Tag: Imagination

Learn Something New

Ever watch kids grow? They learn something new every day. They are excited about it. When they first learn they feel that there’s something that they have learned, which no one else may know about. And they go out to tell everyone.

As they grow, the young learners find out that although what they learned was new to them, it was already well-known by many others. They start to doubt the remarkable vision of the vast world before them. And, as they grow older, they slow in their learning of new things.

The slowing of their learning is not because of a lack of wondrous new things to learn. It is because they are inundated by so much. Also, because they don’t want to look awkward or uninformed by trying to master new skills.

The difference between the third-grader and a mature adult is the ego. In children that ego is not yet developed. In mature adults, the ego is formed, and the ego is also very fragile. Because of the delicate ego, adults are less inclined to try things they know little about.

As I have grown, I have grown out of the belief I know everything about everything. The higher I have gone in education, the more I realize there is an entire universe out there, and then some, of things I know nothing about. And that is okay, because I am curious and interested, and I don’t mind looking the fool if it means I can ask questions and learn new things.

I encourage everyone to reach out and be curious. Learn something new. Do not worry about how others perceive you. Just have fun and feel good about yourself.

If you see me being foolish, that is all right.  Just figure it is because I am learning something new.

Make a list

Good morning and welcome to another wonderful day. Why is it wonderful? Because you are here!

Today I have a task for you. It is an important task.  This task will help you to see both the forest and the trees.

I would like you to please make a list. The list is not for me, it is for you. Each of us should have a list like this. It helps us to understand how lucky we are.

The first part of making a list is just to rest. Take a few minutes to find a spot that’s comfortable and rest. Then it’s time to make your list. Write down something about yourself that makes you feel good, makes you happy, makes you confident.

 

Have you seen a sunrise or sunset lately? Did you enjoy it? Did it make you feel something? If the feeling was good, write it down. Did you laugh today? Write it down.

What you are doing is taking a measure of the positive things in your life. There are plenty of negative things, and you don’t need a list of those. What you need is a list of what’s good in your life. We all have positives and negatives. When the negatives weigh on my mind, it is always nice to pull out the list and remember the positives.

Have a great day. Hopefully, we’ll talk again soon.

How to Prioritize Danger

As humans, we often fear or panic over things which may happen in the future and for which there is no evidence at the moment. The lights might be turned off because ‘The utility bill is due at the end of the month.’ Or, ‘Southern Colorado might have a blizzard in a week, so we need to go to the store and stock up on everything right now.’ Or, ‘There was a bump in the road, I need to go back and look right now. Because someone may have gotten hurt and I may have hit them without ever seeing them.’ I won’t say that any of these things will never come to fruition. However, the odds are very favorable that none of these ever really will.

Is it wise to take precautionary measures? Yes. Is it a good thing to panic over things that have little chance of happening? Not so much. And yet, to the person having the panic attack, it is very real, and drastic measures must be immediately taken. How do you help this person down from near hysteria?

Start by talking to them calmly and ask them if they see anything within a 3 inch to a 6-inch radius around their body that poses an immediate danger. The answer is usually no. If there is, help the person to decide if it is a real danger or only a perceived possibility.

Next, ask them if there is anything within 18 inches of their body threatening danger. Again this usually has a negative response and follow-through is the same as the paragraph above. Next question, is there anything in the room that’s an obvious threat. From there go to the block and then the neighborhood.

You can go as far as you need to with this. Usually by the time you get to the neighborhood, the person you’re talking with starts to understand and feels better. Just because somebody occasionally feels overly upset about something, does that not mean that they have a medical or mental problem. Given the right circumstances, anyone may show this type of fear. If this is a full-time ongoing problem, the person may want to speak with a professional about it. If not, make it one less thing to worry about.

Be The Person You Want Helping You

Lately, I have read a lot from many entrepreneurs about which is more important, to make a lot of money or to help the client who needs that help?

This is a fair dilemma. If you don’t help people and do good for them or their companies you really can’t make very much money because you will not have many customers. If you spend all your time helping people giving away most of what you do and not making a sufficient income, you will not be able to continue due to a lack of funds.

This reminds me of a similar debate in manufacturing. To provide the customer what they are paying for, the winds need to build quality products. To earn sufficient funds to pay for the lines running, asserting quantity must be built and shipped to the customer.

