Show Up & Care

Why would anyone want to be a politician? To have your personal life opened up, to play audience to special interest groups and lobbyist, to constantly be under a microscope, for every decision to be questioned by the less talented...all for much less money than you made as a business leader?

As The Great Jesse Ventura put it, "If Not Me, Then Who?"

My skepticism of the position vs The Governor's optimism makes the case pretty clear:
There is Nothing Easy About Progress!

If everything was easy, we would all be drunk in the town square every day, celebrating our Utopia. We have all learned in recent times that the hours of thankless effort far exceed those spent celebrating in the sunshine. Therein lies our challenge. To put our heads down and progress knowing that the gold stars may be few and far between.

To develop the ability to win in the face of constant adversity with diminishing rewards is a task that less than 25% of American workers are willing to accept. When faced with the challenge of being Genuinely Engaged in your career you can ask yourself but one question:
"If Not Me, Then Who?"

Develop Metrics for Progress Beyond Results
Find Other Avenues
Know That the Willingness to Try Eliminates 75% of Your Competition

Encouragement in All Forms
In a recent survey I conducted regarding workforce engagement, respondents indicated that encouragement from one's peers is equally as important as that from one's manager. This is often because a Manager is caught up in finish line results...that's what pays the bills. There are metrics beyond revenue to get to revenue that when encouraged properly can produce long term success. Whereas, short term revenue may be a stroke of luck or a quick fix product dump.

It is vastly important for organizations to understand business critical behaviors more than just the results they produce. It is even more important to develop programming and training that enriches such behaviors instead of just analyzing results and brow beating assumed under-performers.

The Definition of Insanity
We have identified that life in business is not fair, especially in a floundering economy. Still businesses increase prices, increase quotas and figure that margins will justify themselves in accordance. The thought being....we don't need to produce if we can adjust what we currently have to make up for our lack of production. As such, your loyal customers suffer, your account support spends all day explaining unilateral decision making and your sales people make up for their lack of ability by selling the wrong products & services at the wrong prices to the wrong people....this is exactly how NOT to run a business.

We have to produce by means of DAILY development. Your goals are cemented, how you get there is up to you. Find new ways to penetrate the market, up-sell current customers, develop products and add value.

You can walk into a wall, run into a wall or find a pick axe and bust a whole in it.

Then Who?
A study by HR Solutions indicated that 25% of the workforce are engaged in their work. This seems like a high number. This means only 1 in 4 workers even care about the work they do....what an opportunity! If you know three quarters of the people you walk by every day don't even want to be part of the game, it should be really easy to win. All you really need to do is show up and care.

The odds are steep, the rewards diminishing and the future uncertain. The easy thing to do is give up. If you do then you open the door for the less skilled to take what is yours simply by default.

It is time to no longer accept what we cannot change and change it! To ignore the statistics that serve only to demotivate you, to set your own course, to derive hope from the ambivalence of others.

Show up, find a way and never stop moving forward!

Don't Forget to Remember!

Dave