Smoke in a wind storm

# Chapter 237

Happiness = achievement ÷ by expectations. - Masterminds

This one doesn’t do much for me, because if you are a regular reader here, then you know I am much more about contentment than I am happiness. Happiness, at least the American version, is about the most useless and short-lived emotion ever. As far as happiness goes, you could have just as well written the above equation as Happiness = expectations x by achievements. Or a dozen other variations. Happiness is about as sustainable as smoke in a wind storm. Keeps your eyes wide open or you will miss it entirely. I will stop hammering my point about happiness now.

Achievement and expectations, well now that is entirely another subject. There is substance there. Our expectations and achievements are important, they are what get us up in the morning and get us out the door. I think personally that expectations get a bad rap. Sure they can eat into your contentment with your achievements if they are out of line and over proportioned. But appropriate expectations can create anticipation and deep satisfaction - like my blond coffee this morning right this very moment. Perfectly brewed, fueling this post with delightful energy and heat, making the Nutella and peanut butter melt on my tongue, and this is a daily expectation . . . and I work hard to achieve it = achievement. And as I am sitting here editing this and thinking about this, I realize that I already have expectations about my second mug of coffee, the medium breakfast blend and that drives my workout.

Nah, for this equation to work well for me, you have to spend some time defining happiness, achievement, and expectations.

Wasted energy

# Chapter 236

Talent + bad attitude = failure. - Masterminds

I would probably argue that anything plus a bad attitude equals a failure, but the boys do have a point here. Its an extra travesty when a person has talent and a bad attitude. Heck in my world its a travesty when anyone has a bad attitude period. What about your world? But I really think that the point they are making here is the high frequency of talent and bad attitude. Often the better the talent the worse the attitude. It is indeed a terrible combination. I can count on one hand how many highly talented people I have met that are humble and easy to work with.

Unfortunately my experience is that the highly talented folks who have a bad attitude are the drama queens of the work place. Practically all the wasted energy in my career has been centered around such people who, quite frankly, aren’t worth it. Notice that I said wasted energy. While we all desire admiration, the talented are addicted to it, and will throw temper tantrums to get it. Interestingly enough I don’t usually feel that the talented are actually TALENTED, except at their own PR. They can surely make their stuff sound like the best thing since bubblegum. Since these people can’t really function in a team of peers, my leadership and development advice is almost always, go lead your own org. It usually surprises me how few of them want to do that. Evidently staying around and making your org miserable is preferable.

My solution is to start with peeps with a good attitude. Everything else can be learned. = Success.

Attitudes

# Chapter 235

Demand a great attitude from yourself and your people. - Masterminds

I like this, but I don’t. I like that we look for people with a great attitude, those people help everyone soar. I married my wife because she always has a great attitude. In fact her nickname is PollyAnna! So I get this I really do, to a point. But PollyAnna is also sitting here at the breakfast table this morning trying to get me to have joy in my heart because it finally warmed up to 40 degrees!! I want 94 or 84 degrees, not 40! No amount of cajoling on her part is gonna make me feel warm. Putting on more clothes (which I just did!) is not going to make me have a great attitude about the damn cold weather!

Oh don’t get me wrong, I am going to make the best of it. I will enjoy every moment of the sunshine that I can. I will get on my bicycle and ride out there and soak up all the vitamin D I can get. But dressing like an eskimo in order to do that is not going to put a silly grin of happiness on my face. So if making the best of every situation equals a great attitude and I think it does, then I am all in. If you expect me to be unreasonably happy about things I genuine dislike in order to consider me having a great attitude, then get used to disappointment. I don’t wear masks like that any longer. On the other hand neither will I or do I spread my dislike. I am just going to be quiet. I am an introvert after all and so I am not expected to say stuff all the time. I will not be evangelistic about how I feel, but neither can you.

Activity based

# Chapter 234

Coaching is activity-based. - Masterminds

The ability to accept input is not just sitting in a kumbaya circle and hearing the wisdom of the elders. It is usually practical and applicable in real life right this very moment. Yes there is often wisdom involved, but take the illustration of my grandsons and you will see that coaching is activity-based.

