Tag Archives: second resolution

Start a New Revolution. One called Standards Matter.

12 Sunday Jun 2016

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“I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.” Billy Joel

What is ‘competence’? Webster’s Dictionary describes it as ‘the quality of being capable, sufficiency, capacity’; Wikipedia goes further and says it means (among other biological and scientific definitions) ‘Competence is the ability of an individual to do a job properly’. And there’s the rub.

Using the Human Resources, work orientated definition of competence is something I made the error of doing in my two editions of The Three Resolutions, a mistake I intend to correct in the 3rd Edition. Not because that definition is incorrect, but because its application solely in respect of ‘work’ is far too narrow. Competence is applicable to more than work – it’s applicable to all areas of life.

Those who now me will be well aware that I can be spectacularly pedantic about things like English Grammar, driving standards, and the way people speak. There are two reasons for this.

First, as a student of Stephen Covey, I am familiar with how what happens around us can influence our thinking and behaviour; on the plus side it is how we learned to talk as children, but on the minus side it’s how we learn to speak as adults. Due to the well-intentioned recognition of diversity on the telly, our children and many respectable figures are now unable to pronounce the letter ‘t’ at the end of words like Got and But. Children in mid-Wales speak in a Gangsta-rap Jamaican patois, innit. And the use of ‘myself’ by Essex coppers trying to sound clever has resulted in millions of people now sounding thick as s41t when they persistently use ‘myself’ as a pronoun. (To see what I mean, say it with an adenoidal twang.)

As someone who believes that we can choose differently I therefore detest unthinking compliance with anything.

The second reason I am pedantic is because in the fields I mention, and indeed in all fields of human existence, there are standards which, if observed, make life better for us as individuals, and for everyone else as well. Those standards we will call, for the sake of this article, ‘competencies’.

We are all required to demonstrate a low level of competence when learning to control a ton of metal at speed, and immediately after passing our tests we lower that standard. We are all well aware that the law and scientists tell us that using a mobile while driving is dangerous, yet so many of us selfishly carry on doing it, attacking those who point out our stupidity. We are all taught in school how to use apostrophes, yet even those eminently capable of understanding the simple rules for their use consistently fail to apply that knowledge. Not to mention the equally simple different uses of your, you’re, there, their, and they’re. And if I read an ‘intelligent person’ has written ‘should of’ I weep.

It’s about Standards, reader. Not moral standards – that’s a whole other topic – but about a willingness to at least try and be the best we can be; in the way we eat, drive, speak, write, work, think, learn, and so on. And to stop making excuses about it not mattering when someone points it out.

If you want to make excuses about standards, maybe your brake mechanic will be okay to do the same, sometime.

The secret to a great relationship. Shut up and Listen!

13 Sunday Mar 2016

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“Listen – lest your tongue will make you deaf.” Stephen R Covey (from an old proverb).

Listening is the hardest skill in the world, for a number of reasons. First of all, it isn’t taught in schools. You are taught three other communication methods – reading, writing, and arithmetic (which is a communications tool, in a sense), but you are only told to listen, but never taught how.

Secondly, we have a tendency to listen only with the intention to reply, to the degree that our reply is yelling inside our head even before the other party has fully made their point. I see this on all political affairs programmes when someone starts to make a point and the (ideologically opposed) other party butts in quite rudely to accuse party one of saying or thinking something they haven’t yet actually disclosed. (It’s also standard fayre in television dramas where the eavesdropper only hears what the drama requires they hear, instead of staying to hear it all – like real people. I digress.)

But hard as it is, it is often quite informative and interesting to just shut the hell up and listen. If the other party has something important to say, it’ll be worth hearing. If they are going to make a fool of themselves then the same applies.

You cannot challenge a party’s thinking if you haven’t taken the time to fully hear and understand what that thinking actually is.

In less combative scenarios, shutting up remains important. I’m writing here about, ahem, domestic situations. Occasionally, when one’s partner starts having a rant about something you are doing, have done or are about to do wrong (usually this applies to a man!), the temptation – oh boy, do I know this – is to react defensively and, to quote the old joke, that’s when the fight starts.

It is occasionally better to let the moment pass, use the gap between stimulus and response to use your self-awareness, imagination, will and conscience and just say nothing. Accompanied by the audibly sucked in sigh, I grant you. But shut up all the same.

Doing that requires competence in the application, but character in the thinking behind it.

