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Expectations

April 3, 2011 in Leadership, Sports, Worklife with 0 Comments

The expectations for the Phillies have never been higher than they are for 2011 season.

The 2011 Phillies

Ben Francisco scores winning run in bottom of 9th in first game of 2011. Rob Carr - Getty Images

High Hopes
With the off-season return of Cliff Lee, the Phils have 4 starting aces to throw at their NL foes and an offense that even with the loss of Jason Werth, has potential to score runs in bunches. They have been an exciting team to watch for the past 3 seasons and 2011 looks like it could be magical year for the players, fans, the city of Philadelphia and even for Major League Baseball. The club has been fortunate to have the senior leadership of Charlie Manuel and Ruben Armaro who have made some bold and surprising moves. They seem to know what they are doing and have earned the respect of players and fans alike.

World Series or bust. That seems to be the growing expectation among the fans of Philadelphia and even in the club house. They believe they have what it takes to win it all. Over confident? Maybe. There are a lot of games to be played and there are a lot of hurdles to get by, including the injury bug, but there is no reason to doubt their chances are as good if not better than the rest of the league.

Is it fair to have such high expectations of a sports team or any organization? Should we be disappointed when a team “only” makes it to the first round of the playoff then looses? Most teams would just love to make it that far. Many players never get to taste the playoffs, not to mention wear a championship ring on their finger.  Does the pressure of having higher expectations in yourself and by your fans help you do perform better? It seems that the best athletes are those that rise to the occasion and rather than crumble under the pressure they soar. Conversely, it seems without high expectations (or with too low of expectations), many will fail or only reach mediocrity.

What About the Real World?
It seems to make sense to have these hopes and expectations for sports teams that have the right chemistry and talent, but what about the “real world” where we work and live? Should we have high expectations of our leaders at work, church or government? What about our families and our relationships? If our expectations are low are we just setting them (and ourselves) up for failure? Some of us would rather play it safe and not risk being hurt or disappointed and in so doing, miss out on the opportunity to ever taste the thrill or experience the excitement that comes from achieving something that seems impossible.

Do we cheer for our friends and coworkers or do we insult them or try to bring them down. Do we encourage our kids and be there biggest fans or do we point out what they are doing wrong and constantly have to ‘show them’ how it should be done? Do we support our spouses, church leaders and workplace bosses or do we spend our time finding their faults and pointing them out to others?  How much better would they be if we had high expectations and cheered them on?

I believe sports are so popular because we all want to experience what winning is like. We want to be the hero and the one people cheer for. What we often overlook though is the number of times the star players have struck out, the amount of practice they have put in and the sacrifices they have made along the way.

Maybe it’s time we spent as much enthusiasm cheering those around us as we do our favorite sports team. I wonder how many more champions we would produce if we did?

[Leave your comments here]

 

SAP Projects

March 14, 2011 in Just for Fun, Leadership, Worklife with 0 Comments

SAP projects are often large, complex and very expensive endevours for most companies. The value they provide if done right (on time and budget) can be tremendous. For many organizations, and integrated system like SAP will help them realize new levels of efficiency and savings when looked at over the course of many years.

To archive those results, however, organizations have to be willing to let go of the way they currently do things and approach not only the system but also their business practices with a new paradigm. This is more often then not where companies fall down in their SAP journey. They want the benefits that the standardization and integration that SAP provides but they don’t want to let go of their familiar way of doing business.

The clip below is a humors look at the serious implications of not managing a SAP project well!  Enjoy!

The Bermuda Triangle of Productivity

February 1, 2011 in Worklife with 0 Comments

I love this image. In an online and ever connected world like ours, social media and even email can become huge distractions. How do you know if your productivity is getting lost in this Bermuda Triangle? Do you constantly feel the tempting urge to check for new status updates, tweets and email messages that demand your attention? Do you tend to drop everything else every time you get a new DM, @ reply, a post on your wall or new email message? Maybe it is time to let go (for a while).

