Tag Archives: leadership

Stretch yourself – be like Pregnancy Pants.

27 Friday Mar 2020

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“Sometimes things can go right only by first going very wrong.” Edward Tenner

And here we are. We exist at a time where the whole world has come to a grinding crawl, with the retail and hospitality industries taking a big hit. Which means that we, the citizens, denied our access to the dopamine of retail therapy and the opportunity to get away from it all suddenly find we have to find some other way of feeling good and ‘finding ourselves’.

Charles R Hobbs, of the original, non-Brian Tracy title TimePower, observed that when we go on holiday, the first thing we do on arrival is recreate the Comfort Zone that is home. First, we check the TV channels, and then we find out the wi-fi password. Is he right? Be honest.

Today, the comfort zones of shopping and the workplace have been denied to many, and to be fair that has resulted in a lot of imagination being utilised to cope with new challenges, which is arguably Mankind’s greatest skill. And as one esteemed philosopher put it, Mankind’s development has been the result of Challenge – Response.

The Challenge today is how to live in a confined space and feel happy, secure and productive for the period of the Lockdown. Of course, the nature of this lockdown is, shall we say, a bit like pregnancy trousers – there’s a bit of leeway that will expand and contract as needs demand.

Notwithstanding the ability or otherwise to do your paid work, we have a twenty-day window to:

  • Discover Kindle e-books, which can be in your lap in seconds and can feed your mind on a subject of interest to you.
  • Access on-line courses which can make you more employable.
  • Do all those jobs around the house that have needed doing. (My kitchen FINALLY looks organised.)
  • Talk to your partner and kids.
  • And your neighbours, whether they work for the NHS or not.
  • Telephone friends, neighbours and workmates using those unlimited minutes you’ve paid for.
  • (Personal favourite) Study The Seven Habits, First Things First and Principle-Centred Leadership and discover new ways of thinking – how to think, not what to think – an important distinction. All available on Kindle and, if you’re clever, very cheaply.
  • Read my blogs more often.

All of the above ideas, and any you can discover for yourself, will mean that you come out of the other side of this a better person, more organised, and possibly even more productive than before.

But, above all, doing something like those things will absolutely, unarguably and without fail MASSIVELY increase your sense of self-esteem – the value you place on yourself.

Go on – don’t just be a public hero like everyone else. Stretch yourself.

Win a Private Victory as well.

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.

The Magic Formula – A Cure for Today?

20 Friday Mar 2020

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There is a magic formula that the successful use, specifically and particularly when faced with a challenge that comes at them sideways and out of the blue. Of course, we are faced with such a challenge at the moment, and a lot of people, including members of my family, are feeling the effects of the measures being taken by people to avoid the dreaded lurgy. Which, according to MSWord’s spellcheck, is  a word.

Businesses are laying off people left and right, and given that a lack of custom does tend to thwart a business’ efforts to stay solvent, I can understand this. Of course, said businesses – the less scrupulous – will take the money offered by the government to keep them afloat, while not using it to keep staff in a job. And, of course, if you’ve laid off your staff carefully and before said money becomes available, you can avoid paying them at all. I hope that HMG makes sure that the money they hand out is properly accounted for.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, major grocery retailers are looking at the problems created by ‘now’ and are adjusting their practices to suit.

The major movers, ladies and quintleflick (not a word), are applying the formula.

Unfortunately, as the majority of us are not educated in leadership and management, a lot of people aren’t applying it. If only they knew what it was. Of course, while all clever kids know that x= minus b times the square root of b squared minus 4ac all over 2a, they aren’t taught this formula in school. And it could save a lot of stress.

The formula is E+R=O.*

E is the Event. This is the thing that happens to us or, as one of my participants forced me to decide, the situation in which we find ourselves. (That covered people born with disabilities –  they didn’t ‘happen’, their situation just ‘was’.) The Event is something outside of your control. You didn’t plan it, plan for it, expect it and probably didn’t anticipate the possibility. Cue a pandemic caused by eating a bat, allegedly.

