Redemption? In the time of polictical correctness?

The Marlion Pickett Family

Our Australian Papers are filled with the story of Marlion Pickett, a footballer who achieved greatness by playing his first game of AFL Football in a winning Grand Final side...

But where ould the story be if he came from out current PC world?? Pickett is from a disadvantaged background, spent time in prison and didn't get a chance to shine until in his late 20's. What is more, he gives his success to overcoming the adversities that life through at him... and the popular press is lapping it up.

But if he was from a progressive left leaning community he would not have learned the pain of losing [ hey, the goalposts have been removed so they don't even keep score ] he wouldn't have spent time in prison [Oh he would be free to roam and do shit because "it wasn't his fault!"]

My thoughts are that life has and will continue to be about overcoming hurdles and setbacks... if we remove all of those you won't learn resilience or fortitude... we are being run by snowflakes who want everything to be like the lollipop world of rainbows.

Unfortunately, I have to apologise for having an opinion OR NOT.

[Why the strange spelling for Marlion - the added i is to distance him from his past!]

100 compromises

100 compromises

by Seth Godin

Bit by bit, this is how we ended up with our organization, our job, our life.

It’s impossible to move forward without them.

And so we compromise on schedule, or quality, or on the pace of our days. We compromise on our standards, on our expectations and on what matters right now.

You can’t produce without compromises.

The question is: What would happen if you only had 98 of them?

The difference between extraordinary performance and average performance is simply in the last two compromises.

What's a leader

A leader is...

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”  

John C. Maxwell

#Leadership
#WayneMansfield
#AussieIcon
#SMM2019

Growing Others

Jack Welch

Jack Welch

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” 

Jack Welch

#Leadership
#WayneMansfield
#SMM2019
#AussieIcon

Business 101

Debt Shark

I am feeling the effects of a business transition gone wrong... my succession plan has become a casualty of the ever changing times in which we live.

Many years [ about 12 ish! ] of building a business was destroyed [ the vale of it] with Donald Trump's first venture in to foreign policy - his first visit was to Saudi Arabia and he asked them to pick sides and the sides picked pushed our host country into an alliance with Iran and with all the noise currently I think that will get worse before it gets better. [ People on the ground said it would fix in 6 weeks nearly 2 years ago - and that was before drone strikes on the Saudi Oil Fields ]

So what to do??

One of the strategies I have followed was to have all accumulated assets in someone else's [ the wife ] name so risk didn't mean losing everything. However, that has some strange "unexpected" consequences. Coffee becomes a decision when you are relying on cash flow to fund it but $10k's is just a computer click away... a speeding ticket [8ks over in a 60 zone by a hidden camera in a "open stretch" ] arrives in someone else's name and your integrity is questioned... it was just a fine - no points but Business 101 is to have no personal assets so that mistakes don't cost you your safe haven.

I understand that something you didn't incur, the person getting the fine, for example, is annoying BUT I have difficulty with the attached judgement sent my way... maybe I should never exceed any speed limit but seriously 8 k is a rounding issue and the fine is just taxation by stealth.

So my rant today is not about the blowback but that if you are in business, put your personal assets out of reach because the system attacks you because it can. A public servant [ don't fight Government because they normally win and when they lose nobody but you loses ]  who makes errors doesn't put his house on the line everyday!

An interesting aside... most people chased by debt collectors used to have EXCELLENT credit ratings until the wheels fell off [ and from personal experience ] often from NOT their fault.

The Art of Leadership

It's a bit like WAR

Lao Tzu

A leader is best when people barely know he exists,

when his work is done,

his aim fulfilled,

they will say:

we did it ourselves.

Lao Tzu

#Leadership
#SMM2019
#AussieIcon
#WayneMansfield
Wayne Mansfield

The Challenge

The Challenge

“The challenge of leadership is to be

strong, but not rude;

be kind, but not weak;

be bold, but not a bully;

be thoughtful, but not lazy;

be humble, but not timid;

be proud, but not arrogant;

have humour, but without folly.” 

Jim Rohn

#Leadership
#SMM2019
#AussieIcon
#WayneMansfield

Leadership

What is a great leader?

“A leader takes people where they want to go.

A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”

Rosalynn Carter

#Leadership
#SMM2019
#AussieIcon
#WayneMansfield

Rules for work and life

Rules for Work and Life[Stephen A Schwarzman]

1/25

It's as easy to do something big as it is to do something small, so reach for a fantasy worthy of your pursuit, with rewards commensurate to your effort

2/15

The best executives are made, not born. They never stop learning. Study the people and organisations in your life that have had enormous success. They offer a free course from the real world to help you improve.

