Sharing the Little Things

Another holiday season has begun and as usual I’m excited about all the lights and decorations and opportunities to celebrate not only with family and friends, but also to celebrate with the rest of the world that we’ve reached this point in the year. I do enjoy seeing the homes that have been decorated to the nth, but I also love seeing just the candles lit in the windows and the tree or menorah alongside. I love the big meals and I love picking a cookie out of a tin to enjoy with my usual beverages. I love checking out new holiday-themed movies and watching classics I’ve seen many times.

What I appreciate most about the lights, the gift giving, the celebrations, and the decorations is how they’re all about sharing and connecting. We do all these things to celebrate, yes, but they’re really our ways of sharing the joy we have for the season with others. How we celebrate and connect makes this time of year so treasured for so many of us because of how intimate it is. The other day my partner and I were sharing a little piece of chocolate cake and both of us remarked how nice it was to just be there with each other sharing the cake. There was no big production, no dressing up, no traveling to a destination, no big expenses, just us and a little piece of chocolate cake.

I’m thankful that this year many of us will be able to share and experience the holiday season as we have in past years with family and friends, through bigger gatherings and celebrations, and with a little more hope and peace about what the future holds. But I also think it’s important to not neglect the little things, including simple opportunities to be found this time of year like sitting with a hot beverage and a book, or just snuggling with our partner or (a) kid looking at the Christmas tree or warm fire.

This holiday season I think it’s a great year to focus on the heart and connection of the season, and really treasure the opportunities that you have to connect with those you love and enjoy spending time with. What memories will you make together with those you love this holiday season?

Lessons from Authentic Leaders

This month I read Discover Your True North by Bill George. It has insights about what it means to be an authentic, long-term leader, with lots of stories from very successful leaders from around the world. While anyone can learn from the stories shared in it, it’s a really great choice for someone who’s considering starting a business, wants to be an entrepreneur, or is just getting started with their business or entrepreneurial journey because it gives you first-hand access to some really successful people. Many of the stories in the book sound a lot like how many of our journeys started, with a lot of struggle, failure and change, which should give us hope and inspire us that we, too can be successful.

One of the core lessons in the book is that every leader will struggle and fail at some point in time or another. Maybe that looks like getting fired, maybe that looks like bankruptcy, maybe that looks like divorce, maybe it looks like being sent to another country and the offices there, maybe it looks like being demoted or passed over for a promotion, maybe it looks like being forced out of a company, or maybe it looks like the rollercoaster ride that we’ve seen many businesses take (and not all come out of successfully) over the past few decades. The choice every leader has to make is how they’re going to lead through the struggle and the failure, and if they’re going to pick themselves up (and their team) when the dust settles.

Another lesson is if you want to succeed, if you want your business to be part of the businesses of the future, you have to accept and act on change. On many levels leadership of the future doesn’t look like leadership of the past. Many leaders in the past led with fear, domination and aggression, while leaders of the present and future will empower, emotionally connect with all of their people, and plan for the future. We see change in the world every year, and as you know dramatic and rapid changes have happened over the past two years. You can’t expect to run your business in the way you used to run it 10 or even 4 years ago, because so much has changed since then, unless of course you’re determined to not be successful in the future or you don’t really care about the product/service you’re bringing to the market and the people who are affected by your business.

The best news is that learning from the leaders who have a lasting legacy and are still known in this day and age is still a great way to learn as a leader and get some ideas about growing your business. Who are the leaders you’ve been guided and inspired by as you’ve built your business?

The Success Finish Line

The finish line is something that we often talk about when it comes to success. We know what our goal is with the work we’re doing: to score more points than the other team, to get over the finish line before the other racers, to complete the assigned task within the deadline, to raise kids to be productive and caring members of society, to finish the book, to grow our business so that it thrives and supports ourselves/our families/our employees/our communities, to make it safely to the holiday event (and maybe even enjoy it), or to become an expert in an area like wine or social media, just to name a few.

