Lots of Love, Customer Service

I placed an order from this online company one time. Today I received this promotional email to get me to spend more money with them. Don’t just glance over it – read it carefully for the full effect. It’s worth it.

Dear customer,

You, the customer, are the most important visitor on our premises. As a fast growing online store for replacement printer ink & toner cartridges, we has been receiving a lot of supports from our customers. Your advice or complain is always welcomed. We are not doing a favor by serving you....You are doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so.

To celebrate Canada Day, from now to 5th of July, we offer 10% off every order you place on our website. Though some of items are already on sale, we still offer generously 10% off. What a great deal! Hurry up or the deal will end! Don't Miss Our Biggest Sale Ever!

If you missed our Canada Day BIG save, do not worry, we will have more promotions after. Keep in touch! To order or to get more information, please visit us online. Thanks for your continued support!

Lots of love,
Customer Service

I kid you not, “Lots of love, Customer Service.” I'm sure it was as heartfelt as the "Dear Customer" opening. Ooh, let me open my wallet right away.

Really, if you’re going to market yourself, make sure you impress people.
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What Happened to Your Change-The-World Attitude

High-School is finished for another year. The Yearbooks have been handed out. Remember your yearbook? Did any of your classmates write in your book anything like the following?

• “I will get pregnant right after of high school and marry him. He won’t have any university so he’ll have a lifetime of tenuous jobs while I have four kids, stay at home for them and be lost for something to live for once they leave home.”
• “I will get my degree and not find the job I think I’m entitled to. So I will settle for a job that is far beneath my talents and will whine at work for the rest of my life and blame the job for holding me back and holding me down.”
• “I will listen to what people say and find a good job with a decent company and won’t do anything to jeopardize it. I won’t stand out. I won’t shine. I won’t offer ideas. I won’t do anything to risk showing I’m incompetent. I will simply put in my time, bite my tongue and try to survive it until the day I can retire.”
• “With my high-school diploma in hand, I will think I know everything. I will find a partner who is also too young, settle down in a loveless relationship and, out of obligation, tell myself that this is what all couples have. Real love is only true in fairy tales anyway.”
• “When I get done university, I will take the first job offered to me and work for them for the next thirty years counting down the days until I can retire. I won’t travel, meet new people, experience the world or make a difference. The company owns me. I can do all that other stuff when I retire but I probably won’t.”

Your yearbook and the others you signed were probably full of dreams, ideals, wishes and missions for a well-lived life. What the hell happened?

It’s never too late to get back on track. And don’t ever let your children develop this attitude of defeatism. Give them an Attitude Adjustment early and often. Feed and keep their dreams alive. Their dreams will feed yours. Lead by example.

The Attitude of What Goes Around

It's incredible how your organization sees soft-skills training as a luxury or worse yet, a tool to placate your people - lip service.

During this last year, as personal stress went up over the economy, your organization shrunk the training budgets - especially training budgets for for non-technical and "unnecessary soft training" like stress-management. How laughable and yet how sad, that an organization really doesn't care as much about their people as they do about protecting reserves of cash. So, stress goes up, productivity goes down, revenues drop due to decreased productivity and top management claims, "see, proof-positive there's a recession. We have to tighten our belts."

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: You need stress-management when stress is high. You need sales training when sales are down. You need confidence training when confidence is low. You need attitude training when attitude sucks. In fact, you need these programs on-going before you "need" it. And yet you claim to put your people first by cutting the help they need exactly when they need it because times are tough? You launch a Corporate Social Responsibility initiative and really only concentrate on "corporate" - not so much on social or responsibility.

Don't think for a second that your people aren't watching either. The moment times are good again and the economy has rebounded there will be empty chairs in your workplace because you failed your people exactly when they needed you. They will fail you when you need them. Rule of life: you get what you give.
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The Attitude of Intellectual Capital

"Intellectual Capital" is buzzword these days. For the most part, it refers to the hidden-genius within an employee - the part that wasn't necessary in the job-description.

