Helping Hands: The Power of Listening, Caring, and Helping

“In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us.” ~ Flora Edwards

Let me ask a simple question. What are you doing to mobilize the efforts of those around you? Do you even know what those around you are doing? Aspiring to? Dreaming of? If you answer no, we have a problem.

I have found that some of the most satisfying moments in my life have come from helping those around me. Sometimes it’s not even someone I know, and frankly that’s not a prerequisite. If I get a view into what you are doing and I can sense that feeling that your determination and passion are not going to allow you to stop, I’m likely going to help you in some way. You see, it is my goal and passion to mobilize, assist, and enable those around me to do great things. It’s what powers me and it is much of my purpose.

I discovered many years ago that I have a few talents that afford me the ability to accomplish some cool stuff and that was satisfying. Back then I felt comfortable with the idea of being able to make some impact where I could while at the same time creating a comfortable life for myself. There was a period in my existence when that was enough of a horizon for me to walk toward. I was just going to mind my own business and do what I could personally to make the world a better place.

But then one day I had someone approach me about wanting to get my thoughts around a business that they were looking to launch based on some of the professional experiences I had accumulated over the years. We sat down over a beer and they started sharing their plan. I immediately realized several opportunities that they hadn’t thought about or dismissed for one reason or another. I shared with them my thoughts, perspectives, experiences and it all started to come together like a story. After we were done chatting I wasn’t necessarily sure what the end result was, but we settled up the check and I went on my way. So imagine my surprise the next day when I received a call from this individual and they are thanking me for everything that I did the day before. I’m wondering at that point what in the world I had really done, and was a little confused. After a very heartfelt amount of thanks was heaped upon me I asked what I did that deserved such an outpouring. They simply responded to me, “You cared enough to stop, really listen, and to offer meaningful insight with what you said yesterday. It gave me hope and renewed focus. It really helped.”

I was happy to receive the response I did, but I didn’t think much about it in that moment, though it did make me smile. Then later in the day I took some time to think back to the conversation and how it made me feel. At that point it dawned on me. I’m not exactly sure how this experience I just outlined had happened, but I wanted to do it again!! It felt good!!

That first real meaningful experience was very serendipitous and occurred rather organically, and it illustrated a key learning that I have carried with me to this very day. That learning is that when you help someone else achieve what they are aspiring for, you are really widening your circle of influence and building out a network of friends, colleagues, partners and other interested parties that in return care about you and what you are doing and what you’re trying to accomplish. As opposed to a vicious circle (a situation in which the apparent solution of one problem in a chain of circumstances creates a new problem and increases the difficulty of solving the original problem) you are building out what is called a virtuous circle (A condition in which a favorable circumstance or result gives rise to another that subsequently supports the first). Remember, “good” typically feeds “good.” Seldom are great achievements or innovations born out of cesspools of negativity or selfishness.

I firmly believe that the act of helping and enabling others to be successful sets you up to be successful. Is it some form of magic? Of course not, but remember “Relationships Matter.” I highly encourage you to engage with those around you to find out “what’s going on.” If you know what people are working toward and you demonstrate interest, they are more likely to open up with you and share, at which point you have an opportunity to listen, care, and maybe even help.

You might be shocked at how good you feel and just how valuable that relationship ends up being.

(I have started a blogging collection over at Medium.com that I am curating and contributing to in addition to this little project here, including this post.  Stop on by and, give it a like and follow me there as well!!)

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Relationships matter

Over the last few days I’ve been thinking about a conversation that I had with a colleague of mine who posed a question to me last week. The question in and of itself wasn’t terribly complex and for that matter neither was the answer. However, over the last few days I’ve been realizing that as I go through my day and interact with the people around me that I rely on in order to accomplish the duties and responsibilities that have been assigned that there was more depth to the answer I gave than I had previously thought.

The question posed to me was simple: In my opinion, what is one of the most important aspects to successfully influencing change? Like I said not a terribly difficult question, at least for a guy who has been doing his best to act as a change agent in many different companies scenarios, typically in an organizational development capacity, for coming up on two decades. My answer was this: You must build healthy and valued relationships. Again, as noted earlier, not a terribly complex answer but one that I certainly feel accurately portrays my opinion as to what it takes to truly influence change in an organization. At that point our conversation skewed into a number of different tangents until we both had to go our separate ways and I didn’t think a whole lot more about it.

