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Decisions, Decisions. (On doing the right thing.)

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I was at a meeting last night, and the subject was Guidance – where do you find it? The trainer suggested that there were 5 sources to which you can turn when faced with a decision, or more accurately a momentous decision, the settling of which will have massive impact on ‘what happens next’ in the particular scenario with which you may be struggling at any time. Note that I said impact – the event leading to the decision may seem quite trivial, but your decision on how to deal with it will create the result you want, the outcome you need (which may be completely different), or a complete mash up mess.

The sources included reference material, social and professional peers, and previous practices or protocols. But the one that made me sit up with interest is arguably the most important one, and relates to the Second Resolution, or more specifically the second part.

The decision might well go through all of the assessment sources identified in the previous paragraph: what does the book say, what do my colleagues, supervisors and other human resources suggest I should do, and what is the current practice as laid down in page 457, paragraph 3 sub-section 2 of that manual we all say we’ve read but have actually never been able to find. And after going through that systematic(!?) approach, we arrive at the final guidance criteria, the one relating to that Resolution, and the one which causes the most trouble. And that assessment question is….

“Is it the RIGHT thing to do?”

The problem may have technical solution. It may have a protocol supporting the policy supporting the law supporting the organisation. Your friends may think it’s best. But in your heart, there is doubt.

If that is the case, you need to ask that last question and decide whether your conscience will let you do something you know isn’t right (or as right as it could be), but you’ll keep your job and reputation; or whether you’re prepared to act in all conscience, breach a protocol or practice, risk offending your peers and be absolutely content that what you did was clearly in keeping with your own personal value system, and extrinsic principles.

Not easy.

I hope that where I’ve been faced with such decisions in my past that I usually made the right choice. No doubt there have been occasions when I know I’ve done what I was told to do, in contravention of what I thought I should do, but that was often the result of a direct order by someone with more experience, knowledge (and power) than me. But in one situation that comes to mind as I write this, I was able to communicate my distaste for the execution of the instruction.

It isn’t easy fighting for what’s right. There are always consequences. But it’s a lot easier than fighting your conscience over something you did that you knew wasn’t right. You have to weight the consequences of every decision, right or wrong. You may have to weigh them up for a long time.

But while you wrestle with your feelings over what you decided and what you did, don’t forget to consider that other alternative: how would you feel if you hadn’t stood up for what was right?

Don’t focus on the problems created by acting correctly, in accordance with your conscience, values and personal character.

Focus instead on the personal integrity you demonstrated. People can see it, even if they rarely point it out.

‘Tis the Season to be Stupid, falalalala, lalalala

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(Republished and amended from Dec 2016)

“To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions.”

William James PSYCHOLOGIST, PHILOSOPHER, AUTHOR

Funny, isn’t it? Right now, with 20 days to go, I am positive that millions of people are making their rules for 2022, applicable from Day 1. (Okay, maybe not so much the Chinese, who have a different New Year.) They plan to diet, exercise, rise early, watch less telly, etc. Or maybe that’s just me. Again. Every year since ever.

Honest intentions, I have no doubt.

Next funny thing. Having promised to eat better, exercise etc. etc., they (we)  rationalise that because this is the season of celebration (and the conventional wisdom for celebration is to eat and drink to a massively stupid – yes, stupid – degree),  the fact that we are definitely starting to live better on Jan 1st means we can justify doing the exact opposite.

And I am just as stupid as most of you, in that regard. (Not as stupid as those who think it’s okay to do it FROM New Year until Christmas. Love to those alcoholics who will give up booze for a month to prove they’re not.)

William James, the ‘father’ of psychology (not psychiatry, different science), sought to identify the proper prescription for a successful life. By successful, he spoke not of fame and fortune, but of greater personal effectiveness and integrity, where one lived in accordance with one’s values and therefore did not suffer the debilitation of depression, stress and guilt. His prescription was to advise people throw themselves ‘flamboyantly’ into their primary objective – living life with the peace of knowing that what they are doing is good for them, good for others, and which serves a greater good. Even if that service only means becoming a role model for others.

Bear with. You have a conscience. It may be teeny weeny, or it may be a big bu66er. But you have one. When you fail to act in accordance with its sage advice, you feel a soupçon or a bucketful of guilt, depending upon its capacity and your willingness to listen to it. What you do with that knowledge is the difference between achieving James’ definition of success and living a life of quiet desperation where you spend every evening wondering where the day went and why you haven’t achieved what was on your principled list of things-to-do.

