Tag Archives: service

Unwanted service? Do it anyway.

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I write regularly for LinkedIn, the professional Facebook. (Although the lines continue to blur….) Owing to the fact I will not pay LinkedIn £30 a month for services I won’t use, I suspect that what I am writing isn’t getting the airtime my magnificence deserves. Alternatively, sobering as it is, I might equally have to accept that what I am writing isn’t being read – not for any particular reason, but perhaps for no better reason that people haven’t the time.

My ego says, “Why bother, then?” BUT the Third Resolution requires me to provide that service in any case. And it occurred to me this week that the simple truth, for an individual as much as a business is – you can’t force people to subscribe to your services.

You can market, you can advertise (different, apparently), you can beg and cajole, but no-one can be forced to accept what you have on offer, even if HMG is moving slowly from ask to cajole to enforce in terms of the vaccine. (Conspiracy, moi?)

Particularly if you can’t convince them that they need what you’re offering. (Although convincing people they need something that costs more than they earn is whole other level of begging.)

Which I think is odd, because – and I’m going out on a limb here – most people know that they could be better than they are. We can all be better, and we all know it. But we pretend otherwise, and we certainly (and in monetary terms, perhaps justifiably) resist investing money and time in closing the Gap between what and where we are, and what and who we want to be.

Some people – yes, you know someone like it – would even violently (verbally or physically) fight anyone who suggests they could be calmer, more restrained individuals.

How big is YOUR Gap – the distance between your current emotional, physical, financial, spiritual and mental state, and your ideal? I digress. Mull over that question  later but, for now, let me get back on point.

Despite the fact that people don’t want your services today, or ever, there is great personal gain in carrying on trying. In maintaining professional and personal relevance, in keeping up with technologies and thinking in your field.

(Did you know, all thought leaders pretty much think what their predecessors have thought? They just put it differently. Fair dos, so do I.)

If you do that, the moment you are called upon to provide a service – you’re ready. You’re not embarrassed by ‘having to look something up’, to buying some piece of kit that supports your efforts.

As you may be aware, I teach advanced driving. You may appreciate that for the past 18 months that hasn’t been possible. So rust could set in. meanwhile, my qualification to do that is up for renewal next week. In preparation for that, I figured that I would hit the books and prepare. So I did.

And I discovered that I knew it for the simple reason that I practice it. It’s not just something I teach, it’s something I do. As I read the books I realised ‘I know this stuff’ because I review it constantly, not just before an examination process. (In fact, three years ago I got a call from a tester about a due retest, and he said, “How about tomorrow?” I was ready. I just drove as I now routinely drive. It wasn’t an exam as much as it was a demo.)

Keep up your service standards. You may get the opportunity to provide them sooner than you expect.

For more on this subject, read The Three Resolutions, available at AMAZON in paperback and Kindle formats.

Podcast Paradise

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Last week, I had the honour and privilege of being interviewed by author and charity chief Rob Parsons OBE, head of Care for the Family (www.cff.org.uk) and author of classic books, including Heart of Success and The 60 Minute Father. The interview covered the fields of The Three Resolutions and time management, both of us having written and/or spoken on the latter theme.

Please try it as a commute-filling piece of informative entertainment. This is the download link –

https://we.tl/t-kjDoV5lXsG

Or you can listen HERE –

It was an excellent experience – and I am double checking that no answers began ‘So’, or ‘Yeah, no, I mean.’

My thanks to Rob and the team at CFF for this opportunity – a very impressive set up and I encourage those with an interest in family-related matters to visit their website and take advantage of what is on offer.

Add a (Little) Discipline…..

24 Thursday Jun 2021

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My recent absence from this site is explained by my going on holiday, and I before I went I elected to impose a new discipline upon myself. It wasn’t and isn’t intended to be a long term project, but it was just a ‘see if I could’ idea. The objective was to see if I could go for a 1 mile run as soon as I got out of bed for the 6 mornings away. Seems easy?

For some. For me, I haven’t run a meaningful distance since about 2016 because of recurring leg-related injuries that don’t lend themselves to pounding pavements, (I did a 3-miler a while ago to see if I could – I could, but it caused a week of limping.) added to my discovery of the ‘joys’ of road cycling as a means to exercise and control weight, meant that running is not pleasant. Nor is getting out of bed.