I like a fire in the evenings. My grandsons, especially the two youngest ones are often here in the evenings and that is fire time. Fires are hot. Fires can be dangerous. Fires can be lots of fun. So the youngest grandson is very coachable and fire doesn’t tempt him to do anything foolish because, like I said he is very coachable. His brother, not as much so.

This grandson is less coachable, and consequently he gets too close to the fire. Though the other night, I got some coaching assistance from the fire itself, as I was telling Brooks to move back away from the fireplace, one of the logs in there gave a tremendous CRACK as it exploded open from the heat. THAT got the grandson moving! But fear is a poor motivator in coaching and most other things. The ability to accept input is the key. When my oldest grandson visited us in Eastern Europe several years ago, he and I went hiking up the tall mountain that covers the city from the South. He grew weary of both my pace (slow) and my lead (surely in the wrong direction even though I lived there) so I let him lead. We did eventually reach the summit, although it took us an additional hour. He was happy for me to lead us down because there was pizza waiting at the bottom, and he was hungry and grudgingly admitted that I knew the path far better than he did. Coaching is activity based.

Input equations

# Chapter 233

Coaching is a genuine desire to make people better. - Masterminds

It is the most direct path to help people succeed. If. If they can learn. If they are willing to learn. Often there is not even learning to be had, they, we, us have to be willing to simply have input. People can be astonishingly resistant to input! Those that aren’t, are coachable. Those that are resistant are not coachable.

I have four grandsons. Two are very amenable to input and listen and learn quickly. I predict long successful lives for them. One grandson can take input some of the time, and the verdict is out on him. He may succeed or he may fail, we will wait and see. One grandson is highly resistant to input. While he is the most likable of all four, and consequently leans on his charm rather than his coachablity, I predict he will struggle all his life. Charm can’t carry you nearly far enough in life. While these grandsons range in age from 3-15 years old, you can already see the results from their coachability scores evident in all their lives clear as day. I would venture to say that you would need less than one day here with the four of them before you precisely knew which ones were coachable and which ones were not.

I tell this little story to point out that you and I need to be open to input. We need to be coachable. If we aren’t, then our chances of success greatly diminish. In fact I can truthfully say that my life had small possibilities until I learned to accept and implement input from the outside. Once I conquered the input equation, my life has soared beyond my wildest imaginations! Choose.

The right good people

# Chapter 232

Don’t tell me it’s hard to get good people if you’re not out actively looking for them. - Masterminds

Continuing the theme from yesterday about talent and finding it, there is one huge assumption here, that there are good people out there. Not moral people, but talented people, that is the “good” we are talking about here. But as I pointed out in the previous chapter, even if they have talent or experience (you can decide which is more valuable in your field of expertise) and you hire them, that doesn’t mean they will fit your culture or work with your existing team well, or not bring endless drama to your office. All the entrepreneurs I know and work with, assume and think that people with talent, education and experience will automatically bring value to them and their business. I have observed that this happens occasionally, but it is far from a certain thing. So my conclusion on this one is that you need the right good people, not just talented people.

Then there are the non-entrepreneurs who can’t get anyone to come and work for them, because the work is hard heavy and dirty. These kinds of jobs need tenacity and a willingness to get dirty, more than talent per se. Yet every single job in the world has those who do it, and then those who do it with elegance or class or expertise that makes everyone else’s effort seem less desirable. I don’t know about you, but I want my doctor to have talent, my dentist to have talent, my mechanic to have talent, my bodyman to have talent, my roofer to have talent, my computer tech to have talent. Go find them.

Talent

# Chapter 231

If you believe that people are your most important asset, you must make talent a major focus of your company. - Masterminds

My widget-making friends get all focused on their widgets. This is understandable and to be expected. But many of their complaints are about their people. Go get better people right? Well not so fast. They have spent years trying to hire more and better people and they aren’t gaining much traction. Really really tried. And granted it is hard heavy dirty work, even though the pay is great and the bosses and structure fairly even going. If I were 40 years younger, then it would be a great place for me to work. But I can barely even move that equipment around any longer. The only muscle I can move well these days is my brain, I think, but we are definitely digressing here. Your people, your talent, that is the point here.

