This week not only represents the start of the holiday season but also the coming together of family and friends. We all come together and sit in front of an amazing spread of 
food to celebrate how thankful we are for the sacrifices our forefathers made to journey so far and under such risky conditions in order to start a life in this new land, which was not so plentiful at times. They did this, so they could have a level of freedom that they were not experiencing in their home country.
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Thankful for Abundance
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How To Be Happy During Challenging Times
When I was in Istanbul, Turkey back in September, I heard Harvard lecturer and Good Think CEO Shawn Achor give his presentation focusing on research around happiness. This was fascinating, filled with humor, and centered on the power of happiness can spread and lead to more productive workers. Sharing this now seems very appropriate, given that half the voters out there are not very happy about the outcome of the election. I myself feel like capitalism has been pushed aside in favor of a bigger, more controlling government. I believe economic growth and jobs come from entrepreneurs, and big government only gets in their way, so this doesn’t motivate me to do a happy dance. So how can we all increase our happiness during challenging times?
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Solving the World’s Problems with Abundance
Let’s continue our discussion from last week’s blog. How does Abundance solve the future problems that seem to loom before us like population growth, water needs, hunger, and power?
Abundance Thinking holds the understanding that we have the capability to solve our pains with the technologies we have already created. Those technologies are at such a level that the continued connectivity of each of them creates exponential opportunities for solving all the issues of the day and the problems out ahead of us.
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Meetings That Motivate
How many times have you heard “I spend so much time in meetings, I don’t have time to do all the things I say I’m going to do in those meetings”? It’s a constant battle I face, trying to improve our meetings so that they are as productive as possible in the least amount of time, and ultimately beneficial to our business. After all, business is about bringing a group of people together to accomplish something, together. So you could say that these gatherings are one of the most crucial parts of business. It’s difficult to align people without that infamous word “meeting”.
Imagine a US football team in a huddle. Before each play, the offense and defense take a few seconds to analyze where they are, what down it is, what they think the opposing team will do and their own next play options.
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Who’s Driving?
Having been in business for a while I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what motivates people and what I can be doing to help increase their motivation. I wonder how they get excited about what they do or what outside forces motivate them to want to do more. I have seen the Carrot and Stick work, and I have seen when it did not push people to do better. This made me wonder if it was the people, the culture or other factors that didn’t follow the traditional Carrot and Stick model.
I’ve read some of Daniel Pink’s work in the past, but when he wrote Drive I was excited to see what he had to say about motivation and what drives people to want to do better.
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Realizing Your Purpose
A lot of what happens in business seems to be based on default. What do I mean by default? Well it goes like this: “I lost my job so I went into business myself”, “These clients buy my product so, this is the audience I sell towards”, “I was making all the money for the company, so I decided to go out on my own”, or “I was a really good engineer, carpenter, programmer, haircutter, etc, etc, so I decided to go into business for myself”. This is exciting, but it doesn’t create a great business until you determine its purpose for existence, beyond making a living.
If you’ve ever wondered why it is that other companies seem to be doing so well, and you are always struggling, it could be because you haven’t found or awakened to your true purpose for being in business. Making sure that purpose is always alive in your daily and weekly interactions and the culture of your business is essential to real success.
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What do YOU do when things don’t go your way?
If you follow my blog you might remember my mentioning Nando Parrado several months ago following my trip to the EO Barcelona University. His story was one of the most inspirational stories of my life, and I really want to follow up on it a little more closely.
Nando’s story is about his experience surviving a plane crash and 72 days in the Andes Mountains before walking out with Roberto Canessa to save themselves and their rugby teammates. It’s difficult for me to convey to you how powerful his story is, but here are the highlights (I highly recommend reading his book or watching the movie):
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Sometimes only a clown shoe fits….
When I was about 13 years old I had a neighbor named John Buckholtz. Mr. Buckholtz made clown shoes for a living, a family business that dated back to 1873. His grandfather was Raymond Griffin, the son of James R. Griffin, who originally founded Griffin Theatrical Shoe Co. By the time the business was handed down to Mr. Buckholtz, he was one of less than a handful of clown shoemakers in the world, and arguably the only one who still custom made them by hand.
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Entrepreneurs Don’t Care, Just Like the Honey Badger!
I kept hearing and seeing the slogan “The Honey Badger Don’t Care” in email jokes, on television, and from various people. You may have seen it during the college National Championship Game between Alabama and LSU. You may have seen the signs referring to LSU player #7 Tyrann Mathieu as the Honey Badger.
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6 Factors to Spotting Potential
A few weeks back when we were visiting our office in India, we took a few days and flew on over to Bangalore to attend the EO India regional event called RIE. The India EO events are always a great time, as they’re known for bringing in fascinating speakers and holding dinner events in extraordinary places such as castles, old forts or roof top venues. This year, staying true to their reputation, they brought in Praful Patel, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Vijay Mallya, the Chairman of Kingfisher Airlines and Rasmus Ankersen, a self proclaimed high performance anthropologist.
