The Sanford Berenberg Experience

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Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Message of the Day - Where Strengths Become Weaknesses and Weaknesses Become Strengths

Good Morning,

If the title of this piece confuses you, don’t worry, we will sort it out in a bit.

All People have strengths and all have weaknesses too. These strengths are not so glamorous as Superhero powers and abilities, but we all have something that we are good at. These skills, abilities and strengths are what help us get through the day.

These strengths though, can also house weaknesses within them. That is, the strength itself can be a weakness.

Let’s take the strength of being compassionate. You are able to see the human side of things no matter how harsh or rough a situation gets. People love working with you because they know you care. Taking that strength too far can become a weakness. You may not be able to make the tough decisions because you tend to be too emotional and avoid hurting the feelings of others.

Now let’s go to the other extreme. You are tough and you can take on any situation and your emotions are rock solid. No matter how bad a situation gets, you remain the rock, the pillar of strength for the team. People respect you because when the smoke clears, they know you will be standing. Taking this strength too far can also be a weakness also. Being too strong can cause you to be unemotional and trample on people’s feelings as you do your thing.

Going up the middle, you could be very flexible and adaptable. Nothing can throw you off for long. No matter what happens you can change gears at any time and move to a different beat and follow a different pattern. Folks look to you because you are always in the know because you are a first adopter and often chosen for pilot projects. Taking this too far, someone who is overly flexible may be too wishy-washy and indecisive, changing decisions with the directions of the wind.

We must keep an eye on our strengths and appreciate and understand them, but also we need to know when they start going too far and start becoming weaknesses and tying us down.

You see, strengths can become weaknesses, and if you were to start the other way, you could turn a weakness into a strength. A person who is cold-hearted and unchanging could take this weakness and use it to lead a team through a tempest of a time, holding fast to the plan and goals of the team, through thick and thin. In one situation we had a major snafu we needed to fix, which required calling nearly 100 banks to ask for them to fix a problem we caused. We chose a person some felt too sweet to handle the rigors of the desk, and she wowed us by using this sweetness to get the banks to work with us. It was a great strength she had.

I guess whether something is a strength or a weakness, lies in the perspective you see it in, and how you apply it.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Message of the Day - Be A Hero With Discipline

Good Morning,

On Sunday my wife Karen handed me an article to read in the January 2009 issue of National Geographic. The article was about the Expedition of Fridtjof Nansen from Norway, who in the late 1800’s made several Arctic explorations. He was both an explorer and a scientist, being said to be just as skilled with microscope as with a ice ax and skis.

He gained fame from his traversing Greenland in 1888, where he missed his boat back to Norway and stayed with the Greenlanders for a spell. Nansen then planned a trip to reach the North Pole in 1893 with a well built boat, the Fram (meaning ‘Forward’). Incidentally this is the same boat used by Roald Amundsen in his historic trek to the South Pole. The goal was to have the boat locked in ice and float close to the Arctic where he and his team would go the rest of the way by sled, kayak and skis.

During Nansen’s expedition, his ship did not get near enough to the arctic so he set out with another man, Hjalmar Johansen, by sled with many dogs, some kayaks and skis. They trekked for months and got closer to the North Pole than anyone else in history at that time.

Here is the interesting part. Knowing that he was close, but knowing the status of his supplies, equipment and his promise to his wife to come back alive, he turned away from his goal and headed home. That trek home took over six months. After coming back Nansen and Johansen were treated like heroes. When the fervor for polar expeditions heightened even more, he again chose discretion over valor and went into other fields of study and passed the baton to the likes of Peary, Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen. He worked in the League of Nations, became Norway’s first Ambassador to the United Kingdom and went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize for his work after World War One for helping repatriate prisoners of war.

None his accomplishments in oceanography, meteorology and diplomacy would have happened if he did not show discipline and turn away from reaching the North Pole when he knew it would be best to stop. He would have certainly died in the Arctic, another lost explorer if he pressed on. That is a very powerful force of will and character.