On the one hand you have lots of control here, you set the standards and you make the policies and you set the pay and benefits. On the other hand, you don’t have much control here, you can’t control who does and who doesn’t apply, or come your way, or are willing to move to your town, or their willingness to work hard, or fit into your team, or take initiative, or their home situations that they inadvertently bring with them to work, etc etc. Lots of things you can’t control here. But in most fields of work, there is talent there, and you do have the option of pursuing and attracting that talent, if you have the will.

Tenure versus loyalty

# Chapter 230

Tenure is not loyalty – tenure is time.

Tenure is not necessarily talent – many mediocre people stay with companies for a long time. - Masterminds

Lots of people see tenure - the length of time a person possesses or holds a position - as conferring certain rights and privileges and often it can. I don’t know how anyone in the modern world could consider tenure as loyalty, but clearly some do. I know back in my days of academia, staying the course in one university until you were granted “tenure” was the highest goal for many of my fellow teachers. This gave them super security as the position they had as teacher, basically became a guaranteed position for their entire working life, if they wanted it to be. This is the holy grail in academics. Relatively few ever get to this place. And my kids work in some government jobs that have tenure as position security as well. But don’t ever ever think of it as loyalty to the organization. Well it could be, but humans are human and they stay because it benefits them in some fashion that they find acceptable. Period. They don’t stay on at your org because they want to prove to you how loyal they are or can be.

On the other hand, don’t diss the mediocre people, because you have lots of jobs that are mediocre and need mediocre people to do them regularly. Not everyone aspires to be an expert in your business. But everyone needs a job.

Good and bad

# Chapter 229

How many of your best employees get mad if you hold them accountable? None. How many of your bad employees get mad if you hold them accountable? All.- Masterminds

Continuing yesterday’s theme, Masterminds argues that great employees don’t get bothered at all if you hold them accountable, and that less than ideal employees will object to accountability, each and every one of them. This very well may be true. It would be consistent with their character I imagine. On the other hand you could find yourself defining who is good and who is bad based on incomplete data. You could be creating categories that reflect something other than what you believe is showing here. Remember my employer of 23 years from yesterday’s chapter? They defined loyalty and faithfulness as being quiet and being grateful, which are all well and good, nothing wrong with gratefulness and silence when something is done well. But when it is done maliciously and hurtfully then there is no space for quiet and grateful. No, you need to challenge the org BECAUSE you are loyal and want to work for loyalty-inspiring company that is worthy of being loyal to.

Well my 46 years in the workplace is pretty sure that accountability starts at the top, not at the bottom. I find I am having a problem with our Masterminds group of entrepreneurs that think only employees need to be accountable. Accountability starts at the top and no one further down the food chain will have more accountability than they see coming out of the C-suite.

An invitation to the process

# Chapter 228

Accountability = ownership. - Masterminds

I worked for a company for 23 years that viewed ownership only and exclusively as agreement with current policies and processes. There was no input and there was no allowable pushback. They even created a made up phrase specifically for this tyranny that they created. I always imagined they did this so that they did not have to call themselves dictators and despots, but “constituted authority” was their made up phrase and it was their whip and lash. Having stated all of this accurately and factually, the system worked surprisingly well because everyone signs off on this constituted madness right at the begin of their tenure with these folks, and its nearly impossible to put the bull back in the barn once its been let out. Heck even I stayed there for 23 years! Astonishing.

But few can stay this course and thus they remain a small organization, and largely a feeder org for other groups. If everything comes from the top down, ownership is impossible and there is no way I can take up the mantle of responsibility (accountability) for what happens. You can state on paper that I am responsible for these outcomes XYZ, but unless you give me some power or control or input into the what how and where of these objectives, there is nothing to hold me, to bond and bound and hold me to the results. Thus there is little ownership because there are only rules and demands. There is no accountability, for how can you hold me responsible for your dictates? If you want an org with high ownership, then you invite them into the process of decision making and decide who you are going to be, when, and how. Then you can sit back and watch accountability do its magic.

