Stay in your lane

I did a little driving and walking on and along asphalt this weekend.    Noticed two things, there is an edge to the asphalt and there is usually a line in the centre of it.  The rule is, “Stay in your lane”.  If you are walking you stay on the gravel edge before the asphalt if a car is coming.   If you want to walk on the asphalt facing traffic, that works, you just need to move when a car is coming, because that is the car’s lane.   This is quite a level of trust we put in this edge / line.   When walking you can be 2 feet or less from sudden death.

When driving, this 4 to 5 inch line (guessing as I have never stopped on a big highway to measure it) is in white or yellow and shows you where your lane is for your car.  If you go over the line, and there is another car coming, guess what?   Bang.

For boating, there are no lanes.   One thing we did for water skiing was a key hole turn.   You maneuver the boat to turn back to where you have just been.  Usually in pursuit of flat water.   You try to follow the boats old path to minimize the waves for the skiier.   The boat leaves a bit of a bubble trail which can be followed, but note, other boats don’t see this as some sort of line in the water, so staying in your lane is tough.   Boating has other rules for who has the right of way.   Important to know those, sailboats, dragon boats and float planes need you to get out of the way !!!!!

I worked with a man a few years ago who used the “Stay in your lane” statement for jobs and roles in a big corporation.  Jobs and roles are set up so people have responsibility and authority for specific processes and outcomes.   He was trying to point out that if we work on what we are supposed to most everything will function much better.   Kind of lines in the corporate process highway.

The Empty Park Bench

Last night, as our Dragon Boat Team left our meeting place due to rough water, I noticed that once everyone had moved on, the park bench we gather around was empty.

The goal is to meet twice per week at a specific time, sign in, warm up, get in the boat and train.  A storm had come up which brought up the wind and possibility of lighting.  So it was decided not to go out, safer.  Now you have 20 people who were psyched up to paddle, training for the Big Kelowna Festival.  So some of the team moved on to one of the Team sponsors, the pub.

I was the last to leave the bench.  There was only one paddle leaning against the tree.  What had been a lively group of people, talking, remembering, planning was now an empty park bench.  It looks like 100% of the time, people move on.  And some lower % of the time people follow to the next location.

We as humans gather, around a park bench, in a box, with a fox, sorry I meant in a boat, at a pub, in an office, around a table, in a church.  And we gather with friends on FaceBook, contacts in Linked In, follow on Twitter.   We gather, interact and share our journey, always learning, advancing.

I want to say thanks to the world for teams, and those who are bold enough to ask people to join teams.  Enjoying a common focus is so strong, so inclusive.  And to always have room for another, another seat, another space, another bench.

There is no looking back, teams move forward.  There is abundance.

Duplicitous – A new word for me

I have run across a new word, Duplicitous and a wiki definition of: “Given to or marked by deliberate deceptiveness in behavior or speech”

Where did I see this word? On p. 195 of Stephen Covey’s book on the 7 Habits.

Stephen has written an incredible chapter on the Emotional Bank Account.

He lists how we as humans on this journey called life can make six (6) major deposits that build trust in our relationships.  Have you every counted the relationships that you deposit and withdraw from everyday?   What truly draws people together in family, friends, work?   Whether it be face to face or in the arena of social networking via electronic devices…   FaceBook..  make a friend request,  Linked In…  make a request for a “connection”, Twitter…   develop followers, Blog…   have an increasing dashboard of daily hits with views and readers.   I wanted to list the 6 out this morning as I feel I am very low on many of the EBA’s in my life.   I am interested in nuturing growing things, but I have lots to learn.   As a visual, I many times feel like I “pull up the flowers to see how the roots are coming”.    So here are the Six Major deposits…   as you read them, as I have typed them and will reread them let your conscious, present mind float over all the people you interacted with yesterday and the people you will bump up against today as see where you might fit them in providing then a deposit.

Understanding the Individual

Attending to the Little Things

Keeping Commitments

Clarifying Expectations

Show Personal Integrity

Apologizing Sincerely When You Make a Withdrawal

Getting back to Duplicitous, it must be that this is a big value for me, “Integrity”.   Wow all these authors like Dale Carnegie, Brian Tracey, John Eldridge, Stephen Covey, and Henry Cloud, who I read in January 2009, “Integrity, the courage to meet the demands of reality” all point in the same direction.   So as I’m listing out things today, here is Henry Clouds Six essential qualities determine your success in business.

Establish Trust

Oriented toward Truth

Getting Results

Embracing the Negative

Oriented Toward Increase

Oriented Toward Transcendence

Wow…   it is all here.    Now this leads into something that I was struck by in Dr Henry Clouds book and that is”The Wake”.   This will definitely be a post, as I will be out on the water again slalom skiing and wake boarding.   The concept here is the boat of our lives is going thru the journey and behind it is a wake, a mark.   “It is a beautiful, ever-changing creations as we continue on our path” (p. 16).

The wake is defined by 2 areas, Task and Relationship:   What did we accomplish and how did we deal with the people?   I am intrigued by this learning for me.  Almost all of what I do each day is with an through people.  I have gaps against these dimensions above, gaps that I am working to fill.

Paid to be curious

After my first workout ever today at iQuest, I stopped in at Second Cup to celebrate with a coffee and Bagel.   As was I was settling into the comfy chair (the bike seat was tough…), an RCMP officer asked a lady in line, “What are you doing?”.   I suspect whenever one is asked by an RCMP officer what you are doing, one should be careful !!!!    The lady explained that she was getting a lid for a drink she had got somewhere else and they didn’t have lids…   a likely story I thought.   And then an interesting comment from the officer.   “We get paid to be curious”.

