Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Archives for March 2023

The Hidden Influence of Association

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The “Law” of Association, a maxim popularized by motivational gurus Jack Canfield and Jim Rohn, implies that you’ll become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

This is to say, empirically, everything about you is the average of the five people you hang around most. For instance, your happiness level will be the average of the five of your best mates.

If you want to raise the quality of your life, rub shoulders with people already living the quality of life you aspire to. To become a better communicator, hobnob with great communicators. If you want to be more positive, mix with more optimistic individuals. If you want to be a fabulous parent, spend time with parents who’ve mastered the art.

Birds of a feather flock together … because they share a common vision, and they’re all going in the same direction. So if you’re pursuing a goal, find the people who’ve already attained that goal or are well along the path to achieving that goal. Then be with them, hoping some of their principles rub off on you.

Idea for Impact: In regards to relationships, we’re greatly influenced—whether we like it or not—by those closest to us. Get out there and connect with those whose lives you want to live. Those connections can pay off careerwise and personally.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Office Chitchat Isn’t Necessarily a Time Waster
  2. You Always Have to Say ‘Good’
  3. Being Underestimated Can Be a Great Thing
  4. Stop Trying to Prove Yourself to the World
  5. Could Limiting Social Media Reduce Your Anxiety About Work?

Managerial Lessons from the Show Business: Summary of Leadership from the Director’s Chair

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'Notes on Directing' by Frank Hauser (ISBN 0972425500) Notes on Directing: 130 Lessons in Leadership from the Director’s Chair (2008) explores the parallels between directing the stage and managing projects. The shared themes include ad hoc teams, one-off goals, tight time frames, limited budgets, nebulous chains of command, shared objectives, etc.

Compiled by writer Russell Reich from the notes of British stage director Frank Hauser, this tome contains 130 meditations on casting actors, rehearsing, stage-setting, supervising the production units, and handling critics.

Organized temporally from a director’s initial encounter with the play’s script to its final production, this slim volume is so much more—it’s not just for stage directors.

  • #7: “Learn to love a play you don’t particularly like. You may be asked—or may choose—to direct a play that, for any number of reasons, you don’t think is very good. In such cases it is better to focus and build on the play’s virtues than attempt to repair its inherent problems.” Idea for Impact: Focus on virtues and strengths, not weaknesses. Spend more of their time reinforcing the good performers than dealing with untrainable performers—i.e., you can never remediate grievous weaknesses. Position the person somewhere else where her talents are a better match.
  • #33: “Every scene is a chase scene. Character A wants something from Character B who doesn’t want to give it.” Idea for Impact: Productive relationships with balance and joy call for continuous concession and managing one another’s expectations. Work hard to ensure that all sides feel contented with a negotiated compromise.
  • #73: “Know your actors. Some like a lot of attention; others want to be left alone. Some like written notes; some spoken. Get to know them. It doesn’t have to take long. It’s a good investment that will pay enormous benefits later.” Idea for Impact: Embrace individualized management. No two employees are alike—their temperaments, qualifications, experiences, and backgrounds shape them into thoroughly unique people who’re persuaded, challenged, and inspired in different ways. So why treat them all the same way?

Recommendation: Read Notes on Directing. It’s a worthwhile meditation in managing people, projects, and yourself. Anyone who must get things done through people will find insightful meditations on getting to the core of the narrative, handling people with diplomacy and nuance, and navigating conflict.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Avoid Battle
  2. How to Mediate in a Dispute
  3. How to … Deal with Less Intelligent People
  4. How Understanding Your Own Fears Makes You More Attuned to Those of Others
  5. Making the Nuances Count in Decisions

Inspirational Quotations #988

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Love imposes obligations and these are constant. An intermittent lover is no use to a person of dignity and courage.
—Anita Brookner (English Novelist, Art Historian)

Yet we may constantly do more in what we are than in what we do. We may serve better in the lives we live than in the best service we ever give. The memory of that should bring rest to your spirit when a bit tired, and may be disheartened because tired.
—Samuel Dickey Gordon (American Evangelical Author)

Let every emotion be capable becoming an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it is because you are not hungry enough.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others.
—Hanif Kureishi (British Novelist, Screenwriter)

Envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms.
—Arthur Rimbaud (French Poet)

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.
—Anne Rice (American Author)

Men are only too ready to be swayed by senseless passion.
—John Macquarrie (British Theologian)

Give it away to get it back. There is a wonderful, almost mystical, law of nature that says three of the things we want most—happiness, freedom, and peace of mind—are always attained when we give them to others.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope; a slight change, and all patterns and configurations alter.
—Sharon Salzberg (Buddhist Teacher)

The man that makes a character, makes foes.
—Edward Young (English Poet)

I count false words the foulest plague of all.
—Aeschylus (Greek Playwright)

Confirm Key Decisions in Writing

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All human dealings are subject to intended and (largely) unintended misunderstandings and misinterpretations. In fact, when an agreement is distasteful, it’s easy to misunderstand.

