AdeptAdapters

Adaptation is the process of modification toward achieving certain goals.  

Some examples:

• Certain creatures change their shape or color in order to blend in to the environment. The goal? Survival.
• Teenagers often dress in the current trend, even if the style seems absurd. The goal? Acceptance.
• Many auto enthusiasts buy and install "after market" embellishments for their car or truck. The goal? Increased performance or heightened coolness.
• Many who receive an awful health prognosis vastly change their nutrition regimen. The goal? Improved health, quickly.
• Businesses often modify their product or service menus. The goal? To gain or retain market share.

When the goals are worthy and noble, adaptations can ensure improved health, happiness, and productivity. When the goals are purely selfish and dubious, adaptations usually don't gain traction or last very long.

The best leaders I know are extremely adept adapters.  They constantly survey the "landscape," and lead themselves and their organizations toward transformational alterations that lead to better futures for all. 

Those leaders know well and act regularly on the precept that CHANGE is at the heart of living well (whether as individuals or as organizations). 

LeadershipGOld

From observing some rather exceptional leaders over the last 50-ish years, here are a few of the traits that make me want to keep following them:

• With their words and their ears and their hearts and their effort, they create a clear picture of a better future for all of us.
• They see how each of us can contribute to achieving that picture, and create meaningful roles for us to make those contributions.
• They understand and communicate that progress is the daily expectation, and that perfection is a debilitating illusion.
• They afford everyone in the organization respectful attention and voice.
• They understand that persistent LEARNING is a requirement for success, and that organizational learning is a direct downstream effect of individual learning. 
• They notice, acknowledge, and express gratitude for goal-oriented effort and work, relentlessly.
• They stay focused on the WE, the US, the OUR (not the me, the I, the mine).

I'm betting if you look closely at the most magnetic organizations in your life (whether family or business or faith or...), you'll see that kind of leadership at work.

OffTarget

What causes us to miss our mark?  To fall a bit short?  To feel as though we didn't accomplish our goals?

Here are some common aim-jackers:

• Forgetting that serving others is priority ONE
• Focusing too much on material gain
• Comparing ourselves with others
• Regret and self-pity
• Short-term-itis
• Envy

Each is a state of mind, completely within our control.

Reload.  Re-focus.  Re-aim (every minute of every day).

A shooters' mantra:  "Aim small, miss small."

Advice

Advice springing from reflective research is dependable.
Advice from the inexperienced deserves our suspicion.
Advice from wise counsel is more precious than gold.
Advice founded in rich experience is worthy.
Advice that is proprietary typically isn't.
Advice unsolicited is usually ignored.
Advice unheeded is chimeral.
Advice is always verifiable.

Advice is like LEARNING - the quality of what we get is directly proportional to what we've invested.

SEEK and ye shall find.  Never been easier.

Be advised.........

Strengtheners

What makes us stronger?

• Work - showing up, doing our part (no matter how menial the task or assignment)
• Resistance - facing and resolving pushback (whether free weights or political opposition)
• Effort - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual
• Commitment - following through on what we've promised (even when it doesn't feel good)
• Competition - wrestling with worthy opponents, playing by the rules, accepting the outcomes
• Failure - because it forces us to carefully reflect on the WHY

What doesn't?

• Wishing
• Whining
• Quitting
• Complaining

All about choices....

* On the topic of choices, so very thankful for our fallen on this Memorial Day (including Nelson Coulter, 1945, RIP).

Graditude

High schools, colleges, trade schools, even nursery schools are smack in the middle of graduating their completers (or survivors) and launching them into their next chapter of life.

Of the many graduation speeches I've heard (and, as a former high school principal, pre-read) over the years, the ones that moved me the most were the ones filled with heartfelt and genuine GRATITUDE.

The speakers who acknowledge, reinforce, and express thanks to the countless others who helped them reach their goals - parents, friends, life-partners, teachers, pastors, aunts, uncles, siblings, coaches, counselors, professors, bosses, ................... that list goes on and on.  The titles held by those supporters span a huge spectrum, yet there are some common characteristics that metaphorically describe their impact on us:

• Caregivers - they all care for us deeply and are not afraid to show it (somehow despite our many faults).
• Cheerleaders - they truly want us to succeed and publicly display it.
• Critics - they let us know when we've screwed up.
• Counselors - they guide us toward better decisions, and subsequent outcomes.
• Coaches - they push us, train us, hold us accountable, exhaust us, praise us, sweat-bleed-laugh-cry with us, push us some more.

 "Thanks" seems like such a small word, but oh the power it holds when delivered from the heart.

"Onward and upward!" (as famously espoused by Reepicheep in The Chronicles of Narnia.)

FISHognition

One of the coolest teams I ever worked on was at a high school in Austin, Texas.  Our special education department began incorporating the FISH Philosophy into their daily business. 

The process became contagious and eventually worked it's way throughout the school (about 240 employees in total).  We ultimately began having FISH Pep Rallies from time to time, just to celebrate the effort and accomplishments of the folks and the teams on our campus. 

One of the most enriching and empowering components of that process was the energy-inducing power of recognition and gratitude - recognition from ones colleagues and customers (not the bosses).  When meetings of all kinds begin with recognition, acknowledgment, and expressed gratitude from those one is serving and serving with, it just sort of makes us glow all over.

The same fueling effect takes place for the organization as a whole (and cost virtually nothing).  

Why wouldn't we?