How do I know? I know because that has been a tendency* in my life. A lot of my friends seem impressed with the amount of ‘stuff’ I do and the miscellaneous blobs of service for which I am known support their belief, but I know I could be a doing a whole lot better.

And with few exceptions, so do my readers.

Right now, those close to me privately and professionally are all preloading every conversation around the cake/biscuit barrel/sweet tin with ‘well, it is Christmas’, then stuffing their face knowing how daft they’re being. And (here’s the annoying part), after Christmas they’ll all go on a diet and bring their left-over cr4p into work. Thanks a bunch.

Starting today is key. It’s not easy, but it is the only truly sound route to getting what you want, and getting it soon enough to enjoy it.

My advice, therefore, is to follow William James’ advice. But be a little bit careful with the ‘flamboyantly’ bit. I think he meant do it ‘big time’, not dressed in a pink tutu, wearing a Stetson and covered in Braveheart make-up.

*Does ‘tendency’ mean absolute headlong throwing-yourself-into-dedicated-idiocy?

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This isn’t worki…… WOW!

07 Tuesday Apr 2020

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I had an experience this morning. I can’t say I haven’t had one like it before but it was the first for a wee while.

Jack Canfield wrote a book about 15 years ago called The Success Principles. It is good. This year he (finally!) brought out a workbook as a parallel. I like workbooks, they make me think. The trouble is that over the years I find them hard to complete because I’ve had the same thoughts over and over again.

There was a set of exercises about finding your Life Purpose. Done it before. One question was ‘define your Joy’. Ick. It was to finish the sentence “I feel joy when ……….” I don’t do joy. I define joy as being almost ecstasy, which means 5 minutes after the miracle of birth I’m all “What’s next?”

Then a few more exercises and finally one I’ve actually done before but ….. well, “Meh!” anyway, in the interests of science I went ahead, anyway. The questions were pretty much ‘Describe 2 characteristics you possess’, ‘Name 2 things you like to do’ and ‘What would your perfect world be like?’

Now, I cannot for the life of me recall what happened in terms of the order of thinking, but I came up with “I use my integrity, intellect and productivity to create, master and promote an inspiring philosophy so that all can live congruent, organised and purposeful lives.”

Pretentious? Moi?

I know I cheated – 3 words instead of 2 – but I realised as I drafted, edited and finalised it that (apart from the mastery part!) I am wholly focused on doing exactly that. Now, you may not be reading this (at all) and thinking, “Yeah, that’s Dave,” but that is what Dave does and that is what Dave aspires to.

It’s not a goal statement. That’s the next bit. But now everything I do and all the goals I seek will reflect more accurately, and more consistently, that Purpose. I’ve written four books, two specifically on my philosophy and productivity, and I have two more on the go. I teach people Advanced Driving and enjoy the requirement that I master it myself. And above all, in a sense, I aspire to mastering myself, too. There is a need for discipline, character, competence and service implied within that sentence, too. Three Resolutions compliant, so it is.

And the best thing of all is – and don’t take this personally – that whether or not people read, accept and implement the counsel that I advocate is not important. Their interest is outside my control. What is within my control is whether my daily activities reflect that sentence. Anything else is a bonus.

The AHA! that came with the realisation that this reflected what I was already doing, allied to having finally been able to put it into as short a sentence as that, boggled my mind. It may not boggle yours, but is there a similar sentence that accurately reflects your purpose and personal aspiration to live by some personal philosophy that you know makes perfect sense but you aren’t quite up to speed in terms of congruent performance?

Go on, I DOUBLE dare you.

Purpose

Character, Character, Character – and Standards. Now, more than since 1945.

24 Tuesday Mar 2020

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The lockdown of 2020 has begun. Not since 1939 has anything like this been asked of the citizenry of the UK. That year, 40-odd million citizens did right by their country and their fellow Brits by complying with and trusting the advice and orders of those we elected to deal with exactly this kind of situation.

And a few thousand or so took advantage. Spivs, we called them. We decried their disobedience to the rule of law. And then we bought eggs off them.

We find ourselves in the middle of a truly extraordinary – for us – series of events. Which means we are now being called upon to demonstrate more character, as a people, than we have for quite some time.

Now we can stand up, or we can fall down.

It grieves me to say this, but the nature of televisual celebrity suggests that this might not happen. The young of today, fed as they are by the ‘me’ cult of the Kardashians and Made in Chelsea, will either act true to expectations and, as the evidence so far suggests, stamp their feet and demand their rights to do what they please regardless of the truth of principled living.

Or they may surprise us and show the kind of character that the youth of 1939 demonstrated when they knuckled down, volunteered, fought and died in defence of what had gone before.