R is the Response. It’s what you do about what’s happened, and that includes how you decide to feel about what’s happened. Excitement, despair, challenge – all reactions that are up to you. Maybe not in the first instance, but at least after you’ve paused to think about them.

O is the Outcome. The Outcome is what you want to have happened at the end of it all.

E is unchangeable. That being the case, the only way to change the value of O is entirely within the Response provided to E. Your Outcome is wholly dependant on the quality and thinking behind your Response to E.

The question is – is your Response wholly based in fear, or is it considered, thoughtful and ecological? Is it self-serving or will it serve us all? Is it destructive and aimed solely at self-preservation, or is it a unique answer to a problem? An answer the like of which gets written about in leadership and management literature next year?

Yes, folks. You Response to what is happening to you today could be so imaginative that you find yourself being immortalised in print. It could make you proud, or ashamed. Or just content, which is just enough for your integrity to remain intact.

Or you could just be a selfish tw4t. Your choice.

Businesses – the people you’re sacking, you’ll want back in three or four months. Treat them well and they will come. Treat them badly, and see whether all your selfish efforts backfire.

Have a good weekend, folks.

 

*From an idea by Dr Robert Resnick, as publicised in The Success Principles’ by Jack Canfield, but also the result of Habit One – Be Proactive, by Stephen Covey.

Age = Wisdom, Youth = Vitality. Let the young have both, instead.

12 Thursday Mar 2020

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A few weeks ago I wrote this blog on why I thought material of the kind espoused in The Seven Habits and my own book was ignored by so many for so long, suggesting that people tend to arrive at an age when they suddenly seek meaning rather than stuff.

Today, I put a new spin on this not by looking at why the older ‘do’, but on why the younger ‘do not’.

Reading Stephen Covey’s anthology of first drafts and first thoughts, from the book ‘Primary Greatness’, I read this sentence.

“I maintain that humility is the mother of all virtues, because humility helps us centre our lives on principles.”

Young people are – or want to appear to be – confident individuals. They are fit, recently educated, fashionable, invincible. They tend, therefore and without judgment on my part, to be incredibly egotistic. They are finding their way and have yet to realise that life isn’t one long party – or that if it is a party, it eventually ends when they discover the responsibilities they didn’t possess in their teens and twenties.

Perhaps this is as it should be. Perhaps later wisdom is intended to be delayed until people are ready for it, or until their proverbial wild oats are sown. I have no idea, because I am not the font of all wisdom. By any stretch!

This is why, perhaps, the young resist the wisdom literature. They don’t need it because they know better. They see things ‘as they are’ through interested, open eyes – whereas we old fuddy-duddies see things through experience gained by making mistakes. And having made mistakes we older ones seek to redress them, whereas the young are still learning from theirs.

But imagine if the young were taught that you can be humble and still have fun? That you can leave a legacy of forty or fifty years foundation rather than just for that night or weekend? That they are still learning, and that they could direct and control that learning if they just gave more thought to the longer-term. To their whole lives instead of the now.

Covey goes on to add, “I would then say that courage is the father of all virtues.”

Of course, another influence on the young is the peer group. Which means that Covey’s second quote reveals something which the young tend to lack. Not physical courage – they seem to have that in abundance, as a rule. But courage born of a properly considered and congruent values system, where they act in accordance with their conscience and what they know, deeply, to be true – and yet what those around them are trying to convince them is just ‘boring old stuff’.

This is what should be taught in school, not environmentalism and ‘social justice’ and ‘rights of the individual’ (without responsibilities of and towards the individual).

Kids need to be shown that courage does not mean lack of consideration. That wisdom is not a downer but a path to ‘better’. There are schools out there that do this, but they’ve had to initiate and fund this training themselves.

Wouldn’t it be better if it was a state-funded part of the curriculum? Instead of Welsh.

Leadership, schmeadership.

