Create positive impact

I just listened to a speaker who said that the purpose of life is to create positive impact. Wow! How profound when you stop and think about that, create positive impact.

When you adopt this philosophy your life takes on a different meaning. You approach life, relationships and work in a different manner. One in which you do your best to improve the world around you and leave it better than when you arrived. 

I will personally take this as a challenge and I encourage everyone to do the same. Create a positive impact in whatever you do. Make decisions for the right reasons. Be great at whatever you do and strive every day to leave a good impression and improve your life and the lives of others. 

People and processes

Leadership is about people.

Management is about processes.

Those individuals that truly want to be successful and help themselves, their coworkers, employees and organization grow will use both.

Leadership is the ability to connect with people and influence them toward a central purpose. Leaders are present at multiple levels in and around organizations and teams and some leaders elevate their group while others bring it down.

Ideally, leaders work to improve and bring people up, but that is not always the case. Effective leaders hold high standards and their influence is to raise the bar for performance.

Managers seek to create systems and make things run more smoothly. They seek to understand what is the best way to accomplish a task and then create a system to do it that all the time. In this way, there is little energy wasted and things run smoothly. Unfortunately, this is assuming that there is one way to do things. Most of the time there are numerous ways of accomplishing tasks and the environment is always changing so that the process is evolving. Managers that seek input and are constantly striving to make things better will be successful.

Managers that seek to have operations run smoothly, elicit input from their people and work with them to achieve greatness are the most successful. These are the individuals who have blended their ability manage both their people and their processes.

Power of systems

Yesterday, I was at an event and saw a bunch of people scrambling around to prepare. This particular situation was due, in part, to having new employees who were not fully aware of their responsibilities, but it got me thinking about the value of creating systems.

When an event or a process needs to be completed more than once, and needs to be done the same way, it is wise to create a process for how to do it. This makes it very easy to create consistency, decrease set up and take down time, and systemize the process so that everyone knows how things are going to be done and what needs to be done.

When organizing an athletic event, this includes making sure the floor is clean, the gym is scheduled and blocked off, the bleachers are out, the facility is set up for the sport, the score board is set up and in running order, the referees are scheduled, the benches are set up for home and away teams, there is water available for athletes and other necessary equipment is set up and ready to go.

This can be put down into a checklist to be done the day of, just prior, and at the conclusion of every event for that sport. Once this is created, it should be communicated with all the individuals who are responsible for that sport and copies should be kept in an easily accessible manner.

Having a system in place makes it much easier for everyone involved and allows updates to be done easily, and errors to be evaluated and addressed quickly.

 

Helmets do not prevent concussions

This is a nice article that discusses the fact that helmets do not prevent concussions.

The type of helmet worn did not have an impact on sustaining a concussion, or the amount of time lost in the case of sustaining a concussion.

 

This reinforces the fact that helmets are not able to prevent a concussion, although they can prevent other head and facial injuries.

 

A lot of concussion prevention is strength, awareness and proper technique training. Focusing on those aspects of prevention may be more beneficial than strapping on a new helmet and thinking you are safe.

The Essential Drucker

The more I learn the more I realize how little I know.

This book was no different, Peter Drucker is an expert on management theory and his viewpoints forced me to think and expand my understanding.

 

He argues that having a product is irrelevant if there is no consumer. In order to have a consumer, one has to understand them: who they are and what they want. Only by learning about the customer can he create a product that the customer wants.

 

The consumer is the one who defines the business. Their purchasing decisions determine where the products go and how they are being used. Learning how customers use the product can improve the ability to meet customer needs and wants more effectively.

 

Knowledge workers need a challenge. They become stagnant and mentally bored without it. They can achieve a challenge by performing new tasks, starting a new job, or volunteering time in a non-profit organization.

 

People respond differently to leadership strategies. It is important to know how each person reacts and then apply that strategy with that person.

 

The foundation for effective leadership is thinking through the organization’s mission, defining it and establishing it, clearly and visibly. These basic tasks, although not easy, determine the future of the organization. It sets the table for the product, the customer, the objectives for success and how the organization seeks to finds its place in the world.

 

The essence of management is to make knowledge productive. In this era of knowledge workers who are paid to think rather than perform manual labor, it is important to get them to contribute effectively to the organization’s mission.

When managing workers it is important to ask them to identify what they feel their role is and how they contribute to the organization. Bases on this, ask them to define their own performance goals for accountability. Their view will not be the same as the manager view and this approach helps to bridge that gap. 

 

He also discusses time management and how we do not know how time is allocated in the day. Keeping track of the day to see how it is spent is effective at noticing patterns. Once patterns are formed, it is then a matter of eliminating the non essential tasks and focus on what each person does that contributes the most.

What I learned about leadership

I just finished writing an essay for class on the role of leadership in strategy. Here is a summary of what I learned after doing the research and writing the essay:

1.       There are many different types of leaders and the effective ones have the ability to assess their surroundings and develop a vision that fits their unique circumstances taking the staff, organizational structure, internal and external environments into consideration and motivating all the staff members and subgroups to achieve that organizational vision.

2.       Ineffective leaders fail to accurately assess their surrounding and they attempt to craft visions and strategies that are not possible to achieve with the current resources. This incongruence leads to frustration, poor performance and mistrust.

3.       Effective leaders change their interactions with their followers as the situation calls for. If a task is closed, routine and there is limited time and then the leader is more autocratic. If the task is open, non-routine and there is more time the leader is more democratic.

4.       Followers in general prefer their leaders to be transformative and different followers of separate groups prefer social support, democratic decision making or autocratic decision making

5.       Transformational leaders are most effective in navigating an organization through a change or a period of upheaval. Once the objectives have been met and the organization is stable, then the leader must change their style toward more transactional in order to maintain their current course. Constant organizational change is not an effective long term strategy.

6.       Lassiez-faire leaders are ineffective. Their followers do not trust them and do not understand what their role is.

7.       Communication is important. Leaders need to be able to articulate what their expectations are, what the steps are to achieve the organizational strategy, what objectives they are going to use to evaluate their success and how each person can contribute to the overall success.

8.       When there is a change in leadership, the organizational will experience an initial decrease in performance until the new leader can change the strategy and motivate the members to perform for will. The longer a leader is in their role, the more successful the organizational (in general).

 

It is clear that every situation is different and this is why it is so hard to identify key features of successful leaders, and why some leaders experience success in one role, but failure in another. It takes constant monitoring of the overall circumstances to achieve success and every change demands a different approach. Successful leaders have the ability to either change the situation to their benefit, or choose situations that best utilize their skill set.

Running drills

Nothing is easier than running, right? You tie on your shoes, open up the door, and start.

Why then, are there so many injuries?

If something is that easy, why are we always trying to improve upon it?

 

As it is, running is a good form of exercise and it is easy to do. However, like other forms of exercise it is important to understand where you are and develop a plan to get to where you want to be. Everyone has a different ability to run and tolerate the stress of running. It is important to start easy while building a base and then progressively increase the activity either through time, distance, speed, hills, frequency or any combination of these.

 

Like other forms of exercise, if there is pain, back off. Take some time to cross train and recover before trying again.

 

It also helps to use good form. This link has some good tips with how to keep your form strong so that you get the most out of running and decrease your risk of injury.

 

http://naturalrunningcenter.com/2013/11/17/40-tips-improve-running-form/