Leaders Are Readers -- Feb 2023

Team,

APPLIED AI & ANALYTICS

Great questions and clear read! Been hearing more and more about ChatGPT, and its disruptive fallout in a number of areas, like college term papers. Are students actually writing them or are enterprising students availing themselves to ChatGPT capabilities to churn out content? From the piece’s opening, “Generative artificial intelligence (AI) describes algorithms (such as ChatGPT) that can be used to create new content, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, and videos. Recent new breakthroughs in the field have the potential to drastically change the way we approach content creation.”

From within the piece’s main text, GPT is “generative pretrained transformer … … a free chatbot that can generate an answer to almost any question it is asked…”and DALL-E is “AI-generated art … a mash-up for surrealist artist Salvador Dali and the lovable Pixar robot WALL-E.” What is ChatGPT, DALL-E, and generative AI? | McKinsey

Space, the final frontier … ok, channeling some inner James Tiberius Kirk here. Interesting that AI is everywhere, including on Mars. Pushing the boundaries of AI and robotics | McKinsey

BOOKSHELF

Shared via a LinkedIn post the eight books that are in my “to read” stack as we came into the New Year. There are more, these are the selections I pulled from the bookshelf on which to focus first in 2023. Added a ninth to that list during a visit to American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, VA mid-January with my family. That addition was The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Eills. He’s no stranger to the Bookshelf as we’ve previously covered two other books he wrote. Those were His Excellency: George Washington and Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. For newer Readers, I recommend those as well. In this latest review, Ellis guides us through how our Constitution came into being. He writes with his normal excellent depth of detail and placing things in historical time and context. The quartet he posits were most responsible for delivering The Constitution are George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. He shares how Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris (no relation) were also instrumental but did not rise to the impact level to make this a book about “The Sextet”. Learned a host of new things, and reinforced things I recall from other tomes plumbing the creating of The Constitution.

CORNERSTONE CURATION

In this video, Stacey Boyle, the VP of Solutions at Cornerstone, highlights what she thinks are the five most critical skills teammates need this year.

They are in the order she revealed them:

5 – Digital Literacy

4 – Personal Ownership and Digital Transactions

3 – Critical Thinking

2 – Teamwork

1 – Growth Mindset

 No disagreement with any of these five, and lists do need to truncate in order to be remembered, let alone applied. I’d add Organizational and Personal Resilience, Connection, and Collaboration to these five. As organizations continue struggling to find the harmony between remote work, telework, and in-person work; these additional three things are, perhaps, ever-increasing in their importance. The video is just north of seven minutes. The 5 skills your employees must have in 2023 – Talent Management (talentmgt.com)

CREATIVE COMMENTARY

This is an excellent read not just about what psychological safety is, which we often explore here, it also provides clear steps for how to achieve safe work conditions and culture. Were this easy to acculturate, every organization would adopt and apply. I do think, as this piece points out, creating the right conditions underpinning a truly psychologically safe work environment is cultural. My team has recently been reviewing ways to reinstitute “work rituals” we’ve lost across the past few years. When people aren’t podding together as frequently as we were pre-COVID, creating consistent and close connections is much more difficult. What Is Psychological Safety at Work? | CCL

Connected to the first Commentary, this piece explores how to improve our virtual communications. Like the idea of this being “stage presence”. Some are exceptional communicators in any and all formats. Know I can, and must, improve my on-camera communications. My team meets digitally twice weekly, it is irreducible important I improve manner, method, and mode of digital delivery. There are a couple key rules we follow to help our camera connectedness, including requiring everyone is on camera and having a queue people enter to help us ensure those with comments or questions are acknowledged. “Hands up” functions also work, but we have found the queueing an effective way to ensure no one, and more importantly, their ideas and inputs are missed. Improve Your Virtual Communication: Tips for Leaders | CCL Within this article, there is a link to a self-assessment that also has embedded links to tips and resources for improving our on-camera communication skills. Virtual-Communication-Effectiveness-Quiz-_-Center-for-Creative-Leadership.pdf (menlosecurity.com)

Helping us improve and understand the first two Commentaries, this piece details some approaches for leaders to lead well in our “new normal” hybrid environment. Leading a Hybrid Workforce: 5 Tips | CCL

