Old Man in Coveralls

Jist Do It Right

General Management,

I once attended a party precinct meeting leading to a presidential primary in Texas. The chair was a young man in his early 20’s. He was obviously very full of himself and considered himself a political expert.

About half way through the meeting, he started to by-pass some of the time-consuming procedural steps.

Suddenly, someone yelled from the back of the room, “Jist do it right!”. Turning around, we see a grizzled old white-haired man with a five day growth of beard, wearing dirt-stained coveralls.

The startled young man said, “Well…alright.” and led the group through the correct steps.

Two weeks later, a court ordered a group of other precincts to re-meet to correct their procedural shortcuts.”

Moral: It is usually better and faster to “Jist do it right” the first time

The Thinker

Attention

General Management
Writer David Foster Wallace on the importance of controlling your attention:

“Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about “teaching you how to think” is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

Source: This is Water

The Danger of False Concreteness

General Management
I was once an analyst for an aircraft component supplier. The Division Vice-President asked me for an estimate of the market size and of our sales for the next year. I had access to the best data in the whole world. My data listed every commercial airliner in the world (over 40,000 of them), by model and type, by owner, by tailnumber. It included hours flown for each aircraft, by month. I could tie this data to our records for each customer and tail number. I built a huge spreadsheet model and pasted the spreadsheets all over my office wall. Continue reading The Danger of False Concreteness →

Values Redefined

Human Relations, Strategic Planning
Until now, I have defined the term value to mean a constraint in the Problem-Vision-Mission-Strategy planning framework. In that framework, values are boundaries that limit your possible strategies and actions. For example, a value might be, “We will not break any laws” or “We will do no harm.”

However, when developing a personal mission statement, you can define value to mean “Something I hold valuable”, implying that you strive for that condition. They become your personal vision and mission. Continue reading Values Redefined →

Eager or Anxious

General Management
Your body reacts exactly the same when you are eager and when you are anxious.

But your mind reacts quite differently.
Hearing eager generates confidence. Hearing anxious generates fear.

Then you act in confidence or you act in fear. Everyone around you will pick up on your actions and attitude.

Now that you have become aware of this, you will substitute eager for anxious every time you hear it.

How to Say Yes While Saying No

General Management, Negotiation, , , ,
Many business gurus are touting the ability to say, “No” as a sign of a great leader. Just search the web or Amazon for “say no”. Warren Buffet says that saying, “No” to almost everything is a key to his success. Even I have proclaimed saying, “No” to be an important technique.

But there is a better way. Continue reading How to Say Yes While Saying No →

Second-Order Thinking

General Management, , ,
Great decisions require understanding the second-order effects of your decision. Second-order effects are the consequences of the consequences of a decision. For example, the Prohibition Amendment stopped the legal production and distribution of alcoholic beverages. That was the intended consequence. The unintended second-order consequence was the rise of large criminal enterprises that continued far beyond the bootlegging. Continue reading Second-Order Thinking →