Excellence

# Chapter 227

Don’t make your people guess how excellence looks. - Masterminds

Live it. Model it. Show it. Applaud it. Cheerlead it. Be enthusiastic about it. Talk about it. Live it. Model it. This is one of the foundational bricks in my life and you definitely want it to be one of yours. We get so widget-making focused and production oriented that we begin counting numbers all the time, and excellence is usually the first causality of that approach. Production is necessary, we all get that, but what you are producing is even more important. The “what” being the quality and character and nature of whatever it is that you are making. Like this keyboard that I am typing this chapter on, just has functioned so amazingly for years and years, and it doesn’t go with this iPad any longer, but it shows no signs of quitting and little signs of wear even though I have dragged it through 12 countries and endless trips around the world and while I have worn out the travel bags I carry it in, the build quality of the keyboard is astonishing. Its durability is unbelievable. But none of that kind of excellence would matter if it were a lousy keyboard.

But its the best keyboard ever! So its build quality just is the perfect match to its style and usability. So whatever we make or produce or accomplish, we need to have a level of excellence that is unmistakable and clearly visible, so that you people can see what you are made of and what you make is made of. Set the bar. Reach the bar. Succeed.

Share

# Chapter 226

Share your intent and your vision with your people. - Masterminds

That is exactly what you should do if you want to build an exciting business or process that has high engagement up and down the company. That is exactly what you should do if you want to change the world with a group of people. That is exactly what you should do if you want to like coming to your office each day. Otherwise you will be a solopreneuer, or a lonely CEO, or shouldering most of the work load and all the emotional load. Otherwise you will be the gas and the engine that keeps things working and humming along. Otherwise no one knows what the fat you are about and where you want to go and they will invariably and unknowingly pull in the wrong directions. And I know you find this unthinkable, but you are going to be very frustrated and unhappy and unsuccessful because your people don’t know where you are going nor why you are going there. So be open and transparent and communicate constantly.

The most surprising benefit will the clarity that this forces upon you. As you share your intent and your vision, your people will ask questions and push back and this is best thing that could ever happen to your intent and vision. You can use these questions and pushes as fodder and fuel to make your intent and vision stronger and better and even bigger if that is what you want. Yes yes you have opened yourself up to criticism by doing this, but trust me, they were criticizing you ferociously before when they were in the dark about where you were going.

Weeding

# Chapter 225

What do you believe? Your beliefs drive your life. What are your limiting beliefs and your empowering beliefs? - Masterminds

This is your foundation, these are the bricks in your bedrock, what you believe will drive all your decisions and actions. Of course the nature and quality of those beliefs will help you or hurt you. Few things in life are neutral. And it is typical it seems to have both beliefs, those that limit what you conceive or believe you can accomplish and those that help you reach farther and higher than you did before. You need to take inventory and see what you have to work with. Then comes the difficult part after you list out these limiting and empowering beliefs, the sorting and the rejecting.

This weeding is difficult enough because you will find that some of your limiting believes are cherished markers in your life and you will resist the thought of letting them go. They give you a haven to run to when life is hard or difficult and you can let the pressure off by excusing yourself from responsibility. So a good weeding will reveal these and you will find varying degrees of enthusiasm for uprooting them. And this is a lifelong labor, because these are foundational bricks. They are super difficult to uproot and reject. But you need to do this and rob them of their power to sabotage what you are capable of and need to accomplish. They need to be replaced with beliefs that set you free and give you power and create energy for you to be the superstar that you are destined to become.

The sad truth is . . .

# Chapter 224

Make your people better people, and you will make your business better. - Masterminds.

