It's Never Our Intention.....

"Please know that it's never our intention to inconvenience our best customers."

I wonder if customer service reps have been reading too many Dilbert comic strips. Scott Adams couldn't have come up with a better line.

This was part of an email that a friend of mine received from an airline, after her luggage had been lost. This is not the first time she's been inconvenienced. She travels monthly to South Carolina from Denver for her work as a consultant. Her luggage has been left behind so many times at the DC hub that she was beginning to wonder if the airline gods had it out for her. My friend is also quite witty. She added this clarifier: "Oh, good. I was beginning to think it really was me. As in the infamous breakup line, "It's not you. It's me." " Darn. I was getting used to calling her the Queen of Lost Luggage.

So here's a fun exercise. Complete this sentence 10 times, as fast as you can: It's never my intention to.....

So here goes:

1. It's never my intention to hurt my dear husband's feelings.
2. It's never my intention to hurt my sweet sons' feelings.
3. It's never my intention to have a dirty car with loose granola in the backseat and pebble and leaves on the car mats and windows that have grime from a full winter of driving.
4. It's never my intention to go back on my word and not write for thirty minutes each day when I told my coach I would do that.
5. It's never my intention to be late each morning in taking my kids to school.

You get the idea. What I'm struck by is the power of intention (to lift a phrase from Wayne Dyer). If it's not my intention to do these awful things, am I really intending to do the opposite--to listen carefully to my family and what they need, to keep a clean car, to keep my word, to be on time? Ouch. I've caught myself. (For all you writers out there, don't you just hate that?)

And as for the airline that my friend is still frequenting (so much so that the crew knows her by name...), what have you intended for your best customers in terms of a great customer experience?

Wheel...Of....Fortune!

I mailed three envelopes at the post office this evening. Inside each was an application for four tickets to attend tapings of Wheel of Fortune when the show comes to Denver.

My 10-year old son's favorite show is Wheel of Fortune. Every night at 6:30pm, he settles in front of the TV, to the familiar opening of Vanna and what's his name (really, for the life of me, I can't remember the guy's name right now.) One of my favorite memories of his childhood will be when he turned to me after the puzzle was solved and said, "What's a Plunging Neckline?" I made a U-shape near my neck (c'mon, I'm not going to corrupt my son so soon...) He still looked confused and then asked, "Is that the same as a receding hairline?" Well, sort of. Only it's alot more interesting.

Anyway, my son told me about the tapings in Denver and we found the application on the Web. Even though I'm not a regular Wheel Watcher, I'm game. I was just thinking tonight what I might wear to the taping if we are lucky enough to get tickets. Might I dress up as the letter "T?" Or maybe "Q" would be a bit more mysterious. Would I be disappointed at the actual set? The letters look so full and imposing on TV but what if we get there and it's no bigger than someone's backyard swing set?

I know one thing for sure. If we get tickets, my son will be bursting with excitement. And I'll be standing right next to him, just as excited.

Which brings me to my final point. It's okay to be a kid again and get excited about stuff that kids get excited about. I told you my theme this year was Boldness and Fun.......

Questions to Ponder

I came across an article, Questions to Ponder, that I wrote a few years ago. Sometimes, we need to let our silliness come out, even if it's in the privacy of our own mind. In the silliness is buried truth and our own humanity. Enjoy.

Breakdowns

I attended a coaching workshop this past weekend where one of the themes was declaring our breakdowns—the place where we know we are incompetent. Everyone is incompetent in something. We don’t want to admit it. Especially me. I thrive on being competent. I’m proud to be competent. I abhor being incompetent.

The instructor, Julio Olalla, founder of Newfield Network, is a loving and wise human being. He explained that if we never declare our breakdown, we can’t ask for help. If we can’t ask for help, we will continue to be in breakdown. And then what happens?

The breakdown declares us, instead of having us declare the breakdown. Ooohh, it’s a cruel world.

The last couple of days have been filled with breakdowns. My laptop complained of not being able to find the hard drive when I was trying to turn it on. Uh-oh. A colleague emailed that one of her tires had died and she was trying to get new tires on her car. A client was distraught over relationships with family members, thousands of miles away. If I don’t declare the breakdown, it will declare me.

