Great Quote...

In these times of economic uncertainty, this timeless quote from Architect Frank Lloyd Wright is quite timely....

From my Real Simple Quotes newsletter

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

-Frank Lloyd Wright

Productivity 2.0 from Zen Habits

Productivity 2.0: How the New Rules of Work Are Changing the Game | Zen Habits

For years, books and articles and blogs on productivity have been showing us how to be more productive: crank out the tasks, multi-task, work faster, be organized.

In short, they’ve taught us to be a good part of a corporation that wants more out of us. But that’s old-school productivity, or Productivity 1.0.

Today let’s take a look at Productivity 2.0: a new set of rules have changed everything for the workers of the world. Don’t crank out tasks — learn to work with a deeper focus. Don’t plan and hold meetings and form committees — just launch the software or product or service and keep improving it. Don’t spend time organizing — you’ve got more important things to worry about.

Notes from the Productivity Industrial Complex

My friend, Nwokedi, suggested I read this (below). Like the diversity workshops that were legion during the 80's and 90's, productivity discussions tend to focus on what's in the best interest of companies and not in the best interest of people. To take a deeper cut at that, they tend to focus on "getting things done" but not as much on "getting the right things done." Even the Covey workshops. the self-appointed Gold Standard of the Productivity Industrial Complex, doesn't have much to say about how a lowly employee, having happily sorted their tasks into A, B and C priorities, can prevail upon their leader to moving the C items off everyone's list. As workplaces continue to contract, workers are doing more, but very little job redesign is happening.

I’ll include my thoughts inline with the quoted text:

Alternative Productivity’s Tenets (David Allen):

1. “Productivity” is an Industrial Era economics term that applies to factories, machines, and economies. When applied to people it often has a dehumanizing effect and negates both individual differences and unique talents.
   
   Lalita: Amen. I found myself concerned about the entire concept of "productivity." As an economic term, it refers to a ratio of outputs to inputs, like labor productivity as the relationship between results and the work that went into their creation. People aren’t machines and even a machine can’t simply be tasked to produce more without looking at upstream and down stream inputs and outputs as well as system capabilities. We are more concerned with equipment failure from being over-stressed than we are about burning out people.
   
2. If your productivity increases, but your pay stays the same, then you’re effectively taking a pay cut (same goes if you begin working longer hours for the same pay).
   
   Lalita: This is a conversation I have with consultants constantly. One bragged to me about his hourly rate. When I asked him to calculate how many hours he was working this billing cycle and how much money he was getting, he quietly began scribbling (“I’ll show you.”). You can’t imagine the look of horror on his face when he figured out that his effective hourly rate was one-fifth his rack rate. We had a long talk that afternoon that shifted his world.
   
3. The 40-hour work week hasn’t changed since 1940 and is ridiculously outdated.
   
4. If you’re consistently having trouble focusing, it’s often because you’re focusing on the wrong things (i.e. things you’re not passionate about or things that aren’t best suited to your skillset).
   
   Lalita: Trouble focusing may be a symptom of memory erosion as our plates get more and more full. People today have access, in one issue of the New York Times, to more information than was available to the average human being in an entire lifetime just a century ago. As hoards of new information are being fed in, other information is organized for long-term storage--even if that information is needed for short-term, immediate use. Add in stress, which has been proven to reduce retention and attentiveness, and it gets even...um, I forgot what I was writing about....*
   
   Frankly, we aren’t experiencing a focus deficit: we’re experiencing too much garbage on the plate with little leadership support to move it to the trash where it belongs.
   
5. Increased productivity should equal less time on the job. If you’re getting more done, you should get more vacation time.
   
   Lalita: Not sure how this follows as employers are able to set up, within legally-prescribed limits, any kind of work rules they choose. Besides, there is an important external driver pressuring leaders to produce more: stockholders. These “owners” are interested in one thing and than it increased revenue for their investment. Few leaders at the C-Suite level are willing to buck their boards or say “No mas” at stockholders’ meetings where initiatives are being put forth that will impact the footprint the job takes up in a worker’s life.
   
6. Most best-selling productivity gurus are working in the interests of large corporations and often advocate values and approaches that are not in the best interests of individuals.
   
   Lalita: Working in the best interests of companies? Not if these productivity gurus aren't tying their programs to retention. As people run out of bandwidth, they leave. In droves. Over a decade ago, HR strategists started seeing an increasing trend for “downshifting” where career climbers chose to shift career tracks to paths that would allow for more time to engage in other pursuits (see how I didn’t say “work/life balance”—a term I despise...but that’s another post).
   
