Creating Something Grand

 

What would you like to build? A business? An empire? A charity?  It is a dream now, but how do you start to make it real?

First we need a vision. Who are you going to serve? After all there has to be a purpose to our dream.

Get to know the people you are going to help. What are they like? What are their needs? Wants? Dreams? Desires?

How will they benefit from your vision?  Will they feel better? Stronger? Happier? Healthier? What are you doing for them?

The better you understand your clients the more likely you will succeed.

Remember we asked who are you going to serve? Service will be the key to your success. Become a servant leader.

Risk is Your Business

"Risk is Our Business." - James T. Kirk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toG6aSQFF7Y

Risk is your business too. To create wealth you have to take advantage of opportunities. That involves risk, making decisions, executing plans and seeing the results.

Customer complaints, reviews and returns are obvious expectations in retail world. Have plans how to nicely handle these requests. Even Costco did have to limit returns to one year to control costs.

Quality Issues. Nothing is ever made perfectly. Have processes and procedures to repair or dispose of defective parts or units. Often cheaper to scrap and make new units than to repair.

Planning. New products, services and improvements just don’t happen. Ideas are created. Opinions sought. Market research is done. Product costs are estimated. Advertising is created. People get trained in usage and to answer customer questions.

Risk Mitigation. If you are developing new technology or software, it is common to test concepts, test prototypes, test subsystems, test systems, and test the first production units. You want to minimize surprises and maximize sales.

Savings. To invest most businesses must have saved money from operations, and borrowed more from investor’s savings. Savings are used to create growth.

Insurance. Everyone needs insurance to spread risk. Insurance companies often help with prevention, and then help when losses occur. Have you updated and expanded your coverage as your wealth grows. You will need more insurance.

Risk acceptance. Not everything can be anticipated. Surprises happen, shipments get lost, equipment breaks, people sue without reason and Murphy’s Law applies. Businesses have to accept a certain percentage of losses.

Life Risks. We fall in love, have children and grow older and wiser. Friend and family age and have illnesses. There is no life without risks.  Go out and live your life today. Live long and prosper.

New Standard of Excellence

Not often I recommend an article from 2004 to read. But this article by Dr. Atul Gawande leads to a new standard of excellence. Anyone with a basic statics education is familiar with the bell curve. Most medicine is successful in the middle of the curve. Sometimes treatment at the low end of the curve.

Dr. Warren Warwick’s example at the end of the article shows how you get off the chart medical treatment of cystic fibrosis. He made a study of what it takes to do better than everyone else. He believed that excellence came from seeing, on a daily basis, the difference between being 99.5-per-cent successful and being 99.95-per-cent successful. Warwick’s combination of focus, aggressiveness, and inventiveness is what makes him extraordinary.

“What the best may have, above all, is a capacity to learn and adapt—and to do so faster than everyone else.”

The question is why do you want to be extraordinary?

What are you doing today to get there?

Are you in Dr. Warwick’s territory?

The Bell Curve

What happens when patients find out how good their doctors really are?

The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/12/06/the-bell-curve

Are You Expecting Perfection?

Signs of this include beating yourself up for taking too long, not learning something on the first try, or horrors you make a mistake. These expectations of perfection are flawed perspectives you have chosen. Studies have shown people make more mistakes than they realize, yet we learn, survive and thrive.

Was working as an appraiser, visiting different properties and getting lost occasionally. Have an excellent sense of direction, so was really bothering me. The loss of time and daylight (to take pictures) were adding stress. Took a little time to think it through. Realized I was being unreasonable. Was always going somewhere new, and maps were not perfect. Of course I was going to get loss.

Based on that insight, realized I was getting Paid to be Lost. Still got lost occasionally, but no longer bothered me. My expectations had changed.

 “Give yourself a break, humans make mistakes and are often wrong.” – Steve Amos

Real life will be messy, customers & bosses will be demanding, spouses will not understand, and children will be children. Demanding perfection of yourself  (or worse others) will drive you crazy and make people avoid you. It is a way to be miserable.

Look around. Central bankers do not manage the economy. Leaders of nations react to events they can’t foresee. Predictions of the future are notoriously wrong. Why should you be perfect?

 “The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.” ― Tom Bodett

Stopping Shootings

This is off topic for a business problem solving blog. The shooting at schools like Umpqua Community College is a problem not being solved. Look at cities that have shootings every weekend.

Lets not make light of this. Any shooting is a tragedy to someone. Am praying for the victims and their family & friends. No one knows the pain they are feeling.

This is a good example of how people react versus thinking. Lets make a law. Has anyone ever checked if laws work? One of the cities with the strictest laws is Chicago. 2,332 shooting victims by October 2^nd. Detroit is another disaster with strict gun ownership laws. Neither city is a place would want to live.

How about the safest city in the US? No guns right? Wrong. Plano has high gun ownership with liberal carry laws. Challenges the ban all guns assumption in some proposed laws.

Lived in Texas when the new permits were being issued. Predictions were blood in the street with hundreds of shootings. What happened? Crime went down 10% each of the first 3 years. In the 3^rd year there was a shooting involving an owner with a permit. A classic case of self-defense where the permit holder tried to back away from someone intending to harm them.

What is missing here? The pundits were sure more guns meant more deaths. Reality is the problems are complicated, not straightforward, and causes not well understood. Proposing solutions without research does not work.

Look at potential causes: Disaffected males, gangs, drug money, mental health, lack of male role models, recruiting by terrorists, and suicide.  

Suicide is one of the major causes of gun deaths, and often used to inflate gun violence statistics. One thought is some public attacks may be males who want to commit Suicide by Cop.

Disaffected males are probably the main cause of violence. They may be unsuccessful with jobs and relationships. Mental health issues may be a cause or result of isolation.

Isolated or disaffected males are vulnerable to recruiting by gangs and terrorists. The lack of adults, particularly men, in their lives have them looking for alternative families. Predators will recruit them to support their cults.  Lone wolves are the hardest for law enforcement to stop.

The financial element cannot be ignored for these organizations. The incentive of big money and power draw young men into crime cartels.

What can be done to prevent violence?

First care about and talk with people. Get involved with young adults. The most difficult and unlovable person probably needs someone to talk with the most.

Evil can be prevented by letting people know their ideas are not healthy. They should not consider making people pay for their sins. Most criminals slowly graduate from small crimes until they graduate to major crimes. Interventions do stop misbehaviors from growing to crimes committed.

Mental health care has to lose its stigma. Stressed out people do not make good decisions. Have seen estimates 20% to 25% of adults experience mental illness. That makes it normal. First responders have to be trained how to keep mentally ill calm and get them into treatment.

Start by greeting everyone you can today, and being a role model for others. Talk with people different than you - age, color, dress, hair, politics and religion.  Anyone you meet. Kindness, listening, and caring have to be our calling card.

If someone is a danger to themselves or others, don’t hope it will go away. Intervene and notify authorities if necessary. It is up to us to make this world safe.