Here’s what I noticed about breakdowns:

We can choose our reaction, even in breakdown. I was proud of the fact that I didn’t panic. I wasn’t completely sure of my appts for the day since my calendar is on Outlook. I remembered I had a coaching client at 10am but wasn’t sure who it was. Since the client calls me, it was fun to see who it would be. Yes, I actually enjoyed the surprise.

Breakdowns cause us to move out of our routine, to operate in different ways. When I found out my PC was dead, I started using my husband’s Mac for email. It felt awkward. I had to ask my son to help me set the brightness on the screen. The printer attached to the Mac is incredibly slow. I couldn’t open some attachments. The damn machine speaks to me, in a robotic tone of voice. I moved back and forth between the Mac in the playroom and my office where I have my “stuff.” It was like orbiting the sun and then having to go to Mercury every once in a while.

Breakdowns help you remember the resources you have. Awkward as it may have been, I did have access to email through my husband’s Mac. I emailed the backup service that I signed up with last year, just for this type of situation. The guy who runs it, thousands of miles away from me, emailed me back within the hour. He figured out a way to access my calendar, even though I had forgotten the “secret key” to my data. (Yes, it’s really called a secret key.) The Geeks on Call guy showed up the same day I called, even arriving 30 minutes earlier than expected. He helped me to understand the nature of failing hard drives, what it cost to replace one, and how long it would take to replace it.

As it turned out, my computer booted up perfectly, as I was on the Dell support line, trying to recreate the problem and inquiring if I was still under warranty (I was not.) It was Life’s little trick—helping me to see the nature of breakdowns, pointing out that they weren’t so bad after all.

The Geeks on Call guy came before I could call him about this amazing recovery. He took a look at the error log and gave me some options for when it might happen again. At $165 an hour, I expected to be charged for a house visit but he looked at me and said, “We’ll just call this a cancellation.” I couldn’t believe my ears.

Which leads me to my last point. Breakdowns can bring you to a place of gratitude. I think I’m ready to declare more breakdowns in my life. Thanks, Julio.

Belly Laugh Day is Today

I almost forgot. At 1:24pm local time today, I'll be with a coaching client, throwing up my arms to the heavens, and laughing joyously. How do I know that?

Today is Belly Laugh Day. I blogged about this previously and now the day is finally here. My chance to laugh out loud, for no reason at all, other than it feels good. With a client, no less.

So take some time to laugh. Today, tomorrow, and the next day. I promise it will feel great.

A Few Cool Things

I wanted to share a few cool things on the Internet that I've discovered recently. I'm usually a late adopter in new technology. The fact that I've discovered these things before my parents means I'm making progress on the geek ladder:

• www.squidoo.com. This is a site that is a platform for people to show their expertise on a topic (via a lens they build) and help other people wanting to learn about that topic to navigate the web efficiently. You can create as many "lenses" as you want, using some easy templates and building blocks. I tried this out by creating a lens called Living A Whole New Mind, about my journey from left-brained to whole-brained. It's just a shell at this point but it gave me enough of a taste to decide to return and improve it over time.

• www.flickr.com. This is a site where you can upload photos and share them with your family and friends. But the best thing is a section to view interesting photos that people have uploaded in the last seven days-the kind that you'd expect to see in an art gallery. What I find really ironic is that I am truly a late adopter in terms of photography equipment--I don't have a digital camera. Yet I'm hanging out at a site that is all about digital photos. Or maybe it's not really about that at all.

• www.skype.com. Alot of you probably have already used Skype to make free calls all over the world. I made my first Skype call this last week to Singapore and was thrilled to have a three-way call with dear friends who I have not talked to in almost a decade. It requires a headset with a microphone to plug into your computer which you can easily purchase at Radio Shack for about $10. The quality was a bit unpredictable (the call dropped about 5 times during a ninety minute call) but as my friend said, "You can't complain when it's free."

Bruce Mau on Growth

I'm still de-cluttering. In pile of papers that have been in the corner of my office for the last year, I ran across "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" by Bruce Mau. According to his website, his design studio works with "architects and institutions, artists and entrepreneurs, writers, curators, academics and businesses."

