Picture this. Someone places a juicy ribeye steak fresh off the grill in front of you. What’s the plan for this mouth-watering hunk of deliciousness? To dig right in and enjoy it, right? Now th…
Source: Why Life is Like a Ribeye Steak
Important life lessons no one will teach you
- No matter how fast you vacuum a wet carpet, you can not outrun electricity.
- Close the sunroof before you use the windshield washer fluid.
- Never put bologna in an electric outlet.
- Never ask your 17 year old why the rear view mirror in the new car says “5”. You will never hear the end of him having to tell you it is really “S” for south.
- If you dog eats a pack of Listerine strips he will puke but it will be minty fresh
Recognize the 99
I overheard a coworker yesterday and it made me start thinking about some things I hear all too often. How many times have you heard “I do 99 things right and all I hear about is the one thing I did wrong”? I am fortunate that the current and former managers I have worked for are spectacular about recognizing the accomplishments of the people working for them. Unfortunately, I was not always so lucky. I have also worked for individuals in the past that you never heard from unless you made an error. Aside from my personal experiences, I have heard from many other that have similar stories. “I work hard all day but only hear about it when I do something wrong”. Employees that receive positive feedback will strive to excel. When all you receive is negative feedback you will do just enough to not get in trouble.
I want to put forth a challenge to all members of management to start recognizing the 99 things that their employees do right. For some members of management this will come easy as it is something they already do. For others it may be a challenge but hopefully one they can learn from. The challenges modern employees face today are much greater than we have faced in the past and morale is declining. Something as simple as an email or mention of an accomplishment in a meeting can mean so much to the morale of an employee. When you attribute a positive attribute to someone they will continue to try to make sure you always see them in that light. Errors and performance issues must still be addressed but tempered with positive feedback you are far more likely to strive to do better.
Address the one but Recognize the 99.
Attribute positive attributes to someone and they will strive to reach them
Why Life is Like a Ribeye Steak
Picture this. Someone places a juicy ribeye steak fresh off the grill in front of you. What’s the plan for this mouth-watering hunk of deliciousness? To dig right in and enjoy it, right? Now think about this. If you eat it now you won’t have it later. Maybe rather than enjoying it now while it’s hot and oh so tender you should put it away so it won’t be gone soon. Then the next day you look at it again and it’s not hot anymore but still looking good but if you eat it now it will be gone. Another day passes and then a week, then a month. Look at that steak, you achieved your goal and you still have it but now it is a dried hunk of shoe leather and completely inedible. This is because that ribeye steak, no matter how much you may want to keep it forever, has an expiration date.
What does this have to do with life? Everything in life has an expiration date. Friends, family, relationships, youth (That’s a tough one but unfortunately it’s true). You need to enjoy every morsel of life as it is presented to you and the tricky part is to enjoy it knowing it has an expiration date on it. Every bite of that steak is a glorious culinary masterpiece but it will be gone soon. Now you have to decide that if this momentary time of carnivorous glory is worth it knowing it is just a momentary blip in the dinner of life. You may not even want to order the steak now because you know you cannot savor it forever. Knowing that steak has an expiration date doesn’t stop people from ordering it and enjoying it while you have it in front of you.
Every part of life is a wonderful little steak dinner all to itself but it too will not last forever. Yet, for some reason we humans will avoid those moments of happiness for fear that it will not last. We want everything in our lives to be forever but that just isn’t how it works. Friends move away, relationships end and parents pass away (Yeah, that last one stings but it is true). So what do we do? Avoid these things so we don’t have to face the pain of when the expiration hits or enjoy them while we have them even with the understanding they will not last?
The answer isn’t really that hard and I would give it to you but right now I have a steak to eat.
4 am Thoughts on Innovation
Who remembers the story of making stone soup? Well if you don’t, the basic premise is that a man comes across a small village where food is scarce and the people are all starving. The traveler builds a fire and starts to boil a pot of water. After a while the starving villagers start to gather around him to see what he is doing. He then pulls a stone from his pocket and puts in in the boiling water. The confused villagers ask him what he is doing and he responds “I am making stone soup. I wish I had a carrot or two to add to the soup”. Despite the lack of food in the village one person brings out a lone carrot and puts it in the pot. Upon seeing this another villager brings out a lone potato and adds it to the mix, another brings a tiny piece of meat. Slowly more and more villagers bring the one small morsel of food they possess and add it as well. After a short time, there is a delicious stew that the entire village can share and no one goes to bed hungry that night.
What would this have to do with innovation you might ask. Everything! Take a minute to think about this, was boiling a rock a good idea? Would that feed anyone? Who can make soup with just a rock and water. On its own merits, stone soup is a terrible idea. What if the man was told to leave the village because his idea was terrible and would never work? We make soup with vegetables, not a rock, That’s the way we have always done it. Can you believe that he thought that would work? Had the villagers thought like this there would have been a lot of hungry people in the village that evening.
