-
-
On business in New York with a video camera and sound man in tow for another project, I was able to satisfy a life long curiosity. I have long wondered if I could do “man on the street interviews.”
Focusing on topics related to time use, effectiveness, planning and personal growth, I sought comment on the following topics/questions:
1. Are you busy? Effective? Satisfied?
2. Five years from now, what needs to be different for you to feel you are progressing?
3. What is your greatest concern about the future?
4. Do you have a mentor in your life?
5. Is “balance” important to you? What is “balance”?Well, take a look and let me know what you think.
-
In college, the Air Force and 30 years in the corporate world I have written and edited many different types of papers from very short to very long and for every kind of purpose and audience one can imagine, but none of that experience prepared me for a work of fiction like the business parable There’s More to Life than the Corner Office released a month ago by McGraw Hill Professional. Unlike writing to persuade or provide factual information, fiction is about providing a framework, but allowing the reader to fill in many details. We each have life experience, attitudes, beliefs and pride. We want to “get it” and when reading fiction, we most enjoy the writers who respect us as readers and don’t spoon feed us too much.
For a business man with long experience fully supporting every major point in his writing, this was a tough lesson for me to learn. The co-author on this project, Tammy Kling, was very persistent in her correction of me because I was very quick to revert to the style of providing as complete a picture in living color with as many details as possible. “Show, don’t tell,” I heard Tammy say many, many times.
Another requirement is writing in the character’s own voice as the dialogue and banter switches back and forth. You really have to get fully inside the character’s personality and break out of your own limitations to find that voice. If you do, the character becomes real and if there is change in the depth of the people in the story as in the case of young Patrick Mitchell in this book, you can show clearly that he is making personal progress without saying it.
It is great to have the freedom to express your ideas through a fictional work, but it was much tougher skill to acquire than I imagined. As it turns out, you actually write each chapter about 7 times on average. But in the end, it is worth it if the readers find the work enjoyable and beneficial. We are getting enough feedback to see that goal was reached for most who have read the book.
Tags: Lamar Smith, more to life, writing fiction
-
-
Here’s a clip of Anna Gilligan, from the Fox Business show Fast Track, speaking to Lamar about what it means to get to the corner office.
Lamar Smith on Fast Track from Lamar Smith on Vimeo.
Tags: Anna Gilligan, corner office, fast track, Fox Business, Lamar Smith
-
Up until a few years ago, tobacco smoke was a constant in virtually every indoor space. It hung in the air, permeated fabrics and porous building material and placed a “grey haze” on almost everything. Even non-smoker’s homes did not escape because many more people smoked and did so wherever they went. It was so pervasive that indicating you preferred for someone to not smoke in your home or office would have been considered inhospitable. Hard to believe now, isn’t it?
In the late 1970’s non-tobacco users began to assert their desires and non-smoking spaces began to appear, slowly at first. The air did not clear immediately so the remarkable difference between smoke filled and non-smoking spaces were not immediately discernible to all, but as new construction was completed and interior space that had never been exposed to smoke began to be occupied, the movement really took off. At that point the great difference between smoke saturated and truly fresh air in enclosed rooms was clear and there was no turning back.
Today, with so many of us living in a highly distracted and challenged mode that I have come to call Imbalanced, it feels like low energy, behind the 8 ball, confused, frustrated, unsatisfied, inefficient, burdensome living with high potential for burnout and wasted effort. We each have so many files open in our heads that it is difficult to do a really good job on any one task for all the distraction of the work we are NOT doing. Sound familiar? I see it in most people around me including young and old, male and female, executive and blue collar. A couple of nights ago the father of twin high school seniors girls told me one of his daughters has dropped out of her long love affair with dancing so as to pursue better grades and a more impressive array of activities to go on her resume for college and beyond. He was sad about it as you are only a kid once.
We are a nation of sleep deprived, caffeine fueled, out of shape, frantically busy people who live with feelings of guilt for not doing better and little knowledge of true joy and almost no personal satisfaction and peace. Like the smoke filled rooms of a few years ago, it is the same to varying degrees for almost everyone around us, so we don’t detect the fact that there is a different way to go. If we can ever get a little balance in our lives, the improved feelings, increased productivity, and joy of living more of each day aligned with our authentic purpose will give us a deep craving for much more of this sanity balance and focus offers us.
How can we improve our balance? Start by staking out some time to think through what is happening to us. How are we really spending our time and how are those choices determined? How does our actual time use compare with what is really important to us? Such a review can begin the process and once we pay more attention to the relatively simple principles that drive progress and well being, physically our energy and self confidence increase providing real encouragement we can do the same in the other important aspects of our being. But rather than seeing the analysis and planning step being proposed here as one more task to add to the list, it should be seen as a multiplier of your personal power, too important to ignore. Put some time on the calendar this week. Refer to www.ImprovingYourBalance.com for some more help.
-
A basic law of physics is that no matter where you go, you are there. The one thing none of us can escape is our self. That clear articulation of the obvious leads to at least two beneficial conclusions. First, any time and effort we put into a program of personal growth is likely to be an investment with payoff in many, many places. And secondly, if we don’t like the trend of results we are getting at any point in time, the first place to look to make change is inside our self. Whether in our profession, family, community, or close friendships, we are half of all transactions throughout each and every day and night.