But do you know what the number one killer of potential success is? Not putting in the effort to get to the finish line. Think about the upcoming holiday season: what happens if you don’t cook the turkey or the pies long enough? What happens if you only tape one part of the wrapping paper you’re putting around the presents? What happens if you just throw the lights and decorations out on your lawn and don’t actually do anything with them? What happens when you don’t read to the end of the instructions on how to put something together? Maybe you won’t learn more by finishing the book, maybe you won’t be thrilled to come in second-to-last place, maybe you won’t instantly fix your problems at work, but I can guarantee that the more times you stop before you get to the finish line, the easier it will be for you to do it in the future, and it’s a fast and slippery slope that will drastically hurt your chances of success in the future.

But it’s not just about your success either. When you stop before reaching the finish line, the other people depending on you lose too. They don’t get paid, they have to wait for you to be able to finish projects, they can’t fix issues until/unless you tell them what’s wrong (not just that there’s an issue), they don’t win the game, they don’t have the opportunity to thrive in their careers, they have to put in the effort of chasing you down repeatedly to get any help, and I’m sure you can add to that list ways others have hurt your success efforts because they won’t put in the effort or consideration to get themselves or you there.

If we’re honest, most of us would admit that we would be more satisfied and fulfilled with our lives if we put in a little more effort. No, not everything will be a success, but I do think that more things would end up as successes if we really worked to reach the finish line. What will you give a little more effort into reaching the finish line before the year ends?

No Problem

Thanksgiving is less than a week away for the US and regardless of how you celebrate, and whether you celebrate on Thanksgiving itself or another day because of work or other commitments, I think it’s a day worth celebrating with those you are thankful for. One of the most important things we can teach the next generation is the importance of giving thanks and of being thankful. As we get ready for Thanksgiving next week I thought we’d talk a bit about some of the layers of this important topic.

Thanksgiving starts with being thankful. I think it’s hard to be able to thank someone if you aren’t able to be thankful in your own mind and heart. Yes, there are some people who are able to be polite even if they don’t have any feeling behind the words. But most people who don’t have thanks in their hearts don’t usually bother with niceties or politeness. Having thanksgiving in your heart starts for some with an attitude of gratitude, others welcome it in through paying attention to blessings in their life, and still others just have an appreciation for life.

With gratitude in your heart and mind you’re able to give honest thanks. Not only is it polite to thank others, it shows others that we notice them and appreciate them, whether they’ve done a good job at work, been helpful to us in some way, held the door open for us, reached something for us on a high shelf, killed a bug for us, or gave a little extra when they knew we had a lot on our plate. It makes us feel good to be appreciated and also makes us feel good to appreciate someone else.

When someone says “thank you” there are typically one of 3 responses: “you’re welcome,” “no problem” and no response. Sometimes it’s not totally necessary to reply, for example if you’re part of a large group and it’s a blanket “thank you” or if you’re holding a door for someone a response is not really expected. The response I was really thinking about today was “no problem.” While it may be true that it wasn’t a great burden on you to do whatever you did to be thanked, you’re almost rejecting the appreciation. I don’t know about you, but with thanks not being the habit these days, why would anyone give up the opportunity to accept thanks? Even if it wasn’t something extraordinary, I think it’s equally important for both you and the person who thanked you to be recognized with a “you’re welcome.” The only other response that I think is appropriate and carries the same sentiment as “you’re welcome” would be “it’s my pleasure” or “I’m glad to do it.”

So as we celebrate Thanksgiving and maybe do a little shopping around bites of sides and turkey (and dessert!), make time both to be thankful and to pass that gratitude on.

