The Map Magazine

It is that time of year once more when many people are working on the goals they have set for themselves for the new year. It’s the same thing every year. The goals that people set for themselves are usually along the lines of, “I want to lose weight”, ” I want to quit smoking”, “I want to exercise more” etc. Newsletters and Magazines are full of articles on how to accomplish these things.

Although the normal resolutions are good and healthy for you, they make you focus on negative aspects of your life, essentially, what you should not be doing…smoking, eating badly, being lazy etc. The problem I see with these resolutions is that it makes people think negatively and feel guilty, especially when February rolls around and they realize that they were not able to keep up with their resolutions. By thinking negatively, we set ourselves up for failure.

I want to suggest something different to you. Let us not dwell on new year resolutions that go down the drain by February, let’s focus on something a little different. Positive thinking brings results. Results make us happy and content. When we are content and focused on positive things we will find that many negative aspects of our lives fall away on their own. It is as if the body says, “I don’t need these negative things in my life anymore” and voila, they drop away without effort.

My suggestion to you is that this year we dwell on positive things. Instead of dwelling on what we want to rid ourselves of this year, let us dwell on what positive things we want to see in our lives. Let us focus on our dreams and make them a reality in our lives.

Many people don’t give much time thinking about making their dreams come true. They are caught up in the rat race of life and a worldly way of thinking. My suggestion is that we focus on a more spiritual way of thinking. Let us take the time to think about what we really want in life and then focus on setting goals that will bring us closer to our dreams.

Yes, even when following your dreams, one must set goals or we will never accomplish that which we dream of. Don’t get caught up in wishful thinking but put some action behind your thoughts. The secret to realizing your dreams is to break your objective into small steps. Ask yourself, “What do I need to do in order to accomplish this goal?” then break it down into bite size pieces.

This week we drove from Hamburg to Munich because we had to check out our new apartment and see about my fianc©’s new job out there. It is a very long drive and if you drive fast and push your limits (which most people want to do) you can make the journey in 8 hours. BUT, if you don’t want to stress yourself out, you have to make sure you take time for breaks and stretching so it ends up taking between 10-12 hours, depending on traffic etc. Then you end up at the end of the journey relaxed. Tired still, but relaxed

Think of your dreams as your destination. It may not be right around the corner, most dreams aren’t, but if you have patience, and pace yourself you WILL arrive at your destination. The problem most people run into with goal setting is that we think we can accomplish it much faster if we push themselves to the limit. When we hit problems that will slow us down, we end up getting frustrated and often give up. If, we would relax and think clearly when we hit a roadblock to our dreams, we would be able to figure out alternative routes to our destination. Detours do not mean failure and stalled traffic does not mean that we must give up and forget about our destination. We will reach our goals if we relax, persevere and be willing to figure out alternatives to our situation. We don’t need to drive ourselves like maniacs in order to reach our destination. Life is not the autobahn!

Road plan to your dreams:
1.Figure out what you want the most in life. What is your dream?
2.Set small, realistic steps so you can clearly map out the way to your destination, your dream. Remember that you cannot swim the ocean.
3.Be prepared to take an alternative route if you run into roadblocks.
4.Don’t give up. You WILL reach your destination.

This new year, let us think about the positive things we want in our life. Take the time now, to think about what you really want and then set about making up your road plan. Wishful thinking won’t accomplish anything. Make plans and follow your dreams!

“Shoot for the moon, if you miss at least you will end up amongst the stars”- Author unknown

This article is bought to you by Sharron Myers

Sharron Myers has been a teacher of Spiritual Truth for over 30 years. She also is a Certified Aromatherapist and Personal Development Consultant. Be sure to check out her site: www.sharron-myers.com

To Live the Life You Want, Learn the Skills You Need
www.sharron-myers.com

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The Cult

Becoming a part of the Cult, consists of being recruited a member of the cult, as a person that can be relied on to assume responsibilities and accomplish all or almost all things requested.

Depending upon the position you hold and the person that you are attached to the most, any position can be engaging and can be so different from any other experience that you have had prior to Walmart in almost any retail sector that you feel you are being chosen for great things.

Along with morning meetings and consistently being told how much you mean as an individual to the company, by your recruiter, management and the general population you feel an inclusiveness that is hard to describe. Before the end of each meeting the feeling, gets closer to being accepted into a religious organization or sorority, and when you are accepted, in some way you sincerely begin to believe what you are being told is that you belong to a new family. “The Walmart Family” You begin to believe that “The Walmart Way” is the better way, the only way.

