Audio Tidbits

"When your intelligence don't tell you something ain't right, your conscience gives you a tap on the shoulder and says ‘Hold on.' If it don't, you're a snake." As one might expect, Carl Jung expressed Presley's folk wisdom in somewhat more formal language; but the idea is the same, "Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, 'Something is out of tune.'" Christopher Reeve also heard that inner voice, "I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do."

The recurring belief is that the voice of conscience is ever-present and far less fallible than the voice of reason. For example, Josh Billings asserted, "Reason often makes mistakes but conscience never does." Jean-Jacques Rousseau made the same point this way, "Reason deceives us often; conscience never." Although stated less dogmatically, Joseph Cook agreed with Billings and Rousseau, "Conscience is our magnetic compass; reason our chart."

Unfortunately, that little voice may not be quite the totally reliable key to recognizing the good and right some say it is. Samuel Butler pointed out, "Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it." As it turns out, conscience has an attitude. If you don't pay attention to it, it may just stop paying attention to you. Were that not problem enough, what conscience is saying isn't always clear. You can listen and still struggle to understand. As William Dean Howells pointed out, "The difficulty is to know conscience from self-interest."

Conscience and reason are having a fight. They go back and forth all through the night. It's a right to the nose and a left to the chin. When morning comes, they start over again.

Reason says that it makes perfect sense. It's trying to nudge you off of the fence. The tug of conscience is hard to abide. It's pulling you hard to the other side.

You sway back and forth, first left and then right. Do you do what makes sense or do what seems right? Conscience gives you a pull, then reason a push. If this isn't resolved, you'll be dumped on your tush.

Does reason prevail or does the little voice win? Do you take one on the nose or one on the chin? Either way you go, it doesn't feel good. Do you do what makes sense or do what you should?

Calm yourself and try to unwind. Take a deep breath and make up your mind. Do you go with what you think or with that little voice? It's up to you; and you live with your choice.

Now you know so there you go.

"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional, and are the portals of discovery." -- James Joyce

This certainly puts a different twist on the concept. The only requirement is that one is "A man of genius." If so, you don't make mistakes, you merely commit errors, on purpose. Try that one the next time you screw up, "It's no big deal. I just decided to make this mistake in order to open the portal for discovery." You can also note that on your resume where you explain why you left your last job.

Niels Bohr said, "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field." Of course, Bohr does qualify as a man of genius; but to assume that he too is suggesting that those mistakes are the portals for discovery is likely not correct. A little folk wisdom may be more to the point. "Why are things always in the last place you look?" "It's because, once you find it, you quit looking."

Confucius has a better perspective, "A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake." George Washington also joins in on the same side of the matter, "To err is nature, to rectify error is glory." As you hustle to rectify those errors, it will help to allay your anxiety if you remember Robert Henry's advice, "Don't ever be afraid to admit you were wrong. It's like saying you're wiser today than you were yesterday." While you're at it, though, don't overlook Frank Lloyd Wright's insight, "A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." Since you are the architect of your success, you would do well to minimize the number and size of the vines required to cover up your mistakes.

Now you know so there you go.

"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional, and are the portals of discovery." -- James Joyce

This certainly puts a different twist on the concept. The only requirement is that one is "A man of genius." If so, you don't make mistakes, you merely commit errors, on purpose. Try that one the next time you screw up, "It's no big deal. I just decided to make this mistake in order to open the portal for discovery." You can also note that on your resume where you explain why you left your last job.

Niels Bohr said, "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field." Of course, Bohr does qualify as a man of genius; but to assume that he too is suggesting that those mistakes are the portals for discovery is likely not correct. A little folk wisdom may be more to the point. "Why are things always in the last place you look?" "It's because, once you find it, you quit looking."

Confucius has a better perspective, "A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake." George Washington also joins in on the same side of the matter, "To err is nature, to rectify error is glory." As you hustle to rectify those errors, it will help to allay your anxiety if you remember Robert Henry's advice, "Don't ever be afraid to admit you were wrong. It's like saying you're wiser today than you were yesterday." While you're at it, though, don't overlook Frank Lloyd Wright's insight, "A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." Since you are the architect of your success, you would do well to minimize the number and size of the vines required to cover up your mistakes.

Now you know so there you go.

"Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed." It's not surprising that Dewey bases his approach to change management on active learning. Since change is a fact of life, you might as well make the best of it. Learn as much as you can about the changes in your life and then use them, as much as possible, to your advantage. William O. Douglas suggested that success in using change in your best interest depends, in large measure, on adjusting your thinking to conform to today's reality. "Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts." Francis Bacon also agreed that you need to take charge of change and mold it to your purposes. "Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly."

However, there are cautionary voices as you slide into the driver's seat of your life. For example, Ellen Glasgow said, "All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward." Distinguishing good change from the not so good is an important aspect of the learning Dewey recommended. Arnold Bennett also raised the voice of caution, "Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts." Nonetheless, G. C. Lichtenberg submitted what is likely the take home point here, "I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better."

The substance of your life is in continuous change. The elements form and then rearrange. Some of those elements you can move and shift. Change can be slow or unusually swift.

It's an ongoing saga through each twist and turn. You refuse to change. It's not your concern. W. Edwards Deming discovered the conclusion to the story. "It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."

Now you know so there you go.

"Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed." It's not surprising that Dewey bases his approach to change management on active learning. Since change is a fact of life, you might as well make the best of it. Learn as much as you can about the changes in your life and then use them, as much as possible, to your advantage. William O. Douglas suggested that success in using change in your best interest depends, in large measure, on adjusting your thinking to conform to today's reality. "Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts." Francis Bacon also agreed that you need to take charge of change and mold it to your purposes. "Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly."

However, there are cautionary voices as you slide into the driver's seat of your life. For example, Ellen Glasgow said, "All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward." Distinguishing good change from the not so good is an important aspect of the learning Dewey recommended. Arnold Bennett also raised the voice of caution, "Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts." Nonetheless, G. C. Lichtenberg submitted what is likely the take home point here, "I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better."

The substance of your life is in continuous change. The elements form and then rearrange. Some of those elements you can move and shift. Change can be slow or unusually swift.

It's an ongoing saga through each twist and turn. You refuse to change. It's not your concern. W. Edwards Deming discovered the conclusion to the story. "It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory."

Now you know so there you go.

aeda, John with Becky Bermot. Redesigning Leadership. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2011.

...courage is a noble form of stupidity that aids getting impossible things done.

Being prepared isn't a matter of how much you practice. It's about knowing that even if you fail, you won't give up.

Doing right matters more than being right.

The primary challenge for a leader who is a natural doer is to discover the balance between the two; otherwise the specter of micromanagement can easily make a guest appearance.

Competency results in success results in complacency results in failure results in learning how to be competent again.

I'd rather be green and growing instead of ripe, ready to rot.

A leader's job is to get people on board with his vision--and he'll try whatever tools are at his disposal to do it.

...the one thing I've learned it's most important to convey is respect--it's the prerequisite for any other kind of communication.

...I still find an online poll to be tempting, but I know that it doesn't really do the community justice as a means to be heard. Votes are blind, scalable, and measurable, but they are also unfortunately simplistic in their ability to capture the complexity of opinion beyond a raised or lowered hand.

...managers in the hierarchy serve specific roles in communicating with the campus and I now believe that the president really has no business responding on their behalf.

Until you can serve pizza or drinks over the Web, a social media portal to foster true collaboration will be so-so.

I've learned that the first step in forming any team is to resolve the most basic challenge: getting folks to take the big step away from just being themselves and joining something larger .

When the right people are all in the right room with the right timing they can make the right decision ... right now.

because he thought so differently, his point of view helped me avoid making errors in how I framed a problem. When he did not understand something, it became an opportunity to sort through our differences and construct a common frame built out of the misunderstanding. Learning is said to be most potent when "cognitive dissonance" occurs.

Nobody signs on to be the weakest link in a chain; I've learned in building my own team that it's the ultimate responsibility of the leader to ensure that his team consists of the right members for the job at hand.

On one hand, the experience of leading is rewarding because you are in a position to positively enable others. On the other hand, leading often hurts, because the decisions you make can negatively affect a lot more people than just yourself.

Ideas lead to a result; ideals result in a leader.

Having ideals is having a compass that always points to your heart instead of your brain, and fulfillment isn't something you just imagine in your head but have to feel in your soul.

Trouble is, what makes good leadership is a moving target.

It's often hard to get a read on how well you might be doing because the negative voices too often drown out the positive.