3/25

Write or call the people you admire, and ask for advice. You never know who will be willing to meet with you. You may end up learning something important or form a connection you can leverage for the rest of your life. Meeting people in life creates unusual bonds.

4/25

There is nothing more interesting to people than their own problems. Think about what others are dealing with, and try and come up with ideas to help them. almost anyone, however senior or important, is receptive to new ideas provided they are thoughtful.

5/25

Every business is a closed, integrated system with a set of distinct ut interrelated parts. Great managers understand how each part works on its own and in relation to all the others.6/25

6/25

Information is the most important asset in business. The more you have the bigger your advantage!

7/25

Only take a job that provides you with a steep learning curve and training is provided.

8/25

Impressions matter. Things like being on time, be authentic, be prepared and look the part.

9/25

No one, regardless of how smart, can solve every problem

10/25

people usually focus on their own problems when the answer usually lies in fixing someone else's problem.

Dare Greatly

Dare to do!

"Only those who dare to fail greatly

can ever achieve greatly"

Robert Kennedy

#Quote
#RobertKennedy
#Leadership

#SMM2019

#WayneMansfield
#AussieIcon

Cowboy wisom

Sermons

"The best sermons are lived, not preached."

Cowboy Wisdom

#Quote
#Leadership
#WayneMansfield
#SMM2019
#AussieIcon

What is Productivity?

Are you productive?

The 1st Law of Physics

Let's define productivity. Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of a person completing a task. We often assume that productivity means getting more things done each day. Wrong. Productivity is getting important things done consistently. And no matter what you are working on, there are only a few things that are truly important.

Being productive is about maintaining a steady, average speed on a few things, not maximum speed on everything.

#Done
#Leadership
#AussieIcon
#SMM2019
#WayneMansfield

Habits can be good or bad

What Are Habits?

 

Good or Bad - They are just Habits

Let's define habits. Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day. According to researchers at Duke University, habits account for about 40 percent of our behaviours on any given day.

Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. How in shape or out of shape you are? A result of your habits. How happy or unhappy you are? A result of your habits. How successful or unsuccessful you are? A result of your habits.

What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray. Everything I write about – from procrastination and productivity to strength and nutrition – starts with better habits.

When you learn to transform your habits, you can transform your life.

#Done
#Productivity
#SMM2019
#AussieIcon
#Leadership
#WayneMansfield

The Myth of Radical Change

The myth of radical change and overnight success is pervasive in our culture.

The Myth of Radical Change

Experts say things like, “The biggest mistake most people make in life is not setting goals high enough.” Or they tell us, “If you want massive results, then you have to take massive action.”

On the surface, these phrases sound inspiring. What we fail to realize, however, is that any quest for rapid growth contradicts every stabilizing force in our lives. Remember, the natural tendency of life is to find stability. Anytime equilibrium is lost, the system is motivated to restore it.

If you step too far outside the bounds of your normal performance, then nearly all of the forces in your life will be screaming to get you back to equilibrium. If you take massive action, then you quickly run into a massive roadblock.

Nearly anyone who has tried to make a big change in their life has experienced some form of this. You finally work up the motivation to stick with a new diet only to find your co-workers subtly undermining your efforts. You commit to going for a run each night and within a week you're asked to stay late at work. You start a new meditation habit and your kids keep barging into the room.

“Resistance is proportionate to the size and speed of the change, not to whether the change is a favourable or unfavourable one.”

The forces in our lives that have established our current equilibrium will work to pull us back whether we are trying to change for better or worse. In the words of George Leonard, “Resistance is proportionate to the size and speed of the change, not to whether the change is a favourable or unfavourable one.”

In other words, the faster you try to change, the more likely you are to backslide. The very pursuit of rapid change dials up a wide range of counteracting forces which are fighting to pull you back into your previous lifestyle. You might be able to beat equilibrium for a little while, but pretty soon your energy fades and the backsliding begins.

#DONE
#Productivity
#Leadership
#SMM2019
#AussieIcon
#WayneMansfield

More right

More right

Seth Godin

There are at least seven realistic ways to get from my home near New York to a meeting in Washington DC. None of them is wrong. Each offers its own advantage in terms of resilience, speed, cost or hassle.

And so, we can’t choose based on this is right and those are wrong. The only useful construct is to consider our priorities and find the route with the best combination of trade-offs.

Waiting for perfect is a never-ending game.

And the comfort of totally right vs. totally wrong is elusive.

