MAY 2019

Business Tips:

15 Invaluable Laws of Growth

Our management is doing a new study on the John Maxwell curriculum with the book called the 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. We recommend you pick up a copy or listen to it online if you have the technology to do so. We will be exploring these laws as a team this year.

              The goal in the study is to help each of us learn how to grow and develop ourselves so we have the best chance of becoming the person we were created to be.

~ The Law of Environment ~

              Growth thrives in conducive surroundings. The first step towards success is when you refuse to be a captive to the first environment that you find yourself in. – Mark Cane. If your environment is not conducive to growth, you need to remove yourself from it and find somewhere that will help you grow.

              When you are in a growth environment, you look better than you really are. Everyone is better, looks better, and performs better in a growth environment. When you are in a bad growth environment you are better than you look.

              “My growth environment is a place where others are ahead of me.” – Maxwell. If you are ahead of the class, you should get out of the class.

A growth environment is a place where I am continually challenged. It is a place where my focus is forward. It is a place where the atmosphere is affirming. It is a place where I am often out of my comfort zone. It’s a place where I wake-up excited. It is a place where failure is not my enemy. I know I am there when others are growing. It is a place where people desire change, where growth is modeled, and expected.

The growth environment needs to be started with you and me. We have to do it personally. Who keeps you motivated to maintain that? It has to be you and me. Don’t depend on someone else to motivate you because you will be disappointed…. they won’t show up. You must motivate yourself. How? You must refuel. You must develop nourishment centers for your life and run to them when needed. Examples are music (what songs), reading, etc. – These centers need to be close at hand, very quickly and simply accessible. You should also maintain these quickly at hand such as good thoughts filed, experiences, recreations, friends, hopes, family, giftedness, memories, and books.

             

Personal Tips:

~ Resolution 6: ~

RESOLVE TO KEEP SCORE IN THE GAME OF LIFE:

I know that the scoreboard forces me to check and confront the results, making the needed adjustments in order to win. You either hate losing bad enough to change, or you hate changing bad enough to lose.

Ronald Reagan said, “Trust but verify.” When it comes to personal growth, the overwhelming majority would rather trust without verifying. Improving the check step, for most people, would make the most significant difference in their personal growth.

Why do so many resist the check step? Simply put, a person’s defense mechanisms kick in, which are designed to protect his fragile ego from the painful revelation of his current performance. It can be embarrassing when a person discovers the gap between the skills he wants and the skills he has. Most people, in other words, would rather delude themselves and be happy than confront themselves and exert the effort to improve. But running from the data doesn’t change anything; rather, it only changes or blocks a person’s ability to improve it.

When the gaps are identified, it’s time to make the adjustments needed in order to advance. Plan it, do it, check it, and adjust it; this is the PDCA process for any area of life. After each test, check the results, evaluating what can be done to make the plans better. Every plan and do, no matter how good or bad it is, ultimately helps because it reveals, through the check step, how to improve.

If a person has invested the time to plan, do, and check, then he only has to make adjustments based on the scoreboard to advance. It’s important to find a defeat in every victory (to improve) and a victory in every defeat (to maintain morale). In other words, the defeats keep one humble, while the victories keep one hopeful. Balance is the key here, keeping both pride and hopelessness at bay. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a perfect performance. Therefore, the key is to point out the failure mode, the main area where one is currently deficient that, if enhanced, would make the biggest impact. When such areas are identified, one must follow through and make the adjustments. There is always room to get better, no matter how great one’s present achievements are, so he shouldn’t be upset when he finds areas that need work.

Bill Gates, in the book Business @ the Speed of Thought, wrote, “The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, the best way to put distance between you and the crowd, is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose.”

Michael Dell, in the book Direct from Dell, wrote, “It was clear that in 1993 we didn’t have the in-formation we needed to run our business. We didn’t fully understand the relationship between costs, revenues, and profits within the different parts of our business.

The first and most popular way that so-called leaders use to escape a confrontation with brutal reality is to play the blame game. No one likes to lose, but when potential leaders blame others for losses in an effort to protect their fragile egos, they may ease their pain momentarily, but only by abdicating personal responsibility for results. If a person doesn’t own his losses, he won’t own any victories. Any time one assigns his lack of results to poor mentorship, lazy teammates, unsupportive spouses, the economy, etc., he surrenders control of his life, waiting for others to get better in order for his life to improve. Check out the second (winning isn’t worth it) and third (vicarious victories) ways leaders try to escape confrontation with brutal reality in the book.

Life Skills:

Faith, Family, Fitness, Finances, Friends, Fun, Following, Freedom; we call these the 8F’s in life.

Many of these categories can tell one where their priorities are in life by measuring the time one would spend in one of the above categories. I know we don’t have it all figured out, but we have a lot of great sources that speak into these items and we welcome your comments. Please feel free to drop us a line concerning any of them.

THE DAILY DOZEN - WORK

This year we are going to use this concept to explain 1 word per month that if made into a habit, we believe your life will, no doubt, improve.

Throw your heart over the bar. Do what you were meant to do and do it with passion

Notable quotes: They are italicized above.

Something I want you to know:

Find a great environment in life, keep score, and do the work!