Out of 40+ items, here a few of my favorite from the Manifesto:

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words


I would add one more to Bruce's list:

44. Let go of the image of yourself. When you are willing to release who you think you are, you create the freedom to be who you want to be.

Let me know your favorites and what you would add to the list.

Charlie Brown and inboxes

Before I forget, I want to pass on two things that have given me great pleasure.

One of them I had planned on blogging about over the holiday season. My husband is a piano teacher extraordinaire and one of his students gave him a CD of the original soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Even if you are one of these people who hates the holidays, this is the type of music that lights up a room with joy. There was an article in the paper last month about the composer, Vince Guaraldi. He died at 47, nearly forty years ago, and left a distinctive upbeat jazz sound that we now associate with Snoopy dancing on Schroeder's piano. The CD was selling at Starbucks so you just might find it on sale this month...

The other thing that has been giving me a great sense of satisfaction is cleaning out my email inbox. I've been unsubscribing to newsletters as part of this clearing out, even ones written by people I like. I've written personal notes to alot of the authors, as opposed to hitting the unsubscribe button, explaining my need to clear space. I still get more newsletters than I would like but this initial round has given me the experience of trusting that I will get what I need, with fewer subscriptions and less time. It has also given me a critical eye for where my creative juices need to focus.

Competence, Balance, and Impact

A friend emailed me, confirming my order for a facial cleanser that she sells as part of a direct marketing company (think Mary Kay). She then remarked that she has much more energy for this work, where she runs her own show and watches the profit and loss statements carefully, than her 9-5 corporate job. In her words, “It's late at night and I"m having fun working on my business when a few hours ago, I dragged myself out of my office at 5pm exhausted.”

This is a woman who is a professional in a large high-tech company. She is in a role that requires competence, intellect, and knowledge of corporate politics to survive. She is not a drone on the factory floor. She confesses that a decade ago, she worked 16 hours day without a second thought and now, it’s hard to put in 8 hours.

Here’s how I responded in email:

“What comes to mind is that you can see the impact of your efforts more readily with your side business. And I think we all yearn for impact, especially as we get older. When I was younger, it was about being competent. Now, I still want to be competent at what I do. But that’s not enough. It has to have impact.

And it may also be that like me, you are an entrepreneur at heart. I didn’t realize how much I enjoy running my own show until I left the corporate world. I make a lot less now but there’s a real satisfaction in knowing that I generated every penny that comes through the door.”

This exchange got me thinking. In my twenties, it was all about competence. In my thirties, what I focused on was balance. (Having babies tends to do that to you, real quick.) Now in my forties, I yearn for impact.

My guess is that this evolution is typical of my generation. I’m at the tail end of the Baby Boomers, with a birth year of 1961. I described this evolution to another woman in her forties and she immediately resonated with it.

Could it be that the Gen X and Gen Y workers are more apt to go straight for balance and impact? Indeed, this may be a source of friction in today’s workplaces. My friend commented on this point. “A lot of the balance that I get from corporate America (e.g. flexibility) has been gained through showing competence. My boss knows I can do the work therefore, if I leave for a few hours to read at my kids school no prob...I call this sweat equity.”

Still another friend remarked that her niece in her early twenties was berating her older co-workers for not having balance in their lives and making time for fitness. It’s unclear whether this young ‘un is considered competent by her boss.

No matter how you get there, impact seems to be what most people want in the end. Impact is intertwined with meaning. In order to perceive that I’m having an impact, I must assign meaning as well. It’s part and parcel of impact. And meaning is defined by me, not by anyone else.

As a young engineer, my work had meaning because I knew I had done my engineering work well, with confidence. But the impact of my work was dubious. Projects got canceled more than once and I moved on to the next hot thing in the company. Meaning is necessary but not sufficient to having impact.

The question I ask myself now is, “What impact do I have on others?” It matters that I performed well. It matters even more that I gave to others in a positive way. I measure impact by the number of people who are affected by my work, as well as the depth to which people are touched/transformed/inspired/changed. In other words, breadth and depth.