If people are lucky, they will have at least a few good bosses to guide their own behavior as they progress in life.

So always ask yourself, "What are the principles?" Say them to those who haven't yet heard them clearly, and start from there.

I've observed firsthand how change and uncertainty create an informal stream of information--rumors--that quickly fills the unfilled vacuum of official information. Fueled by anonymous voices and emotional information that's extra-tasty , these informal information structures situate themselves as the alternative locus of "the truth." In other words, rumors effectively transfer the power of spreading information away from the official structures--which tend to be slower, more methodical, and more measured--and toward informal structures that deliver "news" without any need to wait.

I realize now that rumors are a by-product of not only not knowing t...

aeda, John with Becky Bermot. Redesigning Leadership. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2011.

...courage is a noble form of stupidity that aids getting impossible things done.

Being prepared isn't a matter of how much you practice. It's about knowing that even if you fail, you won't give up.

Doing right matters more than being right.

The primary challenge for a leader who is a natural doer is to discover the balance between the two; otherwise the specter of micromanagement can easily make a guest appearance.

Competency results in success results in complacency results in failure results in learning how to be competent again.

I'd rather be green and growing instead of ripe, ready to rot.

A leader's job is to get people on board with his vision--and he'll try whatever tools are at his disposal to do it.

...the one thing I've learned it's most important to convey is respect--it's the prerequisite for any other kind of communication.

...I still find an online poll to be tempting, but I know that it doesn't really do the community justice as a means to be heard. Votes are blind, scalable, and measurable, but they are also unfortunately simplistic in their ability to capture the complexity of opinion beyond a raised or lowered hand.

...managers in the hierarchy serve specific roles in communicating with the campus and I now believe that the president really has no business responding on their behalf.

Until you can serve pizza or drinks over the Web, a social media portal to foster true collaboration will be so-so.

I've learned that the first step in forming any team is to resolve the most basic challenge: getting folks to take the big step away from just being themselves and joining something larger .

When the right people are all in the right room with the right timing they can make the right decision ... right now.

because he thought so differently, his point of view helped me avoid making errors in how I framed a problem. When he did not understand something, it became an opportunity to sort through our differences and construct a common frame built out of the misunderstanding. Learning is said to be most potent when "cognitive dissonance" occurs.

Nobody signs on to be the weakest link in a chain; I've learned in building my own team that it's the ultimate responsibility of the leader to ensure that his team consists of the right members for the job at hand.

On one hand, the experience of leading is rewarding because you are in a position to positively enable others. On the other hand, leading often hurts, because the decisions you make can negatively affect a lot more people than just yourself.

Ideas lead to a result; ideals result in a leader.

Having ideals is having a compass that always points to your heart instead of your brain, and fulfillment isn't something you just imagine in your head but have to feel in your soul.

Trouble is, what makes good leadership is a moving target.

It's often hard to get a read on how well you might be doing because the negative voices too often drown out the positive.

If people are lucky, they will have at least a few good bosses to guide their own behavior as they progress in life.

So always ask yourself, "What are the principles?" Say them to those who haven't yet heard them clearly, and start from there.

I've observed firsthand how change and uncertainty create an informal stream of information--rumors--that quickly fills the unfilled vacuum of official information. Fueled by anonymous voices and emotional information that's extra-tasty , these informal information structures situate themselves as the alternative locus of "the truth." In other words, rumors effectively transfer the power of spreading information away from the official structures--which tend to be slower, more methodical, and more measured--and toward informal structures that deliver "news" without any need to wait.

I realize now that rumors are a by-product of not only not knowing t...

"No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune." One may assume that Plutarch intended this rhetorically, since it definitely isn't literally true. It's hard to say about wetting clay specifically; but starting a job and not finishing it is certainly not uncommon. The fact of the case is that it's business as usual for far too many folks. They probably don't think what they start will be finished by chance and fortune; but they do figure that they won't be the ones who have to complete it. It's likely justifiable to conclude that they see this as good fortune, whether anyone else does or not.

Why do people do this? Why do they stop before the job is done? The famous Anon. has been sitting on the answer, "The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places." That's it. They start with the best of intentions but soon discover that intentions are to accomplishments as a hardy appetite is to breakfast. However you like your omelet, someone still has to crack the eggs and grease the skillet.