When I was growing up and in school, the main distraction was the phone.  Not not a smart phone but a regular-old-corded-attached-to-the-wall phone.  Oh yeah, and the only thing you could do with it was talk on it – no texting, surfing or playing games. I’m not sure how I would have dealt with all of the competing distractions that face kids today.  But it’s not just kids that have to learn how to balance all of the new ways of social interaction with other responsibilities. Adults need to as well and perhaps even more so. Like so many things, it might be even harder for adults to learn how.

I am not saying that social media is a waste of time. It can be a very valuable and important communication and connection tool which gives us inroads and insights to people, customers and potential clients but it must be balanced.  The same can be said about email and texting. While social media (and even texting) is a relatively new medium, email has been around for a long time and there are many who have become slaves to their inbox.

The definition of our “inbox” changes as technology changes. Think about it, an inbox used to only be a physical box sitting on your desk or wall where mail and papers that you had to look at, work on or respond to would go. Now the inbox has become digitalized in many different forms, but just like with the physical one, we must learn not to become slaves to it, else we will find ourselves “busy” but not necessarily working on the right things or the best things.

Question: How do you balance social media, email and work? Do you have a different three points on your triangle? Leave your comments here.

(HT: Ministry Best Practices Image: Fuchsia Macaree)

Staying Focused

January 26, 2011 in Family Life, Tools, Worklife with 0 Comments

The start of a new year is often a great time to get oneself reorganized, set goals and do some planning.  Planning and goal setting are great things to do but it is easy to become discouraged if we don’t achieve or accomplish them.   As a result, many people (I’ve been guilty) give up setting goals (or making them very low) because they feel they won’t achieve them.

Medium to long-range goals are often derailed by a lack of short-term focus to get things done.  Life is full of distractions and competing priorities.  If you try to get everything done at the same time you’ll get nothing done.  If everything is a priority, nothing is.

Instead of giving up or setting the bar too low, I’m looking for tools and methods that will make for a better plan of attack on achieve the goals I set and the immediate tasks I need to accomplish at work, at home, at church and in my own business.  It is definitely a work-in-process and often a challenge to my sanity!  Sometimes I try something, only to find it doesn’t work or only works for a short while.   But I have found the key is not to give up, but to keep trying.

I am currently trying out a few things that I hope to share over the next few weeks.  In the mean time, I’d love to know how do you stay focused?  Do you have any methods, tools or tricks that you have found that work for you?

Deadlines

January 19, 2011 in Worklife with 0 Comments

Deadlines. Does anyone really like them? They usually hang over us at work or business, cause stress, anxiety, and even fear. We first experience them in school as our teachers dole out homework announce quizzes and test dates and assign projects to be done.  As we progress from primary to secondary education the deadlines and assignments get larger and more significant.

By the time we graduate from college we are supposed to be “prepared for the real world” where we will continue to be challenged by work and various things that must be done by a certain time. We quickly become conditioned to the deadlines of life and before we know it they go from being an occasional annoyance in middle school to being something that our life seems to revolve around and by driven by.  The question I’m starting to ask myself is are we aware of how conditioned we are by deadlines and do we really understand the impact they have on both the quality of the work we do as well as our attitude about it.

Every job has expectations regarding the work you perform whether that is the capacity of an educator, a programmer, pastor, real estate agent or chef.   We won’t be employed for very long if we don’t meet or exceed what is expected of us.  While there is much diversity between jobs in different industries I believe the bigger variable is the personalities of the people and organizations we work for.  Do we dread deadlines themselves or do we dread the people who are imposing them on us?  Do we dread the task itself or do we dread the fact that we were told we had to do it?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the importance of needing to actually COMPLETE something and often there is a time frame for which it must get done.  If there wasn’t a time deadline we may often never actually complete the assignment.  I for one need deadline dates to help me prioritize and focus.  But as I expand the scope and variety of the work I do between work, church and business I’m starting to become more aware of my own motivation and how deadlines, dates and the people behind them influence it.

