Message of the Day - The Downfall of Humanity

Good Morning,

 

Okay, the title is a bit deep for my messages, but bear with me on this one. A few weeks ago, I was chatting with one of my friends and the subject of people needing to understand what they don’t understand came up. Through the course of the discussion, we talked about the impact of that not knowing and the attempts to fill that missing knowledge and how that has caused more problems and cost more pain than almost anything else that people do.

 

Let me back up.

 

When we hear a bump in the night, the first thing we think of is ‘what was that?’ Either that or ‘Honey can you find out what that is, I’m going back to sleep’.

 

We hear or see something that we do not understand, that we do not know what it is, and our mind starts to race. We try to fill in the blanks. What could that sound have been, what could that thing I saw in the sky have been, etc.

 

Instead of accepting that we may just not know what that sound is, and move on, we try to fill in the blanks. I have known folks who almost become petrified as they try to find out what something must have been. It is even funny to hear some of the answers they spout out in their rapid trek to finding an answer.

 

Then, it gets bad.

 

When filling in the blanks, we often act on what we have just filled into the blank. If we end up reasoning that the bump in the night was someone breaking into our house, then we respond by grabbing a bat, or other defensive weapon and go searching for the intruder, that is whatever we find is an ‘intruder’, not a cat, a dog, a daughter, or pipes expanding and contracting.  If we see something odd flying in the sky is something from another world, we may start telling folks we saw a UFO. We may even take pictures and videos of it. I once saw a triangular craft that flew very slowly over Stewart Airport in upstate New York. It was seemingly hovering while I drove nearly 10 miles along State Route 17K. Turned out it was the B2 Bomber flying over the base, which was in the news the next day, with photos.

 

In ancient times, when humans did not understand the world around them, they created pantheons of gods to describe the world around them.

 

It’s human nature. We have not changed that much, except that we have cooler gadgets now.

 

One would think that with all the technological advances we have made over the decades that these unknowns would become less, and our fears would be assuaged more easily. Funny thought.

 

The more we know, the more we find out that we don’t know. The more we understand, the more we find that we don’t understand.

 

Folks, we have ended up opening up more than just one Pandora’s Box of unknowns. Add to that, our human nature has not changed. We still encounter the unknown and still try to come up with explanations for it.

 

Sometimes the unknown needs to be figured out, like that sound in the night. Is it a leaking pipe or someone trying to get into our homes.

 

Many things, though, are okay not to understand. We can try to allow ourselves to say, ‘well, I am not sure what that was, and I am okay with that’.

 

Friendships have been destroyed because something went missing and the only way to reason it out was one of your friends must have taken it. Ignore the fact that friend never lied to you, never did anything wrong, but it must have been so. So the friendship is broken. Then you find the missing item in your car. Oops. Funny, but still, no more friendship, damage has been done.

 

Whole cultures and subcultures have been developed based on what people have pieced together to answer their unknown questions.

 

We have seen it, and we have lived it. We may even be the culprits who constantly grapple with the unknown and instead of either researching an answer, or just living with the unknown, we guess and folks just go along with us, no matter how feeble our guesses are.

 

A lot of the messes our world is in today are because of humanity needing to know and coming up with ‘plausible’ answers, which end up being totally wrong, but are not as nearly as devastating as the impact of acting on those ‘plausible’ but at that time accepted answers.

 

Maybe we should take a step back and accept that there will be things that we will just not understand.

 

And that is okay.

 

Honest.

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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Message of the Day - Keeping the Machine Running

Good Morning,

 

I had a thought hit me over the weekend. I was looking at my watch and thinking about the gears and springs and all the working parts of an old fashioned Swiss watch and it hit me that what I do at my day job is just like those springs and gears.

 

When you look at the watch, you see the face and the hands, but you don’t see the gears that keep them moving in time.

 

When you look at the watch band you see the rest of the watch, but again, you don’t see the gears and inner workings.

