You might motivate like Spock if you focus on…
Other ideas on this? Add a comment and let us know…
First, if you have not watched Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion – please, please do. It is funny….ha, ha, ha, he, he, ha…. (ok, I need to work on my laugh – you’ll see the connection after watching).
Joss Whedan on why he developed Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog:
We had three very cute baby Raccoons in our yard last Thursday night. They were fearless, lost, adorable and wondering around lost without a mother. Kind of like employees without a good leader…but more on that later.
We went out and watched them as the toddled around the yard and gardens. They were obviously hungry. The smallest one could not keep up with its siblings and kept cooing out to them (that’s the only way I could describe it, like a mix between a cat’s “meow” and and owl’s “who”). The siblings would circle back and rub noses with the smallest one. They would try to get it to climb the rock wall to the garden or move under the table. The smallest Raccoon would waddle slowly after them and try to keep up.
But the siblings were hungry and cold themselves and soon enough – they left the smallest one by itself.
The next morning, the smallest one was almost dead by the side of the garage.
I read “Sales Comp Demands a Deep Sales Dive, Not a Best Practices Quest” by Ann Bares on Compensation Force yesterday – the article really resonated with me. The basic premise of the article is that companies should focus on understanding their sales force and not depend on best practices. Ann states it best when she says, “the problem with the notion of best practices in HR is that it too often leads to a blind search-copy-cut-paste effort whereby we simply lift popular program elements (out of professional journals, books, studies, etc.) and implement them, without sufficient thought as to their fit and strategic applicability.”
It resonated because it is right-on but also because I just completed an assignment for a company where they were looking for “best practices.”
I didn’t give them any (we’ll not really – more on that later…).
I was in South Dakota last week on a family vacation. First off, I forget how beautiful South Dakota is and all that it has to offer. Secondly, there are some really, really humongous carvings there…
The original idea for Mount Rushmore is credited to South Dakota historian Doane Robinson who thought that it would increase tourism (he was a pretty insightful man). His idea was to carve local famous people into some of the granite mountains of the Black Hills. In 1924, after working on Stone Mountain, GA, sculptor Gutzon Borglum was brought in to carve the mountain.
Mt. Rushmore
Borglum expanded on the original idea and wanted it to be a National monument that focused on our presidents. He insisted that his life’s work would not be spent immortalizing regional heroes but insisted that the work demanded a subject national in nature and timeless in its relevance to history.
Borglum started work on Mt. Rushmore in 1927 at the age of 60. He worked the rest of his life on the mountain.
I just spent the last week in South Dakota with my family. It was a needed break from the day-to-day stuff that has been going on for the last six months.
A time to unwind and relax. A time to reconnect and think. A time to focus on things other than work and obligations…
Buffalo at Wind Cave National Park
I’ve talked taking time off before in order to recharge ourselves (see here: refreshabbatical). I’ve realized that it is very important that we do this – and yet it is so hard. I wanted to take the time off completely – without checking in or doing any work.
Oh well…
I ended up needing to be on some conference calls, figuring out a problem with one of our rental units, and checking back into see how an issue was being resolved at work. As a result I was up way earlier than I wanted to be while on vacation. Putting it mildly, that sucked. Setting an alarm for 5:00 AM while on vacation to take a conference call is not my idea of fun.
But by doing it early, I was able to spend all day with the family – every day.
And I didn’t check twitter, or my blog, or the internet or even the news. It was almost blissful!
What is it that drives meaning in work? True, real meaning that goes beyond the obvious “completed this project” or “achieved that goal”? I have some ideas, but would love to hear what other people have to say first. I’ll keep a track of the responses we get and put up another post on this with some ideas at a later time.
So please, leave a thought in the comment section!
As noted before – I am on the board of the non-profit Economic Growth Centers in Minneapolis (http://www.egcmn.org). We are looking for experts and leaders who have some wisdom to share.
Economic Growth Centers (EGC) is focused on strengthening the economic vitality of Twin Cities communities and neighborhoods. We do this through helping small businesses grow and prosper.
Small companies are the engines of economic growth for the USA – yet they do not have many of the human or economic resources that larger firms do.
Our goal is to create a library of on-line training presentations that can be accessed at any time for free by small business owners, managers, and employees. By providing small business leaders and employees with the skills and information that they need to prosper, Economic Growth Centers is helping them grow revenue, increase buying, add employees, and build out infrastructure, thus increasing the economic vitality of the Twin Cities Metro area as well as other communities across the country.
We are looking for experts in various fields to volunteer to host our training seminars. By volunteering your time and expertise you are helping these small businesses grow and prosper. The library will be focused around key developmental areas that small businesses need to grow:
The success of this endeavor depends on ensuring that we have a robust offering of meaningful courses – I would encourage anyone who is interested in presenting to contact me at kurt@lanterngroup.com or at 612-396-6392 to get further information.
Please share this with people you know who you think might be a good fit. Thank you!
Kurt
I was walking with my 4-year old child to the park. It’s just a few blocks away, an easy walk for him most days. But not today – he wants to be carried.
“I’m tired.” He says. Huh? He was just gung ho about going.
No matter how I try to get him to continue walking, he won’t. I try to use reason – “it’s just two blocks – you can do that.” I try to encourage – “you’re a big kid now who can do this easily.” I use incentives – “if you walk, we can stay an extra 15 minutes at the park”
It is all to no avail…
Ok. I pick him up and carry him on my shoulders. I carry him until the edge of the playground – and now…
Now he is full of energy. He wants down. He takes off. I can’t catch him. He runs, he slides, he swings and he plays….on and on and on.
So here is my question – do I have a lazy kid or did his motivation just kick in? Was it the proximity effect or was he rested because I carried him? Was I played? In the end it doesn’t matter: he enjoyed the park and I enjoyed watching him.
PS – I made him walk the whole way home.
Tell me your experience with motivating a child…
Yesterday I wrote about how we are not rational. Today, we look at how sometimes we don’t even see things that are right in front of our eyes! Take a look.
Did you see the bear the first time? I know when I first did this test, I didn’t. How long did it take you to notice the changes in the 2nd video? I didn’t catch it until about 3/4 the way through and I was looking for it.
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