I did it. As soon as I rose each morning, I shaved, dressed and ran out of the door. One morning, because of that day’s plans, I was out by about 6.30AM.

It was hateful, painful even. Some mornings, particularly the latter ones after experiencing the pain from the earlier days, I lay there desperately trying to justify largesse. And, every morning, I remembered two pieces of input. One was that of speaker Mel Robbins, who advises the 5-second countdown to action – decide what to do, and then give yourself 5-4-3-2-1 GO. It can be quite effective.

The other input was my own. I have a mantra that I have discovered makes it easier to do the difficult. In a pre-2021 exercise developed by the late Jinny Ditzler, author of ‘Your Best Year Yet’ (see www.byypro.com) , I identified several ‘rules’ that related to past successes and behaviours that had served me. I recommend it, but use the book – the site, while excellent, is an expensive luxury.

The particular guideline I used to get out of bed and run was ‘I Make, and Act Upon, the Hard Choices.’* Just remembering it can get me going. It gets me going because I came up with it, and past experience tells me that it works. So lying there bemoaning the commitment, I recalled my own advice and got up. 10 paces in, it was all old news, anyway.

So here’s my advice.

Decide upon a short-term imposition o yourself that requires self-discipline. Even if it’s not intended to last it will firm up your discipline ‘muscle’ for those things that will require more effort. It could be ‘drink only water for 7 days’, or ‘no chocolate for a week’, or it could be more ambitious depending on your situation and your particular need. If you’re already slim, cutting out things you rarely use anyway is hardly a stretch. Be bold.

Find something you don’t enjoy, something in respect of which doing it will serve you, even for a short period. And carry out that commitment.

It is yours, after all.

*I’ve used that for a lot of hard decisions, lately.

For more on self-discipline, get the book The Three Resolutions from Amazon HERE – only £9.80 for 300 pages…..

Win-Win NEEDS the Three Resolutions

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You are familiar with the expression Win-Win, are you not? It’s a management go-to term when you are engaged in some kind of negotiation. Of course, in most negotiations the term is interpreted to mean that ‘I will win most and you will win some’. For example, the nice double-glazing salesman my father played, whose opening gambit for doing our whole house was £10,000, but when he wasn’t getting anywhere with that dropped straight to £6,000, at which my Dad suggested the salesman had (a) just tried to con £4k out of him and (b) better leave while he still could.

Another example – when someone with a purpose on television says ‘we need a debate’ may imply they are seeking a win-win solution to the issue at hand, but what they really mean is they want a debate where the other side does what they want done. My evidence – politicians stating that the other side should ‘show leadership’ by doing what they’re told.

Readers of the classic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People will know that a true Win-Win means that both sides seek out a solution that is better than either of them foresaw when they began the relationship, or they just don’t do the deal. That takes courage and consideration – the courage to stand for what you believe while also being considerate of the other’s needs and perspectives. It’s not surrender – it’s a deeper discussion.

It also means applying all of the Three Resolutions. It takes self-discipline to not blindly default into seeking what you want at the other’s expense, and it means denying yourself your initial victory in preference for consciously seeking a better one. It takes character (knowing what you value and being unwilling to compromise your principles) and competence (specifically the intellectual capacity to negotiate, to understand conceptually within the practices and legalities which cover the matter at hand, and the technical ability to do what is agreed). And it requires that you know your purpose and are willing to serve the other party and their stakeholders as much as you wish to serve your own.

This isn’t just a business related idea. This applies to all interpersonal transactions, from deciding on a family holiday to getting a stubborn teenager to clean her room. (That adjective was redundant, really, wasn’t it? They’re all stubborn.)

It means being proactive. It requires a momentary pause between the stimulus of getting your needs met and starting to demand them, instead using the pause to ask ‘how important is this relationship’? It means deciding that you want to consider your ultimate objective from the broader perspective of a whole-life view and any future dealings. It means giving thought to how you want the project to progress, and whether carrying it through is ethical, and won’t compromise your values and external principles.