#SethGodin
#WayneMansfield

How fast is 5G

5G IS FAST!!!! When researchers talk network evolution, “G” is the term-du-jour. It stands for “generation.” In 1940, when the first telephone networks began to roll out, we were at 0G. This was the dark night of deception. It took forty years to crawl our way to 1G, which showed up with the first mobile phones in the 1980s. But this also marked the transition from deceptive to disruptive. By the 90s—around the time the internet emerged—2G came along for the ride. But the ride didn’t last long. A decade later, 3G ushered in a new era of acceleration as bandwidth costs began to plummet at a staggeringly consistent 35 per cent per year. 2010 saw 4G networks unleash smartphones, mobile banking and e-commerce. But starting in 2020, 5G will hotwire the whole deal, delivering speeds a hundred times faster at near-zero prices. How fast is 5G fast? With 3G, it takes 45 minutes to download a high-definition movie. 4G shrinks that to 21 seconds. But 5G? It takes longer to read this sentence than it takes to download that movie. #5G #LEADERSHIP #SMM2019 #WayneMansfield #AussieIcon

What now is the question many retirees ask

After finishing work... now what?

Famously a friends wife said after 4 weeks of painful retirement, I married you for better or worse BUT NOT FOR LUNCH!

#Rebootology
#WhatNow
#WayneMansfield
#SMM2019
#AussieIcon

If at first

You don't succeed...

Destroy all evidence that you even tried!

#SocialCommentator
#WayneMansfield
#SMM2019
#AussieIcon
#Failure

The high cost of a little bit sooner

The high cost of a little bit sooner

Seth Godin

As the news cycle has trained us to find out results the moment they happen (or sometimes, as polling promises, before they happen), it’s easy to lose track of a simple truth:

There’s a sweet spot between knowing with certainty at a low price (yesterday’s weather report is free) and guessing with a bit of a head start at a huge price (insider trading information).

When we’re anxious, we spend too much time and thus too much money trying to hurry up what we’re about to find out anyway.

A deep breath is usually a better plan.

#SethGodin
#WayneMansfield

The true cost of customer response

The true cost of customer response

Seth Godin

“Your call is very important to us.”

If you hear that, it means someone is not just lying, but also isn’t good at arithmetic.

Your company spends $6 on digital ads to get a click, and one in a hundred clicks leads to an inquiry. Which means that every inquiry sitting in the queue cost you $600. Inquiries are a bit like cronuts, in that they go stale quickly. Waiting an extra day to get back to just one person probably costs you more than the entire day’s salary of a customer service salesperson.

Your company spends $2,000 a day on rent for its showroom. And you paid that rent (along with all of those ads) for a month before John walks into the store. The uninterested, undertrained, under-compensated salesperson is finishing up a personal call, John gets bored and leaves. That (non) interaction cost you $20,000.

Jon, the reservationist, is overwhelmed by incoming calls, and he’s snippy when a regular calls for a table this Saturday night. So the patron, rebuffed and feeling disrespected, goes to a different restaurant, loves it, and never returns. Let’s see–10 business dinners a year at $200 including tip and wine–you can do the math.

“You can do the math,” while true, is rarely followed up by, “I did the math.”

The minimizing coin

The minimizing coin

Seth Godin

If your habit is to clear your throat, apologize a few times, minimize the quality of the work you’re about to share and in general, apologize for the assertions you’re about to make…

you probably realize that this is not an effective way to give a talk, lead a class or have a strategic discussion.

Consider carrying a coin in your pocket, one that’s large, or in a foreign currency.

Every time you feel like you need to minimize your contribution, simply stop and turn the coin over. You can count that as your obligation fulfilled.

And then you can get back to work.

[This isn’t simply an analogy. It actually works.]

Where did you leave the buggy?

Strange things you see on an early morning walk!

Kids Buggy

What do people think when they steal [ well if you owned the buggy would you just leave it here? ] a child's buggy. Last time I checked these things were worth $1000 new but not much second had because who uses second-hand stuff for babies??

Second hand or hand me down shops for kids stuff don't succeed well in 2019 when new is the only option for the "little darlings"

So, on my walks, I often see really expensive stuff abandoned by either thieves or indulgent parents - I suspect abandoned by thieves... the item isn't usually there the next morning so I am left wondering... how about you?

#waynemansfield
#Whatmakesustick
#AussieIcon

“Don’t pee in the pool”

“Don’t pee in the pool”

by Seth Godin

For generations, people dumped crap into the Hudson River. The river was so large and so swift that they assumed that the effluent wouldn’t come back to haunt them.

Of course, it did, killing the oyster beds and poisoning the public.

How big does a body of water have to be before we forget that we’re swimming in it? That it all comes around…

Why are we are okay at yelling at a stranger, but not our neighbour? We will abuse the department in the other building, but not down the hall…

It turns out that the pool/river/tub that we live in is far smaller than it seems. The culture of the place we work, the vibe of the community where we live. It’s all more connected than we realize.