Many people cannot, or worse, will not make those same decisions when they need to. They see the glory, the windfall from pushing onward against all good reason and safety and turn a blind eye to reason.

One of the reasons Karen shared this article with me was because while attempting to fix the bathroom sink pipes, I ran into a series of problems. Each problem I fixed brought out another issue. I looked over the situation and then said, ‘Honey, I think we need a plumber to help fix this’. I looked at the issue and realized that if I kept pushing forward, I would be possibly tear up the wall, the counter and who knows what else. Instead of trying to prove my manliness by fixing the pipes, I chose to admit it was beyond me and we had a plumber take care of it. She was proud that I was able to make that decision and chose discretion over pride (not to mention making a huge costlier mess in the bathroom).

I am no Fridtjof Nansen by any stretch of the imagination, but I was able to be like him because I stopped and re-thought my options and chose to stop. This is a great lesson for everyone. Knowing when to stop is a tough choice. Folks often push forward without thinking. Others try to cover their fear of being found out that they don’t actually know what they are doing. Whatever the reasons, knowing when to stop and choose another option is of vital importance in our lives.

I look forward to learning more about Fridtjof Nansen and his great discipline.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Message of the Day - Focused thought and visualizing goals.

Good Morning,

Welcome new recipients!!

I am taking a break from Marcus Aurelius and read “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace D. Wattles (http://www.amazon.com/Science-Getting-Rich-Wallace-Wattles/dp/B001D95XKO). This is also a book mentioned in the 50 Classics Series, and while I did not immediately add it to my list of books to read, I kept seeing it sitting prominently on a shelf at Half-Priced Books. After the third time, I bought it.

This book, written in the early 1900’s is another forefather of ‘The Secret’. Like ‘The Magic of Believing’ and books on ‘The Law of Attraction’ this book covers how to focus our thoughts to visualize what we want and then welcome it into our world.

Wallace Wattles talks about formless ‘stuff’ which is shaped by thought. Our thoughts, when consistent and focused, forge what we want. Although he says it is not a simple as thinking of getting something and having it materialize in front of you. While that would be cool, it does not work, so far as I have tried. He does mention how these things do end up in our life through a series of events. Someone has an extra item and wants to give it away, and tells a friend, who remembers hearing that someone was looking for such an item and one thing leads to another and the item ends up on your doorstep.

Praying works the same way. We can get what we pray for, but not necessarily in the way that we think. Someone shared with me a story of a shipwrecked man on a deserted island. He prays to be rescued, and in the days that pass, he builds a shelter out of driftwood. He is starving and lonely and keeps praying. Then one day his hut catches on fire and burns to the ground. He feels forsaken and gets angry. The next day he is awaken by a boat coming to save him. He asks how they found him, and they tell him that they saw his smoke signal.

However we visualize, pray or ask for things in our lives, be positive and consistent. Some folks I speak with think they can visualize a million dollars and it will show up next Tuesday. It would be great if it did, but more likely that visualization will create a series of events, ideas, actions, opportunities which if we keep focused on our goal, can eventually come our way. Some folks liken this to serendipity.

When we look at how successful people made it to success, it is often based on hard work and focused thought, consistently visualizing their goals and driving forward in the same direction.

Seems to me that they have successfully used these principles as well.

Something to think about.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Message of the Day: The Emperor's Life of Happiness

Good Morning,

Welcome New Recipients!!

My current read is The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (recommended by the 50 Spiritual Classics series), translated by George Long. Book Three, section 12 of the Meditations had me thinking. Well, most of the book has me thinking, but this one jumped out at me.

“If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping they divine part pure, as if thou shouldest be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with the present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterst, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”

Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus is talking about putting our effort solidly, yet calmly into an endeavor that is before us. It does not have to be important or special, it could be any goal we want to achieve. He goes further to say that if we stay true to ourselves and pursue this goal with vigor and zeal, and do not fixate on our goal, but accept that doing our best is enough to satisfy, that when we achieve our goals, we will feel a sense of pleasure and enjoyment that no one can take from us.

That is a pretty powerful statement.