Poor quantity means not enough product to satisfy the customer or keep the line running. On the other hand, poor quality means returns, reworks, and loss of reputation.

Let’s  look at this in action. You have a young line with new builders who have only the most minimum of training. The manufacturing manager steps on the line and tells everyone they will build and package 350 units by the end of the shift, or else she will find new people to build her computers.

The new people, needing the jobs to support their families and themselves are terrified and start doing whatever they can as fast as they can. Quality inspectors, who work for the manufacturing manager (poor choice in organizational structure) are letting all but the most serious of errors through inspection believing if the units are bad they will fail at the testing stations.

Although it’s a squeaker, the 350 units are built and shipped by the end of the shift. Everybody feels elated. Even the manufacturing manager has something on her face, although it’s not sure if what people saw was a smile, or sneer. Alas, this is just the start of the story and not the happy ending. The units shipped have a myriad of flaws, and the customer believes some units have major flaws which require repair before the units can be sold on the open market.

The 350 questionable units are shipped back to the United States from Europe and with 400 units that were built but not shipped underwent re-inspection and repair. When planning the economics of the line, a re-inspection and repair of units at this magnitude were never contemplated. The factory now has to pay for transportation of units, storage of units, a work crew to inspect and repair units, certification of the work by the customer’s inspectors, and re-shipment back to Europe. This is what we call a hidden factory. It’s not something you plan for your factory to do. Not something you’re going to get paid extra for. It is just a drain on the resources of the factory.

Let’s move this back to our question of the day and are we out to help people, or are we after the big bucks.

If you help someone, hopefully, they tell a friend. And if you help their friend, they’ll tell someone else, maybe two. If you build a quality product and put it in a quality program and charge a fair price, you may go far. Doing good things for people grows a following.   

If your product is filled with errors, grammatical problems, ideas that are irrelevant to the reader you may find items being returned and fees requested to be refunded. That is never a good start and is certainly a bad end.

So, what do you do? Do the best that you can make sure your work is relevant to your customer and you go from there.  And…

Be The Person You Want Helping You.

Are You an Original?

A simple question.   Are you an original or are you a duplicate?

It’s also a silly question, one asked, not to be insulting or demeaning; rather, one to look at considering. And either answer is all right

I am an adult educator and trainer by profession. I am also a writer and an artist. For some of these roles, I’ve done years of extensive schooling. For others, I have either taken other classes or worked with the help of mentors and informal education.

I keep an eye on what’s being talked about looked and taught online. I do this, first, because I need to learn and continue learning. Knowledge continuously changes and grows. I like to keep up with my contemporaries.  I truly believe that online learning, done right, is the best training you can possibly get.   Online learning can fit both into your time and your economic constraints (of these two items, time is the most valuable.)

I look at many offers for classes online, each selling the idea that they have the secret and that if you follow their way of doing things hundreds of thousands of dollars could easily be yours every year.  I have seen some ads which talk about a quick $5000, and others that suggest up to a seven-figure annual earnings.

The interesting part is as you look at their offerings and go to their webinars they start to merge together. Various deliveries give you the same information and lead you to the same actions and conclusions.

This puzzled me at first, then, as I looked at and contemplated this I began to understand. I came up with a plan which was suggested from one of my mentors.

 It works like this; the happiest, richest, and most content people are often those who pick a road early on and stay on it as they walked through life. This is true in religion, it is true in marriage, and it is very true in education. The reason for this is that the alternative to taking all roads at once turns out to be physically impossible and economically impossible. You just can’t do it, and it’s not very productive. Anyone jumping between roads headed towards their destination will find that the changes and costs will keep pulling them back towards the beginning, away from their goals.

If you have a religion that meets your needs, brings you closer to your God, to your beliefs and makes you a better person, follow it. If you have a marriage and children and it looks like a lot of work, that’s okay. Work it. Although things look better elsewhere, the look is just the wrapping on a package of things you don’t even know about yet. If you commit, stick with it. There are hundreds upon hundreds of educators online willing to show you the path to riches and greatness. If you have three or four that you believe in, follow them and stay with them. Jumping between various mentors and trainers can become costly, confusing, and more than taking your money it can steal your time. You can always get money, yet each of us only has so much time and no matter how we use it when it is used it is gone forever.