I did not see it happening and I begin to correlate past experiences with this new and empowered way of working. I am sure I felt something then that most typical retail employees seldom if ever feel. A sense of power.
As the brainwashing continued, I found myself accepting any number of practices that are not truly acceptable according to written company policy but are known to the members as unwritten rules that are to be followed by all without question or concern.

I found myself accepting the unacceptable. Policies and procedures that were just plain common sense meant nothing soon. Even when I complained about something that was going on or went to the office seeking information, or asked why, eventually I you would accept that it was the way it should be in the end and continued to feel that someday I would get the recognition and the position that I truly did deserve.

Depending on your view of what a job is you may find yourself accepting and or doing things in order to please the management that has been so good to you.

I found that seldom if ever did I say anything that would offend anyone. Situations that would normally be questionable to me, even according to Walmart company policy or my own moral beliefs became acceptable.
Things such as Gender discrimination or favoritism becomes acceptable and some how I knew inside bringing it up as unfair would label me as a problem.

This in turn would cause the person or manager who was so good to me, to be hurt and unhappy I would think or even suggest it is what it is.

I found it was not hard to accept and believe all of it was for my own good. I started to believe the company would never want to mistreat or discriminate against anyone even when it looked that way. I believed the reasons or concerns I had, what ever they were, were being handled in a justifiable way and it is was all for the good of the family.

Once I became a bona fide member, the procedure continued and changed occasionally to fit the position that I held within the cult.

The inclusiveness, the confidentiality of different situations became paramount to my standing within the cult.

If at any time, I became a maverick or bucked my immediate supervisor I found that I would immediately pulled aside and put on notice about my conduct and how I should go about repairing any damage I inflicted upon the cult. All of it was done in a very nurturing way and during this type of situation I was informed how I would be now and always expected to conduct myself in the future.

It is when the situation becomes personal and changes the actual way that a person views life, that it simulates brainwashing.

It is when one person recruits another and has no reason for doing it other than their standing within the cult that it is not normal. When the only reward is the person’s standing within the cult will be higher because the person knows what they are doing what is right according to Walmart.
Once you have entered the status of truly being brain washed all situations that are accepted by the cult as justifiable are accepted personally as well.

My personal experience has resulted with the inner conflict that occurs with mentally trying to accept “The Walmart Way” over biological family members and numerous coworkers that have had situations requiring one to take sides.

All issues due to any number of internal or external situations that present themselves seem to trigger an automatic defense system. To do anything other than this would cause one to be shunned by the cult and would cause members to inflict mental strain and stress on the person not conforming to what is considered to be a part of your responsibility to the company as an associate.

There is a psychological aspect to being a Walmart associate that truly finds no special job code.

Julie Pierce has worked in the retail sector for more than thirty years.
She has been a union member of the UCFW Union and the afl-cio more than once and has worked for more than one large retailer during the course of her career. She attended Gulf Coast Community College, Panama City Beach, Florida, in the nineties in the pursuit of a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications.

Some of her work has been published during the eighties and nineties in various editorial pages of newspapers in the state of New Jersey and Florida. She also did some work as a community reporter for a weekly newspaper in Panama City Florida. Other work includes an article in the Gulls Cry, the Gulf Coast Community College newspaper.

She is the wife of TSgt William F. Pierce Jr. (retired) USAF and the mother of three children and one grandchild.

Her experience with Walmart has taken her into three different regions and six districts within the company. In over a six-year period has worked in ten Walmart stores for twelve Walmart Store Managers.

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Time management is one of the least-mastered and most-desired skills in out fast-paced modern world. Time management truly is critical to becoming successful, doing everything you want to, and achieving ultimate success.

What do you need to do to DOUBLE your time management ability?

Do these things NOW:

1) Eliminate time wasters in your life. Time wasters are things that interrupt you and you spend time doing, but you wouldn’t have chosen to do them given the choice. Eliminating these time wasters is critical for time management:

• Email—If you are spending more than 30 minutes per day on email (unless that is your business) you are spending too much!

• Telephone—If you answer the phone live more than 5 times per day during your productive time (work, work at home, etc.) you are sacrificing time management and efficiency. When you answer the phone, you interrupt your current productive flow and this kills your productivity.

• Television—This must be limited for you to achieve ultimate control over your time. My recommendation is 30 minutes per day, especially if you are not getting all the things done you need or want to.

