Ducks in order?

As I look around my office and see the papers, and think about the closet that needs to be purged, I sigh….I need to put my ducks in order. >

Lost strategic focus?

I’m hearing from CEO’s and I’m hearing from senior leaders that one minute you are looking at 3 year plans and the next minute you are all hunting for a missing product in the supply chain. Or, you just finally hired an important new team player and a long time team member gives notice. It is like paddling too much on one side of the canoe and then furiously trying to get straight by paddling hard on the other side. It feels like we all have lost strategic focus. Tell me again, where are you trying to go? >

Click refresh

You refresh your computer. More emails show up. You get new information. How many times each day do you refresh your computer? What about yourself? >

As you think…

Ralph Waldo Emerson said life consists in what a person is thinking all day.* Well that is a scary thought! Have you ever thought about what you think about each day? Do you ever wonder what other people think about all day? We all spend a lot of time thinking about trivial things as time gets away from us. Want to be better?

I hear often that an idea came to someone in the shower. They didn’t plan the time to be creative, it came to them. Do you ever make a plan to let your mind run free? You could take 3 showers each day, but with the drought, that seems like a bad idea. Instead, you might plan quiet time where you allow your mind to drift. As a kid, I would lay on the grass staring at the clouds in the summer without anywhere else to be. Sigh. That doesn’t happen to us randomly as adults.

We all spend a lot of time thinking about things that don’t matter. In fact, we waste a lot of time on the unimportant. When you become aware of doing that, switching to a topic you had on your list to think about (keep these written on your phone), will gain that time back for more important things.

Let me be clear – I don’t object to people goofing off. But, how many times do you wish you hadn’t just spent 20 minutes on social media? Goofing off should make you feel better.

If what you are thinking about is not making you smarter or happier, change the subject. Ruminating over past mistakes or slights doesn’t make you happier. Think about why you are thinking about them. Give yourself permission to change the topic to something more valuable. If it is really bothering you, I bet it will come back up later.

This week, pay attention to your thoughts and change the subject to something more valuable when they are a waste of time. Let’s see if you feel more productive as a result.

 

+ The exact quote from Emerson is “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”  I saw it written without quotation marks as I repeated above. That made me curious. I found the exact quote when I went to double-check the accuracy. I chose to laugh and appreciate the rewrite I read first.

Role changes

Your company grew 30% so far this year. Yahoo! Guess what? This may cause role changes for you. Are you good with that? >

Depends on how you look at it…

Living in an area with mature trees is a real pleasure, especially during the hot days of summer. Look at the palm trees in the picture. They are over 60 feet tall. Notice the ivy climbing all the way to the top? That is pretty unusual. Is it a good thing, or a bad thing? Well, It depends on how you look at it… >

Bossy girl or natural leader?

When I think of 10 year old Nora with long stringy brown hair and glasses, I remember being bored, physically and mentally restless and often speaking up with ideas for how things could be more interesting or more fun. Was I a bossy girl or a natural leader? >

Retire to?

With several successful sales among Members of my groups, a new question has arisen, what to retire to? >

Committed to Growing as Leaders

This week my Chief Executive Vistage groups got together in person for the first time in 15 months. Wow! It was so sweet. There were so many lovely side conversations before starting, during breaks and sometimes during the meeting as people reconnected or met for the first time. >