FABULOUS FORBES

During my near two years helping build the United States Space Force and serving as their first-ever Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer, my email box blew up with an average of 300 emails a day. Assuming I was working 12-hour days, that meant reading, digesting, and responding to 25 emails every hour just to keep pace. Again, assuming a few minutes per email, in short, one’s entire day could have been consumed simply by working email. Applied some filters and functions to help parse through those which really needed my attention, and those which were little more than a cc for me. Applying some simple rules and working with the staff to cut down on the total number by doing things like, work to send me collated notes rather than stream of consciousness for everything you wanted to communicate in separate emails. During the pandemic, I couldn’t walk to someone’s office or workspace because they were only digitally available, taking that option off the table. I like to say, we built the Space Force on Microsoft-Teams. That’s not all the far from the truth. Space Force was signed into Law in December 2019; we closed the world in March 2020. We all had to find other ways to communicate and do so in more effective ways. Digital collaboration spaces became the norm, and I found they too had to be “managed” like email, but once we acclimated to that as the primary communication conduit, emails became less burdensome and I could answer, “yes, I saw your email”. If the data presented in this piece is accurate; then nearly two-thirds of our emails aren’t being read. Success necessitates finding other, more connective, and conducive ways to communicate. Didn't You See My Email? (forbes.com)

HARVARD YARD

Put your walking shoes on, we’re hitting a lot of stops on this month’s walk around the yard, starting with five “Today’s Tips” from Harvard Business Review.

Most have heard the idea that there are formal and informal leaders, and all teammates influence someone. Here, Vanessa shares a couple good ideas about improving and increasing one’s influence no matter where they are positionally.

 Harness the Influence You Already Have at Work by Vanessa Bohns

Becoming more influential at work doesn’t always require getting a promotion or becoming a senior leader—more often, it’s about recognizing the influence you already have, regardless of your position. To get better at seeing the influence your words and actions have on others, start by spending a few minutes visualizing a salient workplace interaction from a neutral, third-party perspective. Pretend you’re a coach reviewing tape from your team’s last game. How would you interpret the dynamics at play? Turning this objective lens onto yourself will help you become more self-aware and recognize your own power. Next, seek feedback from colleagues you trust about how they experience you. This will help you challenge your assumptions about yourself and clarify your impact on others. Finally, test your influence in small ways—for example, by asking for something you want, giving a compliment you’ve been holding back, or pitching an idea you’ve been thinking about. The results might surprise you.

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Like all our Readers, some weeks, I’m moving at breakneck speed from first to last working hour. That means either evenings or some amount of the weekend is the place to get to the other stuff that still needs to get done. No one can sustain that pace on end; we all need to give ourselves an out, a break, a pass to slow down and step away. One way is to be deliberate about time parameters. Many of our Readers have heard me share my “rule of sevens”. Simply stated, I don’t read work-related emails, messages, texts, MS-Teams notes, etc. before 7 am or after 7 pm during the work week, and greatly minimize the time spent on those things over the weekend or days off. Teammates know these are my self-imposed limits. Sometimes, duty requires breaking those parameters, but infrequently. If I’m needed outside my “sevens”, call me; otherwise, I won’t see or act upon a message until I’m back in the working sevens. Over the past several years, this has helped my better manage the work pace and allows for my energies to be better, if not best focused on the ambitious things ahead.

Are You Feeling Less Ambitious? By Dorie Clark

You’re used to thinking of yourself as a high achiever, but lately, you haven’t been feeling that usual spark of ambition. Is this wrong? Absolutely not! Here are three tactics you can use to make peace with your desire to tone it down—even if that impulse conflicts with your previous vision of yourself. First, adopt a flexible mindset and recognize when it’s time to shift to another strategy. This could mean acknowledging that it may be time, after years or decades of grinding hard at work, to reallocate energy toward your health and happiness, family, or hobbies and passions outside of work. Next, understand that there’s no standardized timeline. Your career is a marathon; give yourself the grace to slow down sometimes, take mental breaks, and pace yourself. Finally, figure out what you need in order to grow. Moving forward isn’t always a function of getting a raise, making new professional connections, or building your resume. Sometimes it’s a function of changing things up and exposing yourself to new inputs—whether it’s a month-long trip abroad, or a year of stepping back from the grind mentality and focusing on other areas of your life and well-being—that eventually lead to new and different outputs.

