You might have noticed.

But, come what may, I have determined that while my frustrations were hardly veiled, and my exasperations may have been over the top, there are times where conventional conversation is no longer adequate.

Oddly, something as simple as blogging about something immediately intensifies the permanence of a statement. Suddenly a passing feeling could be known to characterize a person. A snapshot in time may be determined later to underwrite or color whole broad strokes of their life.

But while I started blogging to share things I had learned, and I continue blogging to try and help myself define who I am, one very palpable realization I have come to is that if anything, I am all of these things. The coordination of efforts, the blending of colors, the kaleidescope of perceptions.

A few phrases that come to mind as I consider this:

• Altakaluthia - The Mutual Entailment of the Virtues - This is the greek idea that no virtue exists on its own, but must be checked by others. “Justice without love you know is finally not justice” and the idea that things like Honesty, without Compassion becomes cruelty. In the Power of Full Engagement, Loehr & Schwartz say, “Confidence unmediated by humility becomes grandiosity, egomania, and even fanaticism.” and they reference how Jim Collins in Good to Great notes the best leaders he found in his studies exhibited the coordinated powers of “fierce resolve and humility”
• Metisse - Shadows of Different Colors - I have absolutely no idea if I spelled this correctly, but I met a mexican family once who named their horse Metisse because, as they explained, her interestingly muted & multicolored coat reminded them of metisse, the shadows the moon puts on the ground through the trees. The shadows of different colors.

Maybe, my expressions of upset in this blog for various personal and professional reasons over the years will actually serve as anchor points to help you, the reader, but ultimately myself, to track better anchors along the way, the intersection of which should, logically, be who I really am.

• The Four P’s of Marketing: Product, Pricing, Promotion and Placement
• Entrepreneurship & Business
• Business Law
• Fashion
• Computers, Web Marketing
• Etc.

But, please help me answer this question: What do you WISH YOU LEARNED back then to prepare YOU for the workforce– or, what do you feel those entering the workforce in the next 10 years need to know?

Comments, Please

Its my job to know what’s happening, where, when and how much we’re billing for it. I have no choice but to have it all at my fingertips, and to get from A to Z in as few steps as possible.

Want to know my secrets? Here’s a list of some applications and tools I find so incredibly valuable that my life would be much different without them:

• Roboform password manager
  • Maybe there are other password managers out there, but this one will live with me forever:
    • It has firefox and IE extensions that automatically log me into the website I’m trying to get into.
    • It stores “passcards” and “safenotes” as simple text files, but they’re encrypted with AES (what I use) or 3DES encryption. Your single password unlocks all the rest.
    • Since passwords and notes are stored as text, they can be emailed or synced or backed up with simplicity.
    • Its free for 10 “passcards” but then you can buy unlimited upgrades for like $20. Duh.
    • $ my link above is an affiliate link. Go to roboform.com if you’re really not interested in me making $0.20 if you buy it.
• Anagram by Textual
  • Allows you to highlight any contact information in n email, resume, webpage or whatever and hit the shortcut key and import it right into your outlook contact list, salesforce, palm, etc… KILLER APP for anybody who values their network! You almost don’t “get” how valuable this tool really is until you check out how good it is. Try it!
• Gmail
  • Never again will I change “primary” email addresses.
  • Never again will spam rule my inbox.
  • Never again will I be without a message I had “in my other email”.
  • Never again will I gimp around trying to get access to my messages because my email provider won’t allow IMAP, POP, or web access or some other access vector.
• Google Desktop
  • Oh the WEEKS worth of my LIFE that I have spent searching back through emails and files to find “the document” I need or the “email trail” to show something.
  • No MORE!
• FolderShare
  • Keeping files synchronized between multiple computers in multiple locations USED to be a problem. Not now. Free!
• Blackberry
  • Yeah, I admit I used to think Blackberry users were snobs. They still are. But they’re still faster than you at communicating just about anything to anyone at any time, whenever and wherever they are.
  • If you’re at a killingly-slow networking event, Ask someone why they love their blackberry, and you’ll have no shortage of things to listen to.
• Twitter
  • I’m not spending energy explaining this one. If you don’t get it, fine. But this is one of my secrets of hyper-connectedness.

