Several people have asked me how I got such high Google rankings for my blog so quickly. I would like to think it is due to the fantastic content but it may have more to do with following expert advice. I simply implemented tactics described in my CEO executive coaching client Raj Khera‘s blog and got impressive results.
Here are the details:
I’m don’t pay much attention to pop music, but I am glad I came across this song.
Maybe we all should spend more time planning for the upside?
I prithee tell me;
cram us with praise, and make us
As fat as tame things.
One good deed dying tongueless
Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.
Your praises are our wages.
You may ride us
With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
With spur we heat an acre.
–Queen Hermione in
Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale
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.
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…)
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.
“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
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.
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…)
…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:
- Self-reliance,
- Diligence,
- Thrift,
- Trustworthiness, and
- Initiative
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
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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