Scoring big

It's Thanksgiving Day. My family and I are snowbound and staying safe and warm waiting for when the game is going to start. I took a few moments to take an online assessment on leadership and scored 11 points out of 12 maximum points. Whoohoo! That's a big score :)

The Foster Business School at the University of Washington has an 8 week series focusing on leadership and I want to share about it. It's in it's fourth episode and while the assessment releases 3 quiz questions per episode, I don't know yet how I would score since another 12 points becomes available at the end of the series. Check it out at: http://uwtv.org/fosteringleadership/

UWTV Channels

Regards,
Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle
President

How do you eat an elephant?

This is an age old question that baffles alot of people some of the time and some people alot of the time. The answer though is quite simple. You eat an elephant one bite at a time. Eating the elephant whole would be hurtful and can injure you.   It would then make sense that when it comes to productivity and tackling a big project or task, you would want to take small bites and enjoy the small achievements along the way. 

The benefits are enormous when you take this approach. Teamwise, moral increases (progress is seen immediately); there isn't much re-work if a problem is found; and from a customer perspective, they see immediate value.

Let's take something else like an organization's vision.  This  oftentimes is too big to achieve in the short term. It usually takes a long time. A really long time... and what I mean by long is 10-20 years. NAAAP-Seattle, for example, was founded in 1979 starting as the AsianMBA. It is an organization dedicated to the improvement of the Asian American community promoting leadership, career development, educational exchange, professional networking, social networking, and civic responsibilities. This is an elephant in my view. While 20 years has passed, I can tell you that we're still working on it.

Each year we have an election of new Board members to take a little bite out of our Vision. Individuals taking on a leadership role at NAAAP Seattle go on to other leadership roles and for me that's just the start and signs that we're making progress on our vision. Thank you to all that's served to make NAAAP Seattle a great organization and for those serving now keeping the pathway to leadership clear and unobstructed.


Regards,
Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle
President

Shifting your view

I think you'll appreciate this next post since we all have had the experience of learning Newton's laws in Physics class. Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan, authors of the Three Laws of Performance, identify and define laws, like gravity, pertaining to the world of performance. They get to the bottom of why you can only get certain results. In a nutshell, your view of a particular situation or circumstance is associated with a specific outcome or result.

Said another way, your view gives you the actions to take to get results specific to that view. For example, if your view of life is that it’s hard. Typically that view is constrained with certain moods, feelings and thoughts. Your only actions you could take really is to complain or not do anything. And the result is obvious…no result near to what you want. Yes, you’ll get a result…just not the result you want.

On the other hand, if your view of life is that it’s easy (or rich or fun). What actions could you now take? The possibilities are endless and they’d be very consistent with your view that life is easy. You’d certainly get a result consistent with that view.

Don't believe me? Try it on with any view you have. You'll see that this works with just about anything. Again, like gravity, its a law.

Once you realize that certain views can only generate outcomes specific to that view, you'll need to shift your view to come up with different outcomes.

If you're interested in reading more about the 3 laws of performance, you can read it from the cannon of Warren Bennis' management and leadership series.

Regards,
Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle
President