Researcher Dr. Monika Ardelt has concluded
that “wise” people use two common strategies
for handling a conflict.
They remove themselves mentally
(and sometimes physically)
from a crisis situation and
they concentrate on positive actions
to resolve the situation.
Both reduce the emotion and
eliminate the time wasting finger pointing.
The calmer you are,
as the leader,
the calmer everyone around you will be.
Having watched a few too many movies,
I thought death by poison could be prevented
by inducing vomiting.
A paramedic told me this was
outdated and incorrect information.
What shouldn’t go in,
shouldn’t come back out again.
And since only a third of the poison
is purged by vomiting,
the victim would still die
if this was the only treatment.
(They now use medication like
Narcan and Activated Charcoal.)
Outdated information can kill a company also.
Not knowing what the competition is doing or
what the customer now wants is
equivalent to committing corporate suicide.
Stay current.
As time is limited,
saying no to some projects is a must.
Is that a bad thing?
No.
As Peter de Jager in
So? You’re A Manager… Now What?
says
“While saying ‘no’ is not
what management or clients want to hear,
it gains credibility and respect
when combined with a perfect track record
for always delivering when you said ‘yes.'”
If you say ‘no’ when you need to,
your clients will believe you
when you say ‘yes’.
Recently, in one of my volunteer gigs,
I was asked to make an impromptu presentation.
The person doing the asking knew darn well
I didn’t have the necessary new information
everyone else did
and I ended up looking like a complete jack a$$.
I was angry, very, very angry.
Did I lose my temper?
Nope.
To do that would have benefited no one and
would have hurt my agenda.
It also would have set me up as a junior jammer,
unable to control my own emotions.
Being unable to manage your temper
is the kiss of death.
As AskMen puts it,
“If you can’t manage yourself,
you sure won’t be able to manage others.”
A month ago,
I wanted to buy shares of a certain company.
The problem was,
the price was too high.
I watched it go higher and higher
until my gut said I missed my chance.
Then a week ago, the price corrected.
I scooped it up at my target price.
The same holds with business launches.
Many entrepreneurs,
once they decide to start a business,
want to start it NOW.
They’ll settle for an “okay” idea
simply to have something to launch.
That so-so idea sucks up time, money, and energy
that could be spent looking for a better idea.
Hold out for what you truly want.
Take it from Richard Branson,
“Business opportunities are like buses,
there’s always another one coming.”
However, when you find one,
hop on it,
or you’ll never get to your destination.
At a technology forum,
there was talk about the spread of information
and lack of privacy.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia,
pointed out that this is the world we live in,
we don’t have a choice.
A loved one was telling me
how the tax system wasn’t fair.
He was thinking about fighting it.
Great, I told him,
but play by the rules until the rules change.
Know the rules (written and unwritten).
Know when to follow them,
when to bend them, and
when to break them.
And know the consequences of doing so.
When I say I’m going to do something,
I do it.
A male high school English teacher of mine
ridiculed romance novels.
I stood up in front of the class and
said that I’d write a romance some day.
In May, almost 20 years later,
my first romance novel will be published.
Keeping their word is a sign of all great business leaders.
Robin Sharma in The Greatness Guide says
“The Merchants of Wow among us understand
that a person’s word is their bond.
And that every promise kept builds credibility,
the foundation of trust.
So make the commitment to be impeccable with your word.”
If you investigate the past of any successful entrepreneur,
you’ll find baby businesses.
That was no different for Memo-Pause founder,
Kara Lennox.
“I was born wanting to be an entrepreneur.
When I was about ten,
my dad planted some tomatoes, and
he ended up with so many seedlings
he was going to throw a lot away.
Instead, I put them in my wagon and
dragged them around the neighborhood door-to-door,
selling them for fifty cents apiece.
I cleaned up.”
In the organization I’m currently working in,
there are filing cabinets everywhere.
In the four months I’ve been there,
I’ve never seen anyone take anything out of those files.
They put paper in.
It doesn’t come out.
Why?
Because the filing cabinet is dead.
Search has replaced it.
Douglas Merrill, chief information officer for Google
in February’s Men’s Health says
“How much easier is it to organize ourselves
if instead of thinking of the world in terms of filing cabinets,
we start thinking of the world in terms of search?
For example,
when I come across something interesting
on the Internet,
I don’t worry about whether I’ll ever use it.
I just dump it into my personal online cloud.
Organization then becomes this loose pile of information
that’s growing forever, and
you don’t care,
because every time you ask a question,
you get everything back that’s relevant.”
The story of Anne Boleyn and King Henry VIII
has been told numerous times.
So why was The Other Boleyn Girl
a run away bestseller?
Because telling it from the perspective
of her sister Mary
made it fresh and new.
In contrast,
The Other Boleyn Girl, the movie,
is about Anne.
Mary is pushed back into
a secondary character role.
The story is no longer unique.
It is a me-too.
Classic product development,
a twist on a tried and true product
and then
a classic brand extension mistake,
forgetting what the brand stands for.