Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Archives for December 2022

Goal-Setting for Managers: Set Tough but Achievable Challenges

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Finding the middle ground between setting the bar too low and too high can challenge managers.

Sure, aggressive goals can spark great accomplishments, but they also can induce employees to bend or break the rules in pursuit of those goals, as the Wells Fargo and Volkswagen scandals illustrate.

When employees get comfortable with their usual tasks, it’s time to push them outside their comfort zones. New responsibilities can propel employees to take on new challenges and learn new things.

However, before giving employees new tasks, take away some of the older responsibilities they’ve already mastered. Many people feel they have an unrealistic amount of work to do already. If you aren’t prudent enough to keep your employees’ workloads in check, giving “stretch” assignments can lead to burnout, not growth.

Idea for Impact: Goals that are too high or low can be demotivating. Set goals that are challenging and inspiring but with extra effort, realistically attainable.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. From the Inside Out: How Empowering Your Employees Builds Customer Loyalty
  2. To Inspire, Pay Attention to People: The Hawthorne Effect
  3. General Electric’s Jack Welch Identifies Four Types of Managers
  4. Eight Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Around
  5. Seven Real Reasons Employees Disengage and Leave

Be Smart by Not Being Stupid

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No superhuman ability is usually required to dodge the many foolish choices to which we’re prone. A few basic rules are all that’s needed to shield you, if not from all errors, from silly errors.

Charlie Munger often emphasizes that minimizing mistakes may be one of the least appreciated tricks in successful investing. He has reputedly credited much of Berkshire Hathaway’s success to consistently avoiding stupidity. “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage we have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent.” And, “I think part of the popularity of Berkshire Hathaway is that we look like people who have found a trick. It’s not brilliance. It’s just avoiding stupidity.” They’ve avoided investing in situations they don’t understand or summon experience.

As a policy, avoiding stupidity in investing shouldn’t mean avoiding risk wholly; instead, it’s taking on risk only when there’s a fair chance that you’ll be adequately rewarded for assuming that risk.

Idea for Impact: Tune out stupidity. Becoming successful in life isn’t always about what you do but what you don’t do. In other words, improving decision quality is often more about decreasing your chances of failure than increasing your chances of success.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  2. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data
  3. The Data Never “Says”
  4. Defect Seeding: Strengthen Systems, Boost Confidence
  5. What if Something Can’t Be Measured

Inspirational Quotations #975

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The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
—Walker Percy (American Novelist)

All great ones have undergone suffering. None can escape what is ordained.
—Yogaswami of Jaffna (Sri Lankan Hindu Religious Leader)

All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.
—Sidney Lumet (American Filmmaker)

Keep the other person’s well-being in mind when you feel an attack of soul-purging truth coming on.
—Betty White (American Comedian)

People start parades—politicians just get out in front and act like they’re leading.
—Buck Rinehart (American Politician)

One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
—Ida B. Wells (American Journalist, Activist)

In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art – the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard
—Anne Rice (American Author)

All genuine progress results from finding new facts. No law can be passed to make an acre yield three hundred bushels. God has already established the laws. It is four us to discover them, and to learn the facts by which we can obey them.
—Wheeler McMillen (American Farmer, Journalist)

Oh, the secret life of man and woman—dreaming how much better we would be than we are if we were somebody else or even ourselves, and feeling that our estate has been unexploited to its fullest.
—Zelda Fitzgerald (American Writer, Artist)

All of us who served in one war or another know very well that all wars are the glory and the agony of the young.
—Gerald Ford (American Head of State)

Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.
—Elise M. Boulding (American Peace Scholar)

The Creativity of the Unfinished

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Don’t dot every I and cross every T. Leave a stone unturned.

Ignore a rule. Don’t tie up every loose end.

Leave some questions unanswered. Let something be out of place.

Violate the expectation and usher a realm of potentiality. As the American artist Julia Cameron noted in her seminal self-help book The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (1992,) “Art needs time to incubate, to sprawl a little, to be ungainly and misshapen and finally emerge as itself. The ego hates this fact. The ego wants instant gratification and the addictive hit of an acknowledged win.”

A piece of art, a movie, a melodic line, or a production all tend to be more captivating when they leave you wondering—when they urge you to explore the possibilities your mind has to offer.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Overcoming Personal Constraints is a Key to Success
  2. You Can’t Develop Solutions Unless You Realize You Got Problems: Problem Finding is an Undervalued Skill
  3. Finding Potential Problems & Risk Analysis: A Case Study on ‘The Three Faces of Eve’
  4. Van Gogh Didn’t Just Copy—He Reinvented
  5. Turning a Minus Into a Plus … Constraints are Catalysts for Innovation

Inspirational Quotations #974

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If you treat every situation as a life and death matter, you’ll die a lot of times.
—Dean Smith (American Basketball Coach)

The danger of censorship in cultural media increases in proportion to the degree to which one approaches the winning of a mass audience.
—James T. Farrell (American Novelist)

Fear is only an illusion. It is the illusion that creates the feeling of separateness—the false sense of isolation that exists only in your imagination.
—Jeraldine Saunders (American Writer, Television Personality)

God is a verb, not a noun.
—Buckminster Fuller (American Inventor, Philosopher)

Since each person, as an individual, is the not-being of the other, it is never possible to eliminate non-understanding completely.
—Friedrich Schleiermacher (German Theologian)

No longer can we be satisfied with a life where the heart has its reasons which reason cannot know. Our hearts must know the world of reason, and reason must be guided by an informed heart.
—Bruno Bettelheim (Austrian-born Psychoanalyst)

Sorrows cannot all be explained away in a life truly lived, grief and loss accumulate like possessions.
—Stefan Kanfer (American Journalist, Author)

What is, is; and what ain’t, ain’t
—Joseph Granville (American Investor)

Most true happiness comes from one’s inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is difficult to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline.
—William L. Shirer (American Author)

If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its first apostles.
—Max Muller (German-British Orientalist)

I think there is a choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.
—Muriel Rukeyser (American Poet)

‘Tis the Most Wonderful Time of the Year … to Job-Search

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The holidays are around the corner, and this is an excellent time to job-search, especially since most jobs come from networking and referrals.

As you spread the holiday cheer, use greetings as a pretext to catch up with friends, reach out to LinkedIn contacts, and network with people in your industry. Take the opportunity of Christmas and New Year parties to socialize with new people that can help you.

Some workplaces have use-it-or-lose-it money and headcount in the current year’s financial plan that they’d like to commit before year’s end. Other workplaces that have the upcoming year’s plans approved may be eager to jumpstart hiring.

The holiday spirit and the season of giving make hiring managers even more likely to treat you favorably. Moreover, with work winding down for the holiday season, decision-makers are less likely to be in long meetings and business trips, and, therefore, more likely to be at their desks to be contacted.

And you’ll face less competition since few people bother with job-searching at this time of the year.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Improve Your Career Prospects During the COVID-19 Crisis
  2. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?
  3. The Hidden Influence of Association
  4. How to … Know When it’s Time to Quit Your Job
  5. Being Underestimated Can Be a Great Thing