What color are your glasses?

Posted on November 8, 2013 by dredwilliams

BibleGlassesWe all look at the world around us through some kind of glasses.  Some are rose-colored, some are sunglasses, and some try to correct our vision in some way.

Ok … we don’t all wear glasses, but there is something that affects how we see the world and interact with it:  our worldview.  Everyone has one … whether they realize it or not.  It’s made up of the combination of our beliefs, our fears, our education, our experience, and a whole lot more.  It helps us understand what we see by filling in the gaps:  we don’t see anything holding up an airplane as it flies across the sky, but we know that the air under its wings is what keeps it from falling.  It also can bias our perception because of something we’ve experienced before:  we don’t trust anyone because we just found out our best friend has been lying to us.

Unlike a pair of glasses our worldview isn’t something that we can take off and swap for another one.  It is as much a part of us as our fingerprints.  Knowing what a worldview is, however, can help us understand why we’re reacting in a particular way and — more importantly — help us understand why someone is not understanding what we’re trying to say because we can see what color their glasses are.

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Where’s the box?

Posted on November 7, 2013 by dredwilliams

Two of my favorite quotes from Albert Einstein:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Ok, if we aren’t supposed to do the same thing when we run into a problem, what are we supposed to do?  The current cliche is that we are supposed to “think outside the box” — but where’s the box?  After some intense research, I found this in Wikipedia:

The origins of the phrase “thinking outside the box” are obscure; but it was popularized in part because of a nine-dot puzzle, which John Adair claims to have introduced in 1969. Management consultant Mike Vance has claimed that the use of the nine-dot puzzle in consultancy circles stems from the corporate culture of the Walt Disney Company, where the puzzle was used in-house.

The puzzle proposed an intellectual challenge—to connect the dots by drawing four straight, continuous lines that pass through each of the nine dots, and never lifting the pencil from the paper. The conundrum is easily resolved, but only by drawing the lines outside the confines of the square area defined by the nine dots themselves. The phrase “thinking outside the box” is a restatement of the solution strategy. The puzzle only seems difficult because people commonly imagine a boundary around the edge of the dot array.

So that’s where the box came from!

This is an example of how we limit ourselves through self-imposed constraints … reducing our capabilities because of assumptions that we make about what we are allowed to do. We put ourselves into a box of our own making!  We need to do more than think outside the box — we need to get out of the box and start finding out what we’re really capable of!

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How does anyone take spam emails seriously?

Posted on November 4, 2013 by dredwilliams

I get dozens of emails every day.  I’m on a lot of mailing lists — technical newsletters, leadership blogs, and notices from banks, credit cards, my church, and other valid sources of information.  I get advertising from various stores that I frequent (and some that I don’t) … and a large number of emails offering for me to buy Rolex watches, blue diamond-shaped pills, and penny stocks that are going to take off and turn into the next Google!

I’m all for capitalism — people want to make money, so they advertise their product or service and try to lure (I mean attract) customers into purchasing their wares.  What I find remarkable is that anyone actually believes that those watches are real, that the pills will actually do anything useful, or those stocks are going to do anything other than go down to zero.  The emails are often crude, full of junk text so that it will come up in just about any search, or just so obnoxious that it’s hard to even look at them.  How could any reasonable person actually believe them?

Pure business sense says that if this method of “advertising” didn’t work, nobody would waste the time and effort doing it … but how much business can it really bring in?  Given that it costs almost nothing to send an email, it wouldn’t take much of a return to cover the costs and still provide some profit; but can it be enough to make a living?

“There’s a sucker born every minute” is a quote that is often attributed to P. T. Barnum (though it was more likely something said about him) — and it definitely applies here as well.  Also, “a fool and his money are soon parted” … so unless you want to be known as a ‘sucker’ or a  ‘fool’, I suggest that if the email seems odd or too good to be true, just delete it.

 

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Success is … not forgetting the basics

Posted on November 3, 2013 by dredwilliams

The famous quote attributed to Thomas Edison popped into my mind when reading another blog:  “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”  The common interpretation is that there is a lot of work between coming up with an idea and making it real.  In a business context, it can take on a slightly different meaning.

The current buzzword making the circuit of the leadership in corporate america is “innovation”:  in order to be successful, we have to innovate.  We always have to be doing something new — something different from the rest of the crowd.  I’m not saying that innovation is bad — it is the only real way things get better (more efficient, reduce cost, better product, etc.) — but we need to make sure there is a solid foundation for the innovations to build on.