As I have espoused here, allowing yourself to stop and think that you may be wrong is a way of developing intellectually. But allowing others the brief belief that you are wrong, when you are not wrong, is a way of ensuring that a relationship stays on course.

Let the moment pass, and let your actions clarify and show the accuracy of your thinking, while at the same time demonstrating sensitivity to the emotional state of the other party.

Not easy. But application of The Second Resolution is a great way to stay married.

For more on The Three Resolutions, go HERE to read the first pages of the book.

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Anything you can do, I MUST do better!

12 Sunday Jul 2015

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“When you choose your fields of labour, go where nobody else is willing to go.” Mary Lyon

Is a quote I wish I’d known about years ago. Occasionally, history shows I stepped up to the mark a bit and went a bit further than others may have done. Now and then I exhibited an attitude, some effort and greater knowledge about something that made me look a lot better than perhaps I was, and certainly better than a ‘routine’ me tended to be.

In 2003 I met a new boss, and he was the epitome of dedication, character and competence. I’d had some great bosses who were enthusiastic, caring, compassionate and who were great to work for, but in some ways this chap was one step above them in many ways. It may be, in the cold light of ‘now’, that he was only that one step higher up the stairway to perfection than the others, but that’s the point.

Tony Robbins speaks of the ‘two-percenters’, who only have to put out a little more effort, or more considered effort, to be seen as outstanding. Another fellow (Michael Heppell) illustrates this in his books when he supports Robbins’ contention that to get outstanding results you only have to be that little bit better at creating them than those around you. Remember – the Olympic Gold Medallist is usually only centimetres ahead of the next guy, but who can remember the guy who came second. (Which is a shame but it illustrates my point nicely.)

Albert E Gray is often quoted when he says, “A successful person has the propensity for doing the things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either, necessarily– but their dislike is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.” In addition to doing better than the next person, they’re also willing to do the things that the next person would rather not do, or delegate to someone else, or defer it to when it suits (in the hope it’s never needed).

Thjis manager was exactly like that. He did the work, and he knew his stuff better than anyone I knew. But he also knew better ways of doing it, or how to find the better ways. He was, without question, a master craftsman – and a thoroughly nice bloke.

The Second Resolution is a commitment to being a person of character and a person who is competent. The person who is competent is the guy who comes second. It is the guy with character, with the ability to do more than is called for, for the better reasons, and even when s/he doesn’t want to do – it that comes ahead of the rest.

I wish it as me……

Je Regret Quelque Chose. (I regret something.)

06 Friday Feb 2015

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“The more involved you are, the more significant your learning will be.” Stephen R Covey

I regret something. When I was in my job I tended to learn reactively. I learned, certainly. I occasionally made some startling decisions, one which changed mind-sets and redirected projects for the better. I prided myself on learning some things better than others, but I still regret something.

That while I proactively sought out training, I didn’t learn to deduce. I took facts, applied the system, and results followed. I was a great ‘left-brain logic’ thinker. But I never quite developed the skill to see behind what was going on.

For example, we interviewed one lady who’d allegedly stolen a chap’s camera. She denied it, I went through the logic of her being in the premises from which the item was pinched, her being the only one present, and so on. But the detective with me was the one who said, “He took embarrassing pictures of you, didn’t he?” That was deductive.

Looking back I wonder if the reason for this lack of insight was a reluctance to get overly involved in things. Over time, as interruptions would stop me doing what I had planned, I began to consider all new work as an interruption, to the point at which I would create a good result but stopped learning new, more subtle distinctions.

I also manifestly failed to learn the skills I would need to climb the promotion ladder, so even if I had passed the exams I had no faith that I had the ‘soft skills’ need to lead others. I may have been a great leader, but perhaps if I had been, I wouldn’t have known why and would have been all the less for it.

I saw some masters at this, people who knew their professional ‘stuff’ but also knew how to lead. I wish I’d watched them more.

If you can, get involved. Ask questions – when someone does something, ask them their thinking behind what they’re doing. Not the logic or legal reason – why they are doing it now, what they expect as a consequence, and anything else that will increase your involvement and so help you to learn those distinctions that I so frequently missed.

That’s Second Resolution work. And remembering the continuum from Resolution 1 to Resolution 3, the discipline required to remember and to apply learning will develop your character and competence and thereby improve your ability to serve those you want and need to serve. And you’ll also increase the number of opportunities you get.