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It is true, weather impacts our moods and sense of well-being. Unsurprising that during the heart of winter, particularly where there are four seasons, hits us as the least-productive and dreariest months of the year. Some good recommendations follow about how to address them.

Help Your Team Overcome the New Year Doldrums by Rae Ringel

For many of us, January and February are often the least-productive and dreariest months of the year. How can you help your team beat the new year doldrums? First, embrace experimentation. Where can you introduce new routines, tools, and habits into your team’s culture? Maybe you replace hour-long meetings with 15-minute, agile-inspired check-ins, or designate a “no-Slack” day of the week. Whatever your team’s experiment is, be sure to commit to it for at least a few weeks. Next, recognize your employees by expressing appreciation or gratitude. You might frame such gestures as a “thank you in advance” for work to come in the new year. Since the holiday season has just passed, your employees probably aren’t expecting this kind of gesture—which is exactly why it could provide the jolt they need right now. Finally, reconnect your team with what matters most, whether that’s your customers, clients, products, or users. Ask your employees to identify how their work will drive the team’s overall mission in the coming year. Taking a moment to reflect as the calendar turns will help your team ground itself in its purpose and meaning.

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Some connections to material we read in Fabulous Forbes above. Move away from email as the primary communication tool and add more deliberateness to how, when, and where we engage our teammates. As leaders, self-reminder here, we need to be aware if we’ve become “draining dragons” instead of supporting supervisors, giving our teammates time to actually do their work and sensitize ourselves to the importance of their time as no less important than ours.

Stop Distracting Your Employees by Nir Eyal

Do you expect an immediate response from your employees when you ping them? Do you ask for regular status updates, or send “just wanted to make sure you saw my last email” emails? Do you plan check-ins around your schedule without considering your employees’ needs? If you answered yes to any of these questions, chances are you’re distracting your team rather than encouraging their best work. These strategies can help you change your ways.

 ? Open a safe dialogue. Only when people feel safe discussing their workplace problems will you be able to find solutions for them. Work on improving psychological safety on your team so people don’t fear they’ll be punished for airing their concerns.

? Schedule-sync with your employees. Ask when they generally like to answer emails and messages, do focused work, or join meetings. You can also try designating some distraction-free periods each day—times when there’s no expectation to answer messages or attend meetings across your team.

? Don’t hold meetings without an agenda. Requiring an agenda keeps everyone on track and cuts down on unnecessary meetings by requiring the organizer to put in a bit of effort in advance.

? Set an example. Make time for focused work yourself. Let people know when you’re available, and don’t interrupt others during their focused work or off-hours.

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Love this idea of focusing more on what we contributed over focusing on what we’ve accrued. As I come closer to the end of my uniformed Air Force career, I have been becoming more reflective about all the amazing things this career has afforded and the things all of these great teams I’ve been a part of, have accomplished (accrued). Most, if not all of our Readers know about my service and support building the Space Force from the beginning. Many of our Readers are part of that “first team”. During a recent engagement with fourth graders, talking about how historically important the Tuskegee Airmen are, one pupil asked me what my greatest success has been. The answer came quickly and easily … building the Space Force. In retrospect and reflection, what that “first team” accomplished was nothing short of incredible. 

How to Feel Satisfied with Your Success by Ron Carucci

Why does career success so rarely lead to satisfaction? If you’re prone to dissatisfaction in moments when you expect to finally feel satisfied (after a raise, promotion, or award, for example), you can shift your mindset in three ways to achieve a more sustainable inner peace. Start by shifting from comparison to compassion. Rather than chiding yourself for what you haven’t achieved, show yourself kindness for the progress you’re making on your own journey. And instead of resenting someone for what they’ve achieved, acknowledge that their success doesn’t come at the expense of yours—they’re on their own journey, and being happy for them won’t cost you anything. Next, stop counting what you’ve accrued (money, awards, followers, etc.) and start measuring what you’ve contributed (Whose life have you positively impacted? What ideas have you generated?). Lasting joy comes from giving, not taking. Finally, shift from contempt to connection. Growing insatiably ambitious, no matter how much money or power you earn along the way, will lead to bitterness and loneliness. Remember to appreciate the relationships in your life—especially the ones that have nothing to do with your career success.