   A rule of thumb for calculating the cost of turnover is to take an employee's salary and divide it by 30%. That, very roughly, is base cost of turnover for that one position. Add in a recruiter’s fee or executive signing bonuses, stock options or Golden Parachutes (like a prenupt for the C-Suite set) and the percentage continues to climb. In addition, it can take months for a newly-placed staffer to gain proficiency in a new corporate and departmental cultures and the expectations of the job.
   
   Then there’s the matter of proof. Most productivity workshops have never been vetted for validity (measures the right things) and reliability (measures consistently over time). They "work" simply because the guru has collected anecdotal information from participants that says so.
   
   Just a tad self-referential, no?
   
7. Increased productivity should result in greater carefree time, more vacations, and more time away from work. Most of the time, however, it does not.
   
8. We are living in a time and place that is more “productive” than ever before, but high levels of productivity aren’t making us any happier.
   
   Lalita: Please. “Productive” is not the same as “effective.” You can be doing a lot of things, but not the right things.
   
   You and I both know people who, during meetings, answer phone calls and respond to or send emails. By not focusing on the people in front of them, meeting durations balloon as topics are started and stopped over and over again. In addition, there’s the little matter of credibility. Doing everything else at a meeting but conducting the meeting is seen as incredibly rude, impacting future promotional opportunities and damaging key relationships.
   
   Measures of effectiveness can easily been found in most process improvement initiatives with a clearly-defined outcome stated in advance and work to reduce variation around that stated goal. Not so in productivity workshops, which tend to operate at the tactical level rather than the strategic.
   
9. Productivity should be designed around our lives, not the other way around.
   
   Lalita: Productivity should be designed around systems of increased effectiveness inside a value chain which should connect to desired outcomes which should connect to the strategic mission of the department, the business unit and the company.

10. The workforce is laboring for more hours and for less pay, taking fewer vacations, and generally burning out.
    
    Lalita: Yup. In another entry I scribed, I detailed the differences in vacation for the major developed nations. The US leads the pack of industrialized nations in the lack of vacation time: That’s less than France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Japan and Canada. A whopping 26% of US workers take no vacation at all. Many who do, spend more time with their Blackberrys than they do their families, fearing that if they’re too disconnected (1) people will figure out that they’re expendable and (2) the workload when they return will be insurmountable.

11. The best way to increase productivity is often to quit a lot of things.
    
    Lalita: Good idea, but most leaders are unwilling to insist on job re-design or to challenge their leaders on the best use of their staffers’ time.

12. Productivity often poses as the self-development genre but it is not. Self-development and productivity are two very different things. What is best for us as individuals is often bad for productivity.
    
    Lalita: Huh? People development and the resulting impacts on productivity are connected.

13. The societally scripted routes to success via productivity are failing us.

14. Products marketed towards busy people (e.g. “Productivity for Busy People,” “Cooking for Busy People,” etc.) only serve to reinforce the problem and often glamorize, excuse, and support the unnecessarily busy life and cult of hyper-efficiency.
    
    Lalita: Is there really something “sexy” about scurrying about like a rat in a maze? Really? Telegraphing that you can't get meaningful work done in a humane way is glamouous? Indeed.

15. Hacks, tweaks, tricks, etc. have emerged from a productivity hobbyist culture, are largely insufficient at solving bigger life problems, and often do not increase productivity. These hacks etc. are vestiges of the largely "techie" demographic of the early (but self-reinforcing) blogosphere.

16. Early to bed, early to rise does not necessarily lead to greater productivity. Contrary to several blog posts advocating early rising as a means to greater productivity, the practice of early rising can actually be harmful.
    
    Lalita: Cookie-cutter fixes assume that we’re all the same and have the same requirements. Not so. I get some of my best writing done late at night. Telling me to go to bed at 10 would have me running out the door with my hair on fire. However, an early bird who’s staying up late, can benefit from supports to get to bed at their earlier bedtime.
    
    In a conversation with a fledgeling business owner, he asked me my opinion about something his "coach" (a marketing consultant who had decided--damn the skillset--to hang out a shingle as a business coach) had said. "Lalita, he told me to play business development CD's in my car while I'm driving." When I asked him what he really liked to do while driving he said "Listen to music." Guess what I told him to do? And I'm looking for his "coach" to suggest he stop treating his clients like they're all him.

17. More technology often leads to decreased productivity.

18. Hyper-focusing on productivity often gets in the way of the messy, circuitous, and discursive routes of personal development.

