Thank Goodness It's Monday #301

SIX FORWARD-LOOKING WAYS

TO SPRING FORWARD

Spring has sprung. Yes, I know the 2011 vernal equinox was March 20. 

Hellebore (Lenten rose) 
in New Jersey

But that’s really just the opening gun. Only now has the climate in our bit of the northern hemisphere progressed sufficiently to make it “official.” 

So now, with the notable spring-minded seasonal celebrations pretty much wrapped up this past weekend, let’s take a TGIM moment to examine and apply the lessons of renewal and rebirth that the seasonal shift teaches.

Today IS the first day of the rest of your life. A trite (maybe), but factual, statement. And you can’t remain static and expect to thrive in the future. You have to do more than simply make sure that things are going right today.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Spring to it. You are also responsible for making sure that what you do today creates the future you want tomorrow. If you don’t ponder and then take action on strategies for positioning your business, your family and yourself in the future, you may never have that future.

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Take a quick run though these six forward-looking strategies and consider ways to tweak, twist and customize them to your personal situation in the days immediately ahead:

● Keep on top of trends. Yes, I’m the guy who said, “Tweeting is the new CB radio.” Still, you must be paying some attention in order to make that claim and, perhaps, cash in when the time is right (and cash out before it goes the way of, well, CB radio). Be continually watchful for developments … innovations …fads, fashions and fancies – and be wary of when one becomes another.

Spring mindedness: Keep your finger on the pulse of change. Up close it may be easy to sort out how your markets are doing. But what’s happening in the research labs and wider world that will drastically change what you do and how you do it? What’s happening in American culture that will creep into your world? What’s happening in the broader world that impacts your niche in it? Take in the big picture and make your own informed decisions.

● Think globally, act locally – for starters. Information technology and digital interconnectedness are shrinking the world, creating opportunities for everyone around the globe. So while you’re acting locally, also investigate the global potential of your unique abilities.

Spring mindedness: Discover how your products or services could satisfy customers somewhere else. Seek like-minded partners who can help take you where you need to go.

● Endow technology, people, training. Stop thinking like a bookkeeper (no offense to bookkeepers, you can’t win the game if you don’t know the score) and start thinking and behaving like a strategic manager.

Spring mindedness: Loosen the purse strings as much as you’re able. Don’t get tied down by sunk costs. Stop worrying about what you’ve spent in the past. Money spent on technology, people and training is not a cost, especially in this rapidly changing environment. It’s an investment.

● Innovate or abdicate. The pace of change will not let up. Better, cheaper, faster drives it. If you aren’t prepared to innovate, then prepare to be swept aside in the rush to the future. Stress innovation and adaptation with others who share your interests – and your future.

Spring mindedness:  Spring clean – counsel, train, reprimand and/or terminate laggards who are reluctant to go forward. If they can’t or won’t help you progress, help them get a job with the competition. Then use the freed-up payroll to hire, identify, train, reward and promote the best and the brightest who will help take you to the future.

● Develop future-minded customer relations. Stop thinking in terms of the products and services you historically provide. Start thinking in terms of the needs you’ll help your prospects and clients meet.

Spring mindedness: Stay focused on changing customer desires. Be proactive. Remind them of your long-term commitment. Don’t wait to be summoned to help; or to be “dismissed” in favor of a new resource. Be first on the scene with new solutions in hand as you see requirements changing.

● Beware the complacency of success. Congratulations if you’ve been “hanging tough” so far. When things aren’t broken, there’s less motivation to fix them. Unfortunately that means there’s little motivation to improve.

Spring mindedness: Even if you’re #1 in your market, don’t for one nanosecond be satisfied by the size of the gap between you and the crew in second place. Remember that success is often a barrier to change. Keep banging away at that barrier.

TGIM Takeaway: “A competitive world has two possibilities for you. You can lose. Or, if you want to win, you can change.” Lester Thurow, former Dean of the   MIT Sloan School of Management and definitive voice on global economics said that.

This Spring, become a champion for change and renewal. Prepare for the reality of change. View it as an opportunity and adventure, not a threat. Use the stimulus of the new season get your future-savvy sap flowing and blossom into a success-filled run to a prosperous, winning year end.

Springing into action ...

  

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S.  “Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.” In 1853, Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) recorded that in his Journal.

 

P.P.S.  Here’s the closing stanza of (Thoreau’s neighbor) Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem, “The World Soul.”

Spring still makes spring in the mind

  When sixty years are told;

Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,

  And we are never old.

Over the winter glaciers

  I see the summer glow,

And through the wild-piled snow-drift

  The warm rosebuds below.

