EEK-ONOMICS !!! A U-Turn in the Downturn

Surviving a Sick Economy

Life promises to surprise. Just a while ago we were polishing our shining economy and patting the bloated belly of our envisaged future. Suddenly the winds of fortune turned out to be gas ! A case of the economy suffering from grave dyspepsia with the indigestible servings of the high and swinging life of over-indulgence. A few pills of stark reality put paid to the gas, and it passed with the awful sound and odour of production and job cuts.

So here we are back to our flat bellied world, only to find that we have purged more than necessary from the system. We have had to let go growth-steam , production- rhythm , momentum of change, motivation to experiment, learning ladders of progress, tenets of teamwork, enrolment of ethics, relationship realty, partnerships and scores of nutrients that are needed to fill the system with sustainable growth and competitive advantage. And all because the enema of deflated vision, along with powerful doses of survival laxatives impartially wash out all elements in the tubes !

Weakened at the knees of stability and glassy-eyed from the spasms of painful “detoxification” of the business blueprint of growth, one can be excused at despairing at the shrunken and emaciated remains of a thriving life. Blown away and blown apart are the lives of thousands and for countless generations onwards this effect will snowball to create of the greatest revolutions of economic life on the planet. What do we do with this sick world ? Well the best thing is to dig in your heels on the slopes of the downturn and force through a U- turn.

Lets look at what we can all do to chip in during these tough times. My guess is that it is very similar to what we do when we are really sick. We get a diagnosis done, medicate as advised, support the recovery process, stay in the groove keeping hope of recovery alive, get back up as soon as one can, allow recovery to complete the journey beyond the sensation of wellness, plant flags of our learning on the way ahead, learn new ways to be more resilient and forecast how to deal with future illnesses resident on the journey, and thus achieve a new fullness of health which promises to be more resilient and immune to the bacteria of breakdown.

Translate this to the times of today, and we can look beyond the “medication” which is in progress, and work out the steps from supporting recovery to future new health. The organization and the individual can work in tandem to produce the armour we require.

Lets see what the Individual can do for himself:

• Use the time available to get back into shape – health, knowledge, skills and abilities.
• Enroll your hobbies into your mainstream of life – the future may lie there instead.
• Recast your lifestyle – critically examine what you need and what are the excesses that can be cut away.
• Repair and renew the life you have – revisit old practices like walking instead of driving , visiting instead of emailing , using cost effective public systems in transport and communication instead of costly private luxuries , budget-shops instead of glitzy malls with expensive distractions, more meals at home instead of fast food take aways and glamorous dining at starred restaurants, a quiet and enjoyable sip of wine at home with the family at dinner, rather than the wallet shaking pub crawling crave, living with the fashion statements already in your closet rather than the ones in magazines and showroom windows, more polish on the shoe leather instead of new leather- old leather is so much more comfortable, and well… you complete this list !
• Invest in the future rather than spend for the present, because the future is still available. So educate yourself further with well chosen courses that add value to your future, certify your knowledge and pick up additional skills by examining what your natural talents and abilities can do for you if cultured them beyond passing interest to a level of professional undertaking.
• Provide yourself with options by creating them from the “meta-markets” of your life-skills. For example, if you are a good teacher, learn to become a professional life-coach, a trainer, a counselor. Or if you sing well, train your voice professionally, if you are knowledgeable and skilled, learn to teach and pass on the baton of success to others, if you like gardening , learn to landscape, if you draw and paint, then start offering your skills to printing and publishing houses, learn and certify yourself in computer animation courses, if you like cars and bikes, learn how to repair them, learn how to design them, if you like playing with colour, learn how to apply it in industrial design and interior decoration and so on.
• Combine incomes, skills and lives- get back to community living. Try the new-old way of sharing with family or creating sharing families with friends. Let your networking skills create synergistic skill and life networks that live the practice. It will help you build organizations for the future. You may never need to “get-back-to-work” !
  

What can the organization do to help in these challenging times ?