10 Tuesday Mar 2020

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In 2013 I was honoured to be approached – I was going to say headhunted but perhaps that’s a bit self-indulgent – to provide a service to schools via a homelessness charity whereby I would train teenagers in (essentially) the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens. It was a Win-Win-Win for trainers, the charity and the schools involved and it was through them I enjoyed teaching a hall of 106 13-year-olds in one go.

I no longer fear crowds.

Anyhow, despite the headhuntedness, there was a selection process in which prospective trainers would give a lesson (tick), be interviewed (tick) and socialise with other people (tick). But the source of this article was the result of a round-table exercise the applicants underwent, where we discussed how we would focus on teaching the children leadership. So me being em, I took a tangential view.

I said (and I paraphrase) “It’s laudable that we teach children how to lead themselves and other people, but what about the less able kids who may never be in charge of anything? Why don’t we also teach them how to be great followers?”

I got the gig.

Leadership has become a buzzword for hierarchical management. One LinkedIn correspondent said it all when he described how administration became management became ‘leadership’ – all while teaching exactly the same ‘stuff’. It was only a slight exaggeration. Today I read about ‘leadership in a remote environment’ as an opportunistic (?) take on the magic word, but it essentially meant ‘how do we manage the production of what we produce, remotely?’ Management.

But there are books on another, related subject – Followership. They are rare and, oddly, can be very expensive.

But that’s missing a trick because once you strip away the layers of leadership, everyone else is a Follower to varying degrees. And that subject doesn’t get the level of attention it deserves.

In my training of the 106 kids from a relatively poor area of Wales, some of them expressed what ‘we professionals’ might mis-interpret as a lack of ambition. They wanted to be mechanics, taxi-drivers, and the like. Albeit their ambisions may change up a gear as they aged, instead of planting in them some long-distant dream, I just said this.

“Whatever you want to be and do, just be or do the best that you can while you’re doing it. Work hard for your bosses and enjoy what you do.” Followership, in a nutshell.

Of course, when new employees are trained they are often given the pep talk and the warning chat. I think it would be better if they were educated about what they were doing in the context of those they served, with imagination used to identify stakeholders outside the organisation as well as within. We’ve all heard the story about the bricklayer ‘building the cathedral’, but how often is that translated into the average workplace?

Incidentally, why is the Labour Party having a dig at the expression ‘low-skilled worker’? What is wrong with having a low level of skill if what you are doing has a noble purpose and provides value to others beyond your activity? A streetsweeper is ‘low-skilled’ but imagine if he wasn’t there doing his best for us? A low-skilled care worker changing your Nan’s bed – valuable and noble work. Noble service does not necessarily require high pay. And high-paid people are not necessarily providing noble service.

It’s about time we showed as much appreciation those who follow rather than just those who lead – because without followers, what would the leaders actually be for?

 

For more on the subject of Followership, I write about that very subject in my book, The Three Resolutions, available at Amazon now.

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Half a Life. That’s all you have left….. if you aren’t careful.

14 Friday Feb 2020

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The Half-Life. A physics term identifying how long a radioactive element/isotope takes to lose half its mass through decay. For example, the half life of uranium being from 159,200 years to 4.5 billion years, one kg of uranium will become 500g in 159,200 years or so (!), but that 500g will only become 250g in the next 159,200 years. Simples.

But there is another HalfLife, the one proposed by Stephen Covey, who opined that the Half Life of a career is as little as 2 years, and what he meant was that in just 2 years the currency of your professional knowledge is reduced by half if you don’t maintain competence (Second Resolution). I know from my own experience, after returning to work after an 18-month post-retirement absence, that a lot of new mnemonics and practices had been created while I was gone. I was still competent to do a lot of stuff but I would have needed some retraining to get back up to full speed. Which is why, when it was appropriate, I chased up the training I required.

A surprising number of people object to on-the-job training and to attending courses. I know that some of their reluctance is down to a perceived interruption to the work that they are already doing, that mounts up inexorably while they are away and, occasionally, the belief that the training is unnecessary and irrelevant. We had a saying in the police:

“That was a three-week course crammed into six.”