Too many organizations today are still using last century's model for hiring: developing a position and then sticking a body in it regardless of what else that body brings to the table. Today's model should be geared towards discovering the strengths of the applicant and finding something for them to do that taps those strengths.

So as organizations around the world resist the idea of changing their hiring practices to get the best from their people, they have given it a buzzword to make it seem kind of "foo-foo" and "out there." But the truth is, Intellectual Capital is really a description of all of the talents and aptitudes that someone possesses for which there are no categories on a resume. It's why the resume is dead.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: The easiest way to tap into Intellectual Capital in any organization is also the hardest way: ask. Ask for ideas and then shut up and make sure everyone else at the table shuts up too. Don't ever allow anyone to poo-poo any idea. If you're going to ask for an idea, you CAN NOT summarily dismiss the idea without risking any future ideas. The first indication that an idea is hare-brained is the moment you start to go into deficit in Intellectual Capital.

There are no bad ideas or crazy ideas. There are only those who can't see value in an idea because they don't understand it. Don't let the dimwits of your organization stifle the hidden creativity of the closet-geniuses because "no one else has ever done it." What a horrible thing to do - shooting down an idea because you don't get it. If someone can conceive of an idea, then someone can turn it into a reality.

If you want Intellectual Capital, there's a cost: everything you ever believed to be true must first be tossed out the window or nothing changes.

The Attitude of Reality TV

Let's not be confused here, organizations don't have values. Corporations don't have values. Businesses don't have values. They may have a culture but a culture is not values.

It's the individual who has the values not the collective. Therefore, it's the people who come to work each day that have the values, not the organization they work for. Individual values create an organizational culture. Erode personal values and you erode the corporate culture.

Over the last ten years, we have witnessed a substantial erosion in personal values which has led to questionable organizational culture. People are caring less about others and more about themselves now than they did 10 years ago. A recent Adecco survey pointed out that a shocking 41% of Gen Y's are willing to sabotage others and lie and cheat to keep their own jobs. These are the future business leaders of tomorrow? Think twenty years down the road when these same 41% hold management positions and positions of influence.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Turn on Big Brother, Survivor, The Apprentice, any reality TV show and watch manipulation, backstabbing, blackmail, lies, cheating and ganging-up in action. Decent people don't win these shows. They get crushed. The nasty win the prize money. This is what parents allow their kids to believe is real life in the work world because there's no discussion about values after the show is over.

It's time for us to make up for the lack of personal values that parents aren't giving their children. How about designing personal development courses right in the workplace that deal with values, ethics and morals? If something isn't done soon, almost half of new-hires are going to change the decency of your work place and your corporate culture. Otherwise, we're all in deep sewage. You don't want to work for the 41% who think it's OK to lie, cheat, steal and blackmail.

Leadership and Management Are Opposites

Leadership is not exclusive to work. Why are you confusing Leadership with management? The business bulletin boards and social networking sites are filled with questions about identifying the difference between the two as though Leadership is some sort of goal you attain by checking off a shopping list of traits.

Leadership and management are not even remotely related. In fact Leadership and management are opposites. If you're managing, you're not leading. If you're leading, you're too busy to manage.

LEADERSHIP ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Do you manage your life or do you lead your life? Do you manage your kids or do you lead them, inspire them, and teach them? Did you pick your spouse or are you simply managing your love-life? On the dance floor, do you lead or do you manage to follow?

Just because you've been given a supervisory title does NOT mean you are in a leadership position. I would guess that the guy who undermines you at work and manages to convince others of your incompetence obviously is more adept at leading others than you are or they'd all be on your side.

Leadership is not reserved for those with a corner office and a shiny new business card. Leadership is an Attitude - an attitude not required to be in management. In fact, a manager who thinks himself a leader would be neither well.

Leadership is offense. Management is defense. Playing defense is trying to manage your opponent’s scoring attempts. Leadership is scoring despite what your opponent does to try to stop you.

Stop thinking Leadership and management are one in the same. You're showing that you really have no idea of the difference and you're starting to annoy the leaders who get it.

