How To Finish Christmas Shopping 10+ Days Early

I’m finished my Christmas shopping altogether. In fact, I finished 12 days early and it took me all of a few hours to get it all done. Every gift was well thought out, well planned and the day went virtually stress-free. Did I mention that I’m a man?

Each person on my list will get an appropriate gift and gifts that have meaning for them. How? They told me what they wanted.

I carry a Blackberry and over the course of a year, I have many interactions with the people on my Christmas gift list. In conversation, they will usually give up some piece of information about something they’ve seen, heard about or just gotta have. I simply enter that information in my Blackberry. Then, come Christmas shopping, I simply pull out the Blackberry and purchase a few items from their individual lists. Hey, it’s exactly how Santa does it. You know the “making a list and checking it twice” thing. At the heart of it all is a list. Make one and you take away your stress.

Look you can’t manage Christmas or your family but you can manage how you find the perfect gift - pay attention all year long. Write it down. Get it into a list or a database of some sort. Then, in a few hours, after you’ve mapped out your stores geographically, you are done in no time.

The busiest and most stressful time of the year are the 10 days leading up to Christmas at the malls. Why, if there were a better way, would you put yourself through the stress year after year? You get to enjoy quiet times at home while others are losing their minds at the mall.

Now give yourself a daily reminder on your Blackberry starting December 26 to pay attention to the conversations going on around you. Don’t worry, once you start entering things into your lists it will simply come naturally.

Meanwhile, good luck out there. I’m home with my cup of tea, feet up, stretched out on the leather sofa watching the original Miracle on 34th Street on the big screen. Yes Virginia, there really is an easy way to be Santa.

The Weak Link Of The Strategic Plan

A strategic planning session takes place. All of the players gather around the table. Every item in the plan gets voted on - only those with a unanimous vote get included in the plan. The plan is developed and the chairman asks for commitment to the strategy. One by one, around the room they go, each answering in the affirmative.

But back at the office, the truth sets in. The planning session was a waste of time because you had no intention of doing anything in the plan. You already knew in the back of your mind that to accomplish some of these items in your department you would need a herculean effort. You had no intention of doing your part. You simply figured out that it would be easier to just go along with everyone else at the meeting than to explain why it wouldn't work for your department.

In other words, you lied. And because there was no "accountability" mechanism built into the strategic plan, no one will really know until next year, when give your commitment to another plan you have no desire in implementing.

After all, you only have six more years until you can retire. Why embrace all this change and work so hard when you're this close to retirement. All you have to do is hang on through five more annual planning sessions and you're home free. Let the person repalcing you worry about it then.

Don't worry about suffocating your departmental Culture by not embracing new strategic directions. The job is all about you - not those who still have their whole work lives ahead of them. Nope, you just have to figure out a way to get out of embracing new technologies and practices. You're too close to pension to retire. No, you just keep developing your personal strategic plan of finding excuses for not embracing the corporate strategic plan.

By the time everyone catches on, you'll be out of there anyway - with your legacy of "do nothing" and non-accountability to remind your people of your ineffectiveness as a leader. Nope, your replacement will be as welcomed as a cool summer breeze. But you'll have your pension - and the embarrassment of your leadership abilities to keep you warm at night.