That was until I came across a binder with documents for a program that I had built around leadership and management development at another company I had worked for previously. Upon inspecting the documents I found I was reminded that I spent a significant amount of time reinforcing to the leaders and managers that I was coaching just how important building relationships truly was to every aspect of the work that we as a company were doing. I titled the program “Relationships Matter” and basically required all training and development initiatives that would be developed and deployed over that 12 month period to ensure that they addressed the importance of relationship building inside of the content in some meaningful way. Incidentally, but not coincidently, these programs would prove to be the most successful development initiatives that I’ve ever launched in my career.

This got me thinking about the answer that I’d given to my colleague. I honestly believe that the human dynamic is one of the most overlooked and taken-for-granted aspects in corporate environments. I think that it’s very easy to forget that the most valuable resource in your company structure, your people, are just that, people (not commodities or robots or pieces of machinery) and they need to feel some level of connection not only with the work that they’re doing but with the people around them, with their peers, and their leadership and management. This is why things such as mission statements and vision statements and guiding principles are so crucial, due to the fact that they help create an anchor point for emotional connection between the company and the people who work within it.

But a lot of leaders over the years have said, “Keith we have a mission statement and guiding principles so were okay, right?” My answer to that is PowerPoint slides that get projected on a conference room wall or posters hanging in the hallway are not the answer to creating emotional connection and fostering an organizational presence of cohesive partnership (we win together and we lose together). There must be a culture of teamwork and shared ownership of your mission/vision and guiding principles if you ever have any true hope of inspiring a high level of employee engagement. Leaders have to come out of their offices and walk the floor interacting with employees. Managers need to set up time to just listen to their employees so that they can understand what the mood is and what the thought trends are within the ranks and throughout your work environments. Employees need to be encouraged to collaborate not only in the conference rooms but also in ways that get them out of the office and get them creatively problem-solving in settings that stoke their creativity and fuels their innovation.

You would be amazed with what happens when you get leaders and managers and employees at all levels working together, talking, thinking out loud, and problem-solving. That sharing of thoughts and ideas across all levels has produced some of the best innovation and out-of-the-box thinking that I have ever seen. And the amazing thing is that it’s not a one-time phenomenon. Once people start interacting with one another and building relationships there is a tendency for them to rely more and more upon those newly formed relationships for their perspectives and insights that ultimately ends up influencing projects week, months, and years down the road.

There is a natural compounding effect that has been proven to me over and over that you really can achieve significant, meaningful, thoughtful change when you foster an environment that emphasizes the importance of building healthy and valued relationships. By building out these relationships, that ultimately strengthen the connections between individuals and enhances the work that happens inside of a company everyday, you’re not only positioning your company for greater success, but you’re also role modeling a cultural environment that emphasizes the importance around collaboration, teamwork, and a shared conviction for the most important asset in your company which is also your greatest competitive advantage: your people.

So now let me pose a question to you. What are you doing in your group or organization or company to foster the building of significant and meaningful relationships amongst your workforce? In what way has this help foster meaningful change?

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Managing to be honest

“Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.” — Mother Teresa

We all have to do things that we don’t want to do or are uncomfortable in doing. I’m pretty sure it’s in the human contract that comes with existence on this spinning rock we call home. Sometimes it’s due to the fact that we don’t know how to do it and are afraid of being exposed or of failure. Other times it’s because it is something that we really dislike doing and we do our best to avoid at all costs. Whatever the reason, we all experience that sense of dread of being faced with the realities of having to do things we’ve placed at the top of the list we’ve titled “AVOID!!”

That’s all well and good (and human), but there are times when your environment and responsibilities/duties trump any discomfort you may have with doing things you’d rather not do, especially if there is a paycheck attached to those duties. In these moments it is important to understand the circumstances and all of the information at hand and to act appropriately and in a timely matter.

This morning I observed a prime example of such an event that wasn’t handled well and went “south” quickly, and it all could have been avoided had the manager in question just decided to be more honest and transparent.