 

Thank Goodness It's Monday #300

TAX-TIME LIFE LESSON TO STIMULATE

YOUR THINKING AND YOUR BOTTOM LINE

Thanks to a little-known Washington, D.C. holiday and some odd Internal Revenue Service rules, individual taxpayers have until today -- Monday, April 18 -- to file their federal returns.

 That’s great news for me.

Not because I’ve postponed filing until the 11^th hour.

But because for this milestone 300^th TGIM I have a timely “hook” for sharing (once again for anyone who knows me even moderately well) one of my favorite Life Lessons.

● If you’ve heard it from me before, I hope you find “tickler” value in its repetition and maybe new insight for dealing with today’s economic conditions. Thanks for your patience in reviewing it again.

● If it turns out to be a new item for you, I hope you can take it to heart and use it to make these days easier to weather.

Some basic info: As you may have noted by now, I like acronyms, TGIM (Thank Goodness It's Monday -- in case you hadn't noticed) ... FYI (For Your Inspiration) … BYE (Best Year Ever -- a project with my buddy Eric Taylor) ... 

Certainly they serve as convenient "shorthand." But they are also a powerful and valuable tool for reinforcing important concepts and bringing the full force of the underlying principles quickly to mind.

So, although it’s high season for the dread acronym IRS, that leads my thinking to the origins of perhaps the most important acronym in my mind –

EHFTB

EHFTB stands for – Everything Happens For The Best.

Here's the tax time story behind it: Richard Prentice Ettinger, the co-founder of the publishing giant Prentice-Hall, discovered EHFTB as he started in business as a publisher.

In the earliest days of the company, the pages for his second book, about the then-new Federal Income Tax Law, had just come off the press.

Richard Prentice Ettinger

However: Congress, in its usual wisdom, made last-minute changes in the law. This made many of the already-printed pages inaccurate. Stuck with a huge printing bill and worthless pages, it appeared the new publishing enterprise was doomed.

But RPE, as he was known (more initials), thought hard about what he had. He realized many of the pages were NOT adversely affected.

Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. He concluded that he could salvage the unaffected pages … print some new, correct pages ... punch holes in the whole batch ... and put them all together in a loose-leaf binder.

Bonus payoff: He could sell not just one book but also sell replacement pages on a continuing basis as the Tax Law continued to evolve.

That was in 1915. The forward-thinking Aldous Huxley (author of Brave New World) noted at the time that Ettinger had done with the loose-leaf page something equivalent to what Guttenberg had done with moveable type. Such subscription publishing became a cornerstone of a highly successful enterprise; proof indeed that EHFTB -- Everything Happens For The Best.

 “A nice, but slightly Pollyannaish, sentiment,” you say?

Wait! There's more.

In fact, it’s the most important part.

Richard Neill, RPE’s protégé who was entrusted with the ongoing publication of that first tax tome, passed along this history lesson for many years. (I was a Dick Neill protégé and was fortunate enough to have also known RPE. And yes, he was referred to as RN and I was GS.)

But in the telling and reminding, RN added the crucial element that makes the difference between an interesting bit of business history and a principle which any of us can take to heart and apply.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: When appropriate, and especially if some problem needed confronting or remedying, Richard Neill would annotate the margin of a memo or report with a handwritten EHFTB.

And under those initials he would write –

 FTWMIH

The importance of this second thought, and the principle behind the phrase the letters represent, is THE KEY to making EHFTB work.

Richard Neill's FTWMIH reminder is that –

Everything Happens For The Best

For Those Who Make It Happen

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: You must take action for anything to turn out “for the best.” You must be ever alert for opportunities to triumph in the face of adversity.

And it’s not easy. You can’t be a passive bystander. You must be constantly and consistently preparing for the future. And when challenges arise you must rally that preparation and confront them. It isn’t enough to want the best. Continually challenge yourself to know what you’re going to do to get to where you want to be. Effort makes achievement.

Make the effort. Make it happen – for the best.

  

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S.  And speaking of taxation: Albert Einstein admitted, on filing a tax return, “This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher.” He’s also reputed to have observed, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

P.P.S. "We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly; and from these Taxes the Commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing Abatement.” Ben Franklin told us that in 1757.

Reliving History

ONE NATION, INDIVISIBLE

One hundred and fifty years ago – April 12, 1861– the American “Civil War” began with shots fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina.

By 1865 when that part of the conflict ended, 620,000 soldier’s lives had been lost and the country had changed in profound and immutable ways.

Today, in a land where we regularly pledge “one nation, indivisible,” we’re still examining and discussing and debating the why and wherefore.