How hard can it be? Very, very hard – but worth the effort.

03 Saturday Jan 2015

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“The Character Ethic, which I believe to be the foundation of success, teaches that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their character.” Stephen R Covey.

And, by default, the opposite is also true – that enduring unhappiness is the result of a failure to learn and integrate such principles.

History is rife with stories about the ‘great’ who have fallen because of a failure to act with good character. The funniest comedians, the most talented singers, ‘respected’ politicians and knights of the (UK) realm, rewarded for their great charity work who, after their deaths, turn out to have been truly evil .

The Second Resolution teaches “To overcome the restraining forces of pride and pretension, I resolve to work on character and competence.”

Pride and pretension are behaviours or states of being that identify and are characteristic of an individual who is hiding behind a false image. They appear competent, good, talented, funny and popular. But, underneath, there is a ‘truth’ that perhaps only they know. That they lie, cheat, steal others’ ideas, and in truth are not what they appear to be. Occasionally they get away with it, some until they die, but in the final analysis they are routinely discovered to have been less than we believed.

Some are truly people of great character. They contribute, they provide, they work tirelessly for themselves and for others. Most of us lie somewhere in between! I put myself in there somewhere – as a person who seeks to be good but frequently falls short. A man who is occasionally victim to ‘educated prejudice’, who has seen things which make him think in a certain way, a way that others might find distasteful – although that distaste is occasionally fed by their ‘educated prejudice’. The truth lies in between.

For me, the first step to getting better is to make the Second Resolution. To be aware that pride and pretension is holding you/me/us back and stopping you/me/us becoming what you/I/we could truly become. To acknowledge that there is some pretence to what we are doing, and that we could be doing better. That we could be better at walking our talk, at being congruent in the sense that we (finally) act wholly and always in accordance with what we believe – and what we say out loud.

The more I write this entry, I realise that  the hardest work I’ve ever done will be achieved through ensuring congruity between my word and my deeds.

And life will be all the greater if I ever get there.

Religion without Sacrifice. (Don’t panic…)

15 Monday Dec 2014

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“Without sacrifice we may become active in a church but remain inactive in its gospel. In other words we go for the social façade of religion and the piety of religious practices.” Stephen R Covey

The 6th Deadly Sin is ‘Religion without Sacrifice’.

I know someone who went to church for a long time, but left when they started to realise that many people who went there professed faith and love but failed regularly to express it. In fact, such folk (like politicians, funnily enough) were visibly involved in self-aggrandisement within the hierarchy. If someone got in their way they seemed, shall we say, less charitable?

If you state, publicly, that you follow a certain path – whether that be a religious path or merely belief in a philosophy like the 7 Habits or the 3 Resolutions, then you should really try to exercise that philosophy in the moment of choice, and you should aim to do so consistently. In fact – and this is the hard part – you should be even more inclined to try to do that when it is most in-convenient, because that is when your commitment is most tested.

I find it hard, I admit. On the one hand I want to be a person of competence and good character and in the main I am, BUT occasionally something happens and I suddenly desire that the other driver involved crashes horrifically and dies in the blazing conflagration that their driving deserves. And I will always want to smash the fog-lights of people who use them in broad daylight or rain because it makes their car look pretty.

(Oops, heart on sleeve, there.)

I am no saint. Neither, I suspect, are you. But there’s no harm, and a great deal of gain, in at least moving in that direction. The First Resolution will provide you with the discipline to make better choices for yourself, and the Second Resolution will give you the character and the competence to make better choices for the benefit of others.

Deadly Sin – Number Four

13 Saturday Dec 2014

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“Economic and Political systems are ultimately based on a moral foundation.” Stephen R Covey

The fourth Deadly Sin is ‘Commerce (Business) without Morality (or Ethics)’.

The common view of any corporation is that it is corrupt on the basis that it makes profit. That is lefty, socialist ideological dogma. If corporations did not make profit, they would dwindle and die away, and those who work there would have to seek survival through other means.

However, those which pay poorly, and I include those who pay on zero-hours bases with a clause that the employee cannot seek work elsewhere, do fit the immorality ‘bill’ when it comes to the way they do business. On a similar vein, those who take advantage of customers are just as morally bankrupt – and this includes any business that has such a complicated tariff system that no-one knows how it works and trusts the corporation to deal with them fairly, and to promptly address concerns when they are raised.