Philosphy: I think it makes sense to layer these tools with a bit of where my philosophy comes from. There’s three main sources of my general approach to how I do stuff, and they’re all books you can get:

• Getting Things Done by David Allen. I’m not a GTD freak, but I do like the book, and I really like David Allen’s theories and ways of thinking about how to accomplish stuff.
• Love is the Killer App by Tim Sanders. Slow down and really make a difference for other people. You know you need to.
• The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr. This book gives you the keys and understanding of how to really connect deeply in all the facets of your life.

“Which book has had the greatest impact on your leadership style”

I thought a compilation of their answers might be interesting: When page loads completely, the links below will take you to more information about the book

• The Papers of Theodore Roosevelt — Jon Huntsman, Utah State Governor
• Opportunity Knocks Twice by Don C. Hale and Mark R. Hale — Scott Anderson, President and CE, Zion’s Bank
• When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein — Todd Crosland, Chairman and CEO, Interbank FX
• Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen — Larry H. Miller, CEO, Larry H. Miller Group
• Good to Great by Jim Collins.
  • Lane Beattie, President and CEO, Salt Lake Chamber
  • Alan Hall, Founder and Chairman, Grow Utah Ventures
  • Matthew Godfrey, Mayor, Ogden City
  • Richard Nelson, President and CEO, Utah Technology Council
  • Nicole Toomey Davis, Director, Centers of Excellence Program, Governor’s Office of Economic Development
  • Will West, CEO, Control4
• Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch– Josh James, CEO, Omniture Inc.
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore — James Lee Sorenson, Vice Chairman, Sorenson Companies
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell — Jason Perry, Executive Director, Governor’s Office of Economic Development
• Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky — Jack Brittain, Dean, David Eccles School of Business; Vice Presiden, Technology Venture Development, University of Utah
• Rules for Revolutionaries by Guy Kawasaki — Dinesh Patel, Managing Director, vSpring Capital
• The Age of Discontinuity by Peter F. Drucker — Ragula Bhaskar, President and CEO, Fatpipe Networks
• International Business by Michael R. Czinkota — Lew Cramer, President and CEO, World Trace Center Utah
• Peak Performers by Charles Garfield — Jack Sunderlage, President and CEO, ContentWatch Inc
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick M. Lencioni — Jill Miller, Managing Director, Sundance Institute
• Competitive Advantage by Michael E. Porter — Craig Bott, President and CEO, Grow Utah Ventures
• One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson — Becky Potts, President, Morris Murdock Travel
• A World Waiting to be Born by Scott Peck — William A. Sederburg, President, Utah Valley State College
• Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan and Charles Burck — Bret J. Brockbank, President, Intermountain Staffing Resources
• The Extraordinary Leader by Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman — David S. Layton, President and CEO, Layton Companies

Before I begin, I want to say clearly that I have been overwhelmed lately by the incredible blessings and joy that have come to me over all the years of my life, and over this last year. The fact that my children are warm at night, and my family is safe and taken care of, by itself, is a blessing I have not had the luxury of enjoying, even in my only very recent past. I know that all of these blessings come from God, as he showers blessings down on all his children everywhere, and that it is by his grace, we are preserved and protected.

Yesterday, I read these words which, as I contemplated them deeply, caused a deep sense of joy to swell within me for the incredible life we each have been given:

This earth departs from its orbit of the sun by only one-ninth of an inch (2.82 mm) every 18 miles (29 km). If, instead, it changed by one-tenth of an inch (2.54 mm) every 18 miles, we would all freeze to death. If it changed by one-eighth of an inch (3.18 mm), we would all be incinerated*. Did this all happen by accident? Douglas L. Callister, “Our God Truly Is God�

I’m blessed not only in the life I am able to live, but most-richly in the friends I have had the deep opportunity to get to know. I don’t feel adequate at times to say I am a “good friend”, but I try to be a good person, and I try hard to listen and understand where others are coming from much before I offer advice on where I think they should go. Thanks to wordpress, sixapart, twitter, facebook, myspace, linkedin, ning and all the others for developing tools to help me become closer to friends I already know and love… and to meet new, incredible people along the way.