Thoughts?

"I can not but hate [the prospect of slavery's expansion]. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world – enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites – causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity." – Abraham Lincoln said that in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, October 1854 and archived at National Park Service, Lincoln Home National Historic Site.

Thank Goodness It's Monday #299

STUBBORN-CHILD NEGOTIATING:

HOW TO MAKE PERSISTENCE PAY

Government shutdown? At a last-Friday breakfast meeting of business buddies, that was topic #1. And, naturally, the points of view about who’s to blame varied widely.

But that’s not precisely today’s TGIM topic.

Stubborn-child behavior is. That’s the recurring phrase that virtually every supporter of a differing point of view accused their adversaries of exhibiting.

Why are we surprised?

Persistence pays in almost everything. That’s why there are so many expressions such as “Hang in there” … “Stick with it” ... “Keep plugging away” and “Don’t quit.”

Fortunately (and sometimes unfortunately) persistence pays in negotiating, too.

No matter how many times you tell people you don’t want to do something, or won’t make certain concessions, they keep coming back with new proposals, new “ideas,” new “facts” – as well as old ones – until it finally seems easier to say “Yes” and forget it, than to keep resisting.

And, undoubtedly, one of the best examples of the use of persistence in negotiating is –

A stubborn child. Is there a parent (or grandparent) out there who doesn’t know full well that, upon entering a mall with a four-year old, there is only one thing on the child’s mind:

To look at new toys and buy one.

So, for the sake of uncovering TGIM Takeaways we can apply in our adult-to-adult relationships – and, maybe, to come to some understanding of what’s happening in Washington these days -- let’s play this scenario out.

Case in point: Because she can’t leave her pre-schooler at home on this particular day, Mom takes him on the trip to the mall. Hoping to avoid trouble, she tells him in advance that time is limited and no toys will be purchased.

Usually there’s no complaint at the start. Nothing happens until they are actually in the mall. Then the child asks when (note the assumptive close – "when" not "if") they are going to look at the toys.

“I told you no toys today,” says Mother. “We don’t have time.”

“I don’t want to buy any, I just want to look” says Junior. And he points out they would easily have time if Mother would just hurry up a little. Only to look, of course. And he keeps at it until –

She finally gives in. Once in the toy store or the toy department, Mom keeps reminding her child, “Remember, we’re just looking. No buying today.”
  

“Which do you like better,” the child suddenly asks --



"... the race car?"



"... or the dump truck?"

  And invariably, before thinking the response through fully, Mother will say she likes one better than the other.

“So do I!” the child declares triumphantly.

“So let’s buy it!”

Mother rejects the idea and reiterates what she has said all along about no toys today. The child then turns on the tears.

“But you said you liked it. Why did you say that if you didn’t want me to have it?”

A few minutes later the negotiation has been successfully concluded. The child has the toy and has promised not to ask for another for a long, long time -- which means, in his world, not until tomorrow.

TGIM Takeaway: Very similar tactics are deployed time after time by skilled negotiators in real-world, adult, business and civic situations.

Break it down:

• Conceding something for the moment.
• Asking only one small concession at a time.
• Agreeing to some principle.
• Then going back and renegotiating to break it.

Q: When you realize these tactics are being used against you, what should you do?

In the first place: Don’t get so impatient to get it over with that you throw in the towel. When people won’t take no for an answer, don’t give in.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Give less.

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION #1: Start suggesting, regretfully, that you not only can’t give more, you may have to reconsider and give less. Make your opponents realize that they are not going to make more progress. If they don’t settle quickly, they may wind up with a lot less.

Then stick to your guns and do it.

Q: If you can’t back out of the situation; if you have to settle somehow?

Deploy --

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION #2: At least pretend for as long as you can that you don’t.

Q: When should you use similar “stubborn child” tactics yourself?

That’s pretty much up to you. There is no question that the persistent negotiator – never giving up, always finding a way to try again – will often achieve their objective.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Just remember that “no” and “never” are only temporary reactions. If you mean to achieve a goal, keep going. Find a new approach and try again.

Persistence does pay. It will pay for you, too.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S.  "Good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose." Essayist, poet, philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -1882) said that.

Thank Goodness It's Monday #298

UBIQUITOUS E-MAIL

AND CLASSIC SNAIL-MAIL STRATEGIES

TO MASTER IT

C’mon. ’Fess up. We’ve all got e-mail overload and anxiety, despite the efforts of the best G-mail, Hotmail, AOL, internal corporate tech masters -- whatever and whomever—to create and deploy digital tools meant to help us wrestle our In Box (In Boxes?) into some semblance of shape.