Karin Hurt said recently in her blog Let’s Grow Leaders:

Leadership impact comes in the context of the mundane.  Every day little words inspire connection more than any grand speech you could deliver.  It’s what you say when you think it doesn’t matter that matters.

We have to make sure we don’t overdose on the adrenaline of innovation and forget about all the basic things we need to do so that the “wheels don’t fall off” and “the lights stay on”.

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Do you know how to read a book?

Posted on November 2, 2013 by dredwilliams

I’ve been reading now for about 46 years … lots of books — textbooks, novels, nonfiction, magazines, journals, papers … and I thought I knew how.  As I was listening to Michael Hyatt‘s podcast “How to read a nonfiction book” tonight, I realize that maybe the way we were taught to read books is not as effective as it could be.  His 10 best practices for reading nonfiction books are:

  1. Don’t feel that you need to finish.
  2. Start with the author bio.
  3. Read the table of contents.
  4. Quickly scan the whole book.
  5. Highlight important passages.
  6. Take notes in front or in the margin.
  7. Use a set of note-taking symbols.
  8. Dog-ear (or bookmark) pages you want to revisit.
  9. Review the book and transfer actions to a to-do list.
  10. Share the book’s message.

The first point is definitely interesting … I’ve got several books scattered around my desk area with bookmarks in them — either I get bored with them, find something I don’t like, or it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.  While it’s possible that there may be something useful in the remaining pages of these books, the effort that will be required to plow through them has so far deterred me from attempting the feat.

Items 3 & 4 are also contrary to the traditional “front to back” reading paradigm — and Michael’s rationale is that just like you look at a map before you take a trip, you should get the layout of the book before you start so you know what to expect.

I can’t say that I agree with all his points:  except for textbooks and certain other reference books (such as my Bible), annotating, highlighting, and otherwise “marking up” books seems pointless:  will I ever look at that book again?  His point is that it helps you remember the key points of the book — using the same philosophy as note-taking helping to remember just by the act of writing things down — but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

At the beginning, he does say that this technique is for nonfiction books only — so don’t use this as an excuse to read the last chapter of your mystery novel before you’re supposed to.

What techniques do you use to read books so that you remember the key points in them?

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The Sandwich Generation

Posted on October 30, 2013 by dredwilliams

Jennifer and I have been married for just over 30 years and have seven children ranging from 16 up through 76 … what was that again?

We are in the position that many of our friends are also in:  while we are coming to the conclusion of raising our own family (two more still living at home), we also have had my mother-in-law living with us for the past 11 years.  We firmly believe that it is our responsibility to take care of our parents when they cannot do so any longer — out of respect for the pain that we caused them when growing up, but also to demonstrate respect for our children.  Sounds great — right?  Not so fast …

We have been a reasonably traditional family — with the normal give and take between the parental authority figures and the children trying to do as little work as possible.  We tell them to clean their rooms and after a few tries on their own, we’ll go in and help shovel out the stuff so we can see what color the carpet really is.  It’s a ballet, everyone has their part and knows their script, and things get done … mostly.

Let me say right here that I love my mother-in-law, and I have a deep respect for who she is and what she has accomplished in her lifetime, not the least of which was to raise my darling wife!  She moved in with us as much out of convenience as anything else — she was living alone on the other side of the country, and we all thought it was best to merge our households and enjoy her remaining years as part of our large family.  Years pass, her health declines, and we start hearing the dreaded word from her doctor:  Alzheimer’s.  It’s sad seeing her sit there, sometimes not remembering who the people are around her.  Then came the falls … no serious injuries, but it’s only by God’s grace.  Things need to be done to make things safer for her, but she doesn’t always agree (or understand), and she doesn’t like people messing with her stuff.

This is where the challenge lies:  where is the line between respecting our parents and stepping in to do something for their own good — with our without their permission?  While I have no problem going into one of my children’s rooms to do something that needs to be done, am I going too far doing the same thing in my mother-in-law’s room?  I knew she wouldn’t want me to do it; and while she would not refuse me, it would be painful for both of us if I did it with her around … so while she was out tonight, I went in and removed several pieces of furniture that were creating a significant hazard for her moving in and out of the bedroom.

It was the right thing to do … but was I showing her the respect due my wife’s mother, or was I treating her as my seventh child?

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