The Impact of Focus and Consideration

How often do you think about the impact that your actions as a leader or your business’s actions have on others? Of course every business owner wants to have an impact on the world, such that everyone (or at least many people as possible) want in on the action and sign on the dotted line to buy our products and/or services. But how do we get that done and how do we go about running our businesses? One of the reasons I was thinking about this is because I’ve gotten a couple of emails about flash sales from companies recently, including one who has done more than one flash sale very recently, and while I understand the idea behind flash sales (and some of the reasons why companies do them) with as busy as many people’s lives are, how likely is it that your people are just sitting around waiting for your company to send out a flash sale alert so they can jump up and buy? Even if they absolutely love your products/services and your company, most people aren’t sitting around waiting for you to send them the alert that you’re doing a special sale.

A related topic has to do with emergencies in your business. What defines an “emergency” and are you running your business as if every moment is an emergency and there’s little or no time for preparation, planning or scheduling? Is everything done through the managerial equivalent of “flash sales”? Many businesses experience a “rush” time during the day/week/month/year, but there’s a lot you can often do to plan for those rush times like having extra staff or supplies on hand. But some businesses are run with the expectation that every employee or many employees should be able to find something or fix something at the drop of the hat and always be available to take care of things, even if they’re things that could and should have been able to be planned for ahead of time.

Since 2020 began the world got a couple of big lessons on the topics of focus and impact: many of which we’re still attempting to navigate (with varying degrees of success). For some businesses these years have brought into full clarity how poorly they’ve been run and that the relationships they have with customers aren’t being renewed or reinforced because of how poorly they were built. Now, things that were not seen in a great light before the pandemic are spotlighted, and people are choosing to walk away. People, both customers and employees, have chosen to shed a lot of the stuff that wasn’t really serving them (or they couldn’t afford) as a result of these years and all the changes the pandemic has started. Unless you’re in an industry that is built around crisis (i.e. police, fire, ambulance, crisis negotiator, PR crisis firm, disaster response etc.), now more than ever people are buying from, working with and partnering with companies who have an eye to the future, treat their people (all of their people) with respect, and do business with transparency.

What do your business practices and leadership styles reveal to your customers and your employees? Are you working to make a positive impact for at least the duration of your business, if not long beyond that? If you’re not sure or if you know you’re not, now’s the time to really consider your focus and address the impact your business has on the world.

Being Thankful For Success

Lately I’ve really been feeling the need to slow down. I’m not talking about slowing down our recovery and transition as a world through this pandemic, I’m all for moving forward and getting to a point where life and work is somewhat predictable again. The need to slow down has been more about a desire to just be, in time of quiet, reflection and, especially in this season, thankful. I’ve been thinking a lot about reducing distractions, finally conquering things that have been on my to-do list for too long, eliminating unnecessary steps, making better use of my time and making sure that there’s time in my life for both success and for me.

Lots has changed since 2020 started, many of the daily practices we had we’ve let go of or we’ve started new ones. Holidays haven’t looked the same and that’s been difficult, discouraging and depressing for many of us. Many of us, both individuals and businesses alike, depend on the holidays to end the year on a good note or even redeem the other months of the year. So to not really be able to enjoy the holidays as we have in years past, it’s been hard. This year whether you’re planning to gather with family and friends or not, I think we’re all in a better place mentally to appreciate and enjoy the holidays. And as excited as I am for all things Christmas, I’m planning to spend time in the next week or two being thankful.

When was the last time you sat down and really thought about the success you’ve accomplished, progress you’ve made and victories you’ve achieved? Are you grateful for that success and all the lessons you’ve learned along the way? I know some days it feels like there’s barely enough hours in the day to get all the work done that there isn’t time for being thankful and reflecting on your success, but especially this time of year and especially after how the last almost two years have gone, I think it’s more important than ever to make time to be and reflect on your success.

Even if you don’t have a super long list that needs checking twice of successes you’ve accomplished, I still think it’s a good exercise to help reinforce a positive attitude towards success. Sometimes success is easy, but usually there are challenges and surprises that spring up throughout our efforts, so the better prepared we are mentally to face all the challenges that we do, the better off we’ll all be. What successes are you most thankful for this year?