Note that – they had a life, and Hitler interrupted it. They accepted that intrusion and a nation rose up to the challenge.

We had a life yesterday, and a virus has interrupted it.

I am calling upon everyone to demonstrate the same levels of character that were displayed then, by people just like us who had loved ones to protect, lifestyles to preserve, and an enemy to defeat.

And I will call out any selfish idiots I see.

Now, on a slightly different tack, I’m also going to ask that people do something else they may be tempted to put to one side while they are in isolation.

Maintain, or even Raise Your Standards.

At home, it is easy to let standards slip. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggests that the standards people visibly maintain and expect in the workplace don’t apply when they’re at home. Suit wearers get into their baggy sweatpants, don’t shave, watch telly all day eating fast food.

That is the slippery slope to weight-gain, depression and lowered productivity.

Work as hard at home as you do at work. I’m not suggesting you wear business attire in your house (although why not?), but you can at least dress as if you’re going to be seen in public, ensure you’re clean and well-presented, and only grow a beard if you really mean it. (Ladies excepted.)

Then ‘normal’ will be a lot easier to achieve when it’s all over.

Bon chance, mon amis.

Results take time to measure.

13 Friday Dec 2019

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Okay. Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way.

Not that long ago, I published a blog on The Circle of Influence. The message was that effective people spend their time focused on doing the things that they can do something about.

Yesterday, there was a General Election. This morning my brothers (love ‘em to bits), all being left like m’Dad (who wasn’t all that left but read the Daily Mirror) have started discussing their disappointment that they didn’t win.

Well, technically. I say technically because one of them did. He lives in a ‘safe’ Labour seat, presumably voted Labour and Labour stayed in. Nevertheless, they’re all ‘scared’ (FFS) about the future.

Here’s the thing. We do not elect the Prime Minister. We only elect a local representative. Therefore we have little to no influence over who governs the country because we do NOT have a vote in the other 600+ seats, and it’s that number which decides a government. Which means that the winner of a GE lies solely in our Circle of Concern.

Get out of there!

Next, they’ve also discussed the right-wing, pro-Brexit bias of the media.

Talk about ideological myopia!

The media has been fairly consistent in its desire for Brexit to stop, and Channel 4 has admitted as much. The political interviewers have bashed everybody of all persuasions over what they said when they said it years ago. (In fact, as a criminal interviewer I would say that the manner of their interviews would be described as unprofessional at best, and illegal and oppressive at worst, in all cases.)

The media particularly lied when they showed the evidence of people doing what they denied they’d done, the bar stewards! How very dare they.

Anyway, I’ve left the brothers’ Messenger group for a week while they get it out of their system.

Doris Day said it best when she sang, “Que Sera, Sera.” Whatever will be, will be. Over time, the electorate will see what happens, and then they will either be proved right, or be proved wrong. Hyrum W. Smith expressed it in a similar fashion when he suggested that we only know whether something serves us if we measure the results over time. I’ll go with that.

But I must admit I want to say something political. I respect the general membership of the Labour Party, brothers. They mean well, even if (like all sides) they’ve adopted the aggressive rhetoric of the US.

But think about this. Jeremy Corbyn has supported the IRA, Palestinian terrorists, and Russia (in terms of the Novichok incident).

Brothers – between 1980 and even up to now, to a degree, the people he defends would happily have killed me, as a serviceman and policeman. Not in a war, mind – most likely by planting an IED that would also have indiscriminately killed anyone near me regardless of their status. Or shooting me as I, unarmed, got into my car.

He supports the people whose actions could have resulted in you quietly escorting a plastic bag in a sealed coffin to a local graveyard.

Quite how you could support a man who’d welcome my violent death disgusts me. But I still love you all.

“Conduct a Conversation” isn’t a literal instruction.

12 Thursday Dec 2019

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Communication.

Habit 5 of The Seven Habits® is specifically directed towards that major part of human existence. If you were to read ‘The Book’ you would receive a comprehensive explanation of how successful communication works.

On a course I used to run (as a licensee of The Springboard Consultancy) called Navigator®, one of the modules was about communication and, more relevantly here, about barriers to communication. Obvious examples included language, culture and context, but I have discovered a new one, one which also goes some way towards confirming how we humans have a tendency to become conditioned to mannerisms like modes of speech and language and adopt them unthinkingly.

Remember Covey’s first Habit, Be Proactive? Its main thesis is that there is a space between stimulus and response, and our failure to utilise that space results in blind compliance with whatever becomes the norm in our environment. This blind compliance results in everyone acting ‘the same’ having given no thought whatsoever to the consequence of that new behaviour.