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The ten recommendations offered here apply not just to CEOs or C-suiters, really to leaders at all levels across the organization. These are just good leader behaviors. The head of the table thing is sometimes co-opted by me being the last person in the meeting room, but when I’m not, that is a great way to help put people at ease … removing these “power dynamics” are good ideas when trying to engender better internal relations. How a CEO Can Create Psychological Safety in the Room (hbr.org)

MARVELOUS MCKINSEY

Interesting dialogue around a number of different types of resilience and the board’s role in helping organizations develop and deploy resilience. One resilience type not really discussed relates to personal resilience. All the others discussed really don’t matter if our teams aren’t personally and professionally resilient. Within the Department of the Air Force, like many organizations, we’re deliberately and deeply investing in preventions. Meaning when the challenge hits us, we’re not simply responding, rather we’ve built bulwarks ahead of the bang. The board’s role in building resilience | McKinsey

At the risk of oversimplifying this article and blurring the lines between the models presented herein, my thinking about Human Resources today is really quite simple … operationalize it! This is beyond writing policy, setting parameters, or creating programs. HR today is about relationships, not regulations.A new approach to human resources | McKinsey

Freelance, side hustles, and gigs are way beyond driving for Uber, or delivering food for Grubhub, or coding, and as this piece explores, 1 out of 3 people in the workforce make their living this way. Freelance work, side hustles, and the gig economy | McKinsey

Excellent discussion about workplace rituals … those norms we have where we work that help us make and maintain better interpersonal connections. Workplaces that largely went to telework and remote work have lost this. As discussed herein, “Zoom cocktail hour” doesn’t engender the same closeness and connection as being in the same physical space with others. As shared in “Commentary” above, during one of our recent bi-weekly team check-ins, we inquired, “what are the rituals we’ve lost that you enjoyed, and what are rituals you would like us to expend energy bringing them (back) or into our routines?” The Reader has option to either read the back and forth or listen to the discussion (~16 minutes long). Workplace rituals: Recapturing the power of what we’ve lost | McKinsey

QUOTABLE QUOTES

This is ubiquitous an idea as there may be in leadership for some years now and one that every good leader I know subscribes to (or demonstrates). However, I find it still isn’t applied in ubiquitous ways because it is far easier to say than show.

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they're never weakness.” - Brené Brown

Fact.Check.True!

“If things were simple, word would have gotten around.” Jacques Derrida

 This is one of the clearest statements or sentiments I may have ever come across regarding organization culture.

“Culture is to people as software is to people…” and “culture is language, language is human programming.” Gapingvoid Culture Design Group

SEEDKORN

The following two, very short reads, discuss “returning to the office”. As we explored in “Creative Commentary” and “Marvelous McKinsey” above, Korn-Ferry also shares how important culture and communication are to doing this successfully. Reasons and rationale for in-person when many or most of our teams have been working from home, requires being well-defined and discussed. Returning to Office—But Feeling Unmotivated (kornferry.com); A White Flag on Returning to Office? (kornferry.com)

STOPPING SELF-SABAOTAGE

One of our Readers (hat tip Tim Eernisse) shared this with me several weeks ago. This links you to a 50-question self-assessment that only takes a few minutes to complete. Suppose these are like other assessments; knowing our tendencies help us address becoming better versions of ourselves. Saboteurs | Positive Intelligence

STUDYING STOICSM

Agree! Be in constant study of some sort. That’s what these monthly missives are really all about; constantly learning, evaluating, thinking. Not necessarily just philosophy because not everyone is interested in that subject, but something interests us all.

“In one of his letters, Seneca tells us of an old Roman pleasantry that friends would exchange when greeting each other: “If you are well,” one would say after inquiring how someone was doing, “it is well and I am also well.”

It’s a nice little custom, isn’t it? If you’re good, I’m good, and everything is good. Nothing else matters.