Distractions, Plans and Flexibility

Lately I’ve been struggling with a challenge and it’s one that many of us will face in the coming weeks as the holidays(!!) finally arrive: distraction. If I’m honest the distraction is really based in the fact that there are so many things I want to do and can do, that I’m having a hard time staying focused long enough to get some things done, or not getting distracted by all those other things I want and need to do. I think another part is how much upheaval we’ve dealt with over the past almost two years, that we haven’t really settled into a rhythm, other than a rhythm of putting out fires as they pop up. So while I attempt to deal with my distraction issues, I thought we’d talk a bit about the upcoming holiday season and managing the distractions we’ll face and our kids will face.

Yes, some of these distractions will be really awesome like decorating the tree, wrapping and unwrapping presents, lighting the Menorah or hanging all the other lights of the season, cookie and treat baking, (hopefully) gathering with family and friends, watching holiday movies, listening to holiday songs, and maybe even some holiday-themed arts and crafts. But just because it’s the holiday season all of our other responsibilities don’t disappear, we’ve still got school and/or work, the home has to be cleaned, clothes have to be washed, dishes have to be done, food has to be bought and cooked etc.

One lesson in all of this, both our season of change and this season of holidays, is that we need to be proactive on setting boundaries and making plans, and as part of that build in flexibility for when things need to move around or even just for taking a break so we don’t get overwhelmed. Making this flexible/buffer time part of our regular lives could help with dealing with distractions, give us extra time when we underestimate how long something will take, and help us get into a practice of regularly having down time, like many of us experienced for a few months in 2020.

I also think we need to be better about beating ourselves up over our distractions and our discouragement. Instead of working with what we have we tend to beat ourselves up over what we’re doing or not doing. If we worked on going with the flow more often it would better prepare us mentally to adjust when we need to and give us some wins that we need to be reminded how capable we really are both as individuals and as family members/significant others.

That said, going with the flow and accepting the need for flexibility in our lives doesn’t mean we should stop all our attempts at being focused and meeting deadlines, because both of those are very important to being a contributing family member and our personal success as well. Which is why it’s so important to make sure that you have both flexibility and boundaries/plans in place so that you are still accomplishing what needs to be done. What are you and your family going to accomplish from a work/success perspective in the coming week, and what fun or relaxation will you mix in?

Thankful for Success Teamwork

The one success topic that I always come back to and was reminded of again today is how important it is to encourage everyone to contribute whatever their gifts are to the world. It’s one of the reasons I sometimes struggle with the idea of big corporations and competition, because it doesn’t always allow for “the little guys” to get enough wins in for themselves. I know everyone doesn’t want or need to be as wealthy as a small nation, but if we learned to work together a little more, learned that more victories were made when we weren’t so busy being concerned about being the biggest or on top, fewer people will struggle to the degree that they currently do.

I’m thankful that I don’t have to be good at everything or know everything. I’m thankful that when we need the emergency help we don’t have to rely on one person responding, we get a team who works together to bring us through a surgery from start to finish, we get a team that works hard to save our homes or businesses when there’s a fire, we get a team who works to clear the snow from the roads, we have a team of men and women who are working to find cures and better treatments for the diseases that kill us, we have a team of men and women ready to put their lives on the line for the safety of our country, and the list goes on.

Do you give credit and thanks to those who play a role in your success? Do you even recognize that they play the role they play? So much of the world works together to support us in ways that we’ll never see or really know, and yet they keep our lives and all that goes on moving surprisingly smoothly. And what about you? What kind of team player are you? Do you pull your own weight or do you do the minimum required to satisfy the job? Do you make your team do more work than they need to or duplicate work because you have trust issues? Do you make your success and the success of others more complicated and challenging that it needs to be?

In addition to being thankful and expressing that thanks for those who help with your success, I encourage you to make time this month to really reflect on your success journey and the relationship that you have with success. What areas can you grow in and how can you better support the success journey of others?