ROI In Training

If you can't determine whether you're actually getting your money's worth and a decent ROI (Return On Investment) after sending an employee to training, then you're doing the wrong training. Employee training is a waste without addressing the human component. Sorry but it's true.

For example: Time Management is a waste of time if you don't address self-discipline. Sales training is a waste of money without addressing confidence. Team building is really only tolerance-building: you really don't change people - you just get them to tolerate each other better.

If you want to get decent ROI then train your people to be better, decent human beings. They will be more willing to do what is necessary to help the organization move forward and more readily accept future training.

According to a recent survey by Adecco, one of the world's leaders in human resource solutions, an incredible 41 percent of Gen Y respondents said they would do something dishonest in order to keep their jobs. These behaviours include blaming coworkers for mistakes, setting up situations for co-workers to fail or even blackmailing colleagues. Good luck training that bunch to do honest, good work without addressing values and ethics.

Oh and stop sending jerks to management training. They're still jerks when they get back – but now they have a title.

As for leadership? Leadership is an attitude. Management is something you could do with a leadership attitude but it's not a pre-requisite for the job.

An Attitude Of Trust

Trust is NOT something you earn. In fact, if you are ever put in a place where you feel you have to earn trust, it means you were mistrusted prior. That's a horrible place to start in business, in friendships and in relationships. If you mistrust out of the gate, you've got some serious "baggage" you need to sort out.

You either trust someone or you don't. Black and white. There's no middle ground. You can't sort of trust someone. If you think there's a middle ground, you need an Attitude Adjustment.

We trust people until they give us a reason to not trust them.

Starting out with a feeling of mistrust for every single person, every single organization, every single new idea is not how you do business. If the whole world thought that way, new companies would never get off the ground, new employees would never be hired, new salespeople would have EVERY door slammed in their faces, every new innovation or idea would be summarily dismissed if we didn't trust people to be basically honest, good people.

Trust is given until proven otherwise.

However, earning respect? That's a whole different discussion. And don't argue semantics here - trust and respect are very different traits. Be very clear on the distinction. People trust you when you first meet them. Now, what you say and do will earn their respect.

Sorry Attitude

Question: Do you think apologies are required in the workplace when the situation warrants?

Forgive me for my answer here ;-)

Apologies are not "required" in the workplace nor anywhere else for that matter. The trick here is to never put yourself in a position where you would ever have to apologize. In other words, don't be selfish, arrogant, hurtful, spiteful, mean, uncaring, unsympathetic or unfeeling and you should never have to apologize. Simple huh?

Or, you can think of it the other way: be selfless, humble, giving, grateful, caring, sympathetic and empathetic and you will never place yourself in a situation where you would ever have to apologize. Sometimes though, people need to hear the truth. If the spirit for being blunt and direct is to truly improve a situation, you should never have to apologize for that either.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: No one should ever have to apologize for being decent and kind. Stop thinking of work as a place for the ruthless. That's ridiculous. If your co-workers or bosses aren't decent, they aren't worth following. And don't feel that you have to apologize if they get knocked off of their high horses. They probably had it coming.

Oh, and don't apologize to people who seem to be offended by every little thing. They're just seeking attention and looking for some way to elevate themselves by making you feel small. What you said likely didn't really offend them anyway. They just want to draw attention to themselves. Overplaying the "offended" card is selfish and hurtful. That deserves an apology.

Consequence of Consequence-Free

Consequences are the guideposts of your moral compass. If there were no consequences, people would run roughshod over each other. Items in your garage would be stolen by your neighbors. Police forces would become irrelevant. You would leave the doors unlocked. Business would hire Grade 6 dropouts into senior management positions. You get the idea. Anarchy.

So what happens when you take an individual who has been raised in a virtually consequence-free environment and place him into a corporate environment where there are rules, expectations, structure, failure, mistakes, unfulfilled promises and bosses who are unforgiving? Think this visual over.