2) Make a list of what is genuinely important in your life and just start doing the things on your list. One of the keys to time management is prioritization—you absolutely must know what you want to accomplish and then go do it. Today’s world has too many distractions and when you allow those distractions to become priority, you sacrifice time management. Follow these steps:

• Make of list of what you want to accomplish

• Set time frames for accomplishing each item

• Organize each item in order of importance

• Create a game plan for achieving each of your goals in its respective time frame

3) Begin to focus on time management throughout the course of the day. Your consistent focus must be on managing your time. Once you have determined your goals and your priorities, start focusing on simply getting those things done. If something isn’t on your goals list for this weekdon’t do it until all your goals are done. When you prioritize every interruption that occurs and put your goals last, you will not accomplish your goals. Instead, you will be a slave (as you probably are now) to interruptions and probably feel like you never accomplish enough.

To subscribe to a free weekly newsletter with more Christian success tips like these, click here: Christian Success Newsletter

Written by: Sean Mize, Christian entrepreneur and Christian time management author. Christian Success Network

Note: You have my permission to reprint and distribute this article as long as it is distributed in its entirety, including all links. © Sean Mize 2006

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For meetings to consistently deliver the required performance and hence outputs, it is critical to have a prepared communication process in advance of the meeting.

This enables participants to be aware and where appropriate prepare for the meeting in advance.

It also allows for them to circulate any preparatory information and pre-reading before the meeting to minimise any information-giving during valuable meeting time.

This time when all participants are together must be devoted to the interchange that can only happen when people are together.

The agenda format may vary, but it will need to have some components which are common, as follows:-

• Location and time and who

• Preparation required
• Review of previous agreed actions
• Objectives
• Items to be discussed
• Next meeting location and time
• Review of meeting

By having this structure, it becomes possible for the right people to attend and to:-

• Focus completely on outcome and purpose

• Be prepared
• Develop meeting skills

Exercise

1. Review meetings you hold, however informal, without agendas.

- How focused are they?

- How sidetracked do they become?

- What do you notice about behaviours of people who attend?

- Describe how you feel at the end of three different meetings this week - some with and some without an agenda.

2. Plan one meeting this week for which you would normally not have an agenda using the agenda detail provided in the workshop.

3. Discuss the benefits and concerns about using an agenda

- What is better about having an agenda?

- What might be negatives about using an agenda?

- How might you ’sell’ these in a positive way?

Meetings are hugely valuable contribution ot business life, as long as they work well. Preparing people in advance is ‘one giant step for meetings, one giant step for value-creating interactions of like minded people’.

© 2005-6 Martin Haworth is a Business and Management Coach. He works worldwide, mainly by phone, with small business owners, managers and corporate leaders. He has hundreds of hints, tips and ideas at his website, http://www.coaching-businesses-to-success.com

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Surveys of executives reveal that many companies fall short of their profit objectives due to “people problems.” Research for my Absolutely Fabulous Organizational Change book found these “people problems” fall into two “r” categories: rebellion and resistance.

Rebellion is akin to teenagers defying authority figures, fir instance, rebelling against leaders who institute change. Resistance includes employees flinging roadblocks in the way of the organizational change. Examples include employees slowing down their work pace, badmouthing the change behind leaders’ backs, making spiteful comments about the leaders, and slashing productivity.

Feels Like a Lover or Spouse Just Walked Out on You

One of my prouder moments in the media spotlight occurred when I appeared on business television shows — and also was quoted in national magazines — concerning employees’ emotional reactions to organizational change. I had just delivered a speech on the topic at a national convention. At the press conference after my speech, reporters snapped to attention and later quoted me when I said the following: “The major emotional reaction of employees during organizational change is that they feel like their spouse or lover just walked out on them!”

Why did my statement attract media attention? Because I summarized the emotionally charged sting of betrayal everyone has felt for various reasons. Employees showing difficulty handling change often feel betrayed. They get used to everything at work being done in a certain way. But all of a sudden, if a company (or spouse or lover) changes how it acts, the person feels a huge sense of loss, distrust, and betrayal.

7 Methods to Handle Resistant Employees

My research on executives who lead highly profitable organizational change uncovered the seven most useful methods to handle resistant employees:

a. communicate reasons for change

b. terminate

c. involve employees in decision-making

d. incentive pay

e. insist employees achieve quantified objectives within deadlines

f. teamwork that creates peer pressure to “get with the program”

g. celebrate successes to help employees feel proud and emotionally “bond”

“Old-Style” Versus “New-Style” Employees

Another bottom line concern: Employees who worked productively before the organizational change may be unproductive after the change is implemented. I call them “old-style” and “new-style” employees. I find the following vital differences:

Old-Style Employees:
Works in 1 department, Solo work, Likes receiving direction, Prefers to be told what to do, and Focus: Seniority & experience.