A (Too) Big Win

You may have seen the headlines in recent days about a school who had a football team that won a game with a score of 106-0. They were criticized for unsportsmanlike conduct, which is how they got into the news, but I have a feeling that for one reason or another they would have made headlines anyway. How many non-basketball teams can say they scored that many points in a game? Some teams don’t score that many points in a whole season! I don’t think every team needs to try to set or break a world record, but there is some fun in having them do it and do it so spectacularly.

So where is the line between teaching our kids about winning, having fun, losing, following the rules, and doing what’s right? Yes, that team still would have won if they called the game at 40 points and the other team could not have realistically caught up to them. But do they feel cheated out of playing the full game then, and does the other team? Could they have put second-stringers out on the field to give them the experience on either/both teams? Would they have found it as much fun to play only a couple of quarters and not the full game? Would the other team have been more or less insulted by the loss if the game was called early than to be beaten by 106 points? Can you really rein in celebrations (or shorten memories) when you win a game by that crazy of a score?

I don’t know that there are any easy answers here. As much as competition plays a role in many aspects of our world, I don’t love competition to the extent that many people take it, like having “rivals” and serious grudges held against other schools/groups/teams, so in rival situations I don’t think it’s healthy to let the game play out this far just to shove it in the faces of the other team. As far as other situations, we’ve certainly heard enough underdog stories to know that anyone can turn their luck and be the big winner, and usually there’s give and take on the teams that are on top and those who are on the bottom for a season. But I also know how booked so many of our lives are, including our kids, so the ability to call a game early means dinner on time or bed on time or more time to do homework, which is also appealing.

Maybe the best thing to remember is that so many moments of life are learning opportunities and opportunities for reflection. Am I proud of the team for being able to score that many points? Yes, I honestly am. Do I think they could have called the game sooner, sure, especially in the name of good sportsmanship if the other team was that unprepared or incapable of defending themselves. As I’ve shared in a couple newsletters and posts recently, a win is a win, no matter how big or small it is. And every win, just like every loss, comes with opportunities to learn things, to grow and to improve. As a parent, maybe the most important thing you can do for your kids is to expose them to as many of the opportunities and situations as you can, and then make sure to have a discussion after the more challenging or more successful ones to review what went down. What have you worked through with your kids recently?

Be Clear for Business Success

I was on Twitter the other day and one of my connections was sharing a series of tweets on the importance of clarity in business. Certainly as the seasons change in my area it’s a lot easier to see everything because there are almost no leaves on the trees (with the exception of evergreen trees of course). Of course there are things to love about and in every season, including how the trees fill with leaves after a long, cold winter, but there’s something fascinating about watching the world reappear from where it had hidden behind all the leaves for many months. It almost makes you say “Oh, yea, I forgot that was over there!”

One of the great reasons to choose clarity in your business is for that same reason of excited discovery. When it’s clear what you offer, people who would benefit from the offer are excited to have discovered your solution to their problem or need. Yes, there’s some fun in mystery, but unless you’re in the business of mystery, it’s not fun for your potential customers to be mystified by what you might be offering.

Another reason clarity is great is because it weeds out the people who would be a headache to you or aren’t actually looking for what you’re offering and would cause you to have to deal with refunds and dissatisfied customers. I don’t know about you, but I have enough challenges and headaches that I don’t need to give myself any more by choosing to not be clear in what I offer and why people do or don’t want to choose it. I’d much rather do the work of finding more ideal customers, people who would be more likely to become repeat customers, than try to make any and every sale I can and hope that the people who aren’t a great fit just don’t care about the expense or forget about asking for a refund.

Finally, clarity is important because it starts the relationship between you and your customer off on the right foot. When you don’t make them dig through your site (or social feeds) for answers, when you share in detail why your product or service shines and what you and your team love about it, when you’ve taken the time to address concerns and frequently asked questions, and when you make them confident in that they’re making the right decision buying from you, you’re not only helping the customer find the answer to their problem, you’re creating an even stronger and more positive association with your company and your brand going forward. How has clarity helped you grow your business?