That's exactly what many parents are doing to their kids - raising them in a consequence-free environment. They try to protect their kids from falling down, skinning a knee, falling out of a tree and experiencing bullies. Parents interfere with the educational process and tell teachers what grade their child should be getting. They strip a child's competitive nature by celebrating a participant ribbon instead of 1st place. They raise their children in houses that are beyond large and buy anything the child wants so they never have to go without. They lie to their children telling them they can be anything they want even though they're too short to end up in the NBA and too fat for supermodel work. But they're still special.

Those same kids grow up to enter the work world and find out in short order that they're not special – they’re average at best perhaps even below-average in social-skills and maturity. They learn they can't be anything they want to be. They come face-to-face with the office bully and don't know how to handle it. They disappoint their bosses. They fail. They miss their targets. They lose a job. They live in dinky apartments because it's what they can afford. They drive a beat-up crap car. They suck with money because they've never had to earn it or handle it before. They end up moving back home with mom and dad because they haven't learned anything about life in their whole lives.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Parents, if you want your children to grow up to be something special, stop doing it all for them. Make them work. Make them earn. Make them do charity work. Make them encounter and face-off with bullies. Let them hurt themselves so they learn where boundaries are. Let them earn respect. They are not entitled to it.

Forty percent of kids coming into the workforce today say they would lie, cheat and sabotage others to get ahead. This, mom and dad, is what you taught them. They learned this from having no consequences. You can be real proud. Zero morals, ethics and values. Good job Mom. Good job Dad.

Look, if you want your child to be tomorrow's leader then at least arm them with a few leadership skills, basic stuff they can use in the real world like accountability, responsibility and consequence. They'll be more prepared to make a difference and less inept at caring for you when you get too old to look after yourself.

Just Got A Feeling

You have assembled a group of four university graduates into your interview room. All four graduated from the same university, all with relatively the same marks, and all are willing to work for the same money.

You’ve perused their resumes. They’ve all had the same basic life experiences, history and upbringing. So how do make sure that the candidate you choose will be a perfect fit with the rest of your staff, that your customers will like them and that they bring something to the table that is valuable to your organization?

You will trust your gut. It’s that same gut instinct that you’ve used to help make your business grow, to make good choices, to seize opportunities and to take risks. Your gut has been your best ally throughout your business career. Now you’ll make a gut-instinct choice for the best candidate.

You use your gut instincts, so why aren’t you encouraging the development of your employees’ gut instincts too? Instead, you train them in Time Management, Communication Skills and Team Building – all courses that appeal to the brain. You say you want your people to be more creative in solving customer problems but the courses you’re offering just teach them how to conform. You say you want new ideas and new innovations but you train them in last year’s old-school seminars using old ideas that are mediocre at best.

You’ve taken your cue from the educational system which is all about the marks and not about creativity. A University grad who finished at the top of his class doesn’t guarantee your organization any new ideas. “Top of the Class” just means someone knows how to study and remember course information and be able to regurgitate it when called upon.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: You need creative thinkers on your team who are not satisfied with “good enough.” Perhaps you have employees that are already capable of developing new ideas. But they don’t because since taking the Time Management course you sent them to, there’s no time for idle (creative) thought in their workday.

You want your people to develop new ideas and innovations. You want them to solve customer problems and internal productivity. You want them to be adventurous. You want them to treat others with decency. You want them to step up and be accountable. You want them to discover their leadership abilities. These are all personality and character traits and yet you’re trying to appeal to their brains in a logical way?

Soft-skills and personal development training is where you will find the skills your people need to succeed in the future. Build better people and you build better organizations. Get on it now or be left behind.

Old-School Training Are Like Cold-Meds

Why are the newest and weakest people in the organization tasked with the most important job in the organization: customer service? Why are not the CEOs, Veeps and Supervisors, the veterans of the organization, not serving the revenue stream to the organization – the customer?

At the end of the day, senior management is responsible ultimately for the financial success of the organization. So why then is the most important responsibility - the maintaining and development of revenue streams - left to the minions who are simply treating it like a job?

Corporate America needs an attitude adjustment. If the customer is king and without them the organization ceases to be, why are customers not being served directly by the kings? What consumers are experiencing today is service by dimwits - people who take a dim view of their work and do not use their wits in service of the customer. The solution from above is, "let's send our front-line people to another customer service seminar to improve our service."

