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How do you accomplish really big audacious goals? Hey, that’s easy – break it into lots of little ones, of course!

Hmmm… it seems to me I’ve mentioned before about the network marketing business I’ve recently gotten into, right? (Sound of groans from the audience.) Well, one key concept to success in our NM business can be nicely summed up by this phrase: it’s not what you do; it’s what you… start.

It simply means that eventual success is built upon your initial actions.

OK class, what that translates to for our particular NM business is two-fold, and can be summed up as follows: first, each Associate finds 10 customers, then signs up 3 Associates and teaches them to do the same. We call this the Power Unit (has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?), and completing it is the gateway to earning residual income from all customers that subsequently sign up in the Associate’s downline (which is all Associates below them in the organization).

As with all NM businesses, it works by duplication, and over time it can add up to quite a large number of Associates and customers in your downline. (Just as a for instance, the group leader we’re under has over 3,100 Associates and well over 10,000 customers in his downline after working the business about 28 months.) So, as each Associate does exactly the same thing, then incredible things can happen!

Anyway, the other day I called a friend of mine in order to invite him to become one of my Associates, only to discover he’d been in the business for about two years already (Ignite has been in business since March of 2005). But here’s the thing – he was no longer actively doing anything at all with it. In fact, the sum total of what he’d done was to sign up one single Associate – and then he stopped. No customers, no more Associates. Done. Finis. End of Story.

About a year and a half passed.

By the time I got around to calling him, he hadn’t even thought about it in quite a while. He had no idea what had developed in his downline, so after we talked, he began to do some checking.

Remember that one Associate he signed up? Well, he made the astonishing discovery that  his downline now consisted of an organization of 214 Associates! Whoa Nellie! Can you believe it? Here my friend was, down in the dumps because he felt he wasn’t accomplishing anything – only to find out a large dynamic organization was being built below him – not because of what he was doing, but because of what he… started!

You want to know the sad part? Because he never completed his Power Unit (10 customers and 3 Associates) he hasn’t qualified to earn the residual income from all the customers those 214 Associates in his downline have signed up! No core team - no income. He’s missing out on hundreds, and eventually thousands of dollars of passive, residual income every single month – just because he got discouraged and quit!

OK, here’s the thing.

You got some goals, perhaps even big, audacious goals you want to achieve? Sometimes, after the thrill of coming up with them starts to wane, you find yourself looking at them and thinking, “Now how am I going to accomplish this thing, anyway?”

Of course the answer is to break it down into smaller, more achievable steps, then focus on accomplishing those instead. That way the big, final goal becomes the inspiration for all the little ones along the way.

Plus, each little goal, when successfully attained, gives you progressively more confidence, making it that much easier to make it to the next step. Consistent, along-the-way encouragement plus a big picture vision will propel you forward far more than just the vision alone, no matter how wonderful it is.

When you get right down to it, success in any endeavor is pretty much built in the same way. Remember that phrase I mentioned at the beginning of this article?

It’s not what you do; it’s what you… start!

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Can you change the world by jiggling eggs? (And please note: that’s jiggling, not juggling – because juggling eggs is just… messy. Yuk.)

When Mrs. MZM and I first started grocery shopping together (I realize this admission will probably earn me a sharp reprimand from the MMA - the Manly Men’s Association - but hey, I can take it), well, it was quite the learning experience for poor little ol’ unsophisticated me. I mean, prior to our engagement, my favorite home-cooked foods tended to range from fried spam sandwiches (I’m tellin’ ya – they’re the BEST!) to anything that included the words “Hamburger Helper” on the box.

Ah, well, luckily I proved to be somewhat teachable. Over the years I’ve managed to learn a few things about the fine art of grocery shopping, particularly about certain foods. (Although I still miss my spam sandwiches. *sigh*)

Case in point: eggs. The very first time I observed Mrs. MZM buying eggs, I noticed she carefully examined the ends of each carton, looking for the one with the latest date. It’s pretty obvious, really, but I realized that was something I’d literally never given a passing thought to. I usually assumed that any eggs on the shelf were OK.