2007 was an interesting year for me. To be honest, it felt more like a very extended 2006.

Professionally and personally, I can’t say this year had very super-dramatic goals or objectives that I can say I’ve surmounted. In fact, 2007 for me has been a year of interesting twists, turns, changes in purpose, changes in attitude, changes in my own thinking, and changes in my real foundation of myself. Honestly, I can’t pause for a second and say “wow, look how far I’ve come”. I am in a different place, but that doesn’t mean the same thing as progress.

Oddly, as I think back and write it down, I sense the bits and pieces of a possible mid-life crisis. Could it be? I have no red Ferarri in the driveway (hold on, let me check one more time), so maybe that’s not really the diagnosis.

More than anything else, the lesson I think I’ve learned as I’ve contemplated last year is that all of my BHAGs–as Jim Collins would put it, which is short for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals–were accomplished sooner than I developed and became passionate about new ones.

Personally and professionally, I accomplished and exceeded many of the things I can remember feeling deeply focused on. What’s odd about GOALS is that “more of the same” is hardly something that I can get passionate about.

For example, “Continue to find new customers” and “Focus on my Target Account List” have been on my task list for some time now and, while I’ve both been successful at both, and I enjoy doing them, there is nothing really exciting or interesting about those specific words that makes me excited to check them off. In fact, I can’t actualy ever “check them off” because they are open-ended and permanent. If I didn’t do these things, I would likely lose my job… so why not put “don’t get fired” on my list and keep it short and simple?

At the end of the day, the most-exciting thing for me concerning 2008 is that I have new personal goals, family goals, and I’m working with my team at work to develop new and challenging professional ones as well.

Bring it on.

* See Bert Thompson and Wayne Jackson, The Case for the Existence of God (1996), 20.

Get registered for an incredible Personal Branding teleconference happening Thursday (two days from when I am writing this) and includes an incredible lineup of speakers from all over the world.

This conference is FREE, but you must register, and then get on the phone during the section you want to learn.

From the website:

To mark the 10th Anniversary of personal branding, on November 8th we are providing 24 free teleseminars with experts in the field of personal branding. Anyone in the world with a telephone will be able to participate in this live event.

This event has content streams for career success, entrepreneurial success and talent management. So, whether you are a corporate professional, an entrepreneur, or a HR manager challenged with the need to attract and retain great people, you will take away actionable knowledge from attending.

Check out the Speakers and Panelists which includes Utah entrepreneur and job-seeker advocate Jason Alba.

Review pending… as soon as I consume and digest all of Jason’s delectable networking knowledge.

Clock Building, Not Time-Telling

Of course, it sounds simple on the surface (all good philosophical phrases are) but their implications are far deeper. What’s the difference? Well, Built To Last says it like this:

“Imagine you met a remarkable person who could look at the sun or stars at any time of day or night and state the exact time and date: ‘It’s April 23, 1401, 2:36AM and 12 seconds.’ This person would be an amazing time teller, and we’d probably revere that person for the ability to tell time. But wouldn’t that person be even more amazing if, instead of telling the time, he or she built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she was dead and gone.”

- James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras,
Chapter 2: “Clock Building, Not Time Telling”, Built to Last

So, what are you doing in your organization and in your life that’s TIME-TELLING, but not CLOCK-BUILDING?

Kaushal Kurapati says it like this: “From my work experience I have noted that giving people the freedom to fail and supporting their decisions–after scrutiny–even when they fail is a way to generate trust and delegate responsibility. Leaders who criticize folks in the company for failing just because they (leaders) weren’t involved is a sure shot way to incorporate time telling into the organization.”

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