Well to begin with the organization jumbo-jet can pull full throttle on the twin-engines of good governance and corporate social responsibility. These are those very engines of growth they have touted and won awards for in the “good-times” and must now fly in their passengers ( read employees , channel partners, vendors and stakeholders etc ) in the “bad-times” . Because the passengers are on board since they have already bought their tickets which paid for the fuel and carriage , and cannot be simply jettisoned because the pilot and crew are incompetent to perform to full emergency measures !

This would call for measures such as :

• Counseling the employees what to expect of the future in this business
• Increasing the level of in-house expertise through training and development activities in a focused manner to support and sharpen skills directly related to business
• Stepping up motivation by involving close examination of the hygiene and motivational factors and what strengthening of these would result in better performances.
• Conducting talent identification processes to identify what talents other than those aligned to business are available and counseling employees how they can use their talents to cope with the future.
• Creating creative “brain-shops” in the organization to examine extreme and diverse ways of leapfrogging or re-scaling or reframing and reinventing business life cycles.
• Cutting the flab from business spend across the organization rather than simply cutting salaries and jobs.
• Investing more in focused operations like R&D and product distribution rather than advertising and promotional gimmickry.
• Moving from cost-cutting to cost-reduction as a design not a mere measure.
  

Together the twin clasp of individual and organizational effort to stem the hemorrhaging flow of talent, competence, capability and opportunity can help restore some of the equilibrium to the violent see-sawing of life today.

None of the suggestions offered are all consuming or exhaustive, not do they prescribe fortune filled futures, but they do allow you to dig in your heels and gouge the hell out of the downslide to slow you down enough to craft the U-turn after which the real hard work begins- going back up the hill !

ASPIRE for Success !

Make your Aspirations a Life Mission

I have come across several articles and books on “Success” and all of them have very special messages for the reader. It is truly motivating to read and learn how people are making their dreams take shape. We can certainly benefit from the lessons learned by those who have driven themselves on the road to success and read the milestones they have placed along the way there, for inscribed on each are invaluable insights of life.

To achieve anything noteworthy in life calls for a certain amount of “stretch” which put plainly means that one has to “struggle” with the performance and delivery of results that meet higher standards that those in play. I would rather call this a raising of the bar or an aspiration in action. Performing within our capabilities guarantees delivery against promises made, but these are mediocre performances delivering mediocre goals. Satisfaction with this leads to a dull sense of happy mediocrity and diminished dreams.

At, Valmar International , we have put together our own definition of success in our Vision Statement, drawing from all those lessons others have learned and shared and our own experiences and aspirations for success. Allow me to share this with you, as we have found these simple truths of life very useful.

We look at adopting these tenets of life as we A-S-P-I-R-E for success learning Six Shining Lessons of Life

A : Accountability for Results

Ownership of the task along with responsibility for performance is a prime element of success. Effort no matter how earnest, without focus or direction cannot deliver excellence. “If it has to be, it’s up to me !” is a common enough phrase, but we need to get it off the page and into our work ethic. Desire without a will, subscription to excellence without action, and action without accountability together deliver shallow performances and empty dreams.

The First Lesson here is “Make Your Life Count when You Put Your Signature to it”


S : Strength and Stability of Values

The guide-ropes across life are woven with the values we bring along with us. Values with hold us accountable not just for what we do, but how we do things too. Values contribute to a life with honor and morality. Values provide the higher ground, on which we can breathe the purity of the air of accomplishment, instead of suffocating in the sulphuric swamps of dishonorable practices.
Good corporate governance at the organizational level and personal ethics at the individual level can help create a single transparent and honest agenda of action.

Not having to watch your back or cover your rear while you are engaged in delivering excellence, is a major relief and allows everyone to commit resources without any reservation. Standing firm on what you believe in allows you to advocate your position and interest soundly It’s not about being obstinate, but about being definite.