I have never thought about going after goals with such an honest passion or zeal like Marcus Aurelius writes about above. It is such a pure drive toward a goal, but not a drive filled with prideful ambition.

Some lofty goals are more like dreams and can often seem to be out of our reach, no matter what we do in life. We tend to turn from these dreams from time to time because they seem just too hard to achieve.

Yet, there may be a way.

If we could harness our energies to put our effort like this into what we do, vigorously yet calmly and without distraction or fear, we can reach those goals, no matter how lofty.

Even in such tough times as these, there are those who achieve the seemingly impossible. If this is their recipe for success, then it is here for all of us to use as well.

It is amazing how great wisdom stands for thousands of years and still carries so much, if not more, punch in our lives today.

When we really focus and re-read this teaching before looking at a goal, and ask ourselves if we follow Marcus Aurelius’ guidance, will we succeed?

I am sure we will say yes.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Message of the Day - Do We Complain or Improve?

Good Morning,

Welcome new recipients!!

Over the years I have heard complaints about how the drug companies tried to entice medical practitioners to prescribe their drugs through the liberal use of providing free promotional materials (pens, pads, calendars, etc.). People complained it was unfair and wanted it stopped.

A few weeks ago I heard a news story about how the drug companies are no longer going to provide free promotional materials to medical practitioners except for anything educational about their products. To my surprise, there were complaints made that these drug companies only did this to save money, seemingly ignoring that they were, in fact, stopping giving out freebies.

It is interesting that when people called for a change and got it, some found something else to complain about.

That seems to be a lot of energy spent in complaining and not very much energy on finding solutions.

If we focus our energy on solutions, what we would like to see happen, instead of finding fault (and in our world, there seems to be ample supply of fault to be found) we can enact improvements in our lives and in those around us.

While an incremental improvement may not be satisfying and of itself, repeated improvements are like building a house from bricks. One brick is not much of a house, but as the bricks get added, the house takes shape.

When we look at something that upsets us, can we look with an eye for how to make improvements instead of just complaints? There will be times that there is little to nothing that we can do to change a situation for a variety of reasons, but that does not mean that we should not try to find improvements. Let’s get that improvement mindset revved up and humming.

Taken another way, when we see the glass half full or half empty, do we look at the glass and see what is missing or do we look for the pitcher to fill it up the rest of the way?

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Monday, January 19, 2009

Message of the Day - Be Very Quiety, I am Stealth Learning.....

Good Morning,

Welcome New Recipients!!

Over the last few weeks I have been listening to ‘Primal Leadership’ by Daniel Goleman: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (http://www.amazon.com/Primal-Leadership-Realizing-Emotional-Intelligence/dp/157851486X).

Listening to the book has re-emphasized the importance of learning to improve our Emotional Quotient or EQ. That is, learn to improve our Emotional Intelligence so that we can interact better with others in as many different situations as possible.

One section that jumped out at me was ‘Stealth Learning’. Sounds like sneaking into a bookstore and reading a book, but not buying it (which I am not a fan of. That is why we have libraries). Dr. Goleman tells us that Stealth Learning is a method of learning where as we are doing something else, we learn stuff. The goal is not to learn, but to do, and while we do, we learn.

Some folks take on new projects or dive into fields where they have little to no knowledge, for Stealth Learning. They learn many new skills and a lot of knowledge while at the same time working to achieve a goal.

Dr. Goleman goes on to say that Stealth Learning can often be better than direct learning (get training, take a class, etc.), because what we learn is both immediately applicable and hands on.

I remember while leading one unit, I learned so much about the unit that I could pass as proficient in it in a very short period of time, yet I never had any formal training in it. I learned bits and pieces along the way as I performed my role as a manager. For example, a problem arose, I reached out to my team for help and in resolving the issue, I then learned something new. My goal was resolving the problem, along the way, I learned about the solution, but in addition, I learned other things as well as the team offered suggestions and then commented back and forth on these. In the end, I even improved my management and leadership skills as I learned a lot about working in a stressful environment.

