Tag Archives: second resolution

It’s never too late – nor too early – to learn

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Ordinarily I write my blogs on the day I post them. I wrote this one five days ago, because I knew I’d be busy this morning. I mean that morning. I mean …. Oh, you know.

I knew I was busy on the morning this post would appear (that’ll do) because of my adherence to my personal value relating to ‘intellectual pursuit’ in that I had booked to attend a webinar. To be frank, it’s a webinar the content of which I already know and I could probably plan and present it myself (although the presenter is doing a bang up job). It’s on a subject I’ve studied for decades, hence my apparent over-confidence.

But I have always been of the opinion that ‘competence’, the ‘working’ half of the Second Resolution, is not something you achieve once. Competence is an ongoing obligation, and as competencies develop so does my need to maintain some kind of currency with the latest thinking on the subject at hand. It ahs been said that competencies have a half-life of about two-three years, meaning in that period you’ll lose half your usable ability if you don’t maintain some kind of continuing professional development. I know from recent experience that the procedural changes in the organisation I left in 2014 and to which I returned 18 months later meant that I was way behind in some respects. A steep learning curve was a pleasant surprise!

Many people rue additional training, while some welcome it. I find that the first group is split into people who hate it whatever it is, while some (cough) just detest such training if it is unnecessarily frequent or poorly delivered.

(Did you know that on the first anniversary of the day they are taught how to hit people with a metal bar, police officers are deemed to have forgotten? The same with First Aid. Complete mental collapse in some areas of their work that many apply frequently but on day 366 – all forgotten. Yes, I am being a bit sarcastic and there are valid exceptions.)

In the main, however, frequent attendance at training courses will at best enhance your professional (and personal*) competencies and at worst reinforce the ones you already possess.

So why not approach imposed training as something which will serve you in some way, and proactively seek out training in areas which until now you may have felt unnecessary – or better still, something you want to do just ‘because’.

When the lockdown finishes you will no doubt get the opportunity to return to a community college, further education facility or other provider who will teach you something you will need to know, or will want to know.

I know I will be.

( *I’m booking some ‘relationship’ courses even though I’m approaching my 40th wedding anniversary. Can’t be too careful…….)

For more on principle centred leadership, ready my book The Three Resolutions, available HERE.

The Only True Pride – is Pride in the Truth

14 Wednesday Oct 2020

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As we all sit at home obeying the advice, or sneak about defying the impositions placed upon us, we must all be wondering what the heck is going on at the top. We seem to be watching the Leader of the Opposition both supporting and attacking the Government in such a way as to be able to one day say, “See, I was right all along” because he’s playing both sides of the Lockdown argument while not being responsible in any way for the action that has to be taken. He’s a bit like the crowd of fat, XXXL team shirt-wearing, pie-eating experts in the stands at a Premiership football match, who all know they could’ve done better than the millionaire on the pitch while safely avoiding any exercise that reflects that expertise.

Which made me think about the Second Resolution as it relates to Competence and Character, and their opposites – the negatives of Pride and Pretension. On first seeing Pride as a negative you may be forgiven for thinking that Pride is a good thing, but in this context we are talking not about the sense of peace when we do a good job, but about excessive pride. This is the pride that prevents us acting with integrity when, having made a mistake, we refuse to acknowledge it. It is the pride that also makes us try to cover up that mistake, but that is outside the scope of this brief article.

What I see in politicians today is both disagreeable, and understandable at the same time. They exemplify ‘pride and pretension’ in the sense that they bluster and blather while insisting they have better ideas than the other side, while making sure that their position will not result in their being held to account. We know this to be true because the opposing ideologies are so obviously present – otherwise the parties wouldn’t ‘all’ be in agreement. But it’s understandable, if not forgiveable, because the minute any principled politician listens to advice and changes their policy – they’re slammed for being ‘forced into a u-turn’, as opposed to thanked for listening.

(Watching both sides of Congress debating the Supreme Court nomination is funny. Watching them arguing that the other side is wrong because the other side is doing what the first side did last time, after the other side opposed it, is quite funny. Attacking the other side for finally agreeing with you, while changing your own mind? Not at ALL partisan.)

This element of Pride is the sin of ‘Being Right’ regardless of incoming data. It’s about blind following of your preferred ideology even when you know, inside, that what you are doing is incongruent and undermines any integrity you claim to possess.

When I imagine the parties discussing “We’ll say that, because it means they’ll have to do that, and then we can claim that….”, I cringe. That is playing both sides against the middle instead of clearly deciding – and declaring – what is right. Now the mind-blowing bit – that applies even if they ZRE right.

Truth serves itself – it doesn’t need deception to justify its existence.

The other thing about telling the truth is that you don’t have to make up defences. You don’t have to tell another lie to support or cover the first. Gary King (http://garykinglive.com/truth-challenge/) talks about how research suggests that for every lie told, you have to tell seven more to cover it. And as per the Siphonaptera and its fleas, each of the seven lies has seven more little lies on its back to bite ‘em.

Exercising excessive pride to the extent that you lie – and ‘lie’ includes exaggeration and ‘being disingenuous’ to use the politicians’ obfuscation against them – is not good debating, positive strategy or justifiable in the (any) moment.

So stop playing games – we can see right through you, Mr/Madam Representative.

Here we go again? GREAT!!

23 Wednesday Sep 2020

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What have you achieved during the ‘first’ COVID Lockdown period?

How you define ‘achievements’ in the question I leave up to you. You may choose work-related successes, which will include how you adapted your working practices to address the restrictions and the (yuk) New Normal; you can list any charity or community efforts you undertook; you can rattle through the personal development you made.

Or.

You can consider the lack of initiative you might have displayed in any or all of those areas. You can now consider what you could have done. You can think ‘I could’ve’ (not could OF) and ‘I should’ve’ and ‘I might’ve’. And you can wallow in the self-pity that ensues if you did nothing to take advantage of the developmental opportunity that this pause could have provided.

But GREAT NEWS!

In my area, several local authorities have been re-locked down. (In fact, Cardiff is technically under siege as it is surrounded by locked down unitary authorities.) There are constant rumours, even expectations that another national lockdown is a-coming our way. A second pause-button that you can press and decide ‘What can I do in this period of change?’

I’m lucky. I have no formal occupation other than writing and blogging so I had massive amounts of discretionary time. Oddly, I still have a 9-5 mentality and regularly ‘pack in’ at tea-time. Weird.

But in the period since March I have:

  • Lost 35lbs.
  • Increased my cycling – time and distances travelled.
  • Attended umpteen free webinars to stay on top of my game.
  • Sorted out some home-environments.
  • Written The Way.
  • Edited Three Resolutions. (Okay, I finished that just before it started but it needed a proof read.)
  • Rewritten Police Time Management (still doing that).
  • Had two mini-breaks with the extended family during the eased-off hiatus in the Pandemic Panic.
  • Refocused my mind.

And here we find ourselves at the cusp of another, allegedly 6-month lockdown opportunity.

The Three Resolutions ‘commitments’ provide a framework for consideration of exactly what you can do to take advantage of the gap. You can reinforce your self-discipline by choosing to eat less and exercise more. You can redefine your personal values and your congruence or incongruence in terms of how you behave in their respect. You can learn new stuff, or you can study the old stuff you need to know in order to do an excellent job. You can revisit your sense of Purpose and decide if what you are doing is right for you, while simultaneously considering what service, or what better service you can provide to others – either through work or in a voluntary capacity.

Or you can just accept the entropy that doing nothing engenders. You can actively pursue the self-redundancy that ‘just doing enough’ causes.

Which is the right choice? You KNOW it.

Now DO it.

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.