Nope. Negotiating from a desire for all involved to benefit is definitely not easy. But it all starts with your being the kind of individual who is conscious of the above principles, and sufficiently proactive as to notice when they need to be applied. Instead of jumping straight to the default ‘win’ programming that we tend to adopt as we grow up – and learn from our ‘betters’.

Next time you want something that involves someone else, ask yourself – “Am I disciplined, congruent, competent and service-orientated enough to take the time to find out how I can be a part of making this a mutually beneficial project?”

If the answer is No, even in the moment, then decide to wait until you are.

The results will be truly extraordinary.

For more on The Three Resolutions, got to Amazon and buy the book.

Stephen Covey taught me Scepticism… (bear with me).

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I have always been ‘intelligent’ in the sense I could pass examinations, but I don’t think I became really intelligent until I started studying the works of Stephen Covey. He didn’t make me any cleverer in IQ terms, but he did open my eyes to a new mental approach to things. He showed me how people – you, me and an awful lot of politicians and celebrities – are psychologically flawed, and in recognising those flaws I realised just how much what we are told is ideologically biased. Not necessarily on a political ideology – just a set of ideas about which the speaker feels certain, even though they have no empirical, objective evidence for the firmness of that certainty. It is, to use a Markleism, a ‘lived truth’ and is therefore subjective.

I hear a ‘fact’ now, and I realise that it is rarely factual. It is routinely an opinion. It is an opinion honestly held in the sense that the person stating it (usually) genuinely believes it, but it is rarely an absolute, objective truth. I now question everything I hear, because I know about Values. They believe what they are saying because they want it to be true. And anything which challenges that ‘truth’ is not only wrong, it is an absolute lie!

Attaching emotion to an argument colours it, so when I hear emotion – anger, passion, hate, fear – then I also hear bias. And just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I am right, either. Objectivity requires acceptance that you may also be biased.

Covey taught me many things, but one of them was to see things not through ‘my eyes’ but through ‘principles’. The main principle of debate and learning being – ‘have we heard ALL the facts?’ So I accept nothing, believe no-one and check everything.

For example, when I hear someone on one side of the political divide start insulting the other,  I remember Desmond Tutu’s advice that when in debate, instead of raising your voice, raise the quality of your argument. Try explanation and a quiet, considered voice – and I’ll hear you.

When I hear ‘There is no evidence to show …….. (whatever the speaker does not wish to believe)’, I ask, “Have you even looked?”

When I hear ‘something terrible IS going to happen’ (e.g. Brexit), I recall Hyrum W. Smith (author of What Matters Most) saying ‘ Results take time to measure’ and recognise none of us can tell the future. Try ‘might’ happen – and I’ll listen.

When I hear ‘you MUST do it this way’, I look at the background material and frequently find that ‘this way’ is not the ‘only way’. Indeed, it is occasionally the wrong way. Question what you are told – even if the answer remains the same, you will understand it to a far more informed degree.

When I hear talented actors, who I’ve watched grow up from their first childhood films to mature individuals, telling me their opinions about politics I ask, “When exactly did you do your—–ology degree?” They have a right to an opinion – but all too often they have no ‘authority’ behind it. (And as I get the impression that ‘creatives’ are almost consistently left-wing, I also ask how that stands up, statistically?).

And when I hear an academic’s opinion that is based on their expertise, I remember that they may have found the evidence they sought, but was it objectively tested? And you can get a degree with a 40% pass mark, by the way. Having letters after your name may just be confirmation of a bias!

In essence, what I am promoting, here, is to live a life of healthy cynicism, where you question what you hear – even your own experiences. The last thing this world needs is to move from objective reality to ‘lived truths’.

Listen, but assess. Could they be wrong – because if they are and you act on that, you’re wrong too.

You’ve Fallen – What Now?

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“You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down.” Mary Pickford

Every now and then, even the best have a poor day. An actor fluffs a line, a singer misses a note, Tiger Woods misses a road. These days of woke, a slip of the tongue causes offence and you are the one in the wrong, undermining hundreds of years of basic law about intent being the important element of a crime, not the ‘feelings’ of the other party. People are losing jobs because of momentary lapses of judgment that have nothing to do with their actual job performance – and often because the ‘offendee’ has an agenda (newspaper sales, TV ratings, they want your job, etc.), and not because they were genuinely offended.