Without getting into a ton of detail (that is largely unnecessary), to protect both the innocent and guilty I’m just going to summarize what happened. Basically it was a situation of an employee asking a hard question and a manager (who is known to avoid confrontation at all costs) doing their best Matrix “bullet-time” impersonation, dodging and weaving around the question to give a complete non-answer and insisting that they didn’t know of any better answer to the employee’s question. The problem is that I knew the manager wasn’t being even remotely honest about what they knew concerning the question asked and so did the employee that was asking the question. In the end, after a series of ackward pauses, the employee left the room and the manager was left to squirm in their chair recovering from the less than stellar interaction.

Most often, though difficult, it is better to deliver a difficult message than to play dumb to avoid potential confrontation in the moment and hope the situation just fades away without your involvement or participation. We all know that 9 times out of 10 we are just delaying the inevitable and we’ll have to deal with an even more highly charged situation down the road. In this scenario I observed it would have been much easier to simply deliver the difficult message and to allow the employee to work through it and move on. But now, in an attempt to avoid confrontation, the situation was only made worse and the manager has lost credibility with not only the involved employee, but also with any 3rd party observers who knew anything about what they were seeing unfold.

In this case, honesty would have definitely left the manager more open to criticism and vulnerable, but it would have also signaled to everyone involved and observing that above all else honesty, transparency, and integrity were priorities in their leadership style. Instead, it was clear that this manager’s priorities fell far short of those ideals and were more concerned with avoiding conflict and trying to portray themselves as helpless in the situation.

The worst part of all of this was seeing the interaction between these two lead them down a path where the the lack of honesty all but eliminated the chances of there being any ongoing loyalty, trust, or respect between this employee and the manager at any point in the near future.

In the leader/follower as well as the manager/employee dynamic, honesty, authenticity, and transparency serve as much of the currency that gets exchanged while building the foundational layer on which the relationship exists, out of which loyalty, trust and respect grow. If you aren’t consistently demonstrating the high value you place on these core principles you aren’t likely to have a lot of people who are going to be willing to follow you.

I get that you might hate conflict and that you’d rather sit in line at the DMV for 8 hours rather than deliver a difficult message to one of your employees or a peer or even your boss. Just know that you are doing no one, including yourself, a favor by taking the easy way out and procrastinating on something that deserves to be attended to in the present moment.

Be authentic. Be empathetic. Be transparent. Be respectful. Be honest.

You’ll be glad you were.

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Do I have Peggy Lee Disease?!? LOL

Today I ran across this quote which comes from one of Chuck Lorre’s vanity cards:

“I believe I have identified a debilitating psychological syndrome that has infected a large number of people, myself included. Simply put, the sufferer, in varying degrees of intensity, is convinced that he or she is “not alive enough.” This delusion drives them to carry out all manner of self-destructive acts in a vain attempt to “feel more alive.” I’ve dubbed the syndrome Peggy Lee Disease (in honor of her classic song which first identified the malady, “Is That All There Is?”). The list of misguided actions caused by PLD is almost endless; over-eating, over-sexing, over-shopping, extreme sports, sadism, masochism, alcoholism, drug addiction, workaholism and spending all your money to run for governor of California (for a more complete list check web sites such as TMZ and Radar Online). To date, the only sure cure for PLD is altruism — putting aside selfish interests and giving unto others. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m waiting for something better.”

I found it interesting based on the fact that I’ve kind of reach that age in my life where I to might be starting to suffer from PLD and I want to try to cut it off at the pass if it all possible. The last thing I want is for people to look at me and think “Oh my goodness he has entered his total midlife crisis phase!!” or “He has lost his mind and there’s no hope left for him if he’s doing those types of things…” but I can’t help but look back and realize for as much as I have done and accomplished there are so many things that never came to fruition. I like to think that I have very few regrets (as opposed to no regrets because let’s be honest people, we all have some regrets whether you’re willing to admit it or not) and that most of the things in my life are not box checking exercises so that I can somehow claim superiority or King of the Mountain status because I accomplished this or did that or went here or vacationed there. But I would be lying if I said I did not have a few what-if scenarios in my head.