And where does balance fit in? After all, balance is fleeting. No one “achieves” balance and puts it under a glass case, forever to be admired. I am always working at balance, and the world is constantly shifting either into balance or out of balance for me. It’s as if I am on my tippy toes, trying to find the right way to cross the narrow beam. With time and practice, it doesn’t feel so scary. I know what corrective movements to make with the rest of my body. But it still requires me to be aware and to proactively make adjustments to remain on the beam. Or fall off.

Without balance, impact turns to burnout. It is by nurturing myself that I can have an impact over time. Balance and impact are in a delicate dance.

Competence, balance, impact. Where are you on your journey?

Self-Care and Self-Acceptance

I had a conversation recently with a woman about self-care. She brought up the analogy of putting on your oxygen mask first on an airplane before helping others with their oxygen mask.

Self-care is an inherent part of balance. Without self-care, there's no replenishing of the spirit. And without that, efforts to give back to the world are half-fueled. This is when we know we are out of balance. Things get hard.

Self-acceptance is a close cousin to self-care. Julia Cameron writes about it beautifully. (I'm still working through her book, The Sound of Paper. The local library is expecting a timely return later this week....) Julia's wisdom:

"Self-appreciation is a discipline, and it is grounded in a sense of self-worth. We must believe that we are worthy of our own approval, and then we must give it to ourselves consciously and concretely....Self-acceptance makes it easier for us to be large. How then do we work, then, to accept ourselves? It begins with a determination to remember the beauty of our own personality....If I felt I were beautiful enough, good enough, and worthy enough, how would I act? Act that way."

An exercise from the book helps to ground this idea of acceptance in our everyday life. Number from 1-10. Complete the following phrases as rapidly as possible:

1. Something I really appreciate about myself is___________________

2. Something I really appreciate about myself is___________________

Well, you get the idea. As I scribbled my answers, I started feeling better and better. It's a gift to yourself to do this work.

Saying No

In a newsletter from a fellow coach, Michael Bungay Stanier, I received these definitions of great work and good work:

1. Work that goes beyond its functional intention and moves us in deep and mysterious ways, we call great work.

2. Work that is conceived and executed with elegance and rigor, we call good work.

Michael then goes on to ask the question:

What would you have to say "no" to, to double the amount of Great Work in your life?

Yes, indeed. What would I have to say "no" to?

I have given alot of thought to my theme for 2006, Boldness and Fun. What I've realized is that Boldness is just as much what we say "no" to as what we say "yes" to. There is boldness in whittling down my projects to bet on work that will move me in deep and mysterious ways.

A related thought that keeps coming up in my life: Focus on the good stuff.

This applies to everything from deciding whether to eat the store brand ice cream my son picked out, to the unread books in my office that I'm not compelled now or in the future to read (even if I did get them for free), to the pens in my pen holder that I'll never use because I have my favorite Pilot G-2's. The same goes for movies, projects, television shows, relationships, newsletters. When I spend time and energy (or calories) on the less than good stuff, I'm usually disappointed, with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. The question then appears, "Why settle for a less than Great Experience?"

Which brings me to my last point. This blog is meant to provide a great experience. For me and for you. If you find that it's not, let me know. And move on to focusing on the good stuff for yourself. I'm picky about the blogs that I spend time reading and you should be as well.

Something I Thought I'd Never See

A recent Wall Street Journal article proclaimed, "India's Talent Pool Drying Up." The subtitle said it all--"Tech Sector Suffers as Wages Surge and Multinationals Splurge." Just a few years ago, multinational companies were setting up branches in Bangalore and Pune and signing contracts with Indian software companies like Infosys and Wipro, cashing in on cheap engineers. Now, according to this recent article, all the good talent has been taken. Wages are rising 15% in the tech industry in India, and the consulting firm McKinsey predicts a shortage of 500,000 workers as soon as 2010.

What's happening? I'm reading the book, "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. This is a great book for understanding the forces that have made the world smaller, hierarchies flatter, and connected once-disparate markets. The author describes some of the forces, "flatteners" that kick-started the outsourcing movement to places like India--Y2K, the dotcom boom and the high tech bust. He chronicles the first multinationals doing business in India--Texas Instruments in 1985 and GE in the early 90's. It's taken less than 15 years for the world's appetite for Indian engineers to outstrip supply. And if you think about momentum really gaining after Y2K, then it's taken less than 6 years for this situation to emerge.