And even with the alleged falloff in e-mail use as social networks and short-form handheld connecting become the preferred channel of communication among the most youthful digerati, ubiquitous e-mail is still an important component of –

Real world communication. E-mail allows speedy, direct communication with a wide range of locations. It creates a direct line for correspondence to flow straight to and from you. Thus the volume of mail can still be quite formidable. So it’s a blessing and a curse to many business and community leaders.

Ignore e-mail at your peril. For most communicators – in business and their non-business counterparts – to allow serious mail addressed to them to go unacknowledged or unanswered is inexcusable.

TGIM Challenge: How does a thoughtful person deal with all the bits that can’t simply be deleted or passed along to a more appropriate place for action?

Old tech thinking to the rescue: The late Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990), publisher of Forbes magazine in the heyday of the ink-on-paper version, suggested solutions for snail mail that are just as fitting for electronic correspondence; perhaps even more so.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I get very long letters about editorials and articles. Many of these are answered with just two or three words.

“If the three-, four-, five-, or six-page letter expresses a compatible point of view, the reply, aside from salutation and signature, consists of two words:

‘I agree.’

“If not, the reply, in addition to salutation and signature, is three words:

‘I don’t agree.’

“Letters of enthusiastic compliments (few),” said Forbes, “and letters of vehement disagreement (many) get two-word replies:

‘Thank you.’’’

TGIM Takeaway: These time-tested shortcuts are a good way to cut the communication workload in the digital world as well. Their very brevity signals the intention to bring the “correspondence” to a close without completely blowing off the communicator on the other side. Try ’em and apply ’em and reap the saving of time and trouble without appearing too rude.

But wait. There’s more: One more brief thought while we’re on the subject:

Another slightly crustier old-school thought leader who used a similar shortcut to good advantage was H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), the word-wise critical observer of life in the first half of the 20^th Century and founding editor of his own magazine, The American Mercury.

As a newspaper and magazine editor, Mencken often drew letters expressing outrage and indignation at ideas he had championed.

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Mencken would return all such correspondence to the originators with these words scrawled at the bottom:

“You may be right.”

Thumbs up?

Or thumbs down to the ideas put forward in today’s TGIM?

“You may be right.”

And thanks for reading.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S. Both H. L. Mencken and, in addition to Malcolm, earlier and later generations of the Forbes family provided the world with vast quantities of In-Box-crowding quotable material.

Mencken himself originated scores of them; perhaps the most-quotable, best known is “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”

The Forbes “Capitalist Tool” dynasty spread such wisdom widely through the magazine’s feature, “Thoughts on the Business of Life” where Malcolm wisely suggested, “The best vision is insight.” His grave marker bares the epitaph, “While alive, he lived.”

Thank Goodness It's Monday #297

LET’S GO SEE

WITH THE COUSTEAUS

“Il faut aller voir.” How is your command of the French language?

Mine’s nonexistent. But I do know that the opening phrase in today’s TGIM can be translated “We must go see for ourselves” and was the credo of --

Jacques Cousteau -- the French oceanographer, explorer, filmmaker, environmentalist, inventor, “captain” of the ship Calypso and a hero of mine from my childhood days.

He’s “top of mind” for me today thanks to a weekend celebrating “The Spirit of the Calypso” in, of all places, New Jersey.

Surprise! The Garden State annually hosts “Beneath the Sea” – billed as “the world’s largest dive, travel and oceans exposition.”

I have been a regular attendee there for years. But this year was extra-special as it honored the 100^th year of Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997) naming him as 2011 Legend of the Sea AND his son, Jean-Michel Cousteau as 2011 Diving Pioneer.

I hope you already know much of the Cousteau story:

Co-inventor and principal developer with Emile Gagnan of what we now call SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), Jacques-Yves Cousteau set divers free to explore the sea that covers more than three-fifths of the earth’s surface.

And he led the way himself. He showed countless people the unseen undersea wonders of The Silent World as he titled his 1956 documentary (made with a young Louis Malle), the first of Cousteau’s three Academy Award winners.

When yet another film failed to line up a theatrical distributor, the footage became a National Geographic television special. That in turn evolved into broadcasting deals that, from 1954 through 1996, brought millions of viewers face to face with sharks, whales, dolphins, walruses, penguins, sea turtles, and other denizens of the deep.

Nature and nurture: Viewers were also enlightened about the man-made pollution that was fouling the oceans and adversely affecting our earth’s environment.