So they hire trainers who are desperately clinging to last year's model of business service and are leaving the responsibility for improving their internal performance with a bunch of outside contractors. In essence, you've just said to your people, "Take this course and do it better OK?"

Corporate America may know how to make a profit but it sure doesn't know much about people. And it's people who make the thing run. As long as your people treat their jobs like a job, service will never improve. It can't. It's impossible to build any solid relationship-creating culture on a foundation of "Is it 5 o'clock yet?"

• Time management training to someone without self-discipline is a waste of time.
• Sales Training to someone lacking self-confidence is wasting your money.
• Teamwork training to someone without self-esteem creates a weaker link.

Customer Service, Time Management, Sales and Teamwork training are like taking cold meds for your flu symptoms: you mask the symptoms but don't really address the root problem. You're still sick inside even though you may look healthy outside.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: The workforce is changing. Workplace values are changing. The people in the workplace are changing. So why are you still trying to run your business using ancient business models that are dying?

If people can talk to Presidents and Prime Ministers on social networking sites, your customers ought to be able to talk to the CEO. The old business model of "top-down - keep your customers at arms length - blanket policies" is not going to sustain your organization in the future. People around the world are creating conversations with people who matter. Why can't your customers talk to the people who make the decisions in your organization?

Your business model is sick and risks dying soon. Stop feeding it cold-meds and simply hoping it gets better.

Do You Have Instigational Attitude?

This morning, on Seth Godin’s Blog, he featured a video which you will find below.



Guy #1 is the Instigator. He has the Instigational® Attitude – the “who cares what other people might say” attitude.

Instigational® Attitude takes chances and instigates events just to see what will happen. The Instigational® don’t form committees hoping that there will be enough people joining in so as not to embarrass themselves. Instigators don’t wait for others to get on side. They act because they can. Instigators usually have a lot of leadership ability and a great deal of self-confidence. It’s why there are so few people capable of holding an Instigational® Attitude because it requires confidence and the willingness to take risks, to stretch yourself and have no concern about how it will end up.

The Instigational® know that however things end up, they’ll be OK. No biggie. Nothing ventured - nothing gained. The Instigational® usually end up having more colorful lives not because they attract more fun stuff (which they do) but because they are willing to step out of the collective average mentality and try something different. The first guy sure did.

During the video, initially, not much happened, other than the first guy dancing. But then along came an “influencer.” An influencer may not necessarily be a resident of the collective average because his job requires a little stretch too. When an influencer sees a good idea that he may not have had the creativity to conceptualize or the courage to carry it out alone, he is willing to join along and also, “see what happens.” But at this point, it’s just a couple of guys having a party all by themselves.

Then along comes Guy #3 who has been wrestling with joining in. Guy #3 is not as willing as the Instigational® but just a little less willing than the Influencer. But once he’s decided, he’s all in. This guy makes all the difference. As Seth Godin says, Guy #3 takes the dancing from being an experiment and makes it the beginning of a movement. As soon as Guy #3 jumps in, others follow. There is no distinction between Guy #4 and Guy #40 is there?

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: What is it you’re doing to make your workplace different or your life-experiences different? Do you have the Instigational® Attitude? If not, do you at least have the Influencer Attitude? Or are you sitting back waiting for someone else to turn it into a movement so that you can join in?

It’s sad that you care more about being judged by others than you do about doing something meaningful for yourself. Take a look around your workplace and see it for yourself: only a handful of people are prepared to step out and make their mark. Everyone else is just a follower. As much as you may believe you have the Attitude of Leadership, if you’re waiting for someone else to go first, you’re not leading. Leaders lead. Followers follow.

The great thing is that you get to pick which of the two you will be.

Claiming “Offended” is Offensive

There is nothing that offends me more than someone who plays the “offended” card and claims righteous indignation. You can’t even have an attempt at humor around these people. Have a little fun and you can see that sour look coming over their faces and looking down their nose at you.