And you’re cast down. Do you stay there?

It’s entirely up to you.

Here’s some advice for those who fall. Get up and start again from the First Resolution. Re-establish the disciplines that made you the success you were until only moments ago. Address the mistake by deciding either to never repeat it or to stand by it. Depending on your perspective and the nature of the event – you decide. If you were guilty, in part or in full, accept your tort and never do it again. If you weren’t, be steadfast and step away from the situation before it worsens.

Then look at the Second Resolution: revisit your sense of character, a massive element of which is Integrity. What does your conscience say about your ‘offence’? Was it wrong – if so, decide never to do it again. If not, conclude others were in the wrong and move forward. Examine your professional competencies: which ones weren’t what they could have been – if personalities were involved, what did you miss? Who did you fail to judge accurately? What nagging doubts (‘yellow alerts’) did you ignore? What action did you fear to take? It is rarely your professional competency that fails – it is almost always relationship-related – people, in other words.

Finally, consider the Third Resolution: can you still follow through on your sense of purpose, even if it is in a different way? Who can you serve, instead? What skills do you have that haven’t been compromised or lessened by your fall, that can be put to good, or even better use?

This* happens. But only death can really stop you doing something meaningful with your life. Anything else is a temporary distraction if you decide that to be so. The world is full of recovery stories – write your own if you need to. Use the philosophies available through the many books on purpose, discipline, and so on. Discover an alternative route to the end that what you lost was intended to provide.  

Apply The Three Resolutions.

Get Better. BE Better.

Starting the moment you get over what happened.

*An anagram

Emotional Control – and Two Fights.

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Years ago during my policing career, two colleagues arrested a criminal who had a reputation for violence. On arrival at the Custody Unit car park, and just outside the Unit entrance doors, the officers alighted and invited the detainee to get out of the car. (It was before the use of vans was routine.) He declined their invitation.

Using ‘minimum force’ I used a technique I had learned in training, I put the blunt end of a pen against his earlobe and putting the two between my fingers, squeezed. He got out, at which point my two colleagues pinned him against the wall and tried to cover all his limbs and torso at the same time. I observed two things – one, he was trapped, and two, he wasn’t actually resisting any more.

“Flipping heck Dave, help us!” yelled one of my mates.

“He’s not resisting anymore.” I calmly responded. And he wasn’t. he meekly accepted his fate once the two sweating coppers eased off and the rest of the process went easily.

For 24 hours the two colleagues thought ill of me. The following day, they apologised. The emotion of the moment had taken over.

Another day, same unit. A well known and truly violent prisoner, with a history for acting up in the Unit, was asked to remove his clothes for forensic examination. Predictably, off he went. Yelling, demanding, threatening. It was going to take the world to get his kit off.

“Oy, ******,” I shouted. “WHAT?” he replied.

“Has behaving like that ever actually worked for you?” I asked.

A moment passed and he started undressing.

I’m no saint. I lost my temper now and then. Which doesn’t make today’s lesson less impactive, it merely reinforces it.

When emotions are high, when stresses are present, when losing your temper and abandoning all emotional control is ooohhhh so easy,

Don’t.

There are two reasons for this. First of all, it makes you feel good afterwards. Your keeping control is emotionally satisfying.

But second, it means you keep control and are able to deal with the event better. While I’m not proposing you will ever need this advice, my experience has always been than in a fight it’s the one who loses control that loses. I was attacked many times during my career but I always (somehow!) managed to keep my cool – even when a criminal bit into my leg and I let him stay there because it meant he wasn’t running off – and I literally tied them up in an effective controlling hold because they had lost control and I hadn’t.

You may not be involved in fisticuffs, but the same advice applies to those verbal confrontations we all, occasionally, find ourselves starting or trying to finish. Maintaining emotional control is key to resolution, and it is a truly empowering characteristic that those who wish to be principled leaders should seek to adopt.

All it takes is a moment to decide – who’s in charge here? Me or my emotions.

Choose ‘me’.