In 1974 the Cousteau Society was founded to increase the awareness among the general public of the diversity and fragility of the undersea world and to help people understand the fundamental importance of the world’s oceans to the fate of the planet.

TGIM TAKEAWAY #1: All through the years Captain Cousteau, in his red wool cap, led the way. His death may have marked the end of an era, but not of his legacy of leadership.

Jean-Michel Cousteau was 8 years old in 1945 when he made his first dive using his father’s newly invented regulator. Since that day he has lived in an underwater world and, having produced over 70 documentary films, he is now one of the senior voices heard in ocean conservation.

Although, for a number of years the father and son were estranged, they had reconciled before the senior Cousteau’s death and Jean-Michel has taken a very public role in advancing the Cousteau environmental legacy.

Here’s a story Jean-Michel once shared about his father as an aging aquanaut. I think it gives insight into both individuals and leads us to another worthy TGIM Takeaway.

The son was leading a team of divers filming in Papua, New Guinea, waters totally unknown to his father (at the time in his late 70’s) who had arrived to join Jean-Michel for a dive.

“It was a special moment for me,” the younger Cousteau said, “to be able to share with him something beautiful, as he had done many times for me.

“But the dive proved remarkable on another level. There was a lot of current, and I could see my father was struggling. He gave it his best effort, but finally, after a time, he signaled to me that he was aborting the dive.

“Back aboard ship, he sat exhausted, barely able to speak. For the first time, my father appeared mortal. I watched for a sign of defeat, fearing that, at last, something had gotten the better of him.

“As he opened his lips to speak, I could almost hear the words I feared: ‘I cannot dive anymore.’

“But instead, there was his usual determination. With a big smile and his eyes sparkling he said, ‘Well, it looks like I’ll have to design equipment for old people!’

“And he did … making it easier for him to breathe and extending his diving career for several more years.”

TGIM TAKEAWAY #2: Words of wisdom from the senior Cousteau: “The happiness of the bee and dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and wonder at it.” “I’m not an ecologist for the animals. I’m an ecologist for people.” “We are not documentary. We are adventure films.”

“Allons voir.” Let’s go see.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S. “Upstaged by fish. This would have never happened to Papa.” Jean-Michel Cousteau said that, as perhaps your kids know. If you’ve got seven minutes, check his amusing and informative performance with his animated friends Dory and Marlin and Nemo HERE at the Ocean Futures Society. (Kid-in-all-of-us alert: Nemo and friends appear about one minute in.)

Thank Goodness It's Monday #296

CROSS-EXAMINING NATURE:

DR. BRESLOW EXPLAINS IT TO YOU

Dr. Ronald Breslow, professor of chemistry and University Professor at Columbia University is a pioneering researcher on bioorganic and physical organic chemistry.

He’s won every chemistry prize and honor short of the Nobel Prize (not yet, anyway) and even has some named for him. And he’s established an endowed professorship to keep the scientific process moving forward. More about that here.

And for years he was my next door neighbor.

Full disclosure: I know precious little about chemistry, despite the best efforts of Nutley High School’s devoted science department head, Henry Gutknecht.

But Ron still managed to teach me a thing or two.

And since we just celebrated a “significant” birthday with him, I’d like to honor and acknowledge him in this TGIM message by seeing if I can share some of his wisdom with you.

TGIM Takeaway: The following applies to many life situations as well as the research laboratory.

Here is what is for me the heart of Dr. Breslow’s –

Most Enduring Life Lesson

Research is sometimes described as a conversation with Nature, but that is not quite the right metaphor.

It is, of course, important to listen to nature, not just to lecture at her.

However –

Except in purely exploratory studies, the interaction is more like the way that litigators conduct cross-examination, using leading questions that can usually be answered, “Yes” or “No.”

In much scientific research Nature is addressed with questions in the form:

“Is it not true that …?”

Experiments are designed to pose such questions.

● Sometimes the answer is—

“Yes, you are right; your theory may be correct.”

● Sometimes the answer is—

“No, you are on the wrong track.”

● Sometimes the best answer can be—

“No you don’t have it quite right;

the real situation is the following,

much more interesting than your simple idea.”

TGIM ACTION IDEA: If we don’t insist that our first ideas be correct, Answer #3 can be the most exciting result since it leads us to new concepts.

One more point: Attorneys have a rule about cross-examination: “Avoid surprises. Never ask questions to which you do not know the answer.”

Dr. Breslow suggests: In science -- and in daily life -- our rule should normally be just the reverse.

Happy birthday, Ron. Thanks for all the presents.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373

tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S. “The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.” Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) English biologist said that.