Now this is the development mindset I love. This the truest statement you can make about your people and your business. This is not any great leap in imagination, this is just common sense. Yet practically no one does it. Some make motions at it, but in my 46 years in the work force, I have never received any viable development that was actually helpful (to me or the business) in any way. Common sense that no one does is waste. The real and actual experience that I have had with development in the workplace is that the pieces eventually just became another control mechanism that some boss somewhere was gonna use to force compliance on some issue. Even simple evaluative tools and basic feedback tools were eventually brought back to the table and used as weapons or tools to manipulate and control.

Every hard skill and competence that I have developed in the last 46 years, I did at my own initiative. As I write that, it almost brings tears to my eyes it is so sad. Finally 14 years ago I started my own company and decided that since I was doing the work and I was doing the development of me, I just as well reap the benefits of that. So I am. And so are others.

If you want to make your business great, make your people great. One warning here though, don’t expect your development of them to engender some great and awesome loyalty, and that they will stay with you forever if you send them to a course to get better. If your workplace sucks, they are still gonna leave.

No!

# Chapter 223

Learn to say no – focus on the essentials. - Masterminds

This is a must for all of us all the time. Learning to say no to yourself. Learning to say no to other’s requests or demands. Learning to say no to adding more events and actions to your calendar. Learning to say no to more. It is the first thing I tackle personally and with every new client, and I revisit it often, because yes has a creeping effect. If you don’t learn to say no to pretty much everything, then you aren’t going to have any margin or space in your life to say yes to the really important (net wealth) opportunities that come along. It is clear that most people don’t want to say no to anything - a peek into their lives and schedules makes me shudder - and keeps them running wide open and directionless 24/7. Their FOMO and YOLO keep their yeses rolling and their lives in disarray. They need a way to say no in the worse kind of way. This a decision, but it is also something you learn. Learn to say no.

The point of learning to say no is so that you can do your MIT’s, so that you can focus, so that you can have margin to say yes to the really important stuff, so that you can have a life! You are just going to be overclocked and underpowered all your life if you don’t learn to say no. It will be the hardest and best decision you ever made and ever accomplished.

The leader controls the pace of the business

# Chapter 222

A business never outpaces the leader. Masterminds

This is the synergistic reality that the leader is the fuel or the engine or the oxygen of the business. I am not sure which metaphor is the correct one here, but if a car is the basic metaphor, then its not going anywhere fast without fuel, engine or oxygen. But not only does a business never outpace it’s leader, meaning it can’t grow or develop beyond the leader, it also gets it’s energy and enthusiasm from the leader. It gets it’s inspiration and creativity from the leader. It gets it’s competence and skills from the leader. Or leaders. We have been using “the leader” but the business will develop to the point of leaders if “the leader” has that capacity. More leaders will be added as needed by “the leader” because nobody does everything well.

But this is actually a call to development more than a statement of capacity. That is why they used the word outpaces, which presumes movement and change and progress. Basically I think everyone needs development, especially me. That is why I take courses, learn new concepts, read voraciously, and approach each situation as a learning experience rather than a command situation. When I discover that clients think they cannot or will not learn more, then they aren’t clients much longer. That kind of arrogance and hubris is for playgrounds, not life and business. Too much at stake here, too many people and the people they care for are at risk.

In the business consulting that we do, we gauge the capacity of the business largely by gauging the capacity of the leader. Enough said.

Keeping them separate

# Chapter 221

You must pay very close attention to your money, both in your personal life and in your business. Masterminds.

No this is not yesterday’s post. This one is more. First of all I don’t recommend mixing your finances in your personal life and in your business, but since we don’t hang out with venture capitalists every day, most business owners I know are self-funded at least some. Since my wife and worked overseas for 27 years in places where banking wasn’t easy or stable, we often found that our personal and business money mixed and it was always a nightmare to streamline things again.

But we need to pay attention to our money in our personal lives so that we don’t face any temptation to dip into our business to rescue our struggling personal finances. Conversely we don’t want to find ourselves in a place where the business needs more capital from our personal finances. The challenge is often is that you are you and I am me - meaning that the way we handle and manage our personal finances is often reflected in our business finances. If you consistently overdraw your personal accounts, I would bet that you will find that you tend to do the same in your business accounts. If you consistently write bad checks in your personal accounts, you will be tempted to do likewise in your business account.