(Utility companies take note – a 30 minute wait listening to a ‘we value your custom but can’t be a***ed to adequately man our phones’ message suggests you are LYING.)

Some companies, successful and profitable ones strangely enough, manage to conduct business in such a fashion. They last a fair while, too, and the people that work there are almost invariably happy. (There’s always one……) But they rarely get the publicity, do they?

(I originally added political parties to that paragraph but to be frank I couldn’t, in all conscience, do so. That is because I have yet to meet a prominent politician that has impressed me with their willingness to stand up for their values at the potential expense of their position. I know in my heart that they exist, but they must be hidden because they don’t follow a party line and so don’t get the rewards of power.)

But never forget. It is individuals that set the culture. An ‘organisation’ is not corrupt unless someone with power within that organisation legitimises it. But that is not all. And you might like this next sentence a bit less.

In order for that someone in power to create a culture of immorality and corruption, quite a few other people have to either support them, or stand by doing nothing about it.

Don’t be in that list. Be of good character and stand up for what your conscience and values tell you is the right path. Even if it initially costs you there is always a happy ending when you know you have stood up for the ethical route.

Why apply the Second Resolution?

04 Thursday Dec 2014

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Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships. Stephen R Covey

The Second Resolution is defined as the demonstration of the two elements of trustworthiness – character and competence. Good character is easily seen in others because we admire who they are and how they act. We know it because we see in them what we would like to see in ourselves, even though we are equally aware when we are failing to demonstrate those traits. Good old Conscience.

Competence is different. We only really see competence in others when we see that they are more competent than (we feel) we are.

I believe this – I won’t contend it is true because it is a gut feeling based on experience – because when my peers did something spectacularly good in their work as detectives, I would bemoan to myself, “I wish I’d thought of that!” And if I received a compliment about anything spectacular that I did, I would modestly play it down.

But to address the quote – do you feel that it is easier to communicate with someone of character who is also competent? Of course you do! If you need help you seek out someone who knows the answer, of course, but you also seek out someone who you know will take the time to explain it to you properly, and won’t go and blab about your incompetence to another person.

Trust is important. Trust is a product of trustworthiness, which is a function of BOTH character and competence.

Apply yourself to the Second Resolution.

Mini Blog 1 – Trends – cool, or what?

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

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Reading Facebook this morning I noticed someone use the word ‘trendy’, which I shall redefine as ‘descriptive of a fad’ which Wikipedia describes thus: “A fad is any form of behaviour that develops among a large population and is collectively followed enthusiastically for a period of time, generally as a result of the behaviour being perceived as popular by one’s peers or being deemed “cool” by social media.”

In other words, followership. And it is following of something for the worst possible reason – ‘everyone else is doing it’. I think of such people when I see iPhone 5 owners queuing for an iPhone 6 while their expensive contract still has a year to run. I see it in queues of girls screaming at One Direction because the publicity machine tells them they should, and they’re too young to see it. I see it with people who are in professional positions (lawyers in particular) who have boy band haircuts and shoes jutting 12 inches from the end of their feet. Not impressed.

Fashion is the science of appearance rather than true being – and I’d rather ‘be’ than ‘seem’. People who ‘seem’ frequently have no sense of identity so have to comply with the (faddish?) societal norm – and therefore to be judged by it as ‘in’ or ‘out’. (I sense irony there, but I shall go on.)

Meanwhile, here’s another contradiction – school kids complain about uniforms “’Cos it makes us all look the same and we are individuals.” Then, on non-uniform days they all turn up in their own clothes but still all looking exactly the same!

How can you get ahead by mere compliance with the status quo?

Resolution 2 promotes character. Character is not a fad, nor shall I call it trendy. But wouldn’t it be nice if it was?

Am I Competent?

13 Saturday Sep 2014

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No, I don’t mean me, specifically. It’s a question I often asked myself in times of doubt, and I’m sure it’s a question you may have asked yourself. It is something I know I’ve asked myself when a colleague has pulled some masterful piece of work out of his or her bag, a piece of work I either should have considered or could have considered – but didn’t.

What IS Competence? In my book I define it as “the ability to get things done in accordance with the technology, methodology and ethics of the role being undertaken”. That general definition covers a multitude of professions, trades and pastimes. The ‘things to be done’ are the results expected from the individual that relate to the objectives of the organisation – it may be sales, it may be production, it may be distribution, it could be the provision of any services you can think of. But if you disagree with the definition just apply your own – it’s your understanding of competence that is important, and even more so when you apply it to your own work.