Personal growth is like other significant human endeavors in that developing some type of plan is beneficial. To accomplish any plan, we need to get really clear on the objective, identify the path and processes to use getting to that objective, break down the overall into manageable parts, identify the people and resources (including know-how) we will need, establish realistic time/milestone targets, and then execute the plan with a commitment to monitor our progress and adjust as needed. Getting clear on the personal traits we want to claim as our own and being courageously realistic about the gap between that desired end point and where we are now is probably the hardest part of this process. This gap analysis is also the step with the biggest payoff if we do it well. Some really good news is that we don’t have to improve every aspect of our person at once and the goal is progress, not perfection.
Realizing that we are one-half of our relationships of all types, each transaction or exchange we conduct with others, is actually encouraging. It is a natural element of the human condition to spend much time analyzing the actions and behaviors of other people in our lives and wishing “they” would be or behave differently. But what is the chance you can actually change “them?” Not too great, huh? You know because you have tried and know that is not a good use of time. In fact, it usually causes stress in the relationship. Not good. Well, give it up and look instead to yourself. There is much you can do differently almost always. In fact, you can usually do anything and everything differently. So, the question becomes…what is driving me? How do I behave and present myself so that “they” want to engage productively and positively with me? Spinning the pointer from “them” to you will create amazing results over time.
Tags: Life, relationships
-
Unless your family name is on the front door of your office complex, it will probably take much effort over a protracted period of time to become the big boss. Why do it? Or said another way, what motivations will help you keep up the focused and perhaps extreme effort for the time required?
Having the best office, more compensation, being able to call the shots, more control over your schedule, your jokes being funnier, and always being seated at the head table are a few of the nice trimmings of CEO, but consistently putting forth the effort to get the top job will require more and deeper perceived benefits than that for most. Where do you look for the more sustaining motivations?
Notice that the benefits on the short list above are self-focused. The more sustainable motives are focused on other people. Taking care of and offering value to customers, helping your team members be effective, assuring profit and progress for the business owners, being responsible members of the marketplace and communities where you operate are great examples of the higher calling that not only will call you to better internal choices, but will appeal to those who work with you. Of course over time your associates will see your thought processes unfold whether good or bad. When views like these guide your thinking and internal motivation, it is easier to access your extra capacity and sustain the drive to find the right innovations, improved efficiency, and thought leadership that will lead ever upward to your goal.
A definite side benefit of this other-focus is that you enjoy the trip more and wherever this approach leads you…to the top job or somewhere close, it is more satisfying. Others first, then me!
-
Humans are imperfect. We disappoint, fall short, and hurt each other. In our darker times we mean to hurt others, usually the harm is unintentional. Often we don’t realize our effect or don’t care. It goes with the territory. Since we are all both perpetrators and victims in this arena, why do we so quickly cover over and forget our own short falls, but long remember and dwell on the injustices done to us?
It is appropriate to review our experiences and learn from them. If we were treated poorly in the past, we likely had some role to play, small or large. We do not want to repeat behaviors that invite being disadvantaged, but part of the human experience is that it is so tempting to dwell on those experiences when we were “done wrong,” playing the tapes with different responses by us that might have caused a different outcome. Worse yet, it is tempting to dwell on new action we might take that could even the score…how sweet that might be, we are tempted to think. Truth is, it would not be very sweet for very long. Spending time thinking these thoughts is taking the low road and leads to a disappointing destination. What is the high road? Forgive and move forward. FORGIVE?!? But you don’t know what THEY did to me! Right, but I do know the greater the injustice the greater its power to suck the life out of your potential future.
Forgiving does not have to involve the party that wronged us directly. They may never know. Nor does forgiving them mean that you will ever have any other dealings with them necessarily. Forgiving is simply the process of working your way to feelings of neutrality about the wrong and the person(s) who wronged you. It is largely a mental versus emotional process; at least it is lead by the intellect, not the heart. It begins with the recognition that animosity or anger works like an acid. Acid first eats the vessel that holds it. If you nurse the wound and the hate, you are eating up your own insides. Figure out how to pour out the acid and you will be the first to benefit. Forgive and you are the first and primary one to gain.
The best revenge is to live well. That is harder to do if you are focused on events of the past and experiencing negative emotions about them. So to improve your chances to live well, make a determination to let it go and move on. If you use your head to lead that process with dogged determination, eventually your heart will follow.
Last tip: When you think of the past and it is painful or makes you angry, just force yourself to smile. That will have an immediate effect on your feelings and confuse others. Try it.
-
This is the age of specialization and we must increasingly rely on each other to manage. So, answering the question, “Who can I trust?”, is an ever-present tape playing in the background of our minds most of each day.
I suggest you look at the question of trust in two parts:
1. Do I trust this person’s motives?
2. Do I trust this person’s knowledge, ability, and judgement?To have real trust you must answer YES to each. If you cannot be confident that someone’s motives are aligned with your own, there is and should be a limit as to how much you will rely on their suggestions or perspective. You may continue the conversation, but you need to ask many more questions and be more inclined to verify what you are being told with another or other sources. On the other hand, if you are confident that the other person has your best interests at heart, you can move on quickly to the second question which may not be totally black and white, but is usually easier to answer.
Long relationships matter. If you have known and observed another for a longer period you get to know them at a level not achievable otherwise. That can build your confidence in your views of them on the two-part trust question. Relationships are worth the investment.
Final thought: Others are viewing you through these same lenses. Be careful to serve others well by thinking about their best interests and any perspectives you offer.
