There is some risk to all your jars being full. I discovered this anew in this biblical story in the second book of Kings. It is as much about life as it is leadership, though the principal applies to both.
A widow came to the prophet Elisha crying out, “My husband is dead and a creditor is threatening to take my two sons as slave.” Her only thing of value was a single flask of olive oil, so she had nothing to offer the creditor. The solution offered by Elisha was for her to gather as many empty jars as she could (borrowing from neighbors), go into her house and pour the olive oil from the flask into one of the jars. Miraculously, she was able to completely fill the first jar with oil still remaining in the flask (if you are familiar with the miracles of Jesus, think five loaves and two fishes feeding five thousand people). She filled a second jar, then a third, and so on until there were no jars left. When she ran out of jars to fill, the olive oil stopped flowing. (She satisfied her creditor by selling some of the oil.) 2 Kings 4:1-7 paraphrased
There a lot of lessons in this story (spiritual and otherwise), but the one that has hit me freshly is when all the jars were full, “the olive oil stopped flowing.”
One of my fears in life is that I will run out of jars to fill and the oil will stop flowing. This can happen anywhere: home, business, church, and so on. There is a danger in having no jars to fill. Complacency, self-satisfaction, atrophy or pride (“my jars are all full”) can all set in. Once the oil stops flowing, it can be hard to restart it.
My desire is that I will always have an empty jar—something I can pour into—a reason to get up in the morning and take on the day to make a difference in my life or someone else’s. If I don’t have an empty jar, I want to find one before the oil stops. How about you? Have a jar to fill today? If you look around, I’ll bet you do.
Bring me another jar!
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© Copyright 2015 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company
“Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant.”
There is a lot of wisdom packed in those eight words. They were spoken by King Solomon about 3000 years ago and are recorded in one of his books of wisdom (Ecclesiastes 11:4 NLT).
Another quote (attributed to Zig Ziglar and a few others) is:
“You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.”
Wally Bock (threestarleadership.com) said it this way in his June 2 post:
“A little planning helps you stay on track. A lot of planning slows you down. Plan enough to get started, then adjust as needed.”
Because I am cursed with perfectionism, I tend to be an over-planner. I am prone to wait for the perfect time: the market at the bottom (who is that smart?), weather 72 and sunny, every pro and con identified and evaluated, 100% consensus (who ever gets that?), and so on.
As the years have gone by, a bit of wisdom has seeped in (only a bit), and I now realize that momentum is more important than perfection. As Wally Bock said, it is often better to “get started, then adjust.” If you know where you are (reality) and where you want to go (vision), then GO! There is bound to be at least one thing you can do—today.
I think I’ll take my own advice. I have a 500-part model of the Wright Brothers replica in a box. I’m not sure what I have been waiting for, but the first step of my plan is to take it out of the box and read the instructions. I don’t need to wait for perfection to do that, so I’ll do that today. By mid-afternoon, I’ll have some momentum. Then tomorrow….
What are you waiting for?
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© Copyright 2015 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company.
The gist of last week’s post was leaders are always on—“whatever you are doing, your followers are listening and watching and in the smartphone age, videoing. There is no such thing as off the record for leaders. Everything is on the record and may well be on the recorder”—accept it and get over it. (You can read the post at Always On.
Of course, the truth is if you don’t turn off now then, like a light bulb, you’ll burn out. A burned out light bulb has some damaged parts rattling around in it. You burn out and you will too.
Turning off is easier said than done. Here a few truths about why it’s hard:
#1 We have a hard time accepting that our organization (business, church, school, etc.) can get by without us, even for a few days. Our egos insist that we are essential and calamity is certain if we don’t stay on top of things.
#2 We are addicted to email, Twitter, fb, texting, and so on. Even when we don’t need to, we love to check in just so “we’ll know what is going on.”
#3 Rest and Escape are not the same thing. You can rest for a couple of days at the beach. Escape—turning it off—takes longer for most people because our minds are harder to shut down. (I discuss rest and escape in more depth in 16 Stones. Send me a comment with your email address and I’ll send you the rest and escape section of the book.)
#4 There is often a competition to be first to the “tell the boss,” and with easy access via cell phones, this is hard to thwart.
Every situation is different so I don’t have a one size fits all solution. Here are a few practical suggestions that may help:
#1 Don’t check email or texts from work after you get home unless you are in a crisis that can’t wait until tomorrow morning (almost everything can). You will never get turned off if you are constantly checking in.
#2 Don’t read business related material the last couple of hours before bedtime. Read something that won’t crank up your mind and rob your sleep.
#3 Don’t take work home unless you absolutely have to. Stay at the office an extra hour so when you are home, you are there body, soul, and mind.
#4 When you are on vacation, set a “no calls” policy unless the sky is absolutely falling. Also, remember that “good news” will crank up your mind as much as bad news.