Newt Gingrich figured out the "why" of it. He said, "Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did." On the road to success, people get as far as "Perseverance" and then pull over and park. Perhaps they are too tired to continue, too bored to stay focused, or maybe just too trifling to take their responsibilities seriously. Whatever their excuse, they obdurately resist any suggestion that they should buckle down and take care of business. As Henry Ward Beecher expressed the principle, "The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't;" and some people just won't.

Sure, sometimes you come up against can't and won't and can't wins. You don't have the knowledge, skills, or resources it takes to do what you want to do. At other times, though, won't is clearly in the driver's seat. When you reach that fork in the road, Josh Billings has a little advice for you, "Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there."

It's a postage stamp moment. When it's time to do it, don't hesitate getting around to it. Remember that you are up to it, so get down to it, and jump into it; and if you think others are blocking your way, Gen. Joseph (Vinegar Joe) Stilwell's motto is worth adopting as your own. "Illegitimis non carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)

Now you know so there you go.

"No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune." One may assume that Plutarch intended this rhetorically, since it definitely isn't literally true. It's hard to say about wetting clay specifically; but starting a job and not finishing it is certainly not uncommon. The fact of the case is that it's business as usual for far too many folks. They probably don't think what they start will be finished by chance and fortune; but they do figure that they won't be the ones who have to complete it. It's likely justifiable to conclude that they see this as good fortune, whether anyone else does or not.

Why do people do this? Why do they stop before the job is done? The famous Anon. has been sitting on the answer, "The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places." That's it. They start with the best of intentions but soon discover that intentions are to accomplishments as a hardy appetite is to breakfast. However you like your omelet, someone still has to crack the eggs and grease the skillet.

Newt Gingrich figured out the "why" of it. He said, "Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did." On the road to success, people get as far as "Perseverance" and then pull over and park. Perhaps they are too tired to continue, too bored to stay focused, or maybe just too trifling to take their responsibilities seriously. Whatever their excuse, they obdurately resist any suggestion that they should buckle down and take care of business. As Henry Ward Beecher expressed the principle, "The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't;" and some people just won't.

Sure, sometimes you come up against can't and won't and can't wins. You don't have the knowledge, skills, or resources it takes to do what you want to do. At other times, though, won't is clearly in the driver's seat. When you reach that fork in the road, Josh Billings has a little advice for you, "Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there."

It's a postage stamp moment. When it's time to do it, don't hesitate getting around to it. Remember that you are up to it, so get down to it, and jump into it; and if you think others are blocking your way, Gen. Joseph (Vinegar Joe) Stilwell's motto is worth adopting as your own. "Illegitimis non carborundum." (Don't let the bastards grind you down.)

Now you know so there you go.

"Be not simply good; be good for something." -- Henry David Thoreau

This is great advice; but try not to be too much of a good for something. There is a Greek Proverb that says, "The excess of virtue is a vice." Overdoing what you do is likely an example of such a vice. You just don't know when to quit. Sure, it makes you feel a bit superior; but as Ts'ai Ken T'an advised, "Water which is too pure has no fish;" and that isn't a good thing. Even Abraham Lincoln said, "It has ever been my experience that folks who have no vices, have very few virtues." As you see, overdoing it definitely has the potential for getting really unacceptable. Fortunately, George Orwell understood the root of the matter, "On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time;" so it's OK to have one of those to do lists so long as you don't overdo it. Here's how to manage the whole thing.

Is work piling up and there's just too much to do? Are you getting frustrated with things backing up on you? Does your to-do list keep getting longer with no end in sight? Would you stop and relax if you weren't so up-tight?

Does the daily rat race leave your head spinning? Is it depressing to see that the damn rats are winning? Are you holding up the world but feeling it slip? Is the balance in your life beginning to tip?

Did your future just flash before your eyes? Was it what you expected or a total surprise? Either way you don't need to see it twice. Put on the brakes and consider this advice.

Grab that to-do list and a ballpoint with ink. Shortening the list isn't as hard as you think. Put a checkmark beside jobs actually belonging to you. All other jobs can wait ‘til you're through.

Look at your checkmarks and handle it this way. Put a + beside tasks you can finish today. Rank the + items from more urgent to less. If it's hard to decide, quick take a guess.

Take your + list and cut it in half. Cut it in the middle and don't stop to laugh. What you have left is urgent so approach it this way. Just buckle down and do today's work today.

Now you know so there you go.