(A side note – of course, now that I know about expiration dates, I would never even consider eating an egg past its date; even the thought turns my stomach. But back then, I could have done it unknowingly, and who cared? Funny how perceptions influence reactions, isn’t it? But I digress.)

Anyway, after selecting a particular carton of eggs, she opened it up and used her finger to, er, jiggle each egg, one by one. Interesting; I’d never seen that done before. In fact, after 25 years of marriage, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else doing it either.

The reason is once again obvious (once she explained it, of course – back then, I was dumber than a post regarding this stuff): it’s to check if any of them are broken. Broken eggs will stick to the carton and can’t be moved, even slightly (not to mention stink to high heaven). Don’t you hate it when you get a carton of eggs home and then discover one or more are already broken? Well, this never happens to her!

Nowadays, Mrs. MZM can even send me to the store, alone, resting easy in the knowledge that any eggs I buy will be: a) good for a while, and b) unbroken in the carton. (‘Course, I still tend to go for the ice cream aisle. Sadly, I’m weak that way.)

The other day while at the grocery store, Mrs. MZM told me a young woman watched her do her egg-checking ritual, and then came up and asked her about it. The woman was amazed, and resolved to do the same thing from then on.

So…

I think the real question here is, Are you teachable? If you encounter an opportunity to learn something new, does it turn into a traumatic experience? And when you find yourself getting dragged (drug?) out of your comfort zone, do you go out kicking and screaming all the way?

Or, does it come easy? I assure you, it’s not a trivial question!

I submit (and believe me, I’m including myself in this one too!) that cultivating an attitude of learning is the absolute best way to make it through the lessons life has to give us. I mean, c’mon – does anyone honestly expect their lives to be without bumps or setbacks (if you do, you’re living in a dream world, my friend!)

So how do we get through those times? Why, we learn something new, that’s how!

Now, along about here is where I’m supposed to come up with some great philosophical grandiose pronouncement that sums everything up. Well, after due consideration, all I can think of is this question (and note I didn’t say profound!):

Can one change the world by jiggling eggs? You tell me! (Told you it wasn’t very profound..)

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What I Learned About Leadership by Writing a Book About Leadership

by Kevin Eikenberry, Remarkable Author

When Robert asked me to write a “What I learned” story, I was honored and pleased. After all, I’m always asking my consulting clients and workshop participants to reflect on things that happened as a way to learn and improve. After thinking about it for a minute I decided to write about what I learned about leadership from writing a book about leadership (Remarkable Leadership: Unleashing Your Leadership Potential One Skill at a Time).

Some might think this idea is counter-intuitive – that I should know something about leadership before being so bold as to write about it. I did know some things about it before I began, but I know more now. Here are five of the things I learned:

I learned a lot about the publishing process. While I’ve been a contributing author many times and while I’ve written a book that was published by a small publisher, working with Jossey-Bass was a new experience. I learned that timelines matter (and yes, I met them) if you want to get your book to the market on time. I learned that my editor and everyone involved on the J-B team cares about books (which is comforting), and I learned that they like to think long-term, which also makes me happy.

I learned how to clarify my leadership values and beliefs. It is one thing to consult and training on things, writing them down is a more rigorous process than either of those other pursuits. Writing forces focus and drives clarity on what you really mean. All of us know that, but in this process it became even clearer to me. I now know at a much deeper level how all of the pieces of my beliefs about remarkable leadership are inter-related – more than I ever thought possible.

I learned about sharing responsibility, and not just delegating. When writing one chapter I asked a number of colleagues to tell me how they felt about the concepts of delegation and sharing responsibility. I asked them to consider their answers both from the perspective of the leader and the receiver/follower. The answers and the resulting conversations made it very clear that the difference is much more about the intent of the leader than anything else. Delegation feels like dumping work – sharing responsibility is about building competency. Which do you want to receive? Which do you want engender in your organization. This is a simple concept to type onto my screen, but I believe the implications of this difference for us as leaders are huge.

