Get in your happy (thinking) place

When I am doing a project or writing, I often like to play music that gets me in the zone I need to be in to do my best work.  I call it my “Thinking Music”.  It’s music I don’t have to think about – with no vocals.  I’ll play it on my phone at a low volume and it helps me focus.  If it’s distracting me that day, I won’t play anything at all.

Here are a couple of tracks from my “Thinking Music” playlist –

“Wow” by Thomas Newman, and “Pankalia” by Billow Observatory. 

I’ll be sharing more in upcoming posts. 

Zoom out and look back at yourself

“You can’t see the label when you’re inside the jar” – Clay Hebert

Leadership is the ability to influence others.  If they don’t think much of you, they will resist your influence.  If they think highly of you, you’ll be able to influence them easily because they trust you and will allow it.

Zoom out of yourself and look back.  Look around.  What are people saying about you?  If more than two people are saying it, you have to assume they have a valid reason for thinking this way, good or bad.

What do you have to do to change what others think of you?

Be a giver, not a taker

Nobody cares about most things except themselves.  Even though you want someone to do something, they will only do it if you help them get what they want.

Help others get what they want.

You don’t ever win in life by being a taker.

Simplicity scales

Have you and your managers made your business too complicated?

Are there too many steps and checkboxes and forms and approvals and too many people managing these things?

Complexity is hard to grow.  Simplicity scales.

What can you take away to make it better?

Pay for results

The era of paying people for their time is fading away.  

Talk about results, measure results, celebrate results and pay for results.

Keep your priorities straight.

Show gratitude

Remember to tell your people, and especially your best people, how much you appreciate them.  Smile, send them a handwritten note, thank them in front of others, and be friends.

People go where they are appreciated.

If your sales team sucks – you suck.

So let’s say they suck.

Why?  Did you hire wrong?  Did you not train them well?  Did you not market well?  Do you not have a competitive advantage?  Are they doing it their way?  Do you pay them salary?  Do they not have leads?  

You’ve got to fix this if you want to prosper.

What are your financials telling you?

Do you understand each number?

If not, ASK!

What are they saying needs to be fixed?

Political Ideologies

Totalitarian Communism – you have two cows.  You have to take care of them and then the government takes all the milk.

Feudalism – You have two cows.  You take care of them and your Lord takes some of the milk.

Communism – You have two cows.  The government takes them from you and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows.  You take care of them and the government gives out as much milk as it thinks you need.

Monarchy – You have two cows.  The government tells you where you can put them and how to raise them and takes some milk as tax.  When the leaders of that government die, their kids take over.  If there is war, someone else tells you what to do with your cows or steals them.

Bureaucracy – You have two cows.  The government tells you what you can feed them and when you can milk them, then pays you not to. Then it takes both cows, shoots one, milks the other dry, and pours the milk down the drain.  Then is requires you to fil out forms accounting for the missing cows.

Socialism – You have two cows.  The government lets you keep them but tells you how to take care of them and how to distribute the milk.

Democracy – You have two cows.  You and your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

Representative Democracy – You have two cows.  You and your neighbors elect someone to debate with other elected officials who pass laws that allow you to sell or trade your milk.

Capitalism – You have two cows.  You sell one and buy a bull.

Don't worry

Worry is suffering in advance of something that might happen, or that likely will never happen.

Resolve to accept the worst if it happens.  Once you do that you don’t have to worry anymore, and you can go to work to create a better-than-worst-case outcome.