 

When you look at the clear crystal or the jewels imbedded in the watch, you don’t see the gears and inner workings.

 

No matter how much you study the watch and admire its beauty and precision, the work of the gears is never seen (except for a few watches actually designed to show the gears).

 

But should those gears ever stop working, then the beautiful timepiece becomes only as valuable as the values of its component parts, basically its scrap value.

 

When I looked at my watch, I realized that my work adds value because of the accomplishments of the team and leadership.

 

I may not be in the limelight or even known by other members of the company.  People who call my unit will hardly ever reach me. My coworkers often have no clue as to what I actually do, but it is all in keeping the entire team moving in perfect time. Okay, near perfect time.

 

How many of you are in the same place, where you work hard every day and yet are not seen for what you do? (Yes, our bosses do know what we do, but few others).

 

Like me you can step back and enjoy the fruits of our labors as our teams succeed.

 

We are the gears and springs that keep everything moving.

 

And that is pretty cool.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
Follow Me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/sberenberg

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Message of the Day - Leadership Lessons from the School of Hard Knocks

Good Morning,

 

I couldn’t sleep Sunday night so I came to the computer and figured I’d surf around Facebook and some of my other online haunts. I ended up watching the last 2/3’rds of a movie: The Core. While I like the movie overall, I really enjoy some of the quotes. One of these quotes is about leadership.

 

Col. Robert Iverson: Being a leader isn't about ability. It's about responsibility.
Maj. Rebecca Childs: Got it, sir.
Col. Robert Iverson: No you don't, Beck. I mean, you're not just responsible for the good ones. You've got to be responsible for the bad ones. You've got to be ready to make the ‘really tough’ call.
Maj. Rebecca Childs: What makes you think I'm not?
Col. Robert Iverson: Because you're so damn good. You haven't hit anything you couldn't beat. I mean, hell, you were the one who figured out how to save the space shuttle. You made me, you made the rest of NASA just look like an ass. It's just you're used to winning... and you're not really a leader until you've lost.

 

It’s that last line that resonates with me:  and you're not really a leader until you've lost.

 

People who always succeed, and worse those who do it with minimal effort, who have never failed will find failure harder to take than those of us who keep falling flat on our faces or kicked in our teeth a few times.

 

If you don’t know what is at risk, that is, what failure tastes like, then when you make leadership decisions, you may not really don’t know the impact of failure. For example, when riding a bicycle, until you‘ve fallen off you don’t know the impact of falling off is. You know it will hurt and you can do an entire intellectual exercise, but until you have fallen, failed, etc., then you don’t know.

 

The greatest leaders have often had monumental failures in the their past. They have lost many times before they started to win.

 

And this brings out the main point. It is okay to fail, so long as get up again.

 

Remember, the difference from success and failure is often getting up off your duff, brushing yourself off and giving it one more try.

 

But if you have never failed, then you will not truly know what it means to lead.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
Follow Me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/sberenberg

http://learnandgrowdaily.com  Click here to order: "Learn And Grow Daily!"

502-533-9336

Message of the Day - Jerry-Rigging is not always the solution

Good Morning,

 

This past Saturday, I took a shot at fixing the electric-eye sensor units on our garage door. You know, the ones that allow the garage door to close without having to stand by the door and hold the button down until the door actually closes. It appears that these units at one time offended our dog Bocefus. Bo was kind enough to show us his dissatisfaction with these units by ripping them off the wall. I had fixed them once before, but at that time, they had not appeased Bo and were summarily ripped off the walls again.

 

I had little to work with, wire-wise, and had to do delicate cleaning of wires and twisting them around each other to ensure an electrical connection. As these wires are so very delicate, I could not use a third wire to ensure connection as it would increase the resistance and it would not work. I know this because I once learned how to soldier to fix a circuit board of a 9-pin dot matrix printer I once broke the board for. I did well soldiering, but even the smallest wire I could find to jump from one connection to the next was so much larger than the flat wires in the board, it never worked.