As far as I am concerned, it’s absolutely natural for me to go back and look at those what-if scenarios and wonder whether I should try to recapture some of those things. All I know is that my life has largely encompassed taking care of my beautiful, wonderful daughter and doing everything I can to advance my career to a point where I don’t necessarily have to worry about money or resources, but can live a very simple and comfortable life. And I will be the first to say that is wonderful and exactly what I was likely supposed to do but I guess the question is should we all be doing what we’re supposed to be doing or should we be challenging the status quo and pushing the boundaries. Really I’m not questioning whether I’m alive enough, as I find that everything in my life is quite good and I’m a very lucky individual. I embrace my life and feel very lucky to be alive every single day. I’m just wondering if I should go back to any of those old scribbled lists that were created so long ago and try to accomplish some of the things on them even though the assigned due dates were well over a decade ago.

I suppose at least part of the answer is found in the fact that I’m actually asking the question… Who knows, maybe 2014 is the year that I start making good on some of those old goals.

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“First Monday back to work after a holiday” rant

Today was my first day back to work after a long holiday break. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty difficult getting out and about this morning and getting back into my workday routine, but alas all good things must come to an end including extended holiday breaks. LOL

It was also tough because my daughter went back to her mother and I won’t get to spend any real meaningful time with her again for a week, which is always difficult for me. However, this blog post will not get consumed by my frustrations with co-parenting or the struggle of only being able to witness and participate in 50% of my daughters life. No, this post is about what I do for a living and why I’m about to go a little crazy…

In my current company, I hold the position of sr. training designer and developer. What I basically do is I design and develop training where it is needed in our company. I know, a simplistic explanation but that’s really what I do. Over the course of the last year my focus has largely been on helping to design training around technical products that the company produces, but that’s not really my strong suit. My background as an HR leader and an organizational development expert really lend themselves to more of an employee and team development focus. That is really what I need to be concentrating on as I proceed through the coming year, but in order to do that I need to get some of the lingering assignments from 2013 finished. The real struggle is that the training department that I live in is extremely small and not properly resourced or staffed to do what it is we really want to do. That means all hands on deck for all the prioritized assignments and everything else gets set to the side until we find some open resources or find a way to heighten the priority of those projects.

I’ve been working on trying to create a training on-boarding experience for all customer facing employees that the company hires. This is largely borne out of an incident that was witnessed by our CEO while he was out on a sales call accompanying one of our sales employees. Needless to say he did not like what he saw and from that point on insisted that we prioritize sales training above all else until  we have a robust on-boarding experience that allows our customer facing employees to be able to comfortably and accurately speak to our products, services, and solutions. So until I have that package put together I have no hope of working on the things that I feel that the company desperately needs including training around communication, informed risk-taking, how to work effectively as a team, leadership and management development, how to run effective meetings, etc.

I totally get the fact that the sales team needs help, but I have to admit it’s not the most rewarding work I’ve ever done and it is somewhat tedious trying to manage the egos of some of the sales employees and the expectations of our company leaders all while trying to put together a program with extremely limited resources and no dedicated assistance. In this case I definitely feel like an Army of one half the time. I honestly can’t wait until I’m able to get a package put together that can then be handed off to someone else so that I can go about working on things that I feel are just as important and I that I would much rather be doing.

End of rant… LOL

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You can never go back, or can you?

As I was doing my daily reading of all of the blogs that I subscribed to I came across a very interesting article that made me stop and really think this morning. The article was published on the site Gizmodo and was titled A Pill That Lets Adults Learn Perfect Pitch as Easily as Kids. Now ordinarily an article with that title would interest me, to the extent that I grew up in a very musical family and played instruments and sang in choirs and small groups during the formative years of my life. However this article had much less to do with the concept of learning perfect pitch and much more to do with how in the world they proposed doing it with grown adults.

You see perfect pitch is one of those talents that is extremely rare in our population, just one in 10,000 people can do it, and science says that it’s a skill that has to be acquired by the age of seven. So needless to say it’s one of those things that typically you never have an opportunity to go back and see if you can harness or acquire such a skill, since that ship sails so early in our development. But this article is saying that scientists have discovered that a common psychiatric medication can potentially restart that learning ability in adults.

What is so remarkable about this are the implications for learning at large. I’m not so concerned about the ability to go back and learn perfect pitch. I doubt that I would ever be able to truly have perfect pitch in the first place and it isn’t really a skill that would come in handy for me today since I’m not in the music business. No, I’m much more interested in other examples of critical period type developments with regards to learning, such as increasing the ease of which one learns a foreign language. Again this is a skill that they say is much easier done while the brain is still forming and elastic with regards to the formation of synaptic channels, which is why children pick up other languages much more quickly and easily than adults do.

