the time the answer to this question depended somewhat on where you lived, your politics and values.

Should the US restrict visitors and immigrants from selected predominantly muslim countries? is it right or wrong, can it be justified?

My own opinion is this action is both wrong and unsupportable.  However, there are those with a contrary powerful argument.   Perhaps the best way is respectful dialogue.  Maybe we can figure it out.

Or maybe, as occured in the case of the Berlin blockade, one side figures out how to overcome the other.  Guess who stayed in Berlin without starving.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Behaviour and Motivation

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Everthing a person does can be classified as behaviour.   Simply put behaviour is the way in which one acts or conducts oneself.  It’s probably safe to assume there is some motivation for your behaviour.

Why do you behave the way you do?

However you act, most likely the ultimate motive is self serving.  Cynically speaking even a charitable behaviour could be motivated by a personal need to be viewed as a caring and thoughtful person.

However, while a persons actions are exclusively self controlled the motivation (and therefore the resulting behaviour) could be influenced or impacted by others.

For example when you exclaim “you made me mad” to someone , it is an acknowledgement of their influence on you. To be correct though, only you could choose to be mad, regardless of the level or force or influence the other might have exercised.

Typically though, the influence of others can be a key motivator to our behaviour at any given time.

Leaders and Behaviour Motivation

A key leadership skill is to be able to behave in a way that results in the actions of others leading to positive outcomes.

A critical skill leaders can use to influence others is through awareness of the impact their behaviour is having .  That is the leader needs to do a real time assessment of the impacts they are having and changing focus accordingly, if needed.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

What state are you in?

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Regardless of what you do every day (e.g., work for money, pleasure, charity, retired etc) you can classify how you feel about the surrounding culture/ environment into one or more of four categories.

Each category defines your behaviour and motivates your actions. These are:

  1. unsatisfying/ does not meet your needs
  2. a good match that inspires you
  3. not perfect for you but presents an opportunity to influence change
  4. not to your liking but you accept it

Recognizing your environmental category is an important skill (self awareness) .  It helps you conciously act on the unconcious behavior drivers associated with the culture you are emeshed in.

Self awareness is an empowering skill that allows you to ensure your behaviour is appropriate to the circumstances.  That is, control how you act separate from how you feel, to ensure positive outcomes.

Unsatisfying

Typically you would be motivated to leave this environment as soon as feasible.  This is not usually a happy place for you.  Don’t let your feelings drive bad (inappropriate ) behaviour.

Good Match

Embrace the environment.  That is, embrace how things are and thrive.  Should not be hard.  In this case, you are fully comfortable with the culture.

Not Perfect

There is a real opportunity here to create an environment you would consider a good match and it’s worth trying to do so.  Impact and influence behaviours are key.  Have fun with it.

Not to your liking

This situation is the hardest to take and can morph into deciding to leave.  Normally there is some real motivation to stay (e.g., need the money and cannot readily find a replacement).  Usually you feel trapped, unhappy and stressed.  This is a category you want to move away from as quickly as possible.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

How much Research is Enough?

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For decisions, recommendations or suggestions it makes sense to investigate and gather supporting rationale for your conclusion/recommendation /suggestion.

This research can be wide and varied or narrow and focused.  It can take hours,days, months or years to complete.  The results may be fully objective, mainly subjective or as is most often the case, somewhere inbetween.

The Research Balance

High value decisions are arrived at by spending the least amount of effort to achieve the highest quality result.  This leads to the basic question, how much effort should I expend on research?

How much effort is better spent on positioning, marketing and manipulating to sell the recommended solution?

To that end how about making it look like a lot of time and effort was spent on research, that is having your solution accepted because it looks well researched, really though its just effective use of smoke and mirrors.

Things to watch out for

Don’t let the consultant, salesman, researcher, etc pull the wool over your eyes with their magical recommendations and suggestions to support the best decision.

Consider:

  • Does the solution advocate have a personal vested interest in the outcome.
  • Is there a plethoria of supporting data (I always worry this is asign of misdirection)?
  • Is the path to the conclusion twisted with multiple branches or just straight and to the point?
  • Can the supporting data be replicated (objectively)?
  • Was the research conducted for it’s own sake, that is took a long time so appears well thought out but is really just mainly focused on putting the researcher in a good light and justifying their existence.
Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Secret Information

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Open, clear and honest information sharing is critical if not the most important underpinning of high performing teams.  Have you ever been surprised when finding out information that was intentionally withheld?

Unfortunately using information to gain leverage (i.e., a power play) is all too common.  Often justified by classifying the information as political, private or confidential.

Many times this classification is just rationalization, to hide the real purpose.  That is using information for personal gain.  I often interract with people who salivate over the opportunity to aquire secret information.

Is sharing always good?

Is there any information you should not share with others?  My own view is no, everything can and should be shared.  This view is not widely held.

Laywers frequently advise clients to remain silent.  The argument is to do otherwise could work against you, particularly in the case of active law suites (as one example).

For me that misused phrase “The truth will set you free” is actually valid.  I say misused, in recognition of the dictators and despots that have used it throughout human history have not always had good intentions.

I have been labled naive, but my own real experience has been, the outcomes, particularly in team and organizational environments, are  consistently better when information is shared as it becomes known, whether good or bad.

It is not about the nature of the information but rather the message sent when secret information does not exist.