Instead, we took the one man’s “terrible” idea and built it into something that provided value to everyone. This is one of the important things we should keep in mind while trying to promote innovation in our workplace.
- Rather than tell someone their idea will not work and burying it, let’s start saying “good start, what if we also……”.
- Rather than tell someone their idea is not how we do things, let’s start collaborating about new ways we can make things happen.
- Rather than stifling an idea and burying it instantly, let’s start throwing them into the pot and see what others can add to it.
Like the stone soup, innovation is rarely one idea that makes it from beginning to end by itself. It takes one person not being afraid to throw that stone in the pot despite the fact their idea cannot stand alone. It then takes the others to add their own vegetables to the mix until it turns out just right. Here is a stone. Now does anyone have a carrot?
Shut up and Listen
Therapy. Something many people find really beneficial to get them through their days, weeks, months, years etc. What do you get when you go to see a therapist? Do they say the magic words that make it all better or wave a magic wand to make all your troubles go away? Nope, all they do is listen and listen and listen some more. Why is this so important to us simple humans? Honestly I don’t know but it is. The simple act of having someone truly listen to us is invaluable. Now the catch to that sentence it ‘truly listen’. If you are talking to someone and you know they are making a grocery list in their head or calculating the square root of pi you don’t get that some “Ah…..someone is listening to me and my thoughts are valuable” feeling as you do when someone actually listens to what you are saying. When you are interrupted while talking or they spout out “Here’s what you SHOULD do” it not only negates the warm fuzzies you almost had but it also makes you feel WORSE. That warm fuzzies you should have received from the friend, family, lover, random stranger on the bus has basically just told you that you are either not important enough to let you finish your thought or you just don’t understand what you are actually thinking and let me break it down for you in slow monosyllabic words so you can. Silly human, doesn’t understand how to think right….let me help them. Yes, sometimes it is not a pleasure cruise to listen to someone talk about their thoughts but consider this….they also found you worthy of sharing their thoughts with you. Yes, sometimes you have already heard the same thing from them but think about what that tells you. If they are saying it again it either means they didn’t think you truly listened the first time they said or that it is so important to them they feel the need to say it again. You are important enough in my life that I want you to truly hear this or you are worthy enough to know that this is important to me. Now let’s bring this all back full circle to how we started. Even though we are surrounded by friends, family, fellow cube dwellers etc. we still have to pay someone our hard earned cube dweller cash to PAY in order to have someone to listen to us. There is something fundamentally wrong that this is the surefire way to ensure someone listens without tweeting, surfing or checking Facebook for what their friends had for dinner. We pay a complete stranger that isn’t concerned with anything more than if our check clears*. Yet, somehow this is more comforting because we know they will listen and not interrupt.
* (For those young people out there, checks are pieces of paper that allowed the recipient to take money from your bank account into theirs. Like PayPal for the dark ages.)
Now it would be irresponsible to make these types of statements without providing some tips on how to improve the situation. But wait, the responsibility falls on the listener AND the listenee. (Spell check claims “listenee” isn’t a word but since you just read it and understood what I meant I declare that it is a word. If “twerk” can make it into the dictionary “listenee” should be an easy one to add. Back to the point…
Responsibility of the listener. Your mission is to listen. Sounds simple enough, right? Well it’s not. You need to truly listen, not only to the words but to the tone, body language and the message being conveyed. Stop thinking about whether or not you paid the gas bill or what just beeped on your cell phone. Little known fact, texts do not self-destruct after 90 seconds. The fate of the world rarely depends on you responding to ‘What’s up?’ in under 4 minutes. And no one ever actually died of chronic text, twitter, Facebook, snapchat ignoring.
Responsibility of the listenee. Bet you didn’t see that coming. Alas, there are responsibilities involved in expecting someone to listen to you. Number one is to keep the emotional vomit to a sensible amount. Having someone truly listen to you is like heading to the buffet. You can keep going and going until you are feeling pukey or take samples and just fill up on the stuff that matters. When we head up to the buffet, don’t fill the plate heaping high, take/talk just enough that you are satisfied and the buffet owners don’t hang your picture in the kitchen.
Responsibility of the listener. Ummmm listen. That’s much easier said than done though. In order to truly listen to someone, you must listen to their words and tone and body language. Seriously it’s like trying to juggle an orange, a banana and a rabid crocodile. Remember that this person thinks you are worthy of hearing what they have to say so shut up and listen. Do NOT check you phone, think about the grocery list or try to formulate a response. That last one is a doozy. It’s natural when someone is talking to think about what to say next. Fight the urge and let them finish before you respond. Often halfway through the conversation I tend to trail off and start thinking about how to respond to something that has been said and completely lose the second half of the conversation. When I catch myself doing that I try to repeat what the listenee said in my mind to keep it occupied when it decides to wander away.
In other words, I’ll end this just like I started it:
Shut up and listen. You will both be better for it.
Linda Boone - 4 am Thoughts 