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by Rick Baker
On Apr 23, 2010
You are the CEO.
For some strange reason a loud voice declared “STOP THE PRESSES” and everything at your operation, all the people and all the machines, came to a screeching halt.
But, you were unscathed.
So you took some time to rest and relax. Then, after doing that for a while, you became bored and you asked yourself:
"How should I get things back on track?"
"How should I re-start the people and re-start the presses?"
“What are the right things to do?”
As you stopped to think, ideas started to come to you…
***
Wouldn’t it be great if We Are Idea Leaders after we re-start our operation.
How might we go about making sure that happens?
What if…
- What if our people always work to revitalize self-confidence so we always
Empower Decision-Making …that would help
- What if we know with certainty ideas are a key ingredient for success and
we Inspire Creativity …that would help
- What if our people are convinced prosperity happens with new things so
we Promote Emergent Change …that would help
***
You gave these things deep thought, creating plans for Empowering Decision-Making, Inspiring Creativity, and Promoting Emergent Change so you and your people will with confidence be able to say We Are Idea Leaders.
You wrote out your plans for these things so you could share them when the time was right.
You made a commitment to yourself…these things would be in place when you re-start your people and you re-start your presses.
You decided to sleep on it and see if any more ideas came to you.
To be continued…
by Rick Baker
On Apr 22, 2010
You are the CEO.
For some strange reason a loud voice declared “STOP THE PRESSES” and everything at your operation, all the people and all the machines, came to a screeching halt.
But, you were unscathed.
So you took some time to rest and relax. Then, after doing that for a while, you became bored and you asked yourself:
"How should I get things back on track?"
"How should I re-start the people and re-start the presses?"
“What are the right things to do?”
As you stopped to think, ideas started to come to you…
***
Wouldn’t it be great if We Truly Connect With People after we re-start our
operation.
How might we go about making sure that happens?
What if…
- What if our people commit to understanding themselves and others
and Make Networking a Career Goal…that would help
- What if our people feel generous about going all those extra miles
and Commit to Delivering Value First …that would help
- What if we refuse to let policy or process get in our way and we
Guarantee We Will Get Things Done Right …that would help
***
You gave these things deep thought, creating plans for Making Networking a Career Goal, Committing to Delivering Value First, and Guaranteeing You Will Get Things Done Right so you and your people will be able to honestly say We Truly Connect With People.
You wrote out your plans for these things so you could share them when the time was right.
You made a commitment to yourself…these things would be in place when you re-start your people and you re-start your presses.
You decided to sleep on it and see if any more ideas came to you.
To be continued…
by Rick Baker
On Apr 21, 2010
You are the CEO.
For some strange reason a loud voice declared "STOP THE PRESSES" and everything at your operation, all the people and all the machines, came to a screeching halt.
But, you were unscathed.
So you took some time to rest and relax. Then, after doing that for a while, you became bored and you asked yourself:
"How should I get things back on track?"
"How should I re-start the people and re-start the presses?"
"What are the right things to do?"
As you stopped to think, ideas started to come to you…
***
Wouldn't it be great if We Enjoy the Time We Spend at Our Workplace after we
re-start our operation.
How might we go about making sure that happens?
What if…
- What if our workplace has a 'hassle-free' atmosphere where
winners Share the Right Culture…that would help
- What if our people understand one another's talents and we
Make the Most of Our People's Strengths…that would help
- What if we ensure stress levels are under control and we
Maintain an Appreciation of Humour…that would help
***
You gave these things deep thought, creating plans for Sharing the Right Culture, Making the Most of Your People's Strengths, and Maintaining an Appreciation of Humour so you and your people will Enjoy the Time You Spend at Your Workplace.
You wrote out your plans for these things so you could share them when the time was right.
You made a commitment to yourself…these things would be in place when you re-start your people and you re-start your presses.
You decided to sleep on it and see if any more ideas came to you.
by Rick Baker
On Apr 20, 2010
You are the CEO.
Imagine you are at work at your plant.
Imagine your plant’s alarm sirens scream and a larger-than-life voice blares through your loudspeaker:
"STOP THE PRESSES!"
Imagine you look up at your large clock, the white one with the black hands, high up on the wall of your production area. The clock ever so slowly ticks one more second then it stops.