But of course, because this is Seneca, he couldn’t just leave it there. In fact, telling us about this old expression was just a device to make a point. A better way to say it, he writes, is “‘If you are studying philosophy, it is well.’ For this is just what ‘being well’ means. Without philosophy the mind is sickly, and the body, too, though it may be very powerful, is strong only as that of a madman or a lunatic is strong.”

The point is that to the Stoics, the practice and study of philosophy was the only way to make sure all was well, no matter what was happening in the world. At war like Marcus Aurelius? Study philosophy in your tent at night. Unable to submit to Caesar’s tyranny like Cato? Read a little Socrates before your dramatic suicide. Shot down over Vietnam like James Stockdale? Say to yourself, as he did, “I am leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.” As in…even in a POW camp, I can still practice and pursue philosophy…and be well for it!

Nobody knows what the day or the week has in store for us. As much as we take care of ourselves and eat well, so much of our health is outside of our control. But the one way we can make sure that we are always well, that we are always getting better (mentally, spiritually, if not physically) is by the books we read, the questions we ponder, and the conversations we have.

Now get studying.”

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Around the Department of Defense, in the context of leaders guarding their integrity, we discuss “ethical drift”. It’s the well-researched and documented path some travel where one little concession here, or one little perk acceptance there leads to giving away our being wholly ethical, moral, and in some circumstances, legal, in the way we operate. The little things matter because they can accrue, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, over time to really bad outcomes. This missive hits marks because most of our Readers have probably seen this happen. Even to leaders we think, or thought, the world of. Having an accountability partner, or partners, is a good idea (I call them accountability anchors). These anchors can receive our queries … does this seem right, does this cross even the smallest of streams…?

 “Francis Bacon was a brilliant philosopher whose breakthroughs reverberate through our world today. He was also a human being and a politician. Less glorious than his intellectual achievements were his travails in the public sphere, which ultimately ended in his conviction for accepting bribes.

No one was more disappointed in this than Bacon, who lamented at the end of his life that he had wasted himself, “in things for which I was least fit, so as I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage.”

 It’s an arc that should sound familiar to any student of the Stoics because it is, in many ways, also the arc of the great Seneca. Yes, Seneca was a wise and brilliant philosopher. But as James Romm points out in his riveting biography Dying Every Day (and a great episode of the Daily Stoic podcast), Seneca was also Nero’s principle advisor. In the chaotic court of Nero, Seneca was a stabilizing influence…but he did little to stop Nero’s crimes. We don’t know of any direct bribes, but he did grow quite rich. And just by association with such a murderer, he estranged himself from the ideals of Stoicism.

 In the end, like Bacon, Seneca died a largely broken man. Yes, Seneca’s actual death was heroic and brave, but the road leading up to it had been shameful. Seneca had compromised and compromised himself. He had rationalized. He had been silent and complicit. He had disgraced himself.

 The lesson here is not that the Stoic should turn away from the world–that Bacon and Seneca should have stuck simply to their writings. It’s that we have to strive to be like Cato in what we do. We have to strive to be like Marcus Aurelius. We have to have a code. We have to draw clear lines. We have to correct ourselves when we step over these lines–before it is too late. Seneca himself had written that we must make ourselves slaves to philosophy. The problem was that he had been a slave less to philosophy and more to his ambition and ego, which like it had for Francis Bacon and countless leaders before and since, never leads to a good place.”

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 Good reminder. We all make mistakes. Be willing to forgive, and forget, with great grace because we will all be asking for the same at points in our own lives.

 “It is certainly true that people can do some awful things to each other. We hear of a trusted representative who is stealing from their clients. We hear of a man who has been leading a second life, even starting a second family. We hear of a woman who commits an unspeakable crime.

 These gross violations of morality and law do exist. They are things we would never do; we’d never even consider doing them. However, the truth is that most of the wrongs committed day to day are done by ordinary people in ordinary ways. Even most of the wrongs done to us are not done with any particular malice, but instead stem from ignorance or fatigue or simple selfishness. Moreover, most of them are mistakes we have made ourselves in the distant or not so distant past. As Seneca writes: “A good look at ourselves will make us more temperate if we ask…‘Haven’t we ourselves also done something like that? Haven’t we gone astray in the same way? Does condemning these things really benefit us?’”