I learned the power of role modeling. If I write something that my team (or my clients or my kids) read, then I better be doing it! Do you think I hold myself to a higher standard in a variety of areas now? You bet I do. While I learned this through writing, I believe all highly effective remarkable leaders must be clear on what is important and share that with their team – even if it requires them to work harder to live up to those standards.

I learned that the line between personal development and leadership development is even finer than I previously believed. I’ve always thought there was a fine line between personal and professional development. I now realize that when we become better leaders we become better humans. 90+% of what I wrote applies to everyone, regardless of their job description. These skills make us better neighbors, parents and co-workers too. It is exciting to recognize this fact. As I allowed it to sink into my subconscious, it has improved my approach to learning and accelerated my progress in many areas of my life.

This certainly isn’t all I learned, but these are five of the most valuable lessons for me – all five of these lessons will help me be more effective (dare I say remarkable?) as both a professional and an individual.

Thanks for the chance to share, Robert!

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Exactly how much impact do your actions have on the rest of the world, anyway? Do you know? Is there any way to really measure it? And what about the ripple effect of consequences that travel down the time stream? Where will they stop (sound of Twilight Zone theme) – or do they?

OK, OK, enough with the twenty questions, already! (Alright; it was only six, but I think you get my meanin’!)

When I was working in Portland, Oregon, my office was located in a group of temporary buildings at the job site. Now normally these things are little more than air-conditioned boxes, connected together (#1,693 of the 10,000 ways to use duct tape) and set on pilings. (I wrote about one of my adventures in this very place in the post, What a Ride!)

Anyway, ours was just one of many such offices, clumped together in a sortof grid layout. It was almost like a little miniature town; we had the inevitable security trailer, infirmary, cafeteria, 30 to 40 different vendors’ trailers – I’m tellin’ ya; we had it all.

The entire area was built on what used to be an open field which originally was mostly just dirt. Once the trailer-hive was established, though, the entire area was covered with crushed rock (it helps minimize the mud during rains – and in Portland it rains all the time). It wasn’t exactly flat, either; there were a few slopes and little hills to negotiate when walking from place to place.

Actually, that’s where I ran into trouble one day. I mean, there I was, just mindin’ my own cotton-pickin’ business walking between trailers when I took a slight misstep (actually, my stupid foot slipped off the stupid edge of the stupid concrete sidewalk) and tumbled down the side of a short slope (sound of prolonged crashing and burning). Pencils, clipboard and soft drink – man, it all went flying; ending up in a painful pile at the bottom.

What makes something like this so humiliating was that it pretty much was my own fault. Yep, you’ve been there, right? After all, I’d only been walking since I was, oh, about two. Grbl, grbl. Just not paying enough attention to where I was putting my feet – which is pretty much a cardinal rule on any construction site.

Sure enough, I’d sprained my right ankle. Several nearby workers saw the accident and came rushing over to help. After determining there were no immediate life-threatening injuries (other than my pride, that is), they ended up carrying me like a sack of potatoes to the infirmary. Copious numbers of cold packs were wrapped around my already swelling ankle.

The rest of the day I spent popping extra-strength Tylenol, my foot propped up on my desk. No doubt the aforementioned workers spent the rest of the day regaling their fellows with the soon-to-be-classic Tale of the Clumsy Engineer. I felt really, really bad – both physically and mentally.

To add insult to injury, then the even more painful process of accident reporting began. Augh, the paperwork! You wouldn’t believe how many forms there are to fill out for something like this. In fact, because they go into such depth it’s not called a report; it’s an investigation.

Don’t get me wrong; it has to be done. The idea is to prevent such things from happening, so if the investigation finds something useful, it’s implemented right away to keep anyone else from getting hurt.

(I want to say this because I really believe it: Safety really is the number one priority at most job sites; it must be. I’ll tell you why in a minute.)

Ah well. Eventually the ankle healed, the lessons learned, and life went on. No big deal, right?