Yesterday I talked about outliers and the difference between being an outlier and following the crowd. If you wish to be an outlier, don’t be the crowd and don’t be a duplicate.

Be the Outlier…

                                  …Be Original.

 

 

Pareto Chart

Hi, there this is Mike.

I want to thank everybody who wrote in earlier this week and answered my three questions. The more I know about what you are looking for, the easier it is for me to develop the content you like and can use.

We plan to double down on the things you like while improving some of the ways we deliver the content. Just because I’m not asking every day what you like or don’t like and what you can use or cannot use, does not mean that we’re not interested. As you find entries that are useful, please let us know. If you find things you can do without, that’s even more important for us to know.

I know some people are concerned because they’re afraid if they make a comment, they will end up on my mailing list somewhere.  I’d make everybody this promise, “I will never put anyone on a mailing just because they commented on one of my blogs.”

If you would wish to be on my mailing list, please let me know. Otherwise, reading and commenting on the blog will not put you on a mailing list. This is a promise between friends, me and you.

As promised, today we are looking at a real Pareto chart.  I was going to use a computer build line to show it.  I thought it would be better if I used SAM and his scenario as the backdrop for this.  We all know about SAM’s work.

SAM has been keeping a tick sheet with the number of each type of problem he encountered.  This was before everything got fixed last week.  The tick sheet looked like This:

 

Problem Occurrences Tic marks
Car will not start 6 XXXXXX
Lost car keys 10 XXXXXXXXXX
Saw snakes 2 XX
Had to borrow money 1 X
House over 80° 1 X
Total 20

 

Once SAM collected these numbers, then he could make the Pareto chart. You often hear that the Pareto chart shows where 20% of your problems cause 80% of your work

Rear Real Pareto

The chart shows us what to tackle first to get rid of the biggest hitters. Very small numbers are showing minutia. Minutia is a word for all those little bitty annoyances, they don’t cause the big problems and fixing them won’t fix the big problems. That’s why we use the Pareto chart so we can identify and fix the largest problems first.

Once those problems are fixed, guess what, the smaller problems have moved up to be the largest of the problems. This is presuming another unknown large problem has not shown itself yet. And once the medium and smaller problems are now our top problems, we can turn attention to those and fix those also. We don’t leave problems unfixed, we just fix them in order.

I hope this helps.  Tomorrow I will have a new article, and next week I will start a story that is told in graphics and pictures.

Have a great day.

On this day, we celebrate the Declaration of Independence

Hi, because today is a holiday, I wanted to pass along this holiday note for the fourth.  We continue our normal blogs tomorrow.

Long distance relationships almost never last.  Mine did not last, although we are still good friends.  The relationship between England and the American Colonies did not last, although Britain and the United States are the best of friends now.

On this day, we celebrate the Declaration of Independence. Actually, it was signed on the second of July.  With no mass communications and no copiers in 1776, it took a couple of days to write copies and to get the word out.

It makes me wonder.  If long distance communication were available at that time, would it have made a difference?  Money is the root of many breakups. Could, however, the economic problems, between England and the Colonies be settled amicably before they grew so large that the two entities had no choice except the War of Independence and the legal separation, which was akin to a divorce of peoples?

This sounds like an academic quandary to be debated, and yet, we are on the cusp of the exact same problems in the very near future.  The people of Earth are planning to colonize the Moon and Mars.

The distance to the Moon and especially the distance to Mars will test the ability of communications. Not that communications are as slow as the 1700’s, there is a lag time that will start out as a nuisance.

Just as with England and the American Colonies. When the colonists of the Moon and Mars mine their ores, their focus will be on their work and not as much on the massive cost the Earth spent to get them to their colonies and provide for them as they began.  The Earth, like England, may be in a rush to reclaim the money spent to set up the colonists.

Special care needs to be planned for the missions to ensure a premium is placed on collaboration and communication.  These must be real communication and collaboration processes, not just buzz words.

Understanding what lead up to the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago is vital to future plans of colonization.  George Santayana reminded us why, when he said, “Those who cannot remember their past are condemned to repeat it.” (Wikipedia, last updated, 2/13/2006)

A special thank you to Paul Nielsen for his discussions and suggestions on this blog.  Thank you.

