Message of the Day - The Difference in Seeing and Living the BIG Picture

Good Morning,

 

I often hear about looking for people who can see the big picture. But, do they see where we are going, do they see what we can become, do they see how we are going to get there?.

 

I believe seeing the big picture is all well and good, but it is just the beginning, kind of like heading out on an adventure, where you look at the map and see where you are going, but until you actually start the adventure, then all you are doing is seeing the big picture.

 

Worse yet, there are many who can see the big picture, but once the wheels start turning in working toward the big picture, they don’t have the ability to see where they are at that moment in relation to the big picture.

 

And then there are the ones who see the big picture and cheer for it, and then go back to what they were doing before, never taking a second look at the end goal, nor lifting a finger to get there.

 

It’s as if they see the picture but don’t believe they can achieve it, or even realize that they are part of it, much less have a role in achieving it.

 

Seeing the big picture is safe. It is done from the comfort of what we know.

 

Living the big picture is risky. There is a lot of unknowns along the way.

 

Seeing the big picture and not having the ability to understand how to move from the beginning of the adventure into the big-wide-outdoors is going to limit people’s abilities to get there.

 

We have to be able to live the big picture, to understand where we have come from, seeing where we are going and understanding that the travel from the beginning to end may not be as easy as walking back into our offices or cubicles and doing what we have done in the past.

 

Living the big picture means taking spot checks of where you are now, where you want to be, and seeing what can be done to move there.

 

Often the big picture is something that will take weeks, months or years to achieve, so daily spot checks must become routine. Additionally, we have to understand that we may not get there for a long time. That we may be leaving what we know and are comfortable with to step out and toward the larger goal.

 

Are you someone who can live with ambiguity, with not knowing how things will get done and that there may need to be sudden and drastic course changes along the way?

 

When you can do this, then as we live and work toward the big picture, we see achievements completed, milestones met and often an even bigger picture around the next hill, which unlocks further achievement and newer, greater goals.

 

So, are  you happy seeing the big picture, or  do you want more, do you want to live the big picture. Are you ready?

 

Ready, set, go and take that first step out on the adventure toward the big picture!

 

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 - Dangers of the Go - To Guy - the Other Extreme

Good Morning,

 

With this being my second email with dangers of using a go-to person, please do not think that I am down on them. Heck, I am one of them, as are many of my friends and family members. My point is, like almost everything, too much of a good thing can become a bad thing.

 

Using a go-to person too often does reduce the growth and learning of others, but it also has the danger of burning the go-to’s out. Especially in areas where there is physical labor and deep thinking involved.

 

Imagine having a team of people who push around large, heavy machines and operate them throughout the day in different parts of their office space. They move them, set them up, wait for the right time to use them, pack them up, and then move them again. The day can get tiresome. If you have a few people on that team who are more experienced or just plain better than the rest, there is a temptation to keep giving the tasks to these ‘go-to’ people over dividing up the tasks as evenly as possible.

 

The go-to people do what they do best and make the unit shine, but at the cost of burning them out physically and mentally, as well as creating a rift between team members who seem to get to sit around a whole lot as they are assigned less tasks.

 

Burning out the go-to people without properly training and expanding the skills of the rest of the team leaves the team in a bad way. Without the ability to promote from within, there is the need to consider bringing in new talent from the outside. While that is a good thing, especially for the person coming in, it can and often does put pressure on the existing team to accept the new, knowing that they were not good enough to step up themselves (either by choice or just by not having the knowledge and experience).

 

In the end, the go-to person is a gift from on high and like your favorite anything, should be used responsibly to avoid wearing them out and allowing the rest of the team to develop.  Think of it this way, if you five pairs of shoes, and you wear the same pair every day, in six months you will still have five pairs of shoes. Four will be like new, and one will be ready for the repair shop or trash.

 

The best team, by the way, is a team full of go-to people. A team of leaders who know when to step up and when to step back and allow another team member to take the lead.

 

Having been a member of a team where I was both the go-to person and the person who watched all the choice projects going to the go-to person, I found that I learned the most when the team experience was in the middle, when there was no real go-to person, where everyone got to play a part.

 

This works in any team, in families and organizations of all sizes.

 

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 - Dangers of the Go-To Guy

Good Morning,

 

Everyone likes to have their go-to people, and they have and will have save our butts many times over the years and for the years to come.

 

To some the go-to person is just indispensible making their absence, or worse, departure, even more challenging.

 

Sometimes the use of a go-to person actually creates problems if not watched out for.

 

I once worked in a unit where the former leader relied on two of their team members for nearly all tasks that they, themselves, did not do. The rest of the team was used for their regular functions, but none were tapped for any special tasks. These two people were, alone, the go-to people of the team.

 

When I took over, I split up the tasks between all the team members who were able to do them. This created two problems.

 

First, the go-to people felt that I was picking on them, and in truth, I was, in that I was not going to rely solely on them.

 

Second, when both of these go-to people left the team, the rest of the team felt like they were going to implode due to the loss of the two go-to people following shortly after the loss of their former leader.

 

This former leader was sometimes known as ‘Magic Hands’ as anything handed to them was ‘Magically’ resolved and it appeared that no one, besides the two go-to people ever learned anything about how the issue was resolved.  

 

Ultimately, the team became a team of go-to people as I engaged each and every person. The team improved its performance to best ever in the company up to that time. New people came in to replace those who left, and knowledge was shared between the entire team.

 

Singling out one or two people solely as your go-to people can be a danger to your team’s growth and productivity.

 

Spread out the knowledge and let everyone learn and grow daily!

 

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 - Learning through unlearning

Good Morning,

 

My current read is ‘The Heart of Leadership’ by Elizabeth Jeffries (http://www.amazon.com/The-Heart-Leadership-Influencing-Encourage/dp/0787220000). The book focuses on all aspects of leadership from what leaders need to do, need to be, need to understand and how to do each of these. The book is full of case studies and tools to use and questions to ask yourself to help evaluate your current level of skill in leadership.

 

One section of the book which caught my attention was on unlearning in order to learn. That as we go through life, we often will learn from multiple different avenues. We learn by reading, by watching television or the internet, by listening to and watching others and even by osmosis, just being in an environment can give us information.

 

Unfortunately, not all that we learn is accurate information, or even useful information. Worse yet is some of the information we learn can even be harmful to us or others. Just think about watching an video about some first aid procedure that goes viral, but is missing a few key steps, what kind of damage could that cause?

 

The good news is that as we live and grow every day, we can continue to learn new materials and overwrite the wrong or outdated material.

 

In effect we can unlearn what we have learned and replace it with new and better information.

 

One challenge to this is when we brush off the new information ‘because we already know this’ not realizing what we know is not accurate or current information.

 

So it pays to be open to learning new things even if it is something we learning a long time ago.

 

Then again, in our technologically driven world, what information stays the same decade over decade, much less year over year?

 

Things we learned a few years ago, and sometimes a few months ago will become outdated.

 

The rate of this change is increasing, so it makes even more sense to be learn how to unlearn by being open to learning more of what we think we already know.

 

Confusing huh?

 

In the end, we need to keep an open mind and keep on learning, and that confusing cycle above will flow naturally. You will know it is working by the ‘aha’ moments you have as you learn something knew or find out something you once thought to be true was wrong.

 

And it all comes down to learning and growing daily.  Funny how that works.

 

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