Vietnam and The Three Resolutions

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For the past 8 days I have been dutifully watching a PBS documentary series on the Vietnam War, covering the 1961-1973 American involvement in what had hitherto been a French problem. And the overarching message that I have received has been – if they’d just applied the Second and Third Resolutions, maybe the lives of 282,000 US/South Vietnamese and other allies’ service personnel, 444,000 North Vietnamese/Viet Cong soldiers, and  627,000 civilians, would have been saved. Not all, I suspect – if North Vietnam had simply been handed control there would no doubt have been the kind of casualties usually associated with a communist takeover.*

Why would the Second Resolution have saved them? Character.

You see, the recurring message of the testimony and evidence produced showed (a) how often the US authorities admitted, in secret, that they were fighting a losing battle from when Kennedy was still alive and (b) that the self-interest of Presidential re-election was the focus of some of their decision-making. They even produced evidence that Nixon sabotaged peace talks as a way of supporting his efforts to replace Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 elections. How many of his citizens dies because of self-interest – because of a lack of character?

Which also brings up the Third Resolution. The other factors that killed countless people was unbridled ambition on the part of the leaders of both sides. The North could argue that they wanted to unite their country under one flag, albeit a communist one. The American evidence was clearly that, rather than acknowledge a huge error and step back from it with careful consideration as to how, they just threw people at it to avoid having to admit to a mistake – even someone else’s! Just to maintain power 6,000 miles away.

When I saw how many soldiers died taking ‘strategically important’ hills, only for the victors – survivors – to leave them once they got to the top, I was grateful that my children never volunteered to join the Forces, and simultaneously even more respectful of those who do.

I have always been willing to acknowledge and apologise for my mistakes. Even when my efforts have been rebuffed, and lies told about my errors, my disappointment has been more about another’s unwillingness to accept my apology out of self-interest, than it has been about the negative personal consequences.

Saying sorry often takes courage. It means acknowledging imperfection, it means risking a reputation – it means being vulnerable. Acknowledgement of a genuine effort to apologise is the least one can ask for.

But as Vietnam shows, stubborn insistence on ‘being right’ when patently ‘doing wrong’ in an effort to hide being even more wrongis dangerous to everyone involved.

Particularly for those who didn’t realise they were being misused by the players in the game.

Tell the truth. Live the truth, Acknowledge the truth.

Whatever happens.

*Turns out there weren’t any massacres. Just big re-education camps. Honest.

Handforth and the Third Resolution

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As I write this blog, the Handforth Council Planning Committee video is viral, the major press has got wind of it, and it has apparently chosen sides. Having been party to many a committee meeting myself, I thought I’d explore the concept from a Third Resolution (service) perspective. The question so obviously arising from this amusing event is – why do people choose to serve?

The most attractive and most frequently given answer will be ‘I want to serve the association, public, country, community’ (delete as applicable). For many, that is true. I know I wanted to serve my own Institute when I volunteered. Which was not necessarily my only motive, and therein lay the crunch.

In my opinion, when volunteering there is also the ego-driven desire to be/do something of importance. Don’t judge – there is an element of ‘What’s In It For Me’ in everything we do. That is a psychological truth. If there was nothing at all in it for you – what possible reason would you have for doing it? My evidence? ‘I want to be a nurse’ is a worthy vocational ambition, but years later ‘emptying Gladys’ colostomy bag’ loses its edge. You still do it because it serves your greater vision, but you’d be equally happy if you didn’t have to. We want the good stuff of the service we provide, and we endure the bad. Which is why there is no such job as ‘colostomy bag emptier’. No-one wants it. But they will do it as part of work they do want. You wanted the overall job, and to serve. You do the bad because it serves something else that IS in it for you.

The problems arise when instead of serving in order to get ‘something’, you start to serve with a view to making that service – serve you. Instead of giving to the cause, you start to demand that the cause gives to you – not just emotional contentment and a sense of purpose (which is why you started), but everything. The cause/organisation you serve now belongs to you, and you demand to direct it.

When I watched the Handforth video I found myself asking questions the press seemed to have ignored. Why was this ‘volunteer’ running the Zoom meeting and deciding who was in charge? Was she there because she wanted to serve – or because she didn’t like what she (or someone else) was hearing and wanted to stop it despite really having no business doing so? Watching the earlier part of the meeting suggests at least some internal politics at play.