You are way too good and way too needed

Yesterday, we thought on perfection. Do you view the world in black-and-white? Do you view the world as infinite shades of gray? Or do you live in the Technicolor world, where all dynamics, shades, colors, and opinions are viable depending on the circumstances?

By the way, I should tell you, answers are neither right or wrong here. There are the answers of each individual, who has to decide those are answers which are right or wrong for them.

I am not a philosophy major.  I am an education major with extensive education in corporate training, process improvement, and quality.

I ask these questions to have people think.

The reason I like to have people think is for one very clear fact.

I like to sit in my basement either in the easy chair or laying on the couch, watching my favorite TV shows or listening to the radio, or reading a good book. It is not the only thing I do. I take classes, I am at the library every other week, I have my volunteered and other actions. And I write, develop books, and develop courses which often tie in with the books, and develop charts for measurement and process improvement.

I like to do all this. And it keeps me busy. Yet I find that is because I get up off the chair or the couch in my basement turn off the technology and go out to communicate and collaborate with others.

The sad fact is if we sit in our basement or the backyard or the TV room and wait for somebody to come and help us, show us something better, or improve our lives for us, the dust would grow, and we will be long gone before anybody shows up. And those who do will mainly be looking for the source of the smells, and to collect the bones.

You are way too good and way too needed for such a destiny. Now is the time for you to stand and make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

Think about how you would like to learn or help and what you could do.  We will talk again tomorrow.

In the Eye of the Beholder

Everybody looks for perfection in the world. Yet finding perfection is tough. Perfection is found in the eye of the beholder. And therefore, it would be very hard to find two ideas of perfection which are the same. It reminds me of the speech from John F. Kennedy who said,” We do these things not because they are easy, we do these and other things because they are hard.”

People like the idea of heading towards perfection, because they look at perfection as black and white. Yet we do not live in a world which lends itself to black-and-white. Rather, the world looks upon all things in unlimited hues, shades, dynamic colors, and variables. What is perfection? That depends, and it is up to each one of us to decide what that meaning is for us.

This week, we will talk about perfection, versus reliability, versus sustainability, versus the ultimate, versus the needed.

I promised to keep this short. And I will.

For today, think of your ideas perfection, and how often you truly achieve it.

Planning

Have you ever noticed how frustrating it gets when your plans don’t go the way you expect them to go?  Have you ever gotten frustrated to the point where you cannot figure out how you got to where you are, no idea of how to get back on track, and just want to quit and hide?

Don’t feel bad we all get that way. We look at others on an outing, on a Saturday afternoon, and they look so much in control. We had problems with the store being out of what we wanted to buy, the kids having problems and being fussy in the car, or pets who decide they want to play chase and tag with you and run out the gate just as everybody’s getting into the car.

What do we do about our plans going wrong?  We learn to laugh a little. We understand these things happen. And, not to get upset every time something doesn’t go the way we desire.

Now you’re starting to think, “How did the pros do it?”  As a retired Master Sergeant, I’m here to tell you, there is no corporation better planning than the US military.  And yet, everyone in the US military who has ever been part of building a plan can tell you one thing, plans will generally fall apart with the first enemy contact.

You think I’m kidding you. I assure you I am not. We all develop our plans.  We plan the best we can.  We work with all our prayers, talismans, and other rituals to ensure things go right. And yet, in the end, there is always something that goes awry.

The question becomes, “Why do we do all of the work if we know at some point it will fall apart?”  The answer is simple, knowing that things will generally fall apart, you plan anyway. In that planning, you are continuously looking for the what-ifs, the contingents, the “if this” happens I will “do that.”

I’m not saying that you’re going to get lucky, although sometimes luck is involved. I’m not saying that you will think of absolutely everything. It’s rare. What I’m saying is, the more you plan, and the more you look at the contingencies, the better you will understand.

In understanding, you will see strong spots and weak spots. Having a heads up on strong and weak areas will make your decisions during the execution of the plan much better.  The decisions and changes are now based on what you learned during your preparation. What I’d like to suggest is make the best plans possible.

Every time I plan I know the plan won’t run as predicted. I do not know exactly what will happen to change the plan. I do know what options are available, and I can make much better’s decisions.

Ever planned, and the preparations made changes and decisions easier to make?  If you would like to share something about how planning saved the day when plans went awry, Please, give us a response and tell us what happened.

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