How many people feel good when someone says to them slyly, “Interesting thinking, too bad you don’t know what I know.  Unfortunately what I know is special information exclusive to the powerful people, so I cannot share it with the likes of you”.

Oh yeah, that is motivating.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Financial Planning

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There are many places to get advice on financial planning.  For example,  books, articles, journalists, financial planners, financial product sales people and the list goes on.

Of course many sources results in multiple perspectives.  Probably most of these positions have contextual validity.  That is mapped to the data representative of the situation being analyzed. Howeveryou look at it though, it’s complex.

What about starting simple?

Intuitively, starting with simple basic concepts and gradualy  morphing into more complex ideas over time seems a practicle approach.

At it’s simplest, a financial plan is simply a list of actions, with responsible owners and completion dates, actually that is what any plan is. In others words who is going to do what by when?

The only difference between a financial plan and any other is the nature of the activities, that is things related to your personal finances.

Of course to develop the activities, owners and time frames you do need to know what you are trying to achieve.  Under the keeping it simply principle just start with this simple generic goal “A plan that will enable living the life you want to live”

Start here!

Create an activity list.  That is the things that need to be done to achieve the life you want to live.  These activities will be as personal as the life you want and will have dependencies on each other.

For example; spend money freely without worry  as an activity might be dependent on activities like earn enough money to be able to spend freely or save enough money to be able to spend freely.  Or reduce personal taxes so you have more money to spend freely.

(Just a caveat,  the activities must be realistically achievable, the above is a purposeful exaggeration for illustrative purposes.)

As you work through the plan completing an activity might result in new activities (and owners with completion dates).

The key princples of personal financial management should always be followed as you work through your plan:

  • it’s your plan, you can delegate support and get advice but never delegate decisions
  • monitor the activities and if they are not providing the expected result or the time frames are not achieved address the issue – resolve it to your satisfaction, don’t ignore it

Have fun!

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

When time runs out

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Everyone dies and you could say this is when your available time has run out.  There is no more time for you to do or experience anything on earth.

Always enough time

Time is a facinating resource to manage .  As long as you are alive there is always more time available.  Planning your death, or when time stops for you is not an average occurance.

At some point, usually unplanned, though not always unexpected (in the case of a long illness or just natural aging) death arrives and your earthly time is over.

No one knows for sure if time continues after death in some other form.  Interestingly, for most, the end of time is not anticipated in the immediate present.

How often have you thought, “there will be time to do that later”.  That may or may not be a true thought.  The risk of your time ending abruptly is probably low, but it could happen.

Managing Time

Given our availble time on earth is limited should we allow this to influence how we spend time today?  Should we worry about running out of time before we complete our bucket list?

Living in the Moment

I have always been a big believer in seeking maximum pleasure for myself as long as it does not impinge on the pleasure of others.

So for me, worrying about how to spend my future time or fearing that I won’t get to everything  is not critical to my pleasure, or lack thereof,  so is not an issue for me.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

I am Insulted

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Years ago,  I decided to share with others in a meeting or just a conversation,  when I felt insulted.  Not in an emotional way but simply as a calm information share.

Sometimes, how you decide to feel about a particular behaviour or feedback seems really clear to you, others might not see it that way.  You choose how to feel, the things going on around you drive these feelings.

Open but respectfull communication is an key underpinning of collaborative behaviour.   What you might deem as disrespectful or insulting might actually be viewed by others as prima donna behaviour on your part.

Get the facts, Share the facts

While your perspective of events can certainly differ from others a reconciliation of perspectives ( i.e., the way the facts are interpreted by each stakeholder) will never occur without a sharing of those perspectives.

While my way or the highway can be self satisfying it’s probably not a good way to win friends and influence people ( to coin a phrase well promoted by the Dale Carnegie Institute) .

What Happens?

As noted I have been using this technique for many years and found it to consistently lead to positive outcomes.  Potential tense interactions are diffused and misunderstandings (tons of those) are at a minimum understood, if not resolved.

Like most things balance is needed when sharing how you feel and if not done with consideration to the atmosphere and context of any given situation it can backfire.

However, executed carefully, the results can be very positve, both in the moment and in the long term (many relationships cover more than fleeting moments.)

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Learning

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Learning can take on a variety of forms from formal classroom, to experiential to one on one mentoring.   What is the best way to determine if learning has occurred?

Traditionally

A traditional and oft used technique is testing.  Whether written or practical the core objective is for the learner to prove their knowledge.

Unfortunately the context is artificial and this impacts the outcomes. For example if you are driving a vehicle alone, your responses and attentiveness might drastically differ from when the testor is sitting beside you.

Feeling nervous will definitely affect results.  Cynically speaking the test results might only prove the learner is good at taking tests.  Put them in a situation where the knowledge needed to be practised and the results could be catastrophic.

Is there a better way?

Demonstration of knowledge through execution ( like the driving test) resonates with me but is not always practical and the assessment of the results includes some subjectivity. (For example I would not recommend testing a surgeons skills on open heart surgery).

Japanese sushi chefs undergo a long apprenticeship which provides them with a great deal of practicle experience.  The final test is preparation of Fugu fish sushi.

Fugu is a highly toxic fish that when eaten, if prepared badly, results in almost immediate death.  The sushi apprentice eats the fish they prepared and if they live, they pass.  Now thats a test.