19. When most people speak of productivity in the office, they’re usually speaking about a specific kind of productivity: cubical-land, desk-job, information-worker productivity. The methods used to produce this kind of productivity often do not generalize to other contexts.

20. No productivity system can put you in a zen like, meditative, or mind like water state. A calm, focused, and meditative mind leads to greater productivity, but productivity systems cannot create a mind like water.

21. Too much productivity can turn you into a real tool.

22. Massive value creation often happens during times when no work is ostensibly being accomplished and productivity levels are ostensibly nil.

23. What makes people productive varies considerably from person to person.
    
    Lalita: Huzzah! Truer words have not been written. Task -related productivity is the "booby prize." Figuring out the right things to do and then getting the barriers out of the way so we can focus on the most effective ways of doing those things--that's the juicy cherry.

24. Productivity is often a necessary evil: if you dislike your job, you’re going to need a water-tight productivity system in place to keep you on task.
    
25. Productivity should be designed around lives, not the other way around.

The Force is Stong in You, Young BizWalker

For those of you who know me, I'm a pretty fine coach and consultant, who's gotten to write some of the guiding literature for the coaching profession and created and lead coursework in coaching psychology for such illustrious venues as New York University.

I'm all that. (Ask me sometime how long it took for me to be able to say that and know it for the unabashed, unapologetic truth that it is.)

That doesn't mean that stuff is necessarily any easier at Camp Lita. I love those coaches who say that they coach themselves. Ever see a dentist pull her own teeth or a doctor remove his own appendix. Didn't think so. Coaching's power comes from the interactions between an actor and an observer, and not from the perfection of a coach's life (that's called a Messiah, kidlets).

So, when I get messages out of the clear blue like this one from the hubster, I'm inclined to listen carefully. In addition to watching me work my business and live my life, he's been watching as I work to finish graduate school (Masters in HR with honors later this summer--then off to dive into a doctorate...I can sleep when I'm dead...I can sleep when I'm dead...I can sleep when....).

Being the stress kitten that I am (ain't gonna change it, either....just learning more and more how to make that way of being work for me rather than work me over), he's just got a different sense of how I work.

Something from Star Wars comes to mind. “Luke, trust the force”. Your innate ability and sense of excellence is one manifestation of your “force”. Learning to trust it will reduce your stress and worry many fold. I know, cause I’m there too.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

God, I love this stuff.

The Grammys--God Love 'Em

I didn't watch the Grammys this year. I found myself tad bit burned out from the Super Duper Tsunami Tuesday CNN Marathon I participated in. OK, I got a little carried away. Still, I was very heartened to learn that two music greats, Herbie Hancock and Angelique Kidjo won.

Grammys Shine on Winehouse, West, Hancock - British singer Amy Winehouse, of "Rehab" fame, wins five Grammy Awards. Rapper Kanye West wins four. But Herbie Hancock's Joni Mitchell tribute -- River -- is the surprise winner for album of the year.

If you don't know Herbie Hancock's work, you'll remember his jazz-hiphop tune, Rockit, which, coupled with its stunning video, has become one of the best known jazz pieces in popular culture. It's the tune that backs up the Visa Check Card commercial where the presence of a check (gasp!) winds down all the hip hopping shoppers.

The video, made when Herbie was entering his 40's, set the video music industry on its left ear.

Covers are hard, particularly if the cover artist just creates a verbatim send-up of the original. Angelique, a singer from Benin, did something great with her cover years ago of Jimi Hendrix' classic, Voodoo Chile with her Afrobeat rendition. I was flipping channels on my way to the kitchen during a commercial break when I found her on a PBS special. I stook there with the remote in my hand and my mouth hanging open.

Jimi, I think, would smile and say "Now, that's f-ing something."

What I find so very very nice about these artists and the videos presented here is the quality of staying power they represent: Herbie's Rockit is just as hip today as it was in 1983 and Jimi's Voodoo Chile stands the test of time and culture. Leaves me wondering how enduring some of the brands we see today are.

As a side note: Amy Winehouse, whose ditty Rehab was just too prescient, got a pass from rehab to attend the festivities remotedly.

(Cross posted at American Values Alliance)

A Soldier's Final Blog Post

This is one blog post that left me very, very, terribly sad, thinking about the other solidiers who've done the same--even my brother, who shares the same, delightfully oddball references as Andy and who could have written a post like this while serving in Iraq 1. Having said all that, I can say I also laughed like a goon when I read it.

