Communism vs Free Enterprise - Some Perspective

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In response to my Thanksgiving post this year Alex over at the Advice Network left a thought provoking comment. Here’s the comment:

It’s interesting that the European (illegal?) immigrants could not survive with a communal (communist?) economic system, considering the aboriginal neighbors who saved their lives by showing them what crops to plant DID have a communal economic system.

What do you think accounted for this difference?

I started a comment in reply but the question is interesting enough that I think it warrants a full post. So here it goes. Read more

Clarify Your Win and Be More Effective

Effectiveness is often a good measure of success. When we are effective we are producing the results we striving to achieve.

Trouble comes when the results we see are different from what we expected. What then? How do we become more effective?

One sure way to be more effective is to Clarify Your Win.

We All Want to Win

Everyone likes to win. People love the excitement when their team is getting ahead. It’s the reason sports are a multi-billion dollar industry around the globe. We are hard wired to crave winning and being associated with winners.

This is also why a team that’s in the middle of a big loosing streak has trouble filling a stadium. No one wants to associate with “losers”.

With sports it’s easy to see who the winner is. One quick look at the scoreboard, or maybe the clock is all it takes. Winning in most sports can be reduced to numbers and guys often memorize an amazing amount of data from their favorite sports teams all with the the goal of figuring out who’s got the best chances to win.

Or sometimes they use their stats to explain why this team won and that team lost. Read more

Some Rules You Should Never Break

Yesterday I mentioned some rules that you can get away with breaking in your efforts to keep focused on the money making activities in your business.

But there are some rules you should never break. These unbreakable rules apply not only to your business but also to your entire life as well.

Really there aren’t many of ‘em. But you can totally shoot yourself in the foot and potentially sink your business by breaking them.

They are basic rules, and should be common sense. Of course common sense isn’t so common these days, is it?

It all boils down to basic things like good customer service and treating your business associates and employees well. Most all religions have some form of instruction along these lines. Lots of philosophers even have addressed the issue.

Jesus said we should treat other people as we would like them to treat us.

It’s a rule we should never allow ourselves to break.

An Example

A friend of mine recently was burned pretty badly by a business associate in a way that was completely unethical. There was a bunch of money involved and talk of lawyers.

Thing is the industry my friend is in is way smaller than I think the burner realizes. These things have a way of becoming known. Before to long folks stop doing business with unethical players.

Treat someone the way my friend was treated and word will get around eventually.

It doesn’t matter whether you neglect you blog to focus on your core business (unless your blog is your core business, of course). Your web site will still be there.

And so will those customers, business associates, and employees. At least the same people will be there. You break this rule and they may become your competitor’s customers, former business associates and ex-employees.

Or you can follow the rule and keep them all on your side.

The choice is yours. Treat others well.

Success Principle #15 - Unintended Consequences

Everything choice we make has consequences. And the place we find ourselves in life is simply a direct result of all the choices we’ve made, large or small, added together.

Successful people realize this fact and strive to make their choices wisely.

Many other people instead choose to ignore the cause and effect relationship of their choices and look for something or someone that they can blame for the circumstances they find themselves in. Until they realize that all of us do in fact have choices and that they can start making different choices, their circumstances are unlikely to change.

Unintended Consequences

But here’s the thing. Not all of the consequences of our choices are what we might expect. There are times when unintended consequences might result from our choices.

None of the decisions we make happen in a vacuum. Every choice we make in some way, large or small, affects those around us. And it is quite possible that there might even be a ripple effect of those choices that end up affecting a whole lot of folks.

This principle of unintended consequences is especially evident when governments make policy decisions and change laws for very large groups of people. Read more

Success Principle #14 - Master Your Addictions

My Addiction

I like coffee.

I drink lots of it. Potfulls. Mass quantities.

These days the perfect cup is a nice mild blend with a little half and half and a teaspoon of raw sugar. Or, if I’m feeling especially healthy, perhaps a bit of Stevia instead of the sugar.

I like the smell. The taste is wonderful. And with my goofy work schedule the caffeine kick is an extra bonus.

I’m on day two of coffee withdrawal.

Another Addiction

You see our secretary smokes.

I don’t know exactly how much, but I’m guessing somewhere around a pack a day. Whenever I’ve asked her how much she smokes she usually says, “it’s not that much,” which really doesn’t narrow it down very well.

We’ve been going back and forth hassling each other about our addictions in a very civilized, kid your coworker sort of way for a few months now. She’s a master of diverting the topic of discussion, asking questions aimed at steering the conversation in another direction.