The Second Lesson is “Stamp Goodness on the Charter of Life in Whatever You Do. Seal Life’s Envelope with Greatness and Leave Pettiness Penniless”


P : Passion and Purpose in Performance

Consider this. You visit a well promoted township and see towers, buildings, parks, restaurants, shopping malls, schools, hospitals and all that makes a township strewn across the landscape with no apparent design or town planning. You further notice that many of the structures were only partially complete, some surrounded by dense brush and overgrown wasteland whilst some with pruned lawns. Roads run smartly through the town but some abruptly end in rough mounds of rubble. Restaurants run glitzy advertisements of their fare and entertainment programs, but this is only in print and not in practice. Hospitals gleam with the most professional equipment but the medical services are run by it’s lone pharmacy dispensing OTC medicines. You quiz some of the townsfolk about these strange to bizarre matters, and find that they do not sense anything amiss!!

Do we recognize our lives in this context too ? How often do we really plan the township of our life ? Giving in to the flavour of the moment we may develop competences that die faster than they are used, redirect our focus mindlessly into convoluted and often unfinished paths, build towers of performance without the support structure in place, leave the “insignificant balance” of competence, performance, values and relationships unfinished or half constructed for completion at an unknown later date. But all this has a sense of tremendous busyness and activity, leaving us feeling we have accomplished things ! As we go along we make do with what we have and this makes major withdrawals from our energy and enthusiasm bank balances, till we resign ourselves to living with inconvenience and a poverty stricken future.

Bringing passion and purpose to performance allows us to create the right architecture and platform for our dreams to rise to celebrate a rich and rewarding present and a promising future.

The Third Lesson is “Blueprint your Life with Clear Purpose and Embed Your Soul in the Achiever’s Hallowed Hall of Fame”


I : Integrity of Intent

Integrity is like a precious stone. A flaw in the stone will not only devalue the stone but also may cause problems for the wearer. Interestingly enough Integrity begins with “I” which means that it lies within us to manifest. The completeness or wholeness of the Purpose we bring to our performance and relationships as well as the truthfulness and honesty of our intentions, allow us to shed the disguises and garbs of “strategic” intent which is usually opportunistic in favour of an upstanding unconditional largeness of intent which enlarges the playing field to accommodate others too.

Amidst the fog of deviousness, manipulation and exploitation, integrity of intent is a clear beacon which illuminates the entire relationship with the purity of true partnership in progress.

The Fourth Lesson is “Be of Global Intent and Design. Leave Parched Parochialism to Wither and Die in the Sunshine of Abundance “


R : Reliability in Relationships

The word relationship itself shows us that just like a ship, all hands must be on the deck and the ship of relation needs the synergy of all members to pull together, especially in rough weather. This applies to teams and associates at the organizational level or families and friends at the individual or personal level. Navigating the storms and tempests of suspicion, doubt, misgivings, moments of weakness, inadequacies and incompetence, can take a severe toll on the most weather-beaten of sailors afloat on the sea of survival and success.

Establishing a resourceful relationship which counts on the contribution of all elements in the network of life, trusting and respecting those in the network and staying with the ship provides the robustness to the relationship. Investing in the relationship unconditionally by contributing first without calculating the returns, and living all the tenets we have described this far, creates the reliability needed to put wind in the sails.

It is all about being there when it matters. Finding the right role to play and a set of convergent goals to guide individual contributions to the relationship is crucial for one to deliver at least what is expected.

The Fifth Lesson is “Run a 24x7 Relationship with Your Resources. Burn Your Leave Card”


E: Excellence as a Way of Life

Making excellence a way of life, means demolishing the middle class of mediocrity and aspiring for the “dance of delight”. Life at the cutting edge of excellence, cannot possibly be played by performing with competences one is conscious of possessing. Instead the thrill and exuberance of a full-blown life comes from reaching higher than the “essential expected” and delivering at the very “pinnacle of performance”. It’s all about asking yourself if what you do is enough or can you go the extra mile.

Pulling performances from the slums of mediocrity can be one of the most rewarding and thrilling experiences one can have. Like an eagle, once you experience the heavens, it is hard to live below the clouds. Finding refuge in being “grounded” or “down to earth” or “in touch with reality” leads to exactly that in the rewards. You are grounded in the earth, immersed in a false sense of security of a rationalized reality instead of soaring to embrace the universe.

The Sixth Lesson is “Live Life at Full Stretch Benchmarking Beyond the Best”

With these Six Shining Lessons of Life may you fulfill your dreams and ASPIRE actively for all the success that the world can possibly offer.