Well, not quite.

Fast forward with me (sound of chipmunks discussing the weather) to around the present day. I’m sitting in our weekly Project Managers’ meeting, and one of the things we talk about and discuss every meeting are the safety incidents from the previous week. This particular week there were not one, but two incidents where somebody backed their vehicle into a pole. Sheesh! How can people be so stupid?

Then there was this one guy who turned his ankle when he stepped off a concrete walkway… (sound of needle scratching on a record) Huh? Hey, that sounded just like what happened to me years ago in Oregon! Man, for a moment, I could even briefly feel the pain of that swollen ankle.

But for some reason it really hit me right then (sound of dull thud – hey, I may be slow, but sooner or later I’ll “get it”!): What happened to me didn’t just affect me personally, nor even the immediate circle of people surrounding me at the time. No, that incident got reported and discussed all the way up the ladder to the top!

But why would they even care, you ask? Well Bubba, give yourself a prize because you just asked the right question!

Here’s why it’s such an issue – and this is important, folks. It’s because our engineering firm’s ability to win contracts is partly dependent upon a certain minimum level of safety – as determined by the number and type of incidents (there’s a ranking system). When our safety incident level is greater than zero – well, it would be an understatement to say it gets plenty of attention.

See, in a manner of speaking, engineering firms like mine live and die by, among other things, their safety records. In fact, no client will award a contract to a company with a poor safety record – and it’s usually spelled out in most clients’ requests for proposals.

So what to me was just a simple little sprained ankle, well, for my company it had a direct bearing on the gain or loss of literally millions of dollars in business! Now there’s a consequence that’s easy to understand!

Just bear in mind, friends; everything we do has consequences. Some good; some bad – some planned and some, well, not so much. But never forget the ripple effect, either. You might be surprised how far it can reach, and what will come back to haunt you!

(photo Blue Ripples by hotblack)

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

I won’t have much time today (none, actually), but that’s OK, I still have a treat for you. The Practice of Leadership blog has always been one of my favorite reads, and George Ambler has some recent posts I thought were exceptionally good.

So, in lieu of trying to summarize, embellish, or otherwise add unnecessary comments, I simply give you:

Fish rot from the head down, as do organizations

The Army’s Leadership Framework and Philosophy

Leaders are NOT parents!

Five Steps to Engaging Your Employees

Management f-Laws

Take a few minutes this week and read these posts, then bookmark the blog. You’ll thank me later.

By the way, you may or may not have noticed a new feature I’m trying out here at the Zone. If you hover your cursor over a link, you should see a preview page of the link pop up automatically. This is a free widget from Snap, and it works only on the body of the blog posts. Thanks to John Koetsier for the heads-up. Let me know what you think!

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

And here I thought it was just me.

A recent article from Leigh Buchanan at Inc. magazine, The Imposter Syndrome, examines something most people experience at some time or other: feeling like a fake, despite their apparent success. It’s that nagging feeling that you’re not as smart, or as good, as other people think you are. (NOTE: This is not to be confused with the feeling that you’re OK but everyone ELSE is a fake. That’s called arrogance, and you’ve got a real problem there, my friend…)

“People who feel like fakes chalk up their accomplishments to external factors such as luck and timing, or worry they are coasting on charm and personality rather than on talent. Psychological research done in the early 1980s estimated that two out of five successful people consider themselves frauds; other studies have found that 70 percent of all people feel like fakes at one time or another.”

What I find most amazing is the prevalence of this feeling, even among otherwise apparently successful people. It’s most prevalent among high achievers, and stems from an inability to internalize their accomplishments. If you’re reading this and you are, for instance, a successful entrepreneur, academic, or other management type, then chances are you’ve felt it too. Ironically enough, according to the article, research indicates that being an entrepreneur may actually enhance such feelings because of the lack of scrutiny from bosses.