Hopefully in your business world, you have accountants and/or bookkeepers that will be looking over your shoulders and keeping you out of trouble. But if you are like me and have (I have to stop and count) four different businesses and accounts, there is not the same level of oversight from others on some of the businesses as others. The bottom line here is keep it clean, don’t overextend, spend less than you make, keep emergency accounts.

Where is it going?

# Chapter 220

Where is your money going? Masterminds.

Having clarified what money is and what it isn’t, it still is a crucial piece to knowing how our business and future are shaping up. Never forget that Time is far more valuable, but effectually impossible to change, grow, expand, manipulate, multiply, increase or accumulate. So we focus on money instead, which in comparison is relatively easy to change, grow, expand, manipulate, multiply, increase and accumulate. So according to the Mastermind fellows the most important question is, where is your money going? Being a leadership and development guy and not an entrepreneur, I can see several sides to this question and honestly I have no certainty that I have the right of it but here goes.

The most plain basic issue here, as the monies drain out of your account, to what/where are they going? This is a math question, and perhaps a budget question, and clearly an existential question - is it groceries, rent, transportation, taxes, insurance, employees or materials? If you are more mature, as a person and as a business, and you can track long years of where your money is going, then you can ask where is your money going and get a values answer. You spend discretionary income on the things that matter most to you. If you are raking in the moolah this is an easier question, if you are on the ragged edge the question about where the money is going is much more survival oriented.

At the very least knowing where your money is going means you are aware of what is going on in your life and in your finances and that puts you at the front of the class.

Our values

# Chapter 219

Money is an expression of value, not values. Masterminds.

While yesterday we dealt with the very abstract idea that time is more valuable than money, money is far more concrete and so we will deal with that for the next few days. I think it ironic that while time is far more important and irreplaceable than money, we are going to talk about money more because, well we are a lot more involved emotionally with money than anything else.

Money has an agreed upon value of exchange, a medium where we pay $4 for a gallon of gasoline, or give $3 for a loaf of bread. It is a means of payment for goods or services. It represents an idea of value, that this piece of paper or these coins, represents this much value and that you can exchange it for these goods or services. In the modern world the value is only an idea, it is not backed up by gold or some other commodity as it was in the past.

But money is not an expression of our values. It is not one of the principles we live by. It is not the most important thing to us - that would be our excellence, quality, effort, family, relationships, and generosity. These are our values. Money gives us stuff to exchange for other stuff, but it cannot give us love or care or produce skills and qualities of character and generosity. Don’t get confused about this or you may start loving stuff instead of people.

Net worth vs. net wealth

# Chapter 217

Net worth (total assets) is not nearly as important as net wealth (the total of all the critical areas of your life– family, health, spirituality, adventure, total financial assets, friendships). - Masterminds. This is a no-brainer if you stop and think for a moment, and evidently we don’t because the net worth idea hangs around and around. And it likely is pointing out another factor in our lives, in that we are tracking, monitoring, building and focusing in on our net worth, and we don’t generally do this with our net wealth. Wrong! We gotta change this! This focus is all out of whack and has no balance unless we look, and clearly see our net wealth.

If you will stop a minute and give this 60 seconds of intense focus, you will realize quite a few things about your life. And then you will likely spend far more than 60 seconds once you get going because this is awesome. Unless all you have in life is net worth, your life is far richer than you have felt up to this point! The six points of net wealth are far more powerful than net worth. Sadly I do know people that can only feel any happiness while sitting there looking at their bank statements and their net worth. In fact I am related to a couple of people like this, and I could become one too had I enough net worth to look at. Those bank statements can be mesmerizing! I wonder if your financial links are the most frequented web pages you visit? Mine are, and shame on me. I need to see that I am spending as much time contemplating my adventures, spirituality, family and friends as I do net worth, otherwise what is the point of net worth?