Message of the Day - Yes Virginia There is a Santa Claus, he is You.

Good Morning,

 

As mentioned in prior posts I like watching the Norad Tracks Santa website which shows Santa’s progress of delivering gifts around the world (my favorite video is the 2006 promo showing Santa getting a fighter escort http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPoCtPmjqEc). This site shows how interconnected we all are around the world and how Santa Claus and Christmas represent a time for celebration, reflection, a time for giving and being thankful.

 

At work on Christmas Day, when talking about Santa’s progress (there is an Android app for it you know) one of my co-workers smirked and said: ‘You know Santa died a long time ago’. Getting beyond the jokes, jabs and other flavors of comments, I responded “No, Santa is alive and well”.

 

I shared how Santa is alive and well in each and every one of us. That we can see it all around us, as we each have an opportunity to be Santa for someone else.

 

Then one of my coworkers shared that their daughter and her husband are just starting out and had a medical issue requiring some medical treatment, resulting in a $700 bill which they could not afford. A few days later a cashier’s check arrived in the mail from some unknown source for $700.

 

They may not know who sent it, but I do. It was Santa.

 

I shared that story with a teller at my bank later that week and she told me about a lady who went to a K-Mart and paid off the Christmas layaways for all the customers of that store. That is, all but one penny for each. When the customers came to pay off their layaways and found the balance to be only one cent.

 

They didn’t know who gave them that gift, but I do. It was Santa.

 

At the office I told people that each and every one of us can be Santa.  I asked if anyone participated in an Angel Tree program getting a gift for some family or person they did not know. Several said yes. I said “You are Santa to that family or person”.

 

By our actions to help others, we become Santa. We may not be ole jolly Saint Nick, with a faster than the speed of light sleigh, 9 reindeer and an army of elves making gifts in a northern factory, but we can make the difference in the lives of others just the same.

 

While Christmas may be over for this year, the generosity of a giving spirit does not have to go into hiding for another year.

 

We can be Santa all year long. And it does not have to cost us much in time or money.

 

·         Pick up a package of diapers or baby formula and drop it off at a women’s shelter or clinic.

·         Bring some gently used winter clothes to a shelter or other collection point.

·         Contact a local church and see what they are collecting to help others (supermarkets often have great sales, like 10 for $10 on common items).

·         Pay the barista at your favorite coffee shop for another coffee and ask them to gift it some unsuspecting customer and maybe you can start a day long pay it forward marathon where it seems like Santa just showed up for each and every person.

·         Contact the Ronald McDonald House and volunteer to clean up and prepare a meal for families experiencing tough times with ill children.

·         Go to a nursing home and hang out with some amazingly cool people who have fantastic stories just waiting to be shared.

·         Add your idea or what you did here…

 

Each time we help another we are Santa.

 

And the more Santa is out and about helping others, our world become that much of a better place to live.

 

So yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, he is you.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

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

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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Message of the Day - Character in Action

Good Morning,

 

I have read many books, earlier this year I surpassed 500. Many of these books are in one way or another about leadership and or leaders. If I were to guess, it would be some 100 books relating to leadership. At this point some of the leadership books I read are not very memorable, that is, it’s something I have read before, in some cases, many times. Due to this I have tried to change my search for new leadership books to be more focused on the lives of leaders and accomplishments of organizations.

 

My current read is by author Donald T. Phillips, with Adm. James M. Loy, USCG (Ret.), who also wrote a wonderful book called “Lincoln on Leadership”. I have also read Mr. Phillip’s book, ‘Founding Fathers on Leadership” which also help spark my interest in our founding fathers.  In internet searches I found another book by the same author called “Character in Action: The U.S. Coast Guard on Leadership” (http://www.amazon.com/Character-Action-Coast-Guard-Leadership/dp/1591146720). The title intrigued me and I put it on my wishlist on Amazon. Thanks to an early Christmas present from my buddy Kiwi, I ordered it and five other books off my wishlist (I love buying used books with Amazon Prime!).

 

So I started diving into Character in Action and was grabbed from the get go. If reading this book does anything for you, it will give you a new profound respect for the U.S. Coast Guard. The book ties together leadership lessons with real life stories of Coast Guard operations to give more depth to each lesson.

 

One of the most compelling factor I found in the book is the Coast Guard’s bias toward action.  The USCG trains their people not so much for possible situations, rather they train for what they do on a daily basis. They are a small organization with a smaller budget and have had to do a lot with a little and have found what works and keeps the entire organization moving.

 

So how does an organization which is more likely to act than not, which has less resources than many would consider necessary have so many successes?

 

They train their ranks to think for themselves. No so much what to think, but rather to review a situation, weigh the outcomes and make a decision. They push the decision making down to the front lines. So much so, the top brass focus their efforts on supporting their field commanders, not the other way around.