#5 __________?_____________—send a comment on what works for you.
One final point: don’t be a boss that abuses your employees by disrupting their vacations and home time. A 9:15pm call should be an emergency that can’t wait—meaning there is something we “need to do right now.” Don’t disrupt their sleep by asking them to “think about it” overnight.
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© Copyright 2015 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company
One of the things that make life—and especially leadership—hard is that we are always on. In every role of life—career, parent, spouse, etc.—someone is watching you. Actually, several or many someones are watching you.
For leaders, the more leadership responsibility you have, the more true always on becomes. Whatever you are doing, your followers are listening and watching and in the smartphone age, videoing. There is no such thing as off the record for leaders. Everything is on the record and may well be on the recorder.
A careless moment may well become the next YouTube hit.
A careless word may well become the next retweet.
A careless lunch may well become the next Facebook rumor.
If you are thinking this is not fair, too bad. It is current reality whether it is fair or not.
Is it exhausting to be always on? Yes. My next post will be how to turn off every now and then.
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© Copyright 2015, Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company
Unlike emotion, which can be here today and gone tomorrow, and unlike sentiment or nostalgia, which invoke warm fuzzies and not much else, passion creates dissatisfaction with the status quo and fuels an enduring desire to do something. Passion will not rest easy; passion must act. Passion is essential for effective leadership. Why? Because leaders are defined by what they do, not by who they are. Passion will lead to doing! Management expert E. M. Forster makes the point clear: “One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.”
Now, before you get too upset, I’m not saying that who you are (personality, character, etc.) is unimportant. It is important—very important. Who you are has a lot to do with your potential to lead. However, potential to do something and actually doing it are not the same. Integrity is essential for leaders, but people will not follow you just because you are honest. If you are a visionary, that’s great. But people will not follow you just because you dream great dreams. There are a lot of honest visionaries who never accomplish their dreams because they fail at the task of leading.
I know this may sound harsh, but there aren’t any books written about men and women who accomplished little or nothing, no matter how honest they were or how great their vision was. So, I’ll say it clearly: leaders are defined by what they do, and passion is essential for action, for doing.
It is not your position—CEO, manager, owner, senior pastor—that makes you a leader. What makes you a leader is that people choose to follow you on a journey of change. Before they’ll voluntarily go with you, though, one of the main things they look for is your passion for the journey. They want to know that you really care and that the fire in your soul will endure when the journey together gets tough (because at some point it will get tough, or tiresome, or scary). They want to know their leader’s flame will keep burning even when drenched by discouragement, delayed by detours, or set back by defeats.
So if you want to lead, you’ll need passion for leading or you’ll burn out before reaching the finish line. In The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, John Maxwell puts it this way: “A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.”
Excerpt from 16 Stones, chapter 2. Order info on hard-lessons.com.
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© Copyright 2015 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company
I had a communication failure with my grandsons this morning. While watching a thrilling (?) episode of SpongeBob SquarePants (sic), SpongeBob was attacked by an evil gang called the Bubble Poppin Boys. Fortunately, SpongeBob escaped in a bubble (they failed to “pop it”), defeated the evil Bubble Poppin Boys, and was declared a hero by the town citizens for freeing them from the evil bubble popping terrorists. That’s the back story.
Now for the communication failure: while watching this contest of good versus evil, I commented that the Bubble Poppin Boys reminded me of the Jesse James gang. My 13-year-old grandson, Aaron, asked, “Who’s Jesse James?” “Who’s Jesse James?” Are you kidding me? What are they teaching in history classes these days? How could any well-educated 8th grader not know about the train-robbing railroad terrorist of the late 19th century?
There’s a communication hard lesson in this story. All of us want our communication to be clear (clarity is the buzzword), but it is only clear if the context is understood and it is compatible with the culture. I grew up in a 1950’s Oklahoma culture: cowboys vs. Indians, and good guys vs. bad guys (the bad guys went to jail and the good guys got the girl). The last time Jesse James was part of our culture was when Cher sang “Just Like Jesse James” back in the late 80’s: “Tonight I’m gonna take you in dead or alive.” (I doubt if Aaron knows who Cher is.)
Aaron has grown up in a Legos, Pixar, super-hero, video-game culture. His villains are the Joker, Darth Maul, Lord Voldemort, etc., not Jesse James. Note to self: “Dick, it’s 2015, not 1965. Communicate accordingly—with Aaron and everyone else.”
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© Copyright 2015 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company.
This may be the shortest post ever on Hard Lessons—it is a link to a Washington Post interview with Unilever CEO, Paul Polman.
A few teasers:
He is “ashamed of the amount of money I earn.”
“Just being a CEO in itself is not success. I would not relate success to a title or position.”
“I don’t have any frustrations. It sounds a little silly, but life is too short for me. I don’t worry about all the things that happen, I just think about what to do with them.”