Worse yet are the people who feign offended when it serves to advance their own agenda. Politicians are really good at this one. In fact, in Canada today, there are a whole bunch of politicians pretending to be offended at what another politician supposedly said and turning it into a media circus. It’s cheap politics and it’s as transparent as bottled water.

People who claim to be offended are manipulators, plain and simple. Claiming to be offended is an act that people of poor self-worth pull when they want to get attention. It’s the equivalent to a child’s temper-tantrum, only supposedly more refined. Their offended-act is a ploy to make the offender seem as though they are not as smart and refined as the one who claims to be offended. It’s childish. It’s counter-productive. And it will alienate and divide a good staff. It makes the issue all about the person claiming to be offended and not about the issue itself. That’s selfish and offensive.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: People are people. No one person is better than another in the workplace. Every person has their own value. And, they bring their own values, opinions and beliefs to work just like you. Trotting out your offended act when it serves you won’t change another person’s behaviour so get over yourself. Your little “high-and-mighty” act is tiresome and divisive. You’re forcing your co-workers to take sides when you do that. And shouldn’t your team be working together instead of breaking apart to choose sides? Force people to choose a side and you may be surprised at the outcome. Most people see right through these little acts of indignation.

The truth is, if you’re a competent worker, any goodwill you may have built with your co-workers purely as a result of the quality of your work and your abilities is lost when you pull the “I’m so offended” crap that offends everyone else and forces an uncomfortable silence and awkward moments – more so than the person who supposedly offended you.

If you’re pulling the “holier-than-thou” act in the workplace then you need to go or at least be put in your place. No one is forcing you to be there. No one points a gun at your head in the morning and demands you show up. So if something in the workplace offends you, stop going and instead find a group of people who will tolerate your intolerance. There is no place for righteous indignation in the workplace. The truth is people have tolerated you up to now. Why can’t you act with the same courtesy they’ve shown you and tolerate them?

“Safety Attitude” Includes Money and Security

Safety Attitude is just like it reads: an Attitude of Safety. An Attitude of Safety transcends the workplace. An Attitude of Safety doesn’t only work between certain hours. That would be a Tolerance of Safety. Someone with a Tolerance of Safety might be heard saying, “I know the rules and I abide by them at work but after work I’m on my own time and you don’t own me after work. And so I get to choose how I act off the job, not you Mr. Employer.”

Safety, though, transcends personal injury potential. Safety is not just about whether people find a way to avoid being injured physically. It’s not just about finding fire exits in an emergency or wearing a hard hat on a construction site or owning safety gloves and glasses. But safety really is also about how people might avoid being injured - financially and emotionally too. The problem is that current Occupational Health and Safety programs don’t address Safety Attitude. OH&S programs really only address rules and procedures and adherence to those same rules and procedures. OH&S does not address the underlying attitudes that determine how the rules come about. A really successful Attitude of Safety program must include the elements of not just personal safety, but personal security and even money.

Here’s why. You go to work to earn money so that, over time, you can provide some security for your family like a financial nest-egg, life insurance, disability insurance, retirement planning and investments to help take the “living paycheck-to-paycheck” frustration away from your loved ones. When you develop your security strategy, you take the pressure off of your family. They are secure in knowing that if tough times befell you, they would be alright.

When you put together your security strategy, you are, in fact, looking for safety for your family. You have something precious to live for and that one precious thing, your family, is counting on you. When you have something to live for, like a good family life, you won’t take unnecessary risks on the job. You won’t do anything that would jeopardize you or your family’s welfare. When you are able look out for your family, then you are able to look out for your coworkers as well.

But if you won’t look out for your own personal safety and security, how in the world are you able to look for others? How you do one thing is how you do everything. Someone who is a menace to himself on the job is sure as hell going to be a menace to everyone he works with.

Face it, if you’ve got a good money plan in place and your family is well looked after should something tragic happen to you, you have security. Security, for most families, comes from doing the right things with your money.