 

The organization partners with anyone and everyone who can help them. In these partnerships, the USCG takes the back seat and often does not get credit for successful operations. They are more concerned with the success than the credit. Due to these longstanding and strong relationships, in times of need, their friends and allies are almost always there to help out.

 

The USCG gets their new members into the field as soon as possible and has them doing important work immediately. They also share the importance of the work so that everyone knows what is at stake. They help provide guidance along the way to ensure both successful performance of duties and the continual growth of their staff.

 

I could go on and on, but I must tell you that this leadership book is one of the best I have ever read. Being a fan of Alexander Hamilton does not hurt either. If you were not aware, he created the precursor to the coast guard, called the Revenue Marines, in 1790. There is a lot of tradition in the USCG and this book shows it loud and clear.

 

The Coast Guard have a great model on leadership, and I hope to bring some of it to my company and organizations I work with.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

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

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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Message of the Day - Express Yourself as Yourself

Good Morning,

 

My current read is “Trout on Strategy” by Jack Trout (http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Trout-Strategy/dp/0071437940/). He with his former partner, Al Reis, authored such marketing greats as ‘Positioning’ and ‘Marketing Warfare’, which is my favorite marketing book.  In this book, Jack Trout recounts much of the information that he has previously written and compiled into a book pulling together the best method of laying out strategies for success.

 

While this is a marketing book, the principles within it work all areas of life. This is true because of how pervasive marketing, itself, is.

 

Anyway, some of the material is on simplicity and some on clarity where the points brought out are to convey our message with both simple and clear language.  That we should communicate in one manner in all situations. For example, how we talk is how we should write.

 

Please don’t confuse this one method of communication with a monotone person or someone who only knows one volume…too loud.

 

In essence we should be ourselves as we speak, as we type and as we text or any other form of communication.

 

Conversely, we should not spice up our language with fancy words to impress others, as it often both backfires and confuses (folks don’t understand and they end up not being impressed).

 

As our most basic form of communication is our speech, we can use that as a basis for other forms. For example:

 

When we send a message, send it like we would speak it.

 

When we make a presentation, lay it out as we would speak it.

 

Changing our goals from giving an impressive presentation to one that is readily understood and flowing naturally can have a much better impact than that of trying to do something over the top.

 

Besides, if we end up impressing others with our over the top performances, it is only a matter of time until they see the true us.

 

So why not just be ourselves and express ourselves as ourselves?

 

Sounds simple enough!

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

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

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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Message of the Day - Perseverance and Luck

Good Morning,

 

At the end of my latest dental checkup, the dentist entered the room and after looking at my teeth he smiled and said I was lucky.

 

Seven years after losing my front eight teeth my remaining teeth were still doing well. In other words, I get to keep them for another four months until my next check up.  

 

About seven and a half years ago, after starting to see my dentist, he noticed something wrong with my teeth and recommended I get tested for diabetes by my primary care physician. The tests showed I was a member of club. Maybe it was all those Mountain Dew Code Red’s I loved to drink all the time. Anyway, the diabetes had somehow caused the bone around my front teeth to go away. I was told that it was only a matter of time until the rest would have to be pulled. That was in December, 2004.

 

So now, each morning, either home or away, I spend a lot of time working on my dental hygiene. Flossing, proxy brush, wet brush (using the tooth brush with only water), then with tooth paste and finally the gum stimulator.

 

I probably spend more time on my teeth than many do on their hair.

 

It is with this continued diligence that my dentist says I am lucky.

 

I believe it is a combination of diligence and luck, but without the diligence, the luck would most likely be of the bad variety.

 

By putting in the extra effort and consistently doing more, I have changed the odds against me.

 

This same approach to life can also work in other areas as well.

 

The harder we work, the more consistently we work harder, the better we will do, and the ‘luckier’ we will find ourselves.

 

That is, we will be able to capitalize on opportunities due to our preparation and practice, that would have not been open to us otherwise.

 

By stepping it up and keeping constant effort, we can improve the chances of our success in all endeavors.

 

In a word, perseverance creates success and capitalizes on luck.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

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

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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Message of the Day - Responsibility for Decisions

Good Morning,

 

I must warn you, this message has a little, ok, a lot of passion in it.

 

In leadership we make decisions, and these decisions can and often do have effects which extend beyond the scope of the situation the decision was made for. And as leaders, we need to understand this and be responsible for our decisions and those who feel the change. 

 

In many cases, decisions are made for business reasons, to save a company, to help a customer, to appease the stakeholders, etc.  In some cases, these decisions are made due to ideological reasons. This is more highly prevalent in non-profit and government sectors.

 

When the decision costs jobs, and depending on in what venue decisions are made, lives, we need to be accountable for those decisions.

 

Why is that job being lost, why is the life being sacrificed?

 

As leaders we need to answer these questions, and these answers must be well founded or there can be heck to pay.