But if we are to stay relevant, if we are to provide the best possible service, we have to keep up with developments within our selected professions if we aren’t to become redundant-but-still-present.

The problem with being redundant-but-still-present is that it can all too quickly turn into ‘just’ redundant. Being on top of your game and staying on top of your game aren’t distinct processes – they are the same thing. What’s more, by properly engaging in the training you are offered, you start to develop the ability to influence that training – to make sure it IS relevant and appropriate rather than a tick-box exercise.

I do chuckle at CPD that requires ticking a box that you read something. Who actually reads something if all you have to do is declare you read it? Well, the ethical do, but that isn’t all of us, is it?

Look upon training as a development opportunity, and opportunity to ask questions, and an opportunity to have a bit of a rest from the daily grind of that real work you’re worried will come back and bite you.

Of course, the ability to do the latter, to relax during a course while other work isn’t getting done, requires that you apply some of the time management advice of the kind I promote.

So welcome training, seek it out, maximise its effectiveness and utilise what you learn as quickly after the training as is possible.

Or that career you thought you had for ever might just be half as long as you expected.

 

Time Management Training is available HERE.

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From Manly Macho Man to Man of Meaning. Why take so long?

13 Thursday Feb 2020

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I am a Man. I’d go as far as to say I am a Manly Man, insofar as I try to be the stoic man-of-action when/if the situation demands. I have had fights and car chases ‘in the name of the law’ although I’ve never asked anyone to stop for that reason. (I did hear someone do that, once, and I cringed.) I have climbed cliffs, done a racing driver’s course, served in HM Forces, and I have experienced many other things that one might associate with the term ‘macho’.

I still, occasionally, would like to do some of that stuff again. I am 58.

Yet just lately, my cultural tastes have changed. Despite all that manliness (I have an exceptionally hairy chest – and back – and I’ll leave you with that image), I no longer seek out war films, I have exceptional problems with the end of E.T., and am in bits when Private Ryan, U.S. Army (Retd.) asks, “Have I been a good man? at the end of the film bearing his name.

And one of the nicest films I have seen of late was ‘The Way’, which was about Martin Sheen walking a religiously significant route across El camino de Santiago, in the Pyrenees. The plot revolves around how his son is killed on the first day of his walk along the route, and Dad elects to take his son’s ashes along the walk for him. Hardly ‘The Dambusters’ (man film, obligatory viewing for all male children – and why didn’t MS Word recognise that term? WHY??).

The truth is that like most ‘blokes’, I suspect that as we mature we start to see that all the fun we had doing blokey stuff was just that – fun – and it’s time to think about more important things like family, legacy, principles and so on.

Which is why I think that many people in the machismo/action ‘field’, and men in particular, seem to dismiss and resist the idea of reading books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People until they are middle-aged. Which is a waste of about 30 years.

When you start to get a bit older, you get a little more mature, mentally. For some sooner than others, I might add. And you start to realise that there is more to existence than just you. Your children stop being funny little human puppies and start needing serious help in their lives. You start to notice how people do stupid things on our roads and admit that you used to do them. You stop worrying about spending your hard-earned cash and start thinking about how it will benefit your spouse and kids. You volunteer to be designated driver and you question the future hearing capability of the teenager driving past you with the ‘BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP’ so loud inside the car that it actually drowns out the ‘BRRRRRRAAAAAPPPPPP’ coming from the excessively large exhaust.

You suddenly realise that the life of living has turned to a desire to have a life of meaning. And you also realise that time is running out.

Instead of waiting until you’re 50 to discover what you’ve missed, try reading this book, or ones like it, early enough to be able to have fun while living a life of meaning. Have you noticed that the ‘better’ celebrities do that? They have fun and still contribute, while some (the a-holes) just have fun, and they soon become figures of hate and derision.

That book in particular, and many others like it, are valuable reading when you reach that ‘age of maturity’ that differs for all of us.