The challenge for most people though, is that they don’t realize that they’re acting unsafely because they’re not on the job at the time. On payday, plunking a quarter of your paycheck down on the casino card-table or the VLT is not a Safety Attitude. Going to the bar to get liquored-up so that you can feel lousy and not be 100% the next morning is not a Safety Attitude. Driving home with a couple of beers under your belt is not a Safety Attitude. Getting a windfall of money and spending it all foolishly (boats, skidoos, etc) when you could invest it and set yourself up for life is not a Safety Attitude.

SAFETY ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Being foolish with your money shows you don’t care about your long-term security or long-term safety. If you’re willing to take chances with your money, you’ll do the same thing on the job. You may adhere to safety regulations on the job but you really don’t much care for those rules. You simply tolerate them. Anyone who allows him or herself to be foolish with money, show up to work with a hangover, frequently misplace their requisite safety gear or even drive around without a seat belt on are the kinds of people who don’t care about their own personal safety and security. If they don’t care about their own safety and security, what makes you think that they’ll be looking out for the rest of their fellow crew members on the job? Get real.

If you want to increase safety in your workplace then increase security out of the workplace. Help people with their money and increase the security of their loved ones. Give people a reason to be careful and they will. Make them blindly adhere to a bunch of safety regulations and, well, you take your own chances on the success of that program.

Greatness Is a Choice

I will admit that I am a huge movie buff. In fact, most times, if there isn’t a movie or a hockey game on TV, it’s probably off. I have a few favourite movies that I will re-watch: Sahara (Matthew McConaughey), The Usual Suspects (Kevin Spacey), The Rookie (Dennis Quaid), Finding Forrester (Sean Connery), anything with Gene Hackman and a movie that my friend and mentor Ken Larson turned me onto, The Hunt For Red October (Sean Connery). Ken can recite the dialogue from the movie doing the Sean Connery accent rather well. “Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.”

This weekend, The Replacements with Gene Hackman was on the tube. I’ve seen it many times before but this time, at the end of the movie, Gene Hackman’s character, Coach Jimmy McGinty, narrated a line that I had missed in previous viewings: “Their lives had been changed forever because they had been part of something great. And greatness, no matter how brief, stays with a man.”

That’s a powerful statement. Greatness, no matter how brief, stays with a man. Do something great at some point in your life and you develop a thirst for more or at the very least, you can remember the times when you were great. It does stay with you, either in drive or in memory.

There are two choices that every person faces in life: in their work, their relationships, their pursuit of dreams, their lifestyles, their personalities and their contribution in all they do. Those two choices are 1) greatness, and 2) mediocrity. Everything in life fundamentally comes down to one of those two choices and choosing which side of the equation you will sit on. Will you be great or will you be mediocre? It’s one simple decision really.

Greatness, throughout history, has been fundamentally challenged, violently opposed and systematically dismissed as idiocy by those with mediocre minds - people who don't get it and don't want to get it because when faced with their own mediocrity, it seems as though there is a great deal of work involved in doing something about it. So they attempt to tear down those who would be great in the hopes that by deflating the greatness within someone else, they somehow magically elevate themselves.

In fact, the mediocre have, throughout history, attempted to disparage, discourage and disprove greatness in all forms. So my question here is this: what side are you on? Make your decision right now. You've been, throughout your life, playing for one of two sides. Everyone has the chance to do something great, but you must first decide if you want to be great. If not, save us all a bunch of wasted time and find the door or at the very least, keep it to yourself.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Greatness is not for everyone. If everyone were great, greatness would be considered mediocrity. No, in fact, we need people to be mediocre. Without mediocrity, there would be no comparison point that would allow us to recognize greatness when we see it. No one would ever stand out as a leader. Everybody would be blindly bumping into each other looking for someone to follow. They would just try to get through each day without having to face anything difficult because the thought of facing something difficult paralyzes the mediocre.

The mediocre are so busy keeping up the appearance of being great that they don’t have any time to do something great. In fact, attempting to appear great is far more work than actually doing something great. Reasons and excuses are in the tool chest of the mediocre. Getting things done are in the tool chest of the great.

So the challenge you must face up to today is to simply answer this one question and answer it truthfully: have you, by default, allowed yourself to become mediocre or will you choose to do something great?