That actually does make sense. When you’re the boss, you’re expected to know everything about everything; to be expert in all facets of your business. Unfortunately, few people are experts in many areas – after all, that’s why you hire other people to run the parts of your business you can’t run yourself. Other peoples’ expectations, combined with little or no upward management scrutiny, contribute to that nagging feeling that sooner or later, someone will find out you’re really NOT the expert they think you are.

A Google search for the phrase “Imposter Syndrome” yields 47,200 hits, including the first hit, Imposter Syndrome, the website of Dr. Valerie Young. Amid other interesting information, there’s a simple quiz you can take, reproduced (with permission) here:

• Do you secretly worry that others will find out that you’re not as bright and capable as they think you are?
• Do you sometimes shy away from challenges because of nagging self-doubt?
• Do you tend to chalk your accomplishments up to being a “fluke,” “no big deal” or the fact that people just “like” you?
• Do you hate making a mistake, being less than fully prepared or not doing things perfectly?
• Do you tend to feel crushed by even constructive criticism, seeing it as evidence of your “ineptness?”
• When you do succeed, do you think, “Phew, I fooled ‘em this time but I may not be so lucky next time.”
• Do you believe that other people (students, colleagues, competitors) are smarter and more capable than you are?
• Do you live in fear of being found out, discovered, unmasked?

If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then not only are you NOT alone, but you’ve got some pretty good company (that’s other high achievers like yourself).

I guess never realized just how widespread and how debilitating this could be. Certainly I’ve experienced the feeling many times, despite my own qualifications, abilities, etc. Please, realize that help is available. As Richard Bach once said, “Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but that mark of a fake messiah.”

Sometimes, just knowing you’re not the only one is enough.

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about storytelling. No, not lying or making up stuff, silly! I mean telling stories as a means of conveying things, like values or knowledge.

Now, storytelling isn’t exactly new, but in the business world it does seem to be gaining ground as something of a specialty area. Anecdote, a consulting business in Australia focused almost entirely on storytelling and sensemaking, provides us with a couple of excellent illustrations of powerful storytelling in this post. I am particularly taken by the stained glass window concept (thanks, Shawn, for the vivid image!)

I love telling stories. When I speak, teach or write, I try to make my word pictures clear enough so my audience can easily visualize what I’m trying to get across. Real life stories are the best, because there’s a certain innate truthfulness in them listeners pick up on when a story teller relates things that actually happened to them. But I’ll come back to that in a minute.

John Koestier at Bizhack wrote a post a few days ago that also intrigued me. His idea that blogs (at least personal blogs) can serve as a “songline” (or, for the musically-challenged, a story line) made me realize what I enjoy so much about reading certain blogs. It’s that “first person” experience, in which I’m able to empathize with the writer. That’s what makes it (at least for me) somewhat compelling. Pretty cool thought, John. I like it!

This morning, though, Shawn’s mention of Al Gore in another Anecdote post about what makes good storytellers made me think of another aspect of storytelling that may have a great impact on the value of the stories being told.

Storytelling has its dark side, too, mainly because people are so easily swayed by stories. The fact is if you tell a compelling story that prescribes a course of action, people will jump on board. One reason stories are so powerful is that they have the ability to “draw in” their audience. Put a guy at a podium and have him spout figures and facts, and you’ll see eyes glazing over in no time. But, if the facts are incorporated into a story form, the audience is immediately more engaged and willing to listen. It’s just the way we are.

But what about the storyteller? Why should we listen to the stories they tell? Why should we believe them? Here is the crux of the matter, to my mind, and can be summed up in one word:

Reputation.

Yup, that’s right; it comes down to just one thing, really. If the person telling the story is believable, then people will more likely listen and believe their stories. That’s why advertising, TV news and politics are filled with characters that practically exude (yuck!) “believable-ness” (is that a word? It is now!)

When a person relates a “true” story with the purpose of swaying people to their views, but later the story turns out to be false, what does that mean? What if that person did it multiple times? Would you have a tendency to dismiss any further stories from that person? Why or why not?

So the real issue, for me at least, is REPUTATION. In other words, why SHOULD I believe your stories?

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!