All your machines groan and screech as they halt their work…the whole place is silent.
As in one of those sci-fi movies we see advertised on TV, all your people stand frozen in time.
That is, every person but you.
You are unscathed.
You are able to walk about…in the calm, still, and eerie silence.
Once the surprise wears off your next reaction, of course, is...
“Finally…some time to rest and relax!”
You do that.
You rest. You relax.
After some time, you are refreshed and invigorated: so, the joy of all that rest and relaxation wears off.
You get really bored and you begin to think.
You wonder..."How can I get things back on track?"
“How can I re-start this business of mine?"
And, recognizing you are under absolutely no pressure from anyone or anything, your mind takes it one step farther.
You don’t just ask yourself "How can I get things back on track?"
You ask yourself:
"How should I get things back on track?"
"How should I re-start the people and re-start the presses?"
“What are the right things to do?”
As you focus your thoughts and envision the future, ideas start to come to you…
To be continued…
by Rick Baker
On Feb 23, 2010
Here’s a quote from an article titled ‘Does Corporate Culture Matter? The Case of Enron’, written by A.J. Schuler, Psy.D.
“Enron’s corporate culture best exemplified values of risk taking, aggressive growth and entrepreneurial creativity. These are all positive values. But these values were not balanced by genuine attention to corporate integrity and the creation of customer - and not just shareholder - value. Because the Enron corporate culture was not well grounded, a single scorecard - maximized price per share of common stock - became its reason for being, and even its positive values became liabilities.”
Why was I reading about Enron?
2 reasons…
- We were having a discussion about corporate values and culture.
- During my energy career we worked with many Enron and ex-Enron people: many personal experiences are still vivid in my memory.
Here’s the gist of our discussion…our conclusion.
We agreed, over our business careers many of our failures were consequences of opposed values. We had one set of values. The other folks had a different set of values. And the two sets of values were in [unspoken] conflict.
Expanding on A.J. Schuler’s point, the corporate values reported by Enron appear to be positive. The fact is to those values are only positive when they are guided and bounded by certain attributes of character.
What attributes of character?
A.J. Schuler used the words ‘genuine attention to corporate integrity’.
That captures it…as long as we have a common definition of ‘corporate integrity’, we have a common description of ‘genuine attention’, and we communicate our views about integrity accurately.
That’s where the devil really does hide in the details.
A few years ago, we did a real-life, SouthWestern-Ontario-CEO study of Integrity. If you would like to know the results of our study…email me and I will send a little report to you. Contact Rick
My next blog will be titled To agree or not to agree, that is the question.
by Rick Baker
On Jan 19, 2010
This is the first blog of a 10-blog series about Changing For The Better.
The Purpose: (1) to introduce the important role habits play in performance and (2) to provide some examples of ideas and 'tools' to help people create success-directed habits.
People only do 3 things: (1) Good Habits, (2) Bad Habits, and (3) New Things.
Some may argue that's an oversimplification…however, as yet, I have not felt the need to expand the list.
Good Habits contribute to our betterment.
New Things may or may not contribute to our betterment.
When we set goals defining what 'our betterment' means we generally wish to use our Good Habits, reduce our Bad Habits, and perhaps do some New Things.
When we do New Things we end up either turning them into Good Habits or Bad Habits or we stop doing them.
It makes sense to try doing New Things to create new Good Habits.
Often, and this is important to this blog series, we choose to do New Things in a conscious effort to remove Bad Habits and replace them with Good Habits.
New Things are often the only mechanisms that will help us to move from Bad Habits to Good Habits.
Enough theoretical stuff…at least for now.
Here's a video clip of how I picture Good Habits, Bad Habits, and New Things…
Some things to think about…
- There's a 'thin line' between Good Habits and Bad Habits
- One good way to move from Bad Habits to Good Habits is - Doing New Things
- Doing New Things: the choices are essentially infinite
- Doing New Things = Change
- Doing New Things that lead to our betterment = Changing For The Better
Changing For The Better…that's what this 10-blog series is about. The next blog will talk about Habits and introduce some of the ways we can expand our Good Habits, effect Change, and achieve our goals.
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