 

This morning, as I was walking Bo, the temperature was in the mid teens. The coldest day so far this fall. And as I walked I thought about a shelter I heard about in New York who took people off the streets in whether like this. That this shelter is Christian and as part of their caring for those they took off the streets included teaching the Bible. The New York Government decided to pull their funding from this shelter because of the way they help people, specifically because of the use of the Bible.

 

This was an ideological decision, and I can understand that constituents of state of New York may not approve of this type of care.

 

Yet, there was a bigger part of this decision which really bothered me.

 

No other shelters were set up to compensate for the reduced capacity of these shelter. That the people who were out on the streets had one less place to go because of this decision. That people could die in the cold (and it gets COLD in New York, I lived there for 33 years).

 

Because of an ideological decision by the government, people could die. That makes those who made the decision accessories to whatever befalls those who would have had a place to be warm and well fed and now have to stay on the streets.

 

What do we tell the families of those who die because this decision? The money pulled should be given to either create a new shelter or expand an existing shelter, so as to not allow people to get sick and die.

 

That decision was irresponsible.

 

We, hopefully, will never have to make decisions which have such repercussions, but as leaders we may never get that chance to live and work in completely sterile environments where our decisions have no further impact than the people in front of us.

 

The challenge as leaders is to think a bit longer into our decisions and try to understand what impact they will have before we make them.

 

And as leaders, we must take responsibility for the decisions we make.

 

We can and should learn from each situation, to help us make better decisions as we go forward.

 

Remember, our responsibility as a leader starts when we take on the role, and often does not end, even after we leave the position, as the decisions we make why being a leader often last longer than we do.

 

Something to think about.

 

 

 

Sanford Berenberg

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

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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Message of the Day - Causitive Living

Good Morning,

 

As a kid I remember the Space Invaders video game which first came out in the arcades and then on Atari. The invaders, in a neat formation, started their march slowly to the side and then down on space closer to your base and then marched to the other side. Back and forth, closer and closer. Then to add another level of stress, the invaders sped up as they got closer or the fewer of them that remained. And, of course, when you clear a level, the next level is just that much faster.

 

 

When you play that game, or any game with the same ‘speed up’ concept, you have to match that speed with a focused plan of attack. When you have the system down, that speed becomes manageable.

 

I remember staying with my uncle and aunt in Brooklyn, NY one weekend and as we were preparing to go out for some visits, sightseeing, lunch and dinner, a friend of my uncle and aunt’s came over. He laid down on the couch and started playing Space Invaders.  When we returned about eight hours later, we found this friend, still on the couch, still playing Space Invaders. More than that, he was playing that same game.

 

The increased speed of the attackers had become routine to him, and he just handled it in what seems like a monotonous focused manner.

 

Our lives are like those games. They are speeding up with all of our time-saving tools, increases in technology and how our society just embraces these changes, which causes all of society to pick up pace just like those Space Invaders making the step down closer to your base, and picking up the pace in the process.

 

We are doing more and more, and have less time for a lot of what we consider important to us. We do so much more each and every day, yet we often feel like we have done nothing by the end of the day.

 

Part of this is the lack of focus on what are the priorities in our lives.

 

In that focus, we have to do two things well if we want to take back control of our lives.

 

The first is obvious, but still very hard to accomplish. We need to stop doing those things that just sap away our time. For me, it is at night, before I go to sleep, I go the web and check Fox News or CNN just one more time to see if there is anything new going on in the world since the last time I checked 10 minutes prior.  Or, it’s visiting YouTube to find and watch a video of some comedy routine or music video from the 1980s. And what do you see when you look at these sites? Other videos you ‘might’ be interested in. Next thing you know 30 minutes is gone, which I could have used to get more beauty sleep. And boy do I need that!

 

We all have things we can stop doing which we know are a waste of time.

 

The second is not so obvious. This is to stop doing those things which we like to do, which we need to do. In my current read ‘Simple Life’ by Thom and Art Rainer (http://www.amazon.com/Simple-Life-Time-Relationships-Money/dp/0805448861), the authors talk about how we need to thin down all the things we are currently doing, often which are ones we like to do. That we need to make tough decisions on not doing things which can sap our time and impact our lives while giving a less of a return our efforts.

 

The key point is that in stopping doing these items, these things are nothing bad. Like helping out in a charity event. That is a good thing to do. If you have five events you are doing and little time to spend with your kids or your job is being impacted, then one or two of those charity events may need to be handed off to someone else or even dropped.

 

So how do we decide which good items in our lives we should stop doing?

 

There are many ways, and one that I prefer is to look back at our core values. What is it that makes us us? And then look at our activities and rank them by how closely they align with our values. Then drop the ones which have the least alignment.

 

If everything you do is aligned to your values, then look at your current needs, and reassess under the lens of current needs.

 

To help us live better lives, we need to live more causatively. We need to divest ourselves of the bad behaviors.

 

And if that does not give us enough time back, we need to dig deeper.

 

To focus our efforts on only the key activities which support our values and look to drop others.

 

It could give us a lot of time back throughout our days, weeks, and so on.

 

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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