The idea of science potentially being able to bring us a drug that in some way, shape, or form renews the plasticity of the brain allowing adults to in some weird way recapture their youth, at least in terms of their brains ability to learn new things, is crazy to me!! I mean, this is like science fiction type stuff we’re dealing with here. I never thought that in my lifetime they would start coming up with methods that have the potential of going mainstream that for all intents and purposes affects us at an organic level. I probably should’ve expected it but then again there have been so many promises made that have never been realized with regards to scientific advancement. I mean after all, we are still looking for cures the cancer and diabetes and the HIV virus and on and on and on.

So the question is if you had the opportunity to take a drug that could potentially help you to learn better, but that had risks, would you do it? The scientist that was interviewed for the article noted that there were cautions regarding experimentation with this drug that should be voiced. His concerns lay squarely around our lack of understanding with regards to how our personalities and identities are shaped and how that is connected to our early stage brain development. He notes that “if we’ve shaped our identities through development, through a critical period, and have matched our brain to the environment in which we were raised, acquiring language, culture, identity, then if we were to erase that by re-opening the critical period, we run quite a risk ….”

I think what he is saying here is that science doesn’t know whether this would be adding information to the existing information already on the hard drive in our heads or whether this new information would be over-writing portions of that hard drive we call a brain. I suppose when you think about it like that the risks seems extremely high. I’m not sure I’d be willing to lose any of the memories that I’ve made up to this point even if that sacrifice were to allow me to learn a new language or skill, at least not until there was more information with regards to these suspected risks.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting article and extremely fascinating considering that this type of science is emerging and will probably become mainstream within the next decade.  That and I also love “what-if” types of questions.

It also occurs to me that this post demonstrates just how big of a geek I really am… LOL

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Another comical reminder as to why we should rethink the college education as we know it

Thanks to Collegehumor.com for this (slightly edited to tone down the language a bit).  It speaks perfectly to another downside to the traditional college education that I and many others experience several times a year!!

If the Rules of Alumni Giving Applied to Other Purchases

Salesperson
Ok, so your total comes to $200,000.
You
Oh, wow. That seems pricey for a Corolla.
Salesperson
Trust me, it will be worth it. Think of this as an investment.
You
But can you even guarantee that I’ll still be using it in four years?
Salesperson
Look, the stuff you’re going to learn and the memories you’re going to make in this car will stay with you forever. Things like that are priceless.
You
I thought you said it was $200,000.
Salesperson
You know what I mean.
You
Well, look, I only have about $50,000 in savings right now.
Salesperson
No problem, just take out a loan for the rest of it! You won’t have to pay any of that money back until the future! And who the hell knows if that will ever even get here?
You
Hmm, that’s a good point. I guess I’m in.
Salesperson
Wonderful! You won’t regret this.
Five years later…
Salesperson
Hey, my main man! How’s it going?
You
Oh, uh, hi. Things are pretty good, I guess.
Salesperson
Nice! So listen, how would you feel about giving Toyota a few more bucks?
You
… You mean, like, in exchange for another product?
Salesperson
No.
You
… So you just want me to give you money again?
Salesperson
Yes.
You
Are you… are you eff’in kidding me? You know I still owe the government about $140,000 for that stupid Corolla, right? Not to mention the fact that I’ve barely used it at all since moving to New York. And that all that “stuff” you said I was going to learn in it pretty much just boiled down to “Don’t trust your roommate when he tells you how good he is at driving stoned.” So I guess I feel pretty damn poorly about giving Toyota a few more bucks.
Salesperson
Alright, alright, let’s just calm down for a second.
You
Also, how did you find out where I live? You know it’s kinda weird for a salesperson from five years ago to just show up at your doorstep, right?
Salesperson
Don’t worry about that. Look, you’re part of a community of Corolla owners now, ok? And that purchase is an indelible part of your identity. It’s going to stick with you for the rest of your life.
You
Actually, I’m starting to find that the further away I get from my purchase, the less people ask me about it.
Salesperson
Sorry, I couldn’t hear that last thing you said. Anyway, don’t you think it’s in your best interest to make sure that Toyota continues to have enough money to keep the Corolla brand as prestigious as possible? In the long term, it’s only going to make you and your purchase look that much better!
You
But you’re still getting money, right? I mean, people are still buying Corollas, aren’t they?
Salesperson
Well… yes, they are. But we’d like more money, that’s all. Besides, you kind of owe us after all we’ve done for you.
You
Really. Because I thought I just owed you $200,000 for the car. Which I’ve paid.
Salesperson
Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase!!!!!!!!!
You
Oh, for cryin’ out loud, fine. How much do you want?
Salesperson
Well, you purchased your car in 2009. So, in honor of that, how about a nice, round donation of $2,009?
You
I’m gonna give you five bucks.
Salesperson
OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH THANK YOU SO MUCH THANK YOU THANK YOU THANKYOU THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You
It’s fine. Now will you get out of here? I’ve got to be at work soon, and the subway comes in five minutes.
Salesperson
No problem.
The next day…
Salesperson
Hey there, buckaroo! How’s life? I couldn’t help but remember you saying you had to go to work yesterday. How about sending some of that nice fat paycheck over to Toyota, eh?
You
You know, I think I’m just gonna move.