 When we realize that more errors are relatable and human, we are more likely to understand and forgive. We will not take personally a slight or a screw-up we have been guilty of ourselves—because we remember that when we did it, it was not personal or even intentional. When we recall how dumb we were when we were young, we won’t be so quick to judge the generation coming after us. When we consider all the current beliefs we will be judged for by that generation, perhaps we can be a little more tolerant of the older generation in front of us.

We’ve all messed up. We will all continue to mess up. Does it really benefit us—is it really fair—to go around condemning people for mistakes we’ve made ourselves? For going astray as we have gone astray?

 No. It doesn’t.”

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Variation on the previous input … be forgiving of others!

 “Marcus Aurelius was clearly torn about his fellow man. He was loving and kind and spoke repeatedly of serving the common good. He was also clearly frustrated and disappointed with the flaws of the people around him. Like many great men, he had trouble understanding that not everyone had his gifts, not all of them were capable of what he was capable of.

 You can see in Meditations how he wrestled with these feelings. In the opening passage, he talks about just how obnoxious and annoying (and awful) the people he was likely to meet in the course of the upcoming day. And then, just as you think it can’t get any more depressing and dark, he turns around and reminds himself that they’re doing the best they can, and that it’s not their fault that they have been cut off from truth.

 In the passage that inspired The Obstacle is the Way, Marcus is less forgiving. He talks about how the people who obstruct or bother us are “irrelevant”—how we can shut our minds off to them. It’s a theme that comes up a lot: People are a problem. People are weak. Push them away. You get the sense that he would have been hard to work for, hard to have as your father, hard to please—even for talented and committed people.

 If only Marcus Aurelius could have heard the (fictional) advice from his adopted grandfather, Hadrian, that Marguerite Yourcenar writes into her prize-winning book Memoirs of Hadrian. “Our great mistake,” she has Hadrian say, “is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.” How much happier Marcus would have been had he been more able to see the good in people, and how much better a leader he could have been had he leaned into their strengths rather than disdained their weaknesses.

 Each of us would benefit from that advice as well. We have to focus on what we can learn from other people. We have to focus on what is special and unique about them instead of zeroing in on the ways they are not as good as us. We have to be forgiving and patient, kind and appreciative. We have to engage with what they bring to the table; not lament the things they take from it. Then we have to work to make those people around us better…not write them off as hopeless and broken.”

 THE MAXIMUM STANDARD

Steve drives home a quick wave, hello, or acknowledgement of those around us, however small or simple, goes a long way to making connections and making people feel, and know, they are important to you. The Jeep Wave – The Maximum Standard

Excellent imagery presented here, it’s not really about the snow, it’s about the preparations and purposing to stay on top of things before finding ourselves in a blizzard from which the way out is made all the more difficult. Shoveling the Driveway: Setting Conditions for Success – The Maximum Standard

WINNERS WISDOM

We all know one or more “Big Als”. One for me was Mr George Price, who passed away last year. He called everyone “Big Man”, in part because he wasn’t great at remembering everyone’s name. I cannot recall ever being with George when he wasn’t smiling. He was warm, affectionate, genuine, engaging and loved people. You couldn’t be in his presence without him greeting you with a hug and being intently interested in what you were saying. Spent much time in his office when we worked together at Spangdahlem Air Base. Sometimes, just visiting, other times, I sought out his great wisdom. He spent decades coaching Air Force basketball teams in Germany. He became a United States Air Forces Europe hall of fame coach. “Big Man George” was like Big Al. Who is your Big Al?

Big Al

by Jim Stovall

Recently, I got the sad news that a very special person in my life had passed away. Al Rickey was a career veteran in the military, a successful businessperson, and, as we discovered late in his life, my uncle by marriage through an amazing set of circumstances worthy of one of my novels or movies.

 When I first met Al, he was approaching eighty, and we had just discovered that we were related through his deceased brother. Everyone in the extended family referred to him as Big Al. I wasn’t sure whether that was due to his Italian heritage or the fact that he was the patriarch of the family. When I actually met him, I was surprised to find that he was physically a very small man. As many of you know, early in my life, I pursued a career in football. Then I completed my athletic endeavors as an Olympic weightlifter, so I have always been a physically large and imposing figure. At our first meeting, I estimated Al was maybe half my size, so I was still in search of the origin of his name, Big Al.

