Category: Corporate Games

It is tempting.
Your company is paying for the hotel.
You have a generous per diem for meals.
All you’d need to fund is another airfare.

But here’s the thing…
conventions are for business,
first and foremost.

If your spouse can help you with that goal.
Great.
Take him.

For example:
The Consumer Electronics Show In Vegas
has a spouse pass.
With some prep work,
you can make twice as many connections.

If the convention is closed, however,
seriously think twice.
Will the spouse be happy doing his own thing
during the day?
And, as many of the real business connections
happen over dinner,
during the night?

If the answer is no,
go solo and
take a real vacation later.

When I was babysitting,
I learned never to “let” kids win.
They knew when I did and
then they’d suspect their clean wins.
Giving the impression that
they couldn’t win on their own
certainly didn’t improve confidence.

Derek Jeter’s dad was the same way.
He tells April’s Men’s Health,
“You know the showcase at the end of
The Price Is Right?
When I was 5,
he used to beat me at the showcase every day
before afternoon kindergarten.
I’m 5 years old!
I don’t know the prices!

But he taught me a lesson:
No one’s going to let you beat them.”

No one’s going to let you beat them.
Not at baseball, not at business, not in anything.
Play to win.

Recently I was offered a monthly post
on an up and coming romance review site.

Why did I get offered this opportunity?
Because of this blog.

3 years ago I started blogging here
(or rather on the former RoadToForbes.com site).
2 years ago,
because of this blog,
I got offered a blog partnership at NoLimitsLadies.
1 year ago,
because of those two blogs,
I got offered a post every 2 months
at the high profile RomancingTheBlog.
This year… the much coveted review post.

Each opportunity built on the previous.
That’s how connections are made and
opportunities present themselves.

When Liz Pabon in her book
The MavHERick Mind
defined a leader as
“someone that is willing to do what other won’t
and do so with empathy and understanding,”
I thought of Richard Branson’s first airline seat sale.

He and many other passengers
were stranded after a flight got cancelled.
Instead of waiting for someone else
to figure out how to get him to his destination,
Richard Branson took the lead,
chartering a plane and
selling the extra seats.

Everyone on that flight could have done the same.
They didn’t.
Only Richard Branson did
and, I would venture,
he is the only one now a billionaire.

When I was young,
I would argue a fact I knew rock solid
until the other person conceded
or walked away.

Today, I’m the one walking away.
I state my case,
why I’m qualified to have an opinion,
and then stop talking.

Why?
Because in all the years of arguing,
I’ve never changed a made up mind.
I simply wasted my time
and got myself irritated.

Neither is conducive to success.

A study by
the University of Virginia,
the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign,
and Michigan State
shows that people who are moderately happy
earn more than both
the extremely happy and
the extremely unhappy.

That makes sense.
Optimism is needed to overcome challenges
but hunger is needed to push forward.
The ideal is having a mix of both.

The Cheating Culture written by David Callahan
discusses how more and more people are cheating
and how easy it is to do.

Maybe it’s easy for the average person
but I doubt it is for the rich or famous.

But why would that be when Callahan writes
“Government regulators don’t have the resources
to crack down on cheating,
especially by the super wealthy”?

Because while government regulators don’t have the resources,
the blogosphere and other media types do.
If I can prove Warren Buffett
(or any other successful person)
cheated on his taxes,
I can make myself a million bucks.
That’s a huge incentive.

Think about that the next time
you’re tempted to trade ethics for success.

For the past few years, I’ve worked contract gigs.
I sign long term contracts for the companies.
I drive multi-year projects.

I am supposedly to be held accountable
for actions and investments
happening years after my contract ends.
Supposedly because everyone involved
knows darn well I won’t be.
I’ll have long since left the company.
It is a sham,
a way to shelter permanent employees
from possible mistakes.

If you’re a business owner or shareholder,
take a serious look at the sign offs
on big projects.
If the sign offs are
by contract or leaving employees,
they are meaningless.

There are two general ways of incenting your employees.
You can bribe them with a carrot or
you can beat them with a stick.

If you can find the right carrot,
that technique always works.

The stick has decreasing effectiveness
with the skill of the workforce.
With skilled labor shortages,
employees prefer to move rather
than suffer the beats.

Forget about using it in volunteer situations.
I was recently on the board of a charity.
The President would talk to us under only two situations.
The first was when she wanted something done.
The second was when she wished to reprimand us.
When I realized that I dreaded talking to the President,
I resigned.

I was working for carrots
and those carrots were scarce.

Donald Trump Jr recently told BNN that
“Sometimes tumultuous times
are the best times to make a deal.”

These are tumultuous times.
Whether the U.S. is officially or unofficially
in a recession doesn’t really matter.
The average person is facing challenges.

The average person is.
Donald Trump Jr is not average.
I am not average.
I would bet you’re not average either.

We should be the ones looking to make deals.
Keep your eyes open for them.