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Being a divorced single dad (or how to walk through mine fields and live to tell the tale!!)

I have mentioned before that it’s not the easiest thing in the world having a nearly 4-year-old daughter and being a single dad. I’m very much in a position where I have to do everything in my power to make sure that my daughter knows that I love her more than anything on the planet earth. But there’s a fine line between endearing her to me and spoiling her rotten.

I think I’m about to cross the line if I’m not careful. At the end of the day, anytime there’s a divorce where there’s a mom and a dad who live apart and share custody, there’s always some level of competition that exists. As my daughter gets older it’s starting to become clear to me that she is starting to catch on to what goes on between my ex and myself. She’s a smart little kid and I’m very happy about that, but sometimes I think she’s too smart for her own good. I don’t want her feeling like she can play my ex versus me in a game of “who loves me more?!?” The ironic thing is that in the situation between my ex and I we both truly do love our daughter with all of our hearts. As far as problems go it’s not the worst kind as I know some children of divorced parents end up suffering because there is such hatred between the parents and they take it out on the child. That is an especially difficult situation and often leaves the young one with significant emotional scarring that can last for a lifetime.

My biggest concern is making sure that I don’t create or set some form of precedent in a moment of weakness when I happen to be particularly frustrated for some reason (which my ex has been known to provide ample reason for frustration… lol) and end up either setting myself up or sending mixed messages to my kiddo. Today was one of those situations where I felt myself getting frustrated and had to step back and really understand that my daughter has nothing to do with the situation at hand, which I won’t get into here, but nonetheless if I’m not careful she’ll get caught in the crossfire.

Sometimes it feels like being a single parent is like walking through a minefield, at least as it pertains to co-parenting. You must be very careful what you do and be very careful with what you say, especially in front of your child or children. Being critical of the other parents in front of the child is simply not acceptable, even when you feel the other parent has provided perfectly justifiable reasons to do just that. At the end of the day you have to act with the best intentions, as it regards your child, as possible. But let me tell you I came really close to breaking my own rules today.

Fortunately I caught myself, but not before my daughter started realizing there was something wrong and began to ask me about it. In her words, she wanted to know why I was sad. Oh the innocence of children. Their emotional range and thought process basically goes from reasons to be happy to reasons to be sad and that’s pretty much it. The complexities and nuance of relationships and interacting with others is a lesson long down the line for them. If you ask me, I hope those lessons don’t come too quickly so that my daughter can hold on to her innocence as long as possible.

And with regards to the lessons I continue to learn as a single dad, chalk this one up as one I did not particularly enjoy experiencing but I suppose was necessary.

Ah the joys of single-parenthood…

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The bane that is the student loan

So this post is going to be about where my head is around the concept of formalized higher education for our kids in an era where student loans have severely outpaced the starting wages those who achieve undergraduate degrees are getting as they enter the workforce after graduating.