My conclusion is that the pace of flattening is increasing. Markets move to equilibrium faster and then find a new place where there is a disparity in terms of what things cost and the value delivered to other parts of the world. The WSJ article speculates that the new India will be Russia and the Philippines, where English is widely spoken. I'll be watching with interest.

Expiration Dates

On New Year’s Day, I felt the urge to de-clutter. The spark hit me as I opened up the door to the medicine cabinet. Expiration dates are a great thing. They give you an excuse to throw something out, even if the voice of your penny-pinching, frugal Aunt Bertha screams, “Don’t throw that out! You might need it someday!” Would I really want to rely on medications that are expired, when I’m in the throes of a nasty cold, a painful sunburn, or constipation?

So here’s what got tossed this last week:

Dermoplast. Pain relieving spray. The institutional package, hospital strength. Circa 1993, last used when I returned from the hospital after having my first son. The pinpoint opening from this aerosol can is yellow and crusted over. Packaging declares, “Fast relief of PAIN and ITCH from sunburn, insect bites, minor burns and scrapes.” It may be used for these ailments, but I would always associate this product with having to sit on an air-filled donut after coming home from the hospital. Expiration: July 1999.

ex-lax. Laxative pills. Regular strength. Unopened. This is one that Aunt Bertha would clearly object to throwing out. Given to me by a friend as a practical joke at my 40th birthday party. Packaging reads, “for gentle, dependable overnight relief.” My family already thinks I spend too much time in the bathroom. I don’t think they’d appreciate me in there overnight. Expiration: October 2000.

Benadryl. Antihistamine. Children’s version. Allergy chewables, grape flavored. Two packages, both opened and three-quarters full. My kids hate grape flavored stuff. I can’t believe I got one of them to ingest this. “For relief of sneezing, itchy watery eyes, runny nose, and itchy throat.” These symptoms could be found in any single day in our household, but not because of allergies. I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that the front of one package shows a mother figure nurturing a boy figure. The other package has a boy, upside down, swinging from a tree. Now which is it? Expiration: July 2003 and February 2004.

Cortaid. Anti-itch cream. Itching seems to be a trend here. Maximum strength. Who would want anything less? The tube is well used. It looks as if the semi-arid Denver weather and the last user’s application have left the container bone dry. Pressing on the tube only yields the sound of plastic surrounded by air. No expiration.

Travel sickness medication. 100 chewable tablets. Last taken a couple of years ago when I was experiencing vertigo upon waking up in the morning. “Uses: Prevents and treats nausea, vomiting, dizziness due to motion sickness.” Traveling in your dreams does not count. Expiration: March 2005

Dramamine. Chewable formula. “The Most Recommended Motion Sicknesss Medicine Ever.” Unopened. Bought on behalf of one of my sons, probably coming home from a birthday party with too much candy and ice cream in the stomach. Expiration: October 2003

Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold Medicine. Unopened. Two packages, sample size, two tablets. Must have come in the plastic wrappers from the Sunday paper. One is Orange Zest flavored. The other is Cherry Burst flavored. The flavors remind me of chewing gum, or maybe an icy snow-cone on a hot August day. I rarely take medicines for colds because it doesn’t seem to do any good. Expiration: March 2004.

Children’s Tylenol Cold. Suspension Liquid. (Not to be confused with suspension bridges, suspenseful stories, or sinister suspects.) “Cold Plus Cough.” Packaging shows a figure of a round face boy, coughing into an open hand. I don’t know who the model was for the artist, but it certainly wasn’t one of my kids. There’s no polite “I’ll keep my germs to myself” motion in the Ross household. Expiration: January 2003.


As I type these expiration dates, I have to keep reminding myself that this is the year 2006. Have I really lived through so many expiration dates and not realized it?

Going through my medicine cabinet has been an exercise in excavating my family’s past ills, real and imagined. It makes me realize that I can do with a lot less safety nets for the middle of the night pains. (The local grocery store is just a mile down the street, with fresh, unexpired medications.)

Here’s what I’m wondering about now. What else in my life has reached its expiration date, without me noticing? And if I took a few minutes to notice, what would I realize I could do without, even in the face of Aunt Bertha’s insistent voice?