If you are a bit—or a lot skeptical—about CEOs, this will give you a glimmer of hope. The business world needs more like Paul Polman.
Click here: Interview with Unilever CEO, Paul Polman
I would love to hear your reaction to this. Please take a minute to comment.
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© Copyright 2015 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company
In 1892, Rudyard Kipling wrote: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” (Barrack-room Ballads). Of course, if you go far enough to the east, you end up in the west, and vice-versa.
Nothing annoys me more than interjecting a “never the twain shall meet” paradigm into leader versus manager discussions—as if you can only be one or the other. The words that come to mind are #**!/^<>#**, or suitable for my blog—garbage, really smelly garbage.
In simplest terms, managing is about today; leading is about tomorrow. Managing is about efficiency; leading is about effectiveness. Managing is about achieving goals; leading is about setting goals. And so on.
Yes, I know that some jobs require more managing than leading and others more leading than managing. Yes, I know that it is popular to elevate leading over managing (#**!/^<>#**). Yes, I also know that exclusively focusing on leading will yield a short-term debacle and exclusively focusing on managing will yield a long-term debacle. Small business owners know they have to do both. So do CEOs of large corporations.
If you are a department head (people working for you) in a college or retail store or church or manufacturing company or ____________ (you fill in the blank), some of your time will be spent managing; some will be spent leading. They are different tasks imbedded in the same job.
One thing they have in common is that both are about people: you manage people; you lead people. You design products, develop software, prepare sermons, keep the books, maintain machines, stock shelves…but people? You either manage them or lead them. So, anything you do to get better at either—managing or leading—is going to help you do your job better.
When you are managing, manage with excellence. When you are leading, lead with excellence. The people you are managing/leading are counting on you—to do both.
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© Copyright 2015 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company.
If you want to be the boss’s favorite—and you should—then get there the way my favorites did.
How did they get there? They were all different in terms of their talents and personalities, but they all had these things in common (excerpt from 16 Stones, chapter 4):
“They were trustworthy. They did what they said they would do whether it was a huge project that took months, something simple, or something hard.
They were not high maintenance. I didn’t dread it when they walked into my office. They didn’t expect me to be their counselor or therapist and they didn’t expect me to fix all their problems.
They were focused on the company’s needs, not personal agendas. They knew that promotions would come if they excelled in the job they had rather than worrying about the job they wanted.
They were positive and fun to work with. I looked forward to time with them. They didn’t bring gloominess into the room with them.
They got results. They knew that working hard and being lovable was not the goal. We needed to satisfy customers, deliver profits, motivate and develop employees, and introduce new products.
They told me the truth when I messed up (which was often). There was no sugar coating or walking on egg shells around the boss.
They gained my favor without manipulating, maneuvering, flattering, politicking, or abusing others. They had a simple strategy: be exceptional every day.”
These things worked for KR, RK, JM, DL, JP, DW, LF, SG, LW, and a few others. They’ll work for you too.
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© Copyright 2015 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company
Do you know your limitations? You need to. We all do. Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder of Chobani yogurt, found out the hard way.
Chobani yogurt first hit grocery store shelves in 2007. By 2012, Chobani had $1B in sales and a 60% market share. Wow! What a ride. However, things aren’t so good today. According to a WSJ article*, by 2012 Chobani was “saddled with debt…purchasing was inefficient and it lacked an adequate quality control team—a deficiency that surfaced dramatically when Chobani had to recall yogurt from a new factory in 2013.” Throw increased competition into the mix and Chobani’s market share has slipped for three straight years
All of this—the good and the bad—was accomplished under the leadership of Ulukaya. Chobani is now searching for a CEO to takes the reins because Ulukaya found out the hard way that a “founder passionate about the product, but uninterested and inexperienced in the nuts and bolts of business, can find himself ill-equipped to ride the wave he helped create.”*
Selling lemonade for 50¢ from a roadside stand is not the same thing as running Minute Maid.
Having a one-chair barbershop (like my barber Genie) isn’t the same thing as running more than 1000 Sports Clips shops.
You can run a $10,000 business on 3×5 cards; you need a lot more than that for $100,000…$1,000,000 $100,000,000…and so on.
Pastoring a church of 200 is not the same thing as pastoring a church of 2000.
I found out the hard way that leading an aerospace company did not prepare me to lead a shipyard.
One of the hardest things to do for any of us is to know and accept our limitations, especially when we have achieved some success.
NO LIMITS sounds good when trying to pump up the troops or yourself. But it’s not true. We all have limits. We expand our limits by knowing what they are and getting help. That is what Ulukaya is doing—getting help. He’ll be better off and so will Chobani.
So will you. So will I.
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© Copyright 2015 by Dick Wells, The Hard Lessons Company
* FOR GREEK YOUGURT KING, PATH ISN’T ALWAYS SMOOTH, May 18, 2015, by Annie Gasparro
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