Peter Thiel published a graphic basically demonstrating the massive divide between the amount of debt that’s being accrued and the average starting wage as his “Graph of the Year.” I thought it was a brilliant illustration of exactly what’s happening right now and so I share below:

It’s time to wake up to the fact that our kids deserve better than being societally pressured into a potential mountain of debt at the ripe old age of ~22 with little to show for it. I’ve been sounding this alarm for quite some time and am glad to see it receive some mainstream focus. We need to start doing things differently if we expect to turn the tide of this horrendous phenomenon occurring. Someone you had student loan debt I can personally say it was a huge pressure and always looming over me like a black cloud. I was lucky to be able to get all of my debt repaid because I was able to find work progressively paid me better and better through the years. Not everyone is that lucky… I know quite a few people who have been crippled my student loan debt and a few who have unfortunately defaulted as the work they were able to secure with their degree was not enough to allow them to support themselves/their families and pay back the debt when it came due.

The sad truth is that most teenagers are not thinking about the long term consequences that student loans bring.  They just know that it’s what everyone else is doing and they will deal with it later, years down the line.  And unfortunately colleges and universities have been pimping student loans as the solution so as to meet their own goals and financial needs. You see, the schools benefit from the money that is being paid out and they don’t have to be concerned with how these funds will be paid back as these loans are federally insured and become the burden of the student not the school whether the student graduates or not.  Let’s not even get into the discussion of fluff degrees that hold little value on their own without somehow being enhanced or built upon (I’m looking at you Psych and Comms degrees!!)

Personally I’ve been doing my best to influence leaders everywhere I’ve worked over the years to stop hiring “smart” people or more accurately pieces of paper that somehow we trust to validate someone as “smart” and instead to hire motivated/driven individuals who know how to “get sh*t done!!” With the advent of nearly all information in existence available to mankind freely online, anyone is capable of learning just about anything on their own if they have the desire and drive to do so without accruing mountains of debt. I’ve also become a huge advocate of apprenticeships where individuals figure out what they’re passionate about, where their talents lie, and find a “Master” to learn from in an on-the-job training fashion. It seems that in terms of methodologies, what once was old is new again.

More on this in future posts, but this was what was on my mind today…

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Hello 2014… Lets agree to not let this year suck!!

This is the kiddo and my last photo of 2013 as we look at the great unknown of 2014.

First, let’s start with the fact that while there were some high points in 2013, it wasn’t the best year on record for me.  The good moments surrounded my daughter and her growing into a little person / princess.  The stressful moments surrounded everything else.  I think at the crux of the issues surrounded me worrying too much about stuff that was out of my control.  So, this year it is a return to just rolling with the punches.  There are also a few other things I want to do in 2014:

1. Read even more than I did last year – I want to read at least a couple of chapters a day and at least one book a month. I’m pretty sure this is really important based on the fact that they have discovered that reading daily wards off all kinds of ailments as you get older, especially for those with a family history of Alzheimer’s (which our family does unfortunately).
2. Eat less than I did last year – So, I tend to stress eat and that’s not good when there is a lot of stress in your life. Yeah, I saw a 15 pound weight gain in 2013 and that’s not great based on the fact that I was heavier than I wished going into 2013.  So, this year will need to focus on working toward being healthier with my eating decisions for me and the munchkin.
3. Be more social – Anyone that knows me also knows that I tend to go into “hibernation” when things get stressful.  This would be my introvert side taking some dominance (I tend to test 50/50 with regards to extrovert/introvert) as it seeks to recuperate and re-energize. However, there is a cost to this behavior.  While most of my friends understand, my relationships can suffer. And the truth is I could really benefit from the presence of some good friends during any stressful stretches.
4. Take time to meditate / be quiet – I operate at my best when I have time to just sit back, be quiet, and just let my mind decompress. Something is is I don’t often give myself the time to do this or I don’t do it nearly as regularly as I should. I really need this to change in 2014. It really follows the same line of thought that supports the idea of slowing down to go faster. In order to accomplish everything that I would like to, I’m going to need to definitely be able to organize my thoughts and find the drive/motivation necessary to achieve it all.
5. But most importantly I want to be the best dad I can be in 2014 – Being a single dad to a very rambunctious and active nearly 4-year-old little girl is exhausting. At the same time, it is the most amazing experience I’ve ever had in my entire life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. However, I do know that there are a lot of areas that I’m not that great at and I need to get better, fast. It is my goal to be the best version of my daughter’s dad that I possibly can be in 2014. As long as I learn every day and work to be the best dad possible I’m pretty sure this year will go down as extremely successful in the daddy/daughter department.

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