At the moment, combining the two lessons of reactive response and barriers to communication, I have an observation which I hope readers will share. Primarily with the BBC Politics Live to start with, then everywhere else.

It is this.

For some reason, and it is more noticeable with young ‘speakers’, people on the television have developed a habit of waving their hands about when talking. It was one or two, now they’re all at it.

In itself, a controlled gesture that is designed to emphasise a specific point in a sentence is fine, even welcome and natural. But emphasising every single word with a pointy/downward-claw/pleading gesture made with both hands (yes, Miss Swinson, YOU) means you have emphasised NOTHING.

What is more, while you are waving your hands around, the camera or eye that is focused on your top half can only see your hands waving around and it can’t see what expressions your face is making. People who are hard of hearing (or who are in a room full of screaming kids) and trying to lip-read just can’t.

In other words, what you are trying to say – and it may be important – is lost in a whirr of randomly-wriggling digits and limbs.

I recall the old days when news presenters just spoke with a mic in their hands and I’d agree that was visually dull. But now they’ve been trained to ‘be more expressive’ they’ve gone banzai-nuts and can’t stop moving about. It’s like watching Sir Simon Rattle conduct Thunderstruck by AC/DC.

There is a happy medium.

Might I make a suggestion?

It’s still considered a bit contentious, because some professional speaking clubs don’t like it, but if you put one hand in your pocket, you reduce the sillier gestures by more than half, and the other hand finds a natural rhythm in terms of gesturing that enhances, not obstructs your presentation. (But keep the pocketed hand still…… that’s a whole different distraction.)

This doesn’t just apply to political panels. It applies to any presentation that you have to make, and ‘Hobbs’ Law’ makes the speaker “100% responsible for communication”.

If the audience can’t hear you because all they can do is see your agitated hands, then it’s your fault if they don’t get the message. And a missed message wastes time. Lots of it. Time that has to be spent repeating the message properly.

If Jo Swinson hadn’t been waving her arms about, perhaps she could have been PM tomorrow.

(Sorry, I just spat my own coffee…………….)

Does it REALLY matter? If so – how much?

05 Thursday Dec 2019

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Do you know what ‘priorities’ are?

In most organisations, ‘priorities’ consists of a long list of important ‘stuff’. The bigger the organisation, the longer the list. What’s more, the higher the number of individual departments in the aforementioned corporate monolith, the more varied and even greater the priority number.

Each department, if it is like the public sector, will have its priorities met by the activities of other departments and, more often than not, front-line staff.

Think about that.

Department A will set priorities, as will departments B and C. All three departments’ activities will be conducted by their staff. Department A’s priorities may not be B’s (etc), but without a doubt Dept A will state that ‘X must be done by the end of the day and returns submitted by 5pm by staff in Departments B and C.’  Meanwhile, Department B expects the same of staff in Departments A and C, which means all three departments will be working hard at complying with three sets of priorities, and I’ll bet a week’s wages that they all have to be complied with ‘by 5pm’ so even though NOTHING WILL BE DONE WITH THEM until the end of the next week.

But by setting that 5pm today deadline, they expect that any late returns won’t be too late. In other words, an artificial deadline is set so they save time – at the expense of the other people running around after them.

Ring a bell?

Did you know that ‘priority’ means:

“the fact or condition of being regarded or treated as more important.”

Synonyms include: “prime concern, first concern, most important consideration, most pressing matter, (etc).”

Notice that each of those terms implies that NOTHING is more important than the ‘priority’.

Make a note, staple it to your forehead and wear it as you walk into to the C-Suite.

If you have too many priorities, you have NO priorities.

I suggest that, in acknowledgement that some organisations do have more than one ‘service responsibility’, the number of priorities should at least be reduced to a couple, instead of hundreds; that the departments in the entity be told when ‘their’ priority is not a priority at all; and that staff be so briefed so that they can act on THE priorities that remain.

This is not to suggest that all work is not important. But there are degrees to which (for example) the assembly of statistics (and their circulation to the disinterested) by an administration department is far less important than the activity of the front-line employee actually delivering the service that your organisation was created to deliver.

And, might I say, constantly berating said employee for not blindly prioritising the said admin department’s number crunching really has to stop.

I say this because, from a time management perspective, creating false priorities warps the decision-making of the employee to the degree that mistakes are made in failed efforts to comply with too many masters.

You make better decisions when you have to make fewer decisions.

And having to many priorities undermines quality decision-making.