But wouldn’t it be great if the contents were routinely taught in school?

If you don’t think you’re good enough…..

10 Monday Feb 2020

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Stephen Covey’s son-in-law, as I understand it a medical student at the material time, was asked in an interview, “If being considered for surgery, would you prefer your doctor to be a man of good character, or of great competence?

The response provided was considered. “If I needed the surgery, I would want the super-competent surgeon. But if it was a question of whether I needed the surgery, I’d want the one of character.”

Good answer. But still arguably incomplete.

As I review The Three Resolutions book, and by simple virtue of the fact that I constantly review Covey’s written and spoken works (good ol’ YouTube!) I discovered yet another thought-provoker. It was about the relationship between character and competence (the Second Resolution).

In my book, I write about the progressive nature in which The Three Resolutions are applied, and the impression may be that the one leads to the next and that they are in some way separate, which is not so. They are a continuum, so the crossover from one to the next is more of a blurred edge than a fence, if you will. The same goes on the ‘separation’ between the traits linked at each level – self-discipline and self-denial are linked, not separate characteristics, for example.

Therefore, character and competence are also linked, with blurred edges and ‘bleed’ through from one to another and to the higher levels of purpose and service.

To illustrate how they are interdependent, consider how having good character means better decisions, which in turn feeds better performance (competency). Imagine those two doctors addressing the concerns of the patient. The greedy one who is super-competent might agree that the surgery is necessary, but his self-interest trumps that of the patient every time. His poor character might not affect the decision to have the surgery, but it might affect a decision during the surgery, which means he may, super-competently, do something completely unnecessary and risk the patient’s welfare. Not in terms of life or death, perhaps, but any decision made by a person of poor character is suspect. You know that. You’ve probably experienced it!

The person of good character, having concluded the surgery is necessary, is the surgeon who calls in the super-competent dodgy doc – but supervises his operation because she knows that he is suspect. Her good character means she recognises where her skills aren’t as good as his, but she doesn’t abandon her responsibility for her patient to the man of poor character.

When it comes to producing results, the two – competence and character – are inextricably interlinked but they do not, necessarily, have to exist in one person. They can exist within a carefully, ethically managed team. One that communicates, and one that knows the strengths and weaknesses within itself – and manages them in such a way as to make the weaknesses of individuals irrelevant to the whole team.

From a time management perspective this means that doing things right the first time, as a result of an individual with both great character and super competence or as a result of a team possessing those traits between them, saves a lot of do-overs, apologies, law-suits and recriminations. That is a LOT of time saved!

Endeavour to possess both character and competence but recognise when you lack the latter and seek the complementary strength required to fill that gap.

Ain’t no shame in that.

Read this post twice….you’ll see why.

21 Tuesday Jan 2020

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Stephen Covey wrote, “Most of our mental development and study discipline comes through formal education. But as soon as we leave the external discipline of school, many of us let our minds atrophy. We don’t do any more serious thinking, we don’t explore new subjects in any real depth outside our action fields, we don’t think analytically, we don’t write – at least not critically or in a way that tests our ability to express ourselves in distilled, clear and concise language.”

Just to allow for context, those words were published in 1989, and were probably an extension of his thinking from earlier years. And I add that because I think he is slightly mistaken.

(WHAT!!! A disciple questioning the Master! Next he’ll be chopping off his master’s arm and running the Jedi himself!)

Worry ye not. I think he is mistaken now because more and more people are subject to constant training at work, whereas in 1989 in-house, on-the-job developmental training was less de rigueur than it is now. No diversity, first-aid, health and safety input back in those days, and CPD hadn’t been invented yet.

But the essential premise remains sound. Few of us actively seek out additional training, while even being reluctant to attend that which is provided at work.

Which is self-defeating.