But I wasn’t falling for it.

Friday I finally got her to say out loud that there is no positive health consequences that result from smoking. She also acknowledged a bunch of other things about her smoking.

For example, she admitted that she believed she could quit if she really wanted to. And that the reason she didn’t was mostly because she thought it would be hard.

Oh, there were a lot of other excuses and juicy rationalizations thrown in there too. My favorite was her claim that smoking a cigarette was no less healthy for you than eating a hamburger. Did I mention she’s a vegetarian?

I don’t know if the hamburger thing is true or not. Who knows? It might be.

But just the same I don’t know too many folks who eat 20+ hamburgers a day. Every day.

I’m just saying. Read more

Success Principle #13 - Run Your Own Race

“Two men were walking in a forest, when they suddenly saw a savage, hungry-looking bear. One of the men quickly put on a pair of running shoes. The other guy exclaimed, “You idiot! You can’t run faster than a bear …”

To which the first guy replied, “But I don’t have to run faster than the bear, I only have to run faster than you!”

The Wrong Take Away

In the business world I’ve most often heard that little story told to get the wrong point across. Usually the person relating the story uses it as a spring board to convey some point along these lines.

If you want to be successful you must outrun your competition.

Nope. Wrong. Dumb. Misses the greater truth. Read more

Saying No to a Good Thing

It was a tremendous opportunity.

The first pass over the numbers was exciting. In theory we’d be increasing our net worth considerably, lots more equity the moment we signed the papers.

When we looked at the property it was just the sort of thing Gorgeous and I’d been talking about. And in the right location too.

We’d already been talking about refinancing anyway, so why not just pull some of the equity out of our house, use it as a down payment on this good deal? Then we could rent our our current house and we’d come out way ahead at the end of the day.

In theory.

But the thing about theories is they don’t always play out as expected when put to the test. Like Yogi Berra said,

In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

When I was finally able to pull together actual numbers (instead of the probably “about” numbers we’d been theorizing over) it was immediately obvious.
Read more

Lessons in Amazing Grace

Last night Gorgeous and I had a date night and we went to see the movie Amazing Grace.

All I can say is Wow. Talk about a powerful movie.

It tells the story of William Wilberforce who was the main driver in Parliament behind ending slavery in Great Britain at the turn of the 19th century.

The fight to end British trading in slaves was a bitter one that lasted more than 20 years with Wilberforce bringing the issue before Parliament only to have it rejected year after year.

William was a reluctant warrior in the battle. But once he took on the role he kept at it with a passion that nearly consumed him completely.

The movie takes its title from the hymn Amazing Grace which was written by John Newton. Newton was a former slave ship captain whose change of conscience after his conversion to Christianity forced him from the business of trading in slaves and eventually into the clergy.

Apparently Newton heavily influenced Wilberforce in his own decision on whether or not to stay in politics.

There are a few lessons I brought home from that movie last night. Read more

Momentary Flashes of Twitter Brilliance

Twitter is all the rage these days. Several big blogging names are fully on board tweeting away. And a few others have not embraced the idea. The die hard Twitter converts would probably add a “yet” at the end of that last sentence. We’ll see.

Fortunately for me their IM connectivity is still not working, at least with GoogleTalk, which has been good for me from a productivity standpoint because I’m not all up in the madness non-stop throughout the day.

Most of what goes on there is only of passing interest to me. And I see an interesting principle that seems to be in play over there. I’m open to other names, but for now let’s call it

The Cree Principle of Twitterization

Your Twitter posting frequency will be directly proportional to the length of your friends list.

It seems those folks on my friends list who have hundreds of friends (and huge followings) tend to be the heaviest Twitters. And that makes it easy for me. I can just check in a couple times a day, skim through, glean the interesting stuff and disregard the rest.

A Moment of Brilliance

Read more

Success Principle #12 - The Words We Choose to Use Make a Difference

The Problem

The other day I was cruising around some top quality bloggage when I happened across Kent Blumberg’s place. Kent talks a lot about leadership principles, which is why I keep an eye on his blog.

Anyway he was talking about a great leadership idea that the Japanese use that’s having trouble catching on over here in the States. Kent’s theory that because the Japanese word for this principle sounds funny in English, the entire principle is being resisted, even though it is a good, sound idea.

I left a comment over there suggesting that “Maybe the goofy word thing is why some businesses are reluctant to embrace blogging. Probably sounds to them like some kind of medical condition.” Read more

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