 He had read many of my books, watched a number of our movies, and became an avid reader of this weekly column. Winners’ Wisdom is read by countless people around the world in newspapers, magazines, and online publications each week. Each column, including the one you’re reading right now, has my contact information, so we regularly hear from readers from all walks of life and every corner of the globe.

 No one responded to my columns more often than Big Al, and we had many conversations about life, success, faith, and issues of the day. We didn’t always agree, but Al was never disagreeable. I only hope he learned half as much from these columns as I learned from our correspondence and conversations.

 Al passed away amid living an active life at age 92. He was on one of the honor flights with other veterans to visit the war memorials in Washington, D.C., shortly before his death. He lived every day of his life learning, growing, and impacting people around him. It is not surprising that friends and family learned of Al’s passing when he missed his regular ballroom dancing class one morning.

 Al Rickey was part of the greatest generation that lived through the Great Depression and World War II and created the world we all enjoy here in the 21st century. Like most members of his generation, Al lived his life humbly and remained focused on duty, honor, and service to others. I will think of him as each of these columns goes out and will never forget how, through his words, deeds, and how he lived his life, he definitely earned the title Big Al.

 As you go through your day today, remember Al and how you can make your life big.

 Today’s the day!

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 The best giver I know is my wife. She taught me to be a better giver of my time, whatever talents I may have, my attention, and my support to others. For those who are familiar with the Five Love Languages, Beth’s primary Language is Acts of Service in both giving and receiving. I know I’ve shared in these spaces that she is amazingly attuned to others needs and deliberately acts to address. Readers who know her have undoubtedly experienced this!

 Givers and Takers

by Jim Stovall

 There are many ways that human beings divide themselves into opposite categories. There are lazy versus industrious people, passive versus aggressive people, or generous versus stingy people. I find that one of the most profound ways people separate themselves is in the category of givers versus takers. Whether it’s effort, emotion, or resources, there are people who, upon every contact with them, make deposits into our accounts and those who make withdrawals from our accounts.

We all know people who, if we get a call from them, see an email from them, or run into them in person, we know that we are going to be encouraged, energized, and uplifted from the encounter. On the other hand, we all know people whose every call, contact, or connection with them pulls us down in our minds, body, and spirit.

Being a giver is among the many paradoxes in the world. Simply by the act of giving your time, money, or talent to someone else, logic would tell us that you would be diminished and have less than you did before your act of giving. In reality, giving seems to increase both who we are and what we have.

Conversely, if you take something from someone else, it will seem that you have more than you did before. However, the act of becoming a taker in this world will diminish you and redefine who you are. People want to interact and get involved with givers both personally and professionally. Therefore, givers have more friends, better relationships, and many more opportunities. When people meet givers, they lower barriers and open doors for them. When they confront takers, they build walls and lock doors.

There are many aspects of our lives that take years, if not decades, to create fundamental change in who we are and how we live. But if we have been a taker in the past, we can permanently change our lives right now by changing our minds and becoming givers. It begins as most positive things do—with the understanding that it’s not about us. When we think of others first and seek to create value in their lives, we instantly become givers and begin to succeed both personally and professionally.

The only long-term way to create success in business is to create value in the lives of other people. In your personal life, people will judge you based on whether you are adding to or taking from who they are and what they have. As my late, great friend and mentor Zig Ziglar said, “You can have everything out of life you want if you’ll help enough other people get what they want.”

As you go through your day today, become a giver and enjoy the results.

Today’s the day!

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WORDWIDE

Sharing several new words I heard during a Senior Executive Continuous Process Improvement class I attended earlier this month. Each is connected to discussions about organizational culture.

Obliquity – not explicit or done in a direct way.

Memetics – an amusing or interesting item or an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from one person to another in culture. Here, our focus is on the latter term as it pertains to cultural impacts, not catchy pictures on social media feeds. Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, coined this in 1976.

Semiotics – the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.

Heteroscedasticity – non-constant variance. Ok, easier to just communicate, “non-constant variance”.

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