Advice for a Young Man: "Show Up on Time and Try Your Best."
Manny Veloso
With Our Learn-and-Do Approach, We Build Practitioners Who Think and Act Like Owners
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Take a look at a Green Belt level analysis using catapults in class or sampling using red beads. Then check out the course information for my Green Belt class offered live in the Philadelphia area in November, 2022.
"Show up on time, and try your best." That was the advice my mother gave me before I reported to my first "real" job after graduaitng college. Meanwhile, formulas and half-forgotten facts were running through my head. I was hoping nobody would ask me the 2nd order implications of Euler's Method - for one, I wasn't sure there were any.
I was certain that my mother's advice was a little too simple for these "modern" times in the late 1980's when I entered the workforce. After all, I had just spent 4+ years in college learning to be an engineer. I owned my own PC! (An IBM PC the first with 2 floppy drives.) My cellphone came in a bag with a shoulder strap. Surely technical expertise is what was needed to succeed in the modern world.
As it turns out, my work life did not consist of solving differential equations, or doing mass-flow balances on complex systems. I'm sure some people do those things, however, I've never met any of them during my career.
Instead, it turns out my mother was right. The basics are what people need for
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success in business.
I never really took showing up on time to be critical, until I got older and realized that being late wastes EVERYONE's time, and the cost is high. Now I try to be a little early, just in case. It's easier than apologizing or rescheduling.
The second part of the advice, "Do your best," I thought, was actually spot on. I realized that, for me, 'Do your best' means not stopping just because you ran into some difficulty. It means making promises and keeping them. It means bringing your 'A' game every day. It means choosing We vs Me for the organization.
In closing, Mark Twain said, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.?But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
I guess the same is true for Moms as well. Thanks, Mom! Your advice was spot-on. If only I had listened to you about that lime-green suit for prom.
Links Section
Take a look at a Green Belt level analysis using catapults in class or sampling using red beads. Then check out the course information for my Green Belt class offered live in the Philadelphia area in November, 2022.
Philadelphia ASQ 2024 Chair-Elect / iPEC Certified Professional Coach
2 年Great advice. My father told me it doesn’t take much effort to stand out, and he was right.