Confirm oral agreements, instructions, and understandings in writing at the first chance you get. Don’t rely on just memory.

After meetings, email all the participants recording what was discussed. That way, if there’s ever a debate about what was discussed in the meeting, there is a written record to review. Do this even for phone calls if what was discussed is important. A helpful template:

I am confirming the agreement we reached at our meeting this afternoon. We decided on the following provisions: A, B, and C. Let me know as soon as possible if this information is not accurate so we can finalize this part of our negotiations. Call me to discuss any necessary changes if this doesn’t reflect your understanding.

Idea for Impact: “If it wasn’t written down, it wasn’t said.” Documenting critical decisions—your interpretation of it at least—helps avoid future fracas. If you don’t receive a written protest or correction, your account of the meeting stands accepted.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Avoid Battle
  2. Making the Nuances Count in Decisions
  3. Honest Commitments: Saying ‘No’ is Kindness
  4. Why New Expatriate Managers Struggle in Asia: Confronting the ‘Top-Down’ Work Culture
  5. How to Mediate in a Dispute

Three Rules That Will Decide If You Should Automate a Task

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To check if a process or a workstream is a good candidate for being automated, see if it meets all three of these criteria:

  1. The process must be a well-oiled machine. The requirements and outcomes are well established. Is the process stable enough to be automated?
  2. The process doesn’t need someone to engage with it each time. It doesn’t need manual intervention, oversight, excessive customization, or finesse. It runs in the backdrop; it’s boring and doesn’t require ‘higher-order’ thinking. Are there decision points within the process that require human intervention?
  3. The process is time-consuming. By automating it, will you save at least 4x what you’ll invest in automating it?

If the manual process is broken or doesn’t exist, then automating it before it’s a “well-oiled machine” may lead to mistakes and unnecessary rework. Establish success with the manual workflow before attempting to automate it.

Idea for Impact: Picking which processes to automate isn’t easy; yet, the closer you observe the workflow deeply, the sooner you can understand both the happy path to automation and the exceptions.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. You Can’t Develop Solutions Unless You Realize You Got Problems: Problem Finding is an Undervalued Skill
  2. Constraints Inspire Creativity: How IKEA Started the “Flatpack Revolution”
  3. Intellectual Inspiration Often Lies in the Overlap of Disparate Ideas
  4. Restless Dissatisfaction = Purposeful Innovation
  5. Four Ideas for Business Improvement Ideas

Inspirational Quotations #987

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Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the furies to agitate and torment it.—Frauds, crimes, remembrances of the past and terrors of the future, these are the domestic furies that are ever present to the minds of the impious.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.
—Herodotus (Ancient Greek Historian)

The most intangible, and therefore the worst kind of a lie, is a half-truth.—This is the peculiar device of the “conscientious” detractor.
—Washington Allston (American Artist, Writer)

Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.
—Isaac D’Israeli (English Writer, Scholar)

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (French Writer)

The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist’s imaginative life there is purpose. … Most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.
—Sherwood Anderson (American Fiction Writer)

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.
—George Bancroft (American Historian)

People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any act of Parliament.
—A. P. Herbert (English Humorist, Politician)

Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it’s the same with people.
—James Salter (American Fiction Writer)

My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they’re not really interested in.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

Play the Part of an Optimist

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'Spontaneous Optimism' by Mary Ann Troiani (ISBN 0938901095) Spontaneous Optimism: Proven Strategies for Health, Prosperity & Happiness (1998) by psychologists Mary Ann Troiani and Michael W. Mercer makes a case that optimism is a learned skill. This tome suggests three things you can do to enhance your optimism.

First, adopt a language that connotates positivity. Straighten your body before your emotions. Keep a straight body posture, take big steps, and walk quickly with your shoulders back and your head up. “Pessimistic people walk slowly with small steps and their heads down.”

Second, be on thought watch. Negative thoughts are more likely to contribute to a pessimistic view of life. Change your tone of voice to be cheerful, enthusiastic, and full of purpose. Let your voice echo these sentiments. Avoid talking to people who tend to have a pessimistic outlook—talking to someone who is also down or cynical about life can make you feel worse.

Third, use upbeat or happier words. Call a ‘problem’ a ‘challenge.’ ‘Losses’ are just ‘roadblocks.’ The authors note, “Positive thoughts and behavior have a positive impact on the brain’s biochemistry … They boost your serotonin levels and signal that you’re happy. Your brain will catch up to you.”

Idea for Impact: Deliberate practice of empowering body language can shift your mindset and moods. Optimism, imagery, and self-talk do work.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Avoid Control Talk
  2. “But, Excuse Me, I’m Type A”: The Ultimate Humblebrag?
  3. The Trouble with Accusing Someone of Virtue Signaling
  4. Narcissism Isn’t Confidence—It’s a Crisis of Worth
  5. How to … Change Your Life When Nothing Seems to be Going Your Way