The chances are that having obtained a ‘job’ you either got training, or were expected to already know what it was you were supposed to be doing. Even in that latter situation I’d imagine there was some tempering of what you knew in the sense that it had to be applied to the specific situation in which you found yourself. I know, for example, that after 14 weeks Police training my naïve colleagues and I underwent a Force-level ‘local procedure course’ where we were enlightened as to “how we do it ‘round ‘ere”, followed by another “how we do it ‘round ‘ere” inflicted on us when we got to our first station. Then there were to be many other “how we do it ‘round ‘ere” courses as we were to transfer between stations and departments. I probably inflicted a few rounds of “how we do it ‘round ‘ere” myself. (What do you mean I still do?)

And on each of my subsequent HWDIRH courses I probably discovered that either I was not competent in the eyes of new ‘trainer’ because of the way I HAD been doing it, or the ‘trainer’ was evidently incompetent because I could see (having got older and wiser) that s/he was incompetent. Such incompetence, by the way, was often the reliance on HWDIRH being set in stone – it was ‘the ONLY way’.

It is clear to me that no matter where you go and whatever you do, there is a ‘window’ that exists, through which you will be viewed as competent or otherwise, and this is called the ‘AYNOBETA WINDOW’.

Someone, somewhere, will always know better than you. It is plain if you are wholly new to a field and are completely uninformed that people will see you through this window, and they will be right. On such occasions, suck it up, accept the impatience as a sense of urgency that you learn the new things being taught. (Particularly if you’ve just joined the Marines.)

But in progressing along a ‘training continuum’ where you’ve already gained some competence in your field, the situation may be a bit different with the other party’s AYNOBETA WINDOW. If they DO know better it will be evident the moment that they take the time to explain their thinking and you discover a new perspective. If they DON’T know better, that will become evident the minute they shout you down, refuse to listen to you, or call you an idiot for your failure to succumb to their greatness. Avoid these people like the plague. And don’t become one.

A friend of mine from the Covey ‘stable’ suggests that when we disagree with somebody, a great sentence is this: “Ah, you see things differently – tell me more.” It’s seldom easy to remember to use it, but there it is. Another Coveyism in any difference of opinion is, “What is your underlying concern?” They both send the same message – ‘your opinion is important to me and may be correct – tell me more’, and it actually invites the respondent to review their own understanding of the situation. This practice may well develop BOTH parties to the conversation.

Competence can be learned and incompetence can be unlearned. And in the great continuum of life, skills applicable today may no longer work tomorrow and our competence needs to take new possibilities, and the subsequent need for new learning, into account.

We’re only competent until something changes, but after that change we are only incompetent as long as we are unable or unwilling to learn the new skill required. Once we take the time to be retrained, or to train ourselves, we resume our journey through competence to expertise. And that is a place many of us would like to be.

Weekly Challenge

Is there something you do in your trade, profession, community work or relationships that needs work? How up to date are you with the codes of practice governing your activities? How proactive are you about discovering what your training department still hasn’t told you? What ‘soft skills’ aren’t you applying that you know you should, but haven’t yet applied because you fear your lack of skill will be seen as duplicitous or insincere?

Take the time to either learn what you don’t know, or properly apply what you DO know. For me, that’ll mean exercising much more patience (MUCH more) with family members!

Blog Part

Disappointing weight loss this week, but I suspect there were some environmental factors which warped the weighing scale experience and I hope that the balance will be redressed next week. I’m still on track with the running programme (eh?) and even ran a bit further than I should have one day, just to see if I could. It built a bit of self-confidence in me, so it did.

My book is expanding exponentially – every day something comes up that makes me think “that’ll be great in that chapter”, which means I develop my thinking as much as I hope to help you develop your own.

I also attended a professional seminar yesterday, and some interesting legal and ethical questions arose which are also going to lead to me gaining new competencies, and to taking further opportunities to provide a service in accordance with my Mission Statement. There was also a moral/ethical dilemma – do I challenge a speaker on his ethics in front of a crowd of people? My answer has always been the same – when invited to someone else’s party, don’t criticise the host. And there’s also another perspective to consider – ‘did I hear that right?’

Occasionally you need to keep your mouth shut out of respect – because doing so may also protect your own reputation!