Imagine if your job description was being paid to be curious.   Curious about the 7 Habits, curious about new social media like FaceBook, Linked In, Twitter and New Product Development with curved composite materials.   Curious about CRM databases like SalesForce.   Curious about Marketing.

What are you curious about?

Desperado

“Desperado”

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses? You been out ridin’ fences for so long now Oh, you’re a hard one I know that you got your reasons These things that are pleasin’ you Can hurt you somehow Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds, boy She’ll beat you if she’s able You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet Now it seems to me, some fine things Have been laid upon your table But you only want the ones that you can’t get Desperado, oh, you ain’t gettin’ no younger Your pain and your hunger, they’re drivin’ you home And freedom, oh freedom well, that’s just some people talkin’ Your prison is walking through this world all alone Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time? The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine It’s hard to tell the night time from the day You’re losin’ all your highs and lows Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away? Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses? Come down from your fences, open the gate It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you You better let somebody love you, before it’s too late

Carpe Diem

Something Horace said.   Seize the day.

I have a white shirt with it on.    If someone could have got it thru my thick skull, earlier in my life journey, that the more exercise you do the more energy you have for other parts of your life, I’m sure some things would have been easier.

It has been a great weekend, weights, swim, bike, tennis.    And an incredible birthday party….    very fun.

Carpe Diem.      And great people to join in the events is also so motivating…..

Story crucial elements – Help me to add these to my stories.

A good leadership story has the power to engage hearts and minds. It has these six crucial elements:

1. Draws on your real past and lessons you’ve learned from it.
2. Resonates emotionally with your audience because it’s relevant to them.
3. Inspires your audience because it’s fueled by your passion.
4. Shows the struggle between your goal and the obstacles you faced in pursuing it.
5. Illustrates with a vivid example.
6. Teaches an important lesson.

Detach from the outcome

This week I felt I worked hard to bring people out to what I considered were worthwhile events.   My wife Carrie’s art opening, Dragon Boating and a lunch time 7 Habits session…  At the best event of the week, the wine was great at $4, (not that I had any but others enjoyed it) the Art was incredibly great and the people were over the top magnificent.  I have blog topics for weeks now….   Now I have been told to “Detach from the outcome”….    this is hard….  I always wonder if there was more I could have done at the time.    I picked up the stick of finding big strong men for the Red Hot Chilli Paddlers Dragon Boat Team to increase our paddle power for the Sept 19 Kelowna Festival, and I became emotionally involved when the one night I miss the team forfits a practice.   Something I have learned in the last year is that physically I cannot be in 2 places at the same time.   And I need to be proactive and put first things first.   First things first was enjoying an incredible opening at my wife’s art opening of “burned out”.   So many great people showed up, it was fantastic.   And what was even more incredible which I think is how word of mouth works in marketing, is that one person who came out to enjoy the display of art works, told others how great the show was.  Spectactular.   He explained what a great event it was, the depth of the paintings capturing the 2003 fire, and that the show is open all of August for private viewing.   Some people may not like to socialize at an Art Gallery?   There’s a concept…

Carrie Harper on the web.   If you are in this segment of the population you can view online, and even follow Carrie Harper on Twitter.

But for me, all I can do, is all I can do is enough and now “Detach from the outcome”.   I guess if you don’t detach you get “burned out”.

A Principle Center – “Pick Up The Stick” – Share your story

I was guided this week back to the book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”  Powerful lessons in personal change by Stephen R. Covey.  I mean guided back in that I have not been reading his book cover to cover.  For me it is more like a resource book for ideas on the 7 Habits and principles when walls come up on my journey.  I have been provided the once in a lifetime opportunity to use a brown guidebook from his 3 day course which summarizes all the Habits, Principles and tools for my change management.  I do know a person who is reading the book from cover to cover and he noted that there is a full section on the “Emotional Bank Account” (EBA) making this a very important aspect of our life journey.

On the way to find this section on EBA I opened Stephen’s book to p.122 and found a small title “A Principle Center”.   Now that I look this is inside Habit 2, Begin with the end in Mind.   Looks like I will need to keep going to find the EBA section…

Of course something jumped out while I was reading…  “If you pick up one end of a stick, you pick up the other”.   Now that is pretty visual isn’t it?    The section just before this was written in some magnificent language….

“The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influence that limit other people”

“The only real limitation of power is the natural consequences of the principles themselves.  We are free to choose our actions, based on our knowledge of correct principles, but we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions”

It was this last part that hit me, ‘NOT FREE TO CHOOSE THE CONSEQUENCES OF THOSE ACTIONS”.  I know that, I knew that, I want to function this way but in every new situation I seem to think I can force an outcome, push a result.

If an opportunity comes up to sell frozen free range organic chickens to fund raise for Chloe’s 2009 trip to France, I CANNOT EXPECT ALL 60 OF MY FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK TO BUY ORGANIC CHICKENS.   But some will.  I was free to put this offer up on FaceBook as an event with a few benefits, and in my status and see who was interested.  Chickens sold which was great, Chloe went to France and then the funny part a friend I met in 1985, before the digital world of FaceBook, found me in FaceBook and being the research oriented type that he is looked through my status lines.   What has David Harper being doing lately?  Well he summarized that I had been selling chickens and meat…   and wanted to know what that was about !!!!!!

I would be interested to read your story of whether you thought you could “pick up the stick” and not get the other end.

Also to provide some context here, this is just one small section of the great work of Stephen Covey and the word “Power” got used in the quote…    Stephen’s model here is if you are principle centered then we juggle our lives with SECURITY, GUIDANCE, WISDOM AND POWER.  There is a great table for this on p. 124.

The future

A quote struck me in Victor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”.    Our goals are important.  “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future”