Major Andrew Olmstead, who was re-deployed to Iraq, was the first US soldier killed in 2008--struck by a sniper's bullet. Before leaving for Iraq, he prevailed upon a friend, Hillary Bok, to post this, his final blog entry in the event of his death. She cried when she read it months ago, and, like a good friend, she posed it on 4 January, the day of his death. Be sure to listen to her conversation with NPR's Madeleine Brand.

It contains --no. I'm not going to even try to comment on what he wrote. That would be weird, like the gold leafed roses you can get at Sybaris--completely unnecessary.

January 04, 2008

Final Post

"I am leaving this message for you because it appears I must leave sooner than I intended. I would have preferred to say this in person, but since I cannot, let me say it here."
G'Kar, Babylon 5

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."
Plato*

This is an entry I would have preferred not to have published, but there are limits to what we can control in life, and apparently I have passed one of those limits. And so, like G'Kar, I must say here what I would much prefer to say in person. I want to thank hilzoy for putting it up for me. It's not easy asking anyone to do something for you in the event of your death, and it is a testament to her quality that she didn't hesitate to accept the charge. As with many bloggers, I have a disgustingly large ego, and so I just couldn't bear the thought of not being able to have the last word if the need arose. Perhaps I take that further than most, I don't know. I hope so. It's frightening to think there are many people as neurotic as I am in the world. In any case, since I won't get another chance to say what I think, I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. Such as it is.

"When some people die, it's time to be sad. But when other people die, like really evil people, or the Irish, it's time to celebrate."
Jimmy Bender, "Greg the Bunny"

"And maybe now it's your turn
To die kicking some ass."
Freedom Isn't Free, Team America

Be sure to read the rest...

Goodbye Andy.

Cross-posted at the American Values Alliance or read what others posted on

LNB 048: Just Say "No?! (Pt. 4, Cleaning Up the Slop)

No.
Nein.
Nyet.
Non.

Little words in whatever language we speak. Big mischief if we don't use them when we should. We end up half-committed to projects and other decisions we know we really don't support, taking precious time away from other priorities, working without the focus that comes from commitment.

Resentfully wasting time.

Search Amazon.com and you'll find a staggering amount of books in getting to "yes" but nary a one on getting to a "no" or saying "no" for that matter. Curiously, most of the ones on saying "no" were written with children in mind. Truthfully, some of those books purport to be sales manuals, but are little more than cheap verbal manipulations designed to satisfy us. Funny enough, I can't tell you how many salesfolk I've met who hate being "sold to." They hate when someone doesn't take "no" for an answer. We all do. And still their bookshelves are lined with books that keep spreading the magic.


In this business 2.0 world of relationships we find ourselves on a collision course between two sets of desires: theirs (customers, partners, vendors, suppliers, employees) and ours. Doing untold damage to their chances for the further collaboration. A half-hearted "yes" becomes the low-hanging fruit.

Clean, concise, authentic communication is always the ticket. We end up with less to remember when we stick to the plain, unvarnished truth with little embellishment.

On the show, I talked about the four options you have in responding to requests made to you. They are:

Yes
With us committed to an action either immediately or in the future. Ever heard a prospect say "I'd like to do it in January at the top of the budget year?" Our training has us inclined to try to get them to do it now when they might really mean "I want to sign up in January." Here, you can tell them that you're going to take them at their word...and get your proposal ready for them to sign now with a January start date. You can even make sure that they meant it by calling a spade a spade: "I want to be clear that you are commencing in January. So, I'll take you American Express number so I can run the agreed-upon amount on January 1."

No
Onlineorganizing.com maven Ramona Creel suggests that there are 20 Ways to Say No; however I find that, given some of the equivocations she suggests, people are liable to enter into a tussle with us, believing that those equivocations are up for negotiation. If it doesn't work, isn't consistent with your commitments--whatever--stop trying to be "nice." A clean "no" will save you from trying to manufacture a reason (which isn't nice, by the way). You don't need one (unless you've trained your business associates that you do).

Counter-Offer
You may, in fact, want that project, but with some clear caveats. Tell them so: "I'd like to commit here, and I have a few changes that will have it really work for our team. Take a look and see if we can work those in and then I'm all in." Here, they can say yes or no--they can even counter your counter. This is called a negotiation. Have fun and be clear in you communications.