 

So, after an hour of getting everything set up, and then having to make changes because one side had less wire than other, and one side needed to be spliced in two places, if I moved the wrong way, the wires came unconnected, again…you see where I am going.

 

I took a deep breath and stopped. The jerry-rigging of the sensors was not going to work.

 

As I was resting and thinking of another solution, I realized that I would need to get new sensor units and wires and just do it the right way. After I purchased them and installed them, everything is working again, with a lot less effort.

 

Isn’t that indicative of many things we try to jerry-rig in life? We just try to make it work even know we know it is not the best path to take.

 

We have at times, used an old Excel template to make a new spreadsheet, but don’t peer the old spreadsheet to remove all the old references and formulas and slap in the new, only to find a growing number of errors which then force us to start with a new spreadsheet and do it all over again, when that is what we should have done in the first place.

 

What is it about us that we cling to the old methods which are not cookie cutter solutions and we try to force them into the solutions we are looking for? Is it a fear of change causing us to try to jerry-rig a solution using what we know then going out and trying something new or spending a little more money for a proper solution?

 

One thing I have noticed about jerry-rigging. It is great when you are in a pinch or in a dire or difficult situation. Outside of that, it often is simply  a waste of time and ultimately money.

 

Something to consider.

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
Follow Me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/sberenberg

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Message of the Day - Smoke Alarms

Good Morning,

 

This week was a sad week for bookstores. 2 of the 4 Borders stores in Louisville is closing. The one by my office is one of them. So I went a few last times to pick up some final gifts and such. I found an audio tape by Jerry Doyle, Conservative Commentator and Radio Host for what ended up being $1.00. I remember Jerry Doyle for his role on Babylon 5, and I had seen him at conventions and met him before so for $1 what could I lose. So far, I am really enjoying listening to his book on take “Have you seen my country lately?”.

 

In listening to the second CD, he talked about letting his stardom from Babylon 5 get to his head. That he would vent about some scene or lines he had problems with to his manager, his PR agent and everyone who he effectively paid for his being an actor. Everyone agreed with his rants and what he felt were wrongs. He then called a friend of his, a retired military no-nonsense kinda guy who while Jerry was ranting, was silent. When Jerry paused, his friend asked ‘are you done?’. Jerry said no, and his friend told him to put on his space suit, speak his lines, get his paycheck and then hung up on him.  To Jerry it was an alarm going off, and he changed gears.

 

Jerry also shared a conversation he had with one of his mentors. He asked how Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson could they have earned millions if not more, and to lose it all. His friend said that they didn’t have smoke alarms.

 

Jerry explained smoke alarms are people who tell you how it is. Not like his manager or PR agent who were simply ‘yes-men’. Like his friend who hung up on him after Jerry saw that he was getting a big head about his acting.

 

I am blessed to have several smoke alarms in my life. My wife, my best-friend Howard, several other friends and even my boss.

 

Think about it. I work in a professional office and share a blog of some five hundred messages over 5 years, published a book on self improvement. Put me on a team with some first time supervisors and a few with some more experience, and it may appear to be a mismatch. If I do not watch myself, I could think that I was all that, that I was something special and lord it over my peers.

 

My peers and friends cheered my accomplishment, but also treated me the same as the day before my book was published.

 

I am an average guy, who happens to be good as some things, great a few and terrible at others (painting for one, don’t EVER ask me to paint ANYTHING).

 

When I forget this and see myself as more than I am , I prepare myself for a fall back to reality.

 

It is because I have smoke alarms who I listen to. I don’t pull out their batteries and ignore them.

 

Do you have any smoke alarms in your life who help keep your feet on the ground when your head is in the clouds?

 

If you do, thank them.

 

If you don’t….put new batteries in, or get some.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
Follow Me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/sberenberg

http://learnandgrowdaily.com  Click here to order: "Learn And Grow Daily!"

502-533-9336