Every professional update improves your ability to execute on your responsibilities, and every voluntary educational experience broadens your mind and improves personal creativity. And quite often, what you learn away from your professional life impacts on that professional life. I did a law course in 1999 and the stuff I learned there certainly impacted positively on what I did at work. It changed my level of thinking and vastly improved my understanding of Sith (defence lawyers) practices, which I promptly turned back upon them, mwahahahahahahaha!

But it doesn’t have to be formal training, although that is best.

Every article you read on a subject of interest to you is an example of well-spent time. That’s why I write these articles, yet keep them short. It’s a minute, maybe two, away from your work focus but it might just broaden your thinking and/or provide new tools for increased quality of productivity without an increase in quantity (although you do get to do more of what you like, of course). And other writers on other subjects can add to your toolbox, either in work or just for qualified conversation at a posh dinner.

The message today is to take two minutes to read more articles – on LinkedIn or elsewhere – and identify areas of interest that will make you smarter.

One caveat. At the end of the opening, quoted paragraph Covey added, “Instead, we spend our time watching TV.” There is a lot of good stuff on TV, and I like an escapist cop-show as much as anyone. But the drivel that peppers the airwaves (The Masked Singer? FGS!) serves no-one’s interests but the financiers. Watching them takes more than two minutes and only provides the vapid with dinner conversation.

Go back to reading if you need 30-60 minutes that will make you better as an intellectual. Or just take two and use them wisely, Padawan. Better still, read this twice so it sits comfortably in your pre-frontal lobe and causes you to see your next valuable, voluntary training opportunity.

 

Speaking of which……. Me book. (Blatant plug.)

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48 years. Same tune, different words. Still true.

05 Tuesday Nov 2019

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As an enthusiastic student of The Seven Habits® , and having shaken the hand of the great man himself, one of my pastimes has been to explore Stephen R. Covey’s earlier works and compare them to those with which many leaders and businesspeople will be more familiar.

I’d gamble most of you would be aware of the first Habit, ‘Be Proactive’, which uses the ‘you are the programmer’ computer metaphor to describe how individuals have control over how they live their lives – to a greater extent than they may otherwise have thought – because they have the ability to choose their response to what happens to them.

In 1971, I suggest, ‘proactivity’ the term was yet to be invented by Stephen Covey. But the idea of humans having ‘choice’ was not, and although the terminology has changed and become part of the business lexicon (like ‘journey’, which is now grossly over-used, so stop it), the concept remains valid.

In his work ‘How to Succeed with People’ (Deseret Books, 1971), a 2½ page chapter referred to how there is a gap between our knowledge about things, and our ability to act on that knowledge. He calls the chapter “Three Processes – Knowing, Choosing and Doing”.

He suggests that many of us fail in our efforts to be better despite the fact that we know what we should do, because there is a disconnect between that knowledge and our ability, or perhaps our willingness, to act on that knowledge. Put simply, our failures lie in how we choose, or fail to choose, to act.

Here’s a direct lift.

“Choosing means to pause and stand back for perspective, to think deeply, and then decide our own actions and reactions. Choosing means to accept responsibility for ourselves and our attitudes, to refuse to blame others or circumstances.

Choosing, then, means to commit ourselves strongly to that which we decide to do. This committing process often involves a real internal struggle, ultimately between competing motives or between conflicting concepts of ourselves.”

He goes on to suggest that making the better choice can break the binding power of habit, and it is habit that tends to keep us where we already are, and away from where we want to be. Moreover, habit teaches us ‘you’ve failed before, you’ll fail again’. As Covey also put it – ‘Private Defeats precede Public Defeats. Choice can over come the pull of habit.

Choice, therefore, creates an important link between the engine of knowing and the gearbox of drive.

The best leaders have the ability to choose well. Their better choices overcome the largesse and stasis created by habit, and habit is the enemy of change for the better. (While a great servant, habit is a poor master. Occasionally.)

Stephen Covey said that principles endure. The principle of choice – whether you use the expression ‘Knowing, Choosing, Doing’ or ‘Be Proactive’ – endures.

It’s fun finding that out by reading older works. Makes me feel all scholarly.