by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
I found more evidence of just how much we lost when Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch died. Today, while revising my executive coaching materials on goal setting and time management, a colleague mentioned that Randy Pausch was most proud of his talk on time management.
We are in the midst of a famine,
a prolonged, widespread deficit of a resource
essential to life: productive time.
Pausch’s talk is a thorough and entertaining presentation of the essentials and I highly recommend it for my executive coaching clients (though I can not agree with every suggestion). You may have heard much of it before, but Professor Pausch’s celebrity, good humor, and excellent example give it tremendous impact. You will do something different and better as a result of watching.
Highlights
• Record and priority rank your tasks to reduce stress
• Batch your tasks, questions, and communications by person
• Schedule blocks of time adequate for the task
• Avoid interruptions and distractions
The video and the PowerPoint slides, along with lots of other Pausch material, are available here.
Watching this talk may leave you with a big question, especially if the advice is familiar. “Why am I not doing these things despite the knowing that they work?” That gap, the mystery between what we know and what we practice, is my domain: executive coaching.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Quotes and Aphorisms
Back of the beating hammer
By which the steel is wrought,
Back of the workshop’s clamor
The seeker may find the Thought,
The Thought that is ever master
Of iron and steam and steel,
That rises above disaster
And tramples it under heel!
The drudge may fret and tinker
Or labor with lusty blows,
But back of him stands (more…)
by Tony Mayo | Recommended Books, Stress Management
The Relaxation Response
by Herbert Benson, M.D.
with Miriam Z. Klipper
Reading and using The Relaxation Response may have saved my life in 1989. It may also have destroyed my life, for it turned out to be the first paving stone on a spiritual path which led away from much of what was accepted and familiar. I left behind the person I had known myself to be and became a person I could not have predicted. The path brought me to most of what I treasure today.
I was a thoroughly Western, rational, mechanist, Ayn Rand Objectivist, John-Wayne-style “I’ll do it myself” individualist whose life was thoroughly unsatisfying. Each day I came home from a thankless, stressful job to a cold and chaotic home. I would sit on the couch and feel as though worries and disappointments were (more…)
by Tony Mayo | Client Comments
I have known Tony as a business associate for twenty years. His skill in assembling and leading small groups of executives creates an environment where everyone’s business–and life–benefits from the collective wisdom and experience in the room. I am very pleased with the results I am getting as a participant in one of Tony’s TEC [now Vistage executive coaching] groups.
Phil Gross, Managing Director
Expense Reduction Analysts
by Tony Mayo | Quotes and Aphorisms
If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible…what wine is so sparkling, so fragrant, so intoxicating, as possibility!
–Søren Kierkegaard
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Leadership Development
The Economist newspaper has an excellent summary of Warren Bennis’s work on leadership, adapted from their book: Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus. Bennis makes a strong case for leadership as something to be nurtured and learned.
Four things an effective leader must embody, communicate, and encourage are:
Mr. Bennis and I share, along with many other management consultants and executive coaches, a debt to the pioneering work of Werner Erhard‘s EST and Landmark Education.
by Tony Mayo | Quotes and Aphorisms
I live my life in growing orbits
That move out over the things of the world
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.
I am circling around God,
Around the ancient tower.
And I have been circling for a thousand years,
And I still don’t know
If I am a falcon or
a great storm.
Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer (René) Maria Rilke
1875-1926 Austro-German poet
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, For Fun, Quotes and Aphorisms
“Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
–Thomas A. Edison
“If Edison needed to find a needle in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where the needle 
might be, but rather would examine every straw, straw after straw like a diligent bee until he found the object of his search. I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of his labor.”
–Nikola Tesla
“That’s fine in practice but what about your theory?”
–Popular tee shirt on
University of Chicago campus
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.”
–Yogi Berra
by Tony Mayo | Recommended Books
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by Robert M. Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a deep and impressive work that has sold millions of copies and stayed in print in many languages for over twenty years. I read it for the first time when I was about forty years old. It was good to wait until I was ready for it. I am not sure I can recommend the book, but I am glad I experienced it.