If someone turned up in your meeting and declared she was running it because a third party ‘asked her’, what would your response be? If s/he rejigged the agreed agenda, added bits in and threw the Chair out because he wasn’t content to allow the hijack – would you go, ‘Fine, no problem’? And what if it was clear that half the attendees seemed to be either in on the hijack or willing to endorse it? (Which, if that was the case, would explain the anger displayed by the Chair/Vice-Chair particularly if it was happening ‘again’ and they’d had enough of it. Half a story is not a whole story.)

The Third Resolution is intended to counter the Restraining Force (possibly) demonstrated in Handforth. (And I emphasise – none of us knows the whole story, so that’s a big ‘possible’.)

That RF is UNBRIDLED Aspiration and Ambition. Note the importance of the adjective ‘Unbridled’ – aspiration and ambition in an individual is laudable until it becomes self-serving, and serves the individual at the very expense of the body being served. My observation of the meeting – which is admittedly subjective and may be misinformed – was that someone appeared to be interfering in someone else’s game, as modest and (in fairness) emotionally cool as she appears in the video, and perhaps shouldn’t have. I have done some research and have some questions but – not here. 🙂

So was she there to serve? And if so, serve whom? Only the parties involved know the whole truth. But if I wanted to serve the local authority I’d seek election or employment. And I’d only do it because I wanted to serve, even if I wanted to progress and serve from the top. Ambition good, unbridled ambition, bad.

 In the interests of balance, I might do a blog on emotionally-controlled addressing of interference and trespassers…….

Your Vision REQUIRES The Three Resolutions

25 Wednesday Nov 2020

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Vision is often a beautiful product of an individual’s creative imagination, but it is achieved through application of that same individual’s independent will, allied to the faithful assistance of those whose sense of purpose complement that of the dreamer.

This means that while the former is a function of identity, experience and desire, it is nothing at all unless and until it is given life through conscious activity. Performance of that activity at a higher level brings with it an expectation that the individual directing that activity is, or becomes, competent in whatever skills are used in order to achieve the outcome, including those skills that engender, empower and enable the contribution of others in the enterprise. For everything we do well and for ourselves in pursuit of a dream, we do with, for and because of other people.

That is the motivation behind application of The Three Resolutions. Whether you use those three words or prefer to use different conceptual tropes, or are even just ‘winging it’ in the sense that you are ‘doing without thinking’, all successful endeavours rely on faithful application of The Three Resolutions.

The Three Resolutions are at the heart of any success. They state:

First Resolution – “To overcome the restraining forces of appetites and passions, I resolve to exercise self-discipline and self-denial.”

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

 Third Resolution -“To overcome the restraining forces of unbridled aspiration and ambition, I resolve to dedicate my talents and resources to noble purposes and to provide service to others.”

The primary message of each of these statements needs little explanation – they are all self-evidently true. No success would argue that they are not.

Yet people will actively argue that they are not, that there are nuanced rationales as to where and when they do not strictly apply. And even as they make those arguments they seem unaware that any success they have is the result of focused effort, industry competence, knuckling down when they’d really rather not, and providing sufficient service to others so that those others help them as they are themselves helped in a synergistic relationship.

At the same time as they argue against the timeless wisdom of philosophies that parallel The Three Resolutions, these people discover that their success is fleeting – they spark brilliantly for just a few moments before indiscipline, incompetence, a lack of character or a burgeoning, overwhelming self-interest grips them and casts them down – often very publicly.

Those who argue against such concepts as The Three Resolutions are hopeful that they won’t need to be disciplined; that they don’t need to have character; that they need serve only themselves.

For the most of us, however: we don’t argue against them. We acknowledge them, even as we wish they weren’t true!

So be in no doubt. Writing the book was and remains easier than complying with it. But well worth the effort.

Look at YOUR Vision. Will it/did it happen without application of The Three Resolutions?

If you find that you did apply them in order to achieve success in terms of your Vision – tell someone else. They need to know, too. So that they can work on their own.