This will probably become a series of posts as I share my thoughts and learnings about myself but I’m also interested in hearing from you.  Leave your comments as to the impact or importance of deadlines in your professional or personal life.  Do they help you?  Do you find some deadlines easier or more motivating than others?  Why do you think that is?

Casual Friday

May 28, 2010 in Worklife with 1 Comment

Today is Friday. At many work places this means “Casual Friday”.  In my 20 years of being in the work place, a lot has changed in regards to dress code. I remember when I first starting working full time in 1988 men were still required to wear a suit everyday. Today that is almost hard to believe and I am glad that has changed!

The 90′s ushered a radical idea – “Casual Friday”. Where I worked, it was a summer-time only experiment, but the foundation was laid and there was no turning back.  In a few years it became year-long and in the past decade, many places of employment allow business casual dress not only on Friday, but Monday through Thursday as well.  Where I work, “Casual Friday” is now “Jeans Day”.

What has been most interesting to observe during this radical change is how so many people just don’t seem to be able to really understand what is appropriate to wear in the work place and what the definition of  ”business casual” really is. This seems to especially be the case in my industry where I am around folks in the technology profession – Geeks.

So in honor of casual Friday and Summer being around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to help spread the word as to what business casual is and what it is not.  Do everyone a favor – make sure you understand this!  Here are the official guidelines from where I work, but they are a good guideline for most places.

Business Casual wear means clean, neat, professional clothing.
Anything you would wear to the gym, beach, and trendy bar or to clean out your garage, should not be worn to the office. Business Casual dress does not mean wearing your most comfortable old clothes or your favorite old jeans to the office. Rather it is a chance for you to take a more casual approach when dressing for work. We ask everyone to use good judgment when determining if an outfit is appropriate. When in doubt, don’t wear it! A lot of this is just good common sense.

Business Casual is:
For women: Skirts, dresses, pant suits, casual dress slacks, Capri or cropped pants, blouses, knit tank or short-sleeve tops, sweaters, blazers, appropriate sandals.
For men: Casual dress slacks, Khakis, sweaters, dress shirts and golf shirts. Ties and jackets are optional.

Business Casual is not:
Camisoles or thin-strapped tank tops, t-shirts, shorts, skorts, jogging suits, sneakers (tennis shoes), rubber thong sandals or workout clothing. These items are inappropriate in an office environment at all times.

New Diggs

May 27, 2010 in Worklife with 0 Comments

This week I got to tour the future home for the world headquarters of my employer, VWR International.

The building is actually being completely gutted down to the cement structures and being remodeled. Everything from new heating and cooling, flooring, lighting, walls, and cubicles. It will basically be a new building when we move in (scheduled for this Fall).

radnor - patio.jpg

A few things I’m looking forward to in the new location:

  • Free gym – The company is really trying to promote healthy life-style choices. This is a great step.
  • Outdoor terrace patios
  • Complete WiFi coverage – I really dislike the wired setups we have currently
  • More gathering / meeting locations – especially for ad-hoc meetings with your workgroup
  • More lighting / open areas
  • Swans – They actually bought 2 swans to live in the fountain pond to keep the geese away. Apparently they are very expensive, but they are quite beautiful.

    • I believe there will be a definite moral boost for everyone once we into the new digs. After all, who doesn’t like that fresh new building smell?  Somehow the environment you are in can do wonders for your attitude, motivation and outlook.

    The only thing I’m not looking forward to will be the new commute. It will probably be adding another 10-15 minutes to my daily drive and into heavier traffic. I’m staying hopeful that adjusting my work hours may help avoid the worse time of rush hour, but we’ll have to wait and see.

    Have you ever had a work-related environment that you either really liked or didn’t like?  How did it impact you or others?