Commitment to Commit Later
You may be racing out the door. Keep moving. We sometimes say things to people to placate them and hope we can dig ourselves out later. If you don't have time to carefully consider an offer now, resist the pressure to commit right away. Giving people a clear date and time you want to discuss the merits of their request with them will satisfy most. Putting it on your calendar will satisfy even more. Really racing out the door and can't stop. Ask them to email you a request with some suggested dates and times for your talk...and then keep moving.

...and now some Zen from the epic movie, White Men Can't Jump:

Rosie Perez: Sometimes when you win, you really lose. Sometimes when you lose, you really win. Sometimes when you win or lose. you actually
tie. Sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose.

Woody Harrellson: I hate it when you talk like that.

We hate it, too. Woody. So get this: Some of us sound eerily similar when we say "Sometimes when they say yes, it's really yes. Sometimes when they say no, it's really yes. Sometimes when they say yes or say no it's actually maybe..." You get the point (and probably a headache, too.

Resources
Simplify Your Work Like: Ways to Change the Way You Work So You Have More Time to Live...some of these suggestions are stunningly simple and effective.

On my list to read is Saying No: A User's Manual by Karen Bading. It purports to helping people say "no" without wrecking their relationships. I'll let you know.

Listen Now: 24.01

It's Been Rough...

I've been quiet for a while.

Here's the scoop. Everybody's finally fine. Garland just finished his three month treadmill test and his cardiologist is very pleased. He had a little angina (still has some blockages), but his doc said that everything is moving the right direction. Dad came out the other side of his septic pneumonia (a deadly form) looking better and feeling better than he had in years (only Dad could take a running slide toward the Abyss and come out healthier). He's continuing his rehab at a local gym and is strong and quite...well, alive! He went back to visit the rehab center where he stayed for two months. They simply didn't recognize him. He's gorgeous!

In the midst of all this, I found a mole that was getting very large and a very...weird (its own technicolor mole show). When I pointed this out to my doctor, he immediately produced a set of scalpels and started hacking it off (with clear margins to make sure he got it all). Then, off it went for biopsy.

Um, yay....*

Listening to him worry aloud whether it was a nasty skin cancer (I'm Black, people! Mighty melanin protect me!), I just didn't think I could deal with anything else this year--I'd already weathered the one-two punch of Dad's major illness and Garland's heart treatment. Then Dr. Park, still suturing up my leg, said "If it's nothing, you'll know. If it's something not so good, you'll deal with it. That's what you do."

It was that statement that left me with tears in my eyes. No matter now much got heaped on, how the illnesses of these important men in my life left me with a business with no actual business and work I'd never thought I'd need to do, I was there: battling for their health and wellness for over a quarteryear with all the love and hope I had when others had given up.

I'm rebuilding my business. I'll be straight with all of you. And it's not the most fun I've ever had, but like Dr. Park indicated about my dealing with the possibility of cancer, I'll get through it.

Like he said: That's what I do.

I'm carefully considering what (and who) I want to let back in and where I've been tolerating business deals that made money but no sense. I'm making sure that I re-invigorate my business with only the elements that give me a chance to use my SuperPowers (more on that later) and see others use their mutant powers for the forces of good.

I recently saw the Broadway production of The Color Purple. My stepdaughter is in it. She lives by her passion for music and dance and doesn't let anything else get in the way of that passion--not even her own "sensible" voice that says "make sure you have a fallback plan."

I adore that about her.

I've also stopped bullshitting about my well-being. No more pretending that I'm ever too busy to eat or work out or get a good (read: complete) night's sleep. Dad said I had to: "We can't take care of you as good as you take care of us!" Sweet man!

You'll be hearing more from me as I pick up my pace. Some of it will really shame me to admit (like that I top the scales at over 180 pounds). Other stuff will be easier (I've booked lots of speaking engagements, added two new clients and my podcast is expanding). I'll want to convince you that I'm really talented and that this was just an unavoidable circumstance I had to deal with (when you hear that, know that I'm just scared or tired or worried). I want to see how my sharing with you, openly and generiously about the truth of where I'm at, can add value to your business day. And then some days I won't want to talk with you at all.

See what you can get for yourself.

Now, I'm going to have at it!

Cheers!

100 tips to improve your life

Recently, I have began reading a number of self-improvement websites or as some people call it, life hacking. In my effort to unleash Me 2.0 these blogs and sites are priceless. I have gotten many insights into being more productive, being a better Dad, how to beat bad habits and implement new good ones, and a number of other stuff I find interesting. Today, my rss reader was graced with a sweet collection of links that I just had to share. Entitled: 100 Tips to Improve Your Life

Enjoy!