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Name of author Rick Baker, P.Eng.

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“The Driving Force” - The Leader’s personal Values fuel everything

by Rick Baker
On Jan 11, 2011
Why?
 
Why do personal Values fuel everything?
 
As an introduction, here are a few answers:
  1. Decision-Making is simplified when values are clear and known. When decision-making is simplified, that creates efficiency…and efficiency means lower costs, higher gross margins, and higher profit.
  2. Trust can be built quickly. Deals are easier to do when the parties each knows the other’s ‘good values’. Trust promotes prompt and fair deals, so more opportunities are realized. Trust helps us build long-term relationships…an efficient and effective way to grow business.
  3. A group of people who share common ‘good values’ and work together toward shared goals have an opportunity to achieve excellence & accomplish great things.
3 examples to introduce why personal Values fuel everything
 
Decision-Making is simplified
 
“It is not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”
 
Roy Disney, Film Writer & Producer [nephew of Walt Disney]
 
“Values provide perspective in the best of times and the worst”
 
Charles Garfield, Business-Leadership Author
 
Building trust becomes easier & quicker
 
“Earnings can be pliable as putty when a charlatan heads the company reporting them.”
 
Warren Buffet, Investment Entrepreneur
 
"Trust is equal parts character and competence... You can look at any leadership failure, and it's always a failure of one or the other."
 
Stephen M. R. Covey, Author & CEO
 
Higher likelihood of accomplishing excellent things
 
“Authentic values are those by which a life can be lived, which can form a people that produce great deeds and thoughts.”
 
Alan Bloom, Philosopher
 
“Executives will have to invest more and more on issues such as culture, values, ethos and intangibles. Instead of being managers, they need to be cultivators and storytellers to capture minds.”
 
Leif Edvinsson, Intellectual Capital pioneer

Tags:

Entrepreneur Thinking | Spirited Leaders | Values: Personal Values

Sales Tweet #127

by Rick Baker
On Jan 11, 2011
Sales Tweet #127 The optimist may be as wrong as the pessimist...but the optimist has more fun.
 
The Thinking Behind the Sales Tweet
Just don’t let the optimism get outside the bounds of realism.

Tags:

Beyond Business | Thought Tweets

Sales Tweet #126

by Rick Baker
On Jan 10, 2011
Sales Tweet #126 Good salesmen are like good cooks: they create appetites when people aren’t hungry.
 
The Thinking Behind the Sales Tweet
Gitomer says, "People hate to be sold but they love to buy". [Similarly, many people love to eat but they don’t want food crammed down their throats.]

Tags:

Sales | Thought Tweets

Sales Tweet #125

by Rick Baker
On Jan 7, 2011
Sales Tweet #125 People are talking and obviously it's nonsense so you begin to speak.
 
The Thinking Behind the Sales Tweet
Eckhart Tolle said that in one of his 'retreats'. People laughed. They laughed because they recognized that’s exactly what they do, at least from time to time. This Sales Tweet is another reminder - Listen Well!

Tags:

Communication: Improving Communication | Humour | Thought Tweets

About Time

by Rick Baker
On Jan 6, 2011
I don’t have enough time to do that!
 
How often do you say that? How often do you think that?
 
Do you ever question whether or not that is true?
 
I have been thinking about Time quite a bit lately.
 
I started thinking about Time a couple of months ago when, one after another, I heard a number of people say they did not have time to do this or to do that. It expanded when a friend asked me if I had read anything by the [Canadian] author Eckhart Tolle1. It expanded more when the people in the LinkedIn group called Positive Thinkers started to exchange ideas about Time.
 
While this was going on I wrote Thought Posts expressing an opinion Successful people have more time2. Some people argued this was absolutely impossible. Other people said they agreed with the view. And, the LinkedIn group discussion of Time continues. And, I wrote and asked Eckhart Tolle if he would share his thoughts about Time. I know, in one of his CDs, he said “Time is an illusion”. Perhaps, that’s enough said?
 
Eckhart Tolle teaches the Power of Now and the Art of Presence:
  • We only have the present.
  • When the present passes, it becomes the past...and it is gone. It is at best a memory.
  • The future is not guaranteed to any of us. If it arrives then it arrives as the next piece of ‘the present’.
 
So, I am about ready to set aside the question “What is Time?” Although, before I do that I will restate my views:
  • Time is an organizing-tool designed by Man.
  • Time is an introductory effort at measuring the incomprehensible [universe].
Setting aside the definition of Time, most people would agree each of us has ‘the present’. And, during our lives we have a string of pieces of ‘the present’. As each piece of ‘the present’ passes it becomes the past. As the next piece of ‘the present’ arrives it ceases to be the future. We do not know how many pieces of ‘the present’ will come to us. All we know for sure is we have ‘the present’.
 
We can succeed if we make the best use of the present. Successful people have 2 good habits:
  1. They do better at defining what success means to them
  2. They make the better use of the present
I continue to think successful people have more time.
 
Footnotes:
  1. I have now listened to several Eckhart Tolle audio books. A link to .Eckhart Tolle
  2. Successful people have more time links Successful People Have More Time and About Time

Sales Tweet #124

by Rick Baker
On Jan 6, 2011
Sales Tweet #124 In his year-end review, his boss said "Ernest should go far…the farther the better".
 
The Thinking Behind the Sales Tweet
Ernest was tickled pink. And, he knows his boss is a lot smarter than his coworkers who were so short-sighted they laughed when Ernest showed them his boss's supportive words.

Tags:

Thought Tweets | Ernest Seller

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