YOU ARE APPROVED ! Certified, Signed and Stamped by YOU !

The Seal of Approval is almost as coveted as the mysterious and elusive Holy Grail. Both are the result of Man’s quest for “Divinity by Proximity” because possessing either would mean raising of the mere mortal to the realms of the supreme spirit. From nothingness to everything, finite to infinite, inconsequential to undeniably intrinsic, banished to proclaimed, wastrel to apostle, rejected to celebrated !

Ah ! Rejection, the scourge of mortal mankind. For no man is an island, therefore he must relate to others and integrate with the rest of the world. Which in many ways translates to being accepted and approved by others in order to develop competence in the area of interpersonal relationships. Wrong !

All of us undeniably need to be appreciated, which is a positive stroke to our sense of being and doing. Dependency on this need in order to feel better about ourselves is a disorder of rationality and often an emotional overrun stemming from a whole spectrum of causes. Let’s take a look at some of them and see if we can figure a way to transcend these obstacles to a sense of self worth and equilibrium with the rest of the world.

We have been schooled to judge ourselves the ways others see us. Our education system itself unwittingly endorses this inequity, with our sense of competence and ability being judged by others in the close confines and constraints of an academic assessment of memory skills rather than processed thought, applied knowledge and competence to deliver. We ignore the multiple intelligences across which learning can be delivered and force-feed it in a manner which cannot possibly produce the best results. Those who “beat the system” by mastering the manipulation of clear process flaws, such as offered by almost any coaching or tutorial class, are approved, whilst the real student of learning can often be denied approval or competitive levels of the certification of competences , which have not really been tested.

Collective experiences of being undervalued across life often find origins in the shrouding of one’s capability in the advocated cloak of “humility” , a virtue we are told to hold dear by a generation of an old world , going into oblivion, as a guide to a new world they have barely experienced and an emerging world they could not possibly accept. Values and belief systems of a dated perception of reality, have contributed to our continued subscription to a single window of assessment of ourselves rather than a 360 degree multiple window assessment centre.

The overpowering need for approval from others has its roots in a deep scarring of a sense of self and an erosion of our deposits of self worth. Lack of approval or acceptance both direct and discreet is what we consider to be “rejection”. But how bad is rejection and what does it really mean to us ?

“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.” Says the famous American actor Sylvester Stallone, true to his reel-life personas Rambo and Rocky Balboa

Rejection is a word we are plagued with because we have described it to ourselves as failure and we consider failure to be a destination rather than an event. To experience rejection is to experience failure – if viewed positively, this just means that somehow something we do, does not meet with what somebody expects or needs. It does not mean that we become useless or worthless. A one million dollar cheque given to a man too poor to have a bank account, does not make either the one million dollars less that what it is worth or the man poorer than he originally was. The inability to encash the cheque, simply suspends the delivery of wealth at that moment. It does not deny it. Self worth is the multi-million dollar potential we are all born with.

Each and every one of us is born priceless, and everyday we gain in value no matter what we do, simply because we are there to witness the day. We can deny the acceptance of the moment and embrace the rejection of those to come. Rejection at it’s worst is a judgement of the past, not of the future. And since the future holds all the wealth we want or desire, what prevents us from going forward ? A fall in the past ? If all our futures were pinned on the “sins’’ of the past, we would not survive childhood.

Karl Stern the noted German-Canadian neurologist and psychiatrist puts rejection into succinct perspective when he says “Psychoanalysis shows the human infant as the passive recipient of love, unable to bear hostility. Development is the learning to love actively and to bear rejection.”

So how do we get beyond the fear of rejection? Simple. Learn to love ourselves. Which means, learn to appreciate yourself, concentrating on reframing your focus from what’s wrong to what’s right in your life, approving of yourself wholeheartedly, celebrating who you are, remembering we are all Work in Progress and that Perfection is an endeavour, a journey. It is the journey that is significant, for the journey and not the pit-stops we make en-route, is the longest experience.

The next time you feel rejected, issue yourself a Certificate of Approval, signed and stamped by YOU! Encash your multi-million dollar future NOW!

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