Mr. Pirsig presents the story of his search for the roots of deep (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Stress Management
Reason is what tells us to ignore the present and live in the future. So all we do is make plans. We think that somewhere there are going to be greener pastures. It’s crazy. Heaven is nothing but a grand, monumental instance of the future.
Listen, now is good. Now is wonderful.
–Mel Brooks
A wonderful–and apparently unique–skill we humans have is the ability to weave the recalled events of the past and the imagined events of the future into a meaningful story. Tragically, we are often the victims of this skill though we could be its master. Most of us spend more time in this story of memory and speculation than we do in our present experience. We overlook “now” as we endlessly evade the present by engaging in regret, worry, or hope.
I saw a small example of this recently in my CEO executive coaching group. One member mentioned that (more…)
by Tony Mayo | Technology Tips
I have just added a new, free feature to this blog. You can get an email each time a new item is posted with a summary of the post and a link direct to the complete article. Each email also includes a simple, one-click unsubscribe link, so you can stop at any time. Your address is not used for any other purpose or shared for any reason.
Just enter your address and click. That’s all there is to it–no other information is required.
by Tony Mayo | Client Comments
I worked one-on-one with Tony over several months as I sorted through opportunities and obstacles to growth of my law firm. I came to realize that there were very substantial and irreconcilable differences in approach to growth between me and some of my partners. The end result was an amicable firm split and my formation of a new firm with partners who share similar views on how best to grow the business.
Tony is outstanding at probing to find the “heart” of an issue, and he constantly presents his clients with alternative ways of achieving their goals.
Lonnie C. Rich, Partner
Rich Rosenthal Manitta Dzubin & Kroeger, LLP
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners
…a revival of what Shirley Robin Letwin, the distinguished Anglo-American political theorist, called the “vigorous virtues” in her important study of Thatcherism. These are such qualities as:
that enable someone who exhibits them to live and work independently in society. Though they are not the only virtues—compassion might be called one of the “softer virtues”—they are essential to the success of a free economy and a civil society, both of which rely on dispersed initiative and self-reliant citizens.
John O’Sullivan, Executive Editor
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
in a speech at Hillsdale College
by Tony Mayo | For Salespeople, Sales Techniques
How many new sales do you need to recover the cash lost in just one poor negotiation? If your net margin is 10%, you would need $1,000 in new business just to cover the deficit from giving away a single $100 discount.
Every dollar that poor negotiating removes from your price is a dollar of pure profit lost; free cash flow you have utterly wasted.
The most shameful part is, because you failed to negotiate well, the customer didn’t even appreciate the bargain you gave away.
Everybody lost!
I have read a lot about negotiation and even written a little, but most of the literature is for buyers trying to get better price and terms. Advice for the other side of the table, the salesperson, is harder to find. My executive coaching client, Raj Khera, CEO of MailerMailer, has just put a superb, free guide for business owners on his blog. Titled Negotiating price: how to overcome price resistance, Raj’s post is concise and practical. Apply his simple advice and increase your profits.
Don’t confuse hard negotiating with heartless negotiating. A deal that doesn’t make sense for everyone makes sense for no one.
Always leave some money on the table.
Never spill blood on the floor.
You may need to return to that room again.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches
Business Week has a short article about Jerry Levin, the former head of Time Warner. He led the merger with AOL. The merger is generally considered a disaster for Time Warner and Levin left under pressure. What did he learn?
From the article and his life after leaving the executive suite, it sounds like he learned how to learn:
…understanding that it’s O.K. to be open and vulnerable, to ask for help.
To state it in different terms, it’s probably helpful to invoke the feminine principle and be compassionate, empathetic, understanding, give respect to everybody, don’t get deluded by the natural hierarchy. And don’t get too self-satisfied that you have all the answers.
He has gone on to establish a holistic retreat, Moonview, with his wife. What learning is he most eager to share with executives?
My strong advice would be to find a calm, meditative state every day. With the tempo of executive life, that seems almost impossible, but it’s probably the most important thing that you can do.
Namaste, Mr. Levin, and thank you.
See also Gandhi on silence.
See free, easy Meditation Instructions on this blog.
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