It is amazing what we can learn as we go through our days. When we take on new projects or enter new areas of our lives, we open the door to greater opportunities for Stealth Learning.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Friday, January 16, 2009

Message of the Day - The Miraculous is not always so miraculous

Good Morning,

Yesterday I saw and read in the news about the airliner which lost both of its engines to a bird strike shortly after takeoff and had to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River. You sure don’t hear too many stories like that, thankfully.

Everyone on the airplane survived, and the airplane itself is still relatively intact, and according to this morning’s new report, is still floating on the Hudson River. The New Yorker’s reading this may want to get some pictures.

It seems miraculous that after take off, and with no engines, the pilot was able to crash land with no loss of life and minimal injury to everyone onboard. We often hear of similar crashes and expect there to be a total or near total loss of life.

How did this happen? From news reports, it was the quick thinking response of the crew with the help of the control tower. It was as if this were an exercise for which they had some form of training for.

Wait a minute. Very few airplanes crash, so few that most pilots will never experience anything like this during their entire careers. In fact, they are more likely to be injured driving home in their car after a day’s work. So why train for something that may never happen? There appear to be more logical things to train for, which the pilots will encounter more often. Because we never know what may happen to us, in whatever we do. Having some form of training, and thus experience, in handing oddball and difficult situations gives us resources to pull on to handle these difficult situations.

Training for the unknown is often jeered at or written off as something unwarranted or unnecessary, especially during tough economic times.

As we see today, training for critical situations like this has saved the lives of everyone on that airplane.

Practice makes perfect, practicing what to do in times of crisis can give you the tools to make a No-Win situation come out miraculously well. While there are no guarantees, I would rather have more tools in my tool kit than less.

Practice for the unexpected and maybe you may see a miraculous outcome.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

502-533-9336

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Message of the Day - You Don't Have to be a Genius to be Successful

Good Morning,

My current read is ‘Outliers: The Stories of Success’ by Malcolm Gladwell. (http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html). Let me start off by saying that I simply love reading anything by Malcolm Gladwell. His writing style just sucks me in and I understand the concepts he is sharing very quickly. I love his first two books, ‘Tipping Point’ and ‘Blink’ and already love ‘Outliers.’ If you have not read them, please do, I am sure you will get a lot out of them too.

About a third of the way through the book Malcolm Gladwell talks about the correlation of genius to success and that in several long term sociological experiments. Having high IQ’s does not necessarily map to having a successful life. He goes on to show that the difference from having an average IQ to being above average in IQ does have implications in being successful, but once you get into the genius level IQ range, having an IQ of 150 or 190 does not have that much impact on the success of your life.

What does this mean?

Like all things, it is diminishing returns. After a certain point, the value of ‘better’ starts dropping off. Even with genius.

Also, IQ is also not all that it’s cracked up to be. These days we have identified other qualities which can have even more impact on our lives, like EQ, Emotional Quotient (from Emotional Intelligence as covered in Dr. Daniel Goleman’s books on the subject). Being able to operate well in a society of people can have a lot more implications than being smarter than the group of people you work with. Especially if they don’t like or trust you. We have seen the stuck-up prodigy who could care less that another human beings were alive in their presence. Makes me want to get their autograph….

This also means that we should not limit ourselves by what we feel our IQ is. That is, if we are average or slightly above average, the doors that close in our live are often those that we close for ourselves because we feel we are not smart enough. We give up on ourselves and make erroneous conclusions of what we can and cannot do based on what we know about ourselves.

It reminds me of a Garfield comic strip with Odie the dog sitting in a tree next to Garfield. Garfield’s caption reads ‘It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t know what you can’t do.’

This means that we can all be successful the way we are. We are smart enough for most things in life. Ok, not all of us will qualify for MENSA, but does that we really limit our lives? Only if we let it.

We don’t have to be a genius to be successful in life. Studies have shown, and as I am learning from ‘Outliers’ there are many factors that go into success. Intelligence, while being a part of the puzzle is not a large part.

That’s good news!

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg