I am not ready to crown myself the greatest leader of all time. And I readily admit that I don't necessarily do this on purpose, but...in his book "The Management Gurus: Lessons from the Best Management Books of all Time" Chris Lauer writes about the importance of generating small wins. And that is something I do.
He writes "leaders should dream big, but start small. Dream big about crossing that enormous cosmos to find some new world but start small with a few short journeys to test your theories and abilities".
I have found myself telling more than one person, on more than one occasion, that I am not trying to conquer the world. Now don't get me wrong here. I have big plans for Bravo but I also know that have those dreams realized it needs to be slow grow. Deliberate, slow, methodical and planned. One project at a time, one client at a time.
I would think for anyone starting a business this would be sage advice.
Why is "generate small wins" important for me? I think one of the reasons that people never go after their dreams is because they think everything has to be perfectly in place in order for them to get started. Not me. I see the first time I do anything--a new workshop, a new presentation, any new idea as a trial run. I have to. If I required perfection I would never get started.
And so I approach everything I do as adding one small win to my win category knowing that in time, those small wins will accumulate and start snowballing into the big wins I lay in bed at night and plan out in my head.
All great stories have a moral and mine is this: if you are keeping from going after your dreams because you think everything should be PERFECT take a deep breath, tell yourself "perfection is not the goal" and then get started.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Duh Factor
I sometimes find myself clicking on the Yahoo Home Page snippets about life at work. Today's home page snippet is about bad co-workers. Here are the five things that make you a bad co-worker, according to Yahoo.
1. You dump last-minute work on people when you could have avoided doing so.
2. You complain about people without telling them your beefs directly.
3. You exude negativity.
4. You bring your personal life to the office in ways that make people uncomfortable.
5. You're chronically defensive.
Here's the end to this ENLIGHTENING (sarcasm intended by the all caps) article:
"If you recognize yourself in any of the above habits, you may be the irritating coworker that colleagues are complaining about to me. Try a one-month moratorium on the behavior and see if any of your relationships improve."
Here is the problem: YOU WON'T RECOGNIZE YOURSELF IN ANY OF THESE ITEMS AND THAT IS WHAT MAKES YOU SO **%#@@ IRRITATING. Thus, the DUH factor.
You see, people who do these things are painfully self UNaware. And that is what makes them so hard to work with. I have often joked with clients that we are going to start providing an anonymous service to people where we send emails that say "hey guess what? Everyone thinks you are a royal jerk!" That reminds me of a funny bumper sticker I saw once "Jesus Loves you, Everyone Else Thinks You're an Asshole". Now that is funny.
Maybe I should just buy a bunch of those and hand them out as a service project. It would make the world a better please me thinks.
DUH!
1. You dump last-minute work on people when you could have avoided doing so.
2. You complain about people without telling them your beefs directly.
3. You exude negativity.
4. You bring your personal life to the office in ways that make people uncomfortable.
5. You're chronically defensive.
Here's the end to this ENLIGHTENING (sarcasm intended by the all caps) article:
"If you recognize yourself in any of the above habits, you may be the irritating coworker that colleagues are complaining about to me. Try a one-month moratorium on the behavior and see if any of your relationships improve."
Here is the problem: YOU WON'T RECOGNIZE YOURSELF IN ANY OF THESE ITEMS AND THAT IS WHAT MAKES YOU SO **%#@@ IRRITATING. Thus, the DUH factor.
You see, people who do these things are painfully self UNaware. And that is what makes them so hard to work with. I have often joked with clients that we are going to start providing an anonymous service to people where we send emails that say "hey guess what? Everyone thinks you are a royal jerk!" That reminds me of a funny bumper sticker I saw once "Jesus Loves you, Everyone Else Thinks You're an Asshole". Now that is funny.
Maybe I should just buy a bunch of those and hand them out as a service project. It would make the world a better please me thinks.
DUH!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Power Point is not the Devil
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
I was cruising the aisles of the business section at Barnes and Noble yesterday in search of new alluring book titles and came across a book on leadership and presentations that looked interesting. I opened it up to the table of contents and noticed a section on PowerPoint so I turned to the page indicated where I read "how many of you have ever left a presentation and said 'Wow he/she has a great PowerPoint!'? No one right?" The writer went on to suggest that great leaders don't need Power Point for a great presentation. That may be true in some cases. But to then make the assumption that no one has ever been moved by a great Power Point? Well, I respectfully disagree.
Slides in a presentation have the ability to create a visual experience that a stand alone speaker could never achieve no matter how amazing her language choices might be. That is just the truth of the matter. Millie and I recognize the place of our slides--to provide visual impact to our message--and we design them accordingly. On many occasions our workshop and presentation attendees have commented on how great our slides were and well, I humbly agree. We work HARD at it. Millie has spent an hour on one slide before trying to strike just the right tone with the slide and I can't count the endless hours we have spent looking for just the right image. Why?
Because seeing is powerful.
Because the research is conclusive: people are more likely to remember a message when all their senses are employed.
Because audiences want a multi sensory experience.
Because audiences have a shorter attention span and are more likely to zone out without something to look at.
Because Because Because
Slides are not bad.
The people who design them are usually bad at designing slides.
If you have never left a presentation and said "Her Power Point rocked" you would certainly know it when one did in fact, well, rock. It would make an impact. You would sit up and take notice.
Slides are not going to go away.
People are going to keep using Power Point.
And we are glad for it, because it allows us to work with our clients to help them design slides that, well Rock.
I have a few slides above to illustrate my point. Could you do a better job with words to tell the story that the image so nicely tells on it's own? Take the toy soldiers for example. It is just the perfect representation of the idea we wanted to communicate and for our audience the image is a throwback to their days as kids playing in the backyard with their little toy soldiers. Without it, we might have said "You know it's like when you had all those little toy soldiers you used to play with when you were little..." and it might have gotten a few smiles but the IMAGE is way more powerful isn't it?
I shall not throw the book under the bus I read because I did not read the whole thing and I suspect there is probably some great advice inside the book. But suggesting that great leaders who are great speakers don't use Power Point or Slides in their presentations is just flat out wrong.
Just ask Steve Jobs.....
Great Slides
View more presentations from guestbce1265.
I was cruising the aisles of the business section at Barnes and Noble yesterday in search of new alluring book titles and came across a book on leadership and presentations that looked interesting. I opened it up to the table of contents and noticed a section on PowerPoint so I turned to the page indicated where I read "how many of you have ever left a presentation and said 'Wow he/she has a great PowerPoint!'? No one right?" The writer went on to suggest that great leaders don't need Power Point for a great presentation. That may be true in some cases. But to then make the assumption that no one has ever been moved by a great Power Point? Well, I respectfully disagree.
Slides in a presentation have the ability to create a visual experience that a stand alone speaker could never achieve no matter how amazing her language choices might be. That is just the truth of the matter. Millie and I recognize the place of our slides--to provide visual impact to our message--and we design them accordingly. On many occasions our workshop and presentation attendees have commented on how great our slides were and well, I humbly agree. We work HARD at it. Millie has spent an hour on one slide before trying to strike just the right tone with the slide and I can't count the endless hours we have spent looking for just the right image. Why?
Because seeing is powerful.
Because the research is conclusive: people are more likely to remember a message when all their senses are employed.
Because audiences want a multi sensory experience.
Because audiences have a shorter attention span and are more likely to zone out without something to look at.
Because Because Because
Slides are not bad.
The people who design them are usually bad at designing slides.
If you have never left a presentation and said "Her Power Point rocked" you would certainly know it when one did in fact, well, rock. It would make an impact. You would sit up and take notice.
Slides are not going to go away.
People are going to keep using Power Point.
And we are glad for it, because it allows us to work with our clients to help them design slides that, well Rock.
I have a few slides above to illustrate my point. Could you do a better job with words to tell the story that the image so nicely tells on it's own? Take the toy soldiers for example. It is just the perfect representation of the idea we wanted to communicate and for our audience the image is a throwback to their days as kids playing in the backyard with their little toy soldiers. Without it, we might have said "You know it's like when you had all those little toy soldiers you used to play with when you were little..." and it might have gotten a few smiles but the IMAGE is way more powerful isn't it?
I shall not throw the book under the bus I read because I did not read the whole thing and I suspect there is probably some great advice inside the book. But suggesting that great leaders who are great speakers don't use Power Point or Slides in their presentations is just flat out wrong.
Just ask Steve Jobs.....
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