New-Style Employees:
Interdepartmental, Teamwork, Likes ndependence, Prefers shared leadership, and Focus: Updating & expanding skills.

For example, at Excell Global Services, vice president Lori Ulichnie used four methods to transform old-style employees into the new-style employees needed to implement Excell’s highly
profitable organizational changes:

a. Incentive pay

b. Thrill of employees receiving executives’ attention

c. Clear business strategy

d. “Communicate 500 Times” — continually repeating Excell’s strategy to employees.

Shoot the Dissenters

Another way to handle resistant employees was colorfully stated when I delivered my Absolutely Fabulous Organizational Change presentation at a company’s management retreat. At one point during my presentation, an executive stood and dramatically announced: “As our organization undergoes major organizational changes, we always seek to cure the wounded. But, we will shoot the dissenters!”

Every manager in my workshop remained silent for a few moments. Then, they all burst out laughing. Reason: They recognized the wisdom of what they heard. Some rebellious and resistant employees simply need to be de-employed. After all, a company’s purpose is to prosper — not to run a counseling center for rebellious employees.

Hire the Best

Importantly, a fantastic way to avoid employee problems in times of change is to not hire employees who could become problem employees! As I always ask in my workshops and speeches on Hire the Best — & Avoid the Rest, “What’s the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to have productive and dependable employees?” My answer: “Hire people who are productive and dependable human beings!!” Superior hiring methods often include evaluating applicants using customized tests and interviews.

© Copyright 2005, Michael Mercer, Ph.D.

Michael Mercer, Ph.D., is a consultant, speaker, and founder of The Mercer Group, Inc. in Barrington, Illinois. He delivers speeches and seminars at conferences and corporations. Dr. Mercer’s “Abilities & Behavior Forecaster” pre-employment tests are used by companies across North America. He authored “Hire the Best — & Avoid the Rest” and also “Absolutely Fabulous Organizational Change”. You can subscribe to his FREE e-Newsletter at http://www.DrMercer.com or call him at (847) 382-0690.

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Unfortunately, at least two thirds of much of the training and development effort undertaken by organisations to develop their people is wasted.

This is such as shame isn’t it? Waste of money is bad enough but even more serious is the waste of human energy and enthusiasm. I’ve witnessed organisations and their people suffer for weeks and months under the latest management fad only to find they’re no further forward - or worse off.

Here are nine vital lessons from hard experience that will help senior managers plan and buy better training interventions.

1. Start at the “coal-face”.

Ask people in specific departments, projects and teams what they need to help them do even better. This “bottom-up” approach encourages people to offer their own suggestions for better training, better systems and better communication. Allowing people to express what they see as the solution is motivating because it is “not management dictating” and because they see a chance of some action! This bottom-up approach often reveals problems and bottlenecks that have been around a long time - hindrances people have got used to. Remember, most organisations don’t have a mechanism for everyday problems to filter up to top management.

2 Work on may fronts simultaneously.

Real sustained improvement comes from the cumulative effect of lots of 5% improvements. For example, a project might be to improve the safety record of an organisation. One way to achieve this objective is to attempt attitude change through technical and behavioural workshops. However, this will not be enough. One has to simultaneously work on the leadership ability of supervisors, improving the quality of safety meetings, improving procedures and making safety literature have more impact.

3 Look for cures - don’t just treat the symptoms

Many training courses only treat the symptoms. We send people on courses because we see something not being done as well as it could be. But what is causing the difficulty in the first place? Yes, tips on time management, team building and brilliant customer care, for example, are useful, but they won’t work if the organisation, albeit unintentionally, puts barriers in people’s way. Production and operations people often have to struggle because sales and contracts people don’t consult them at an early stage about the capacity to fulfil the contract.

4 Accept that some solutions to the problem may be boring and uncomfortable to carry out.

The solutions to improving people’s performance are usually straightforward. Some are so straightforward that people don’t believe it and they look for something more “thorough”! “There must be something else!” That’s why consultants and management gurus feel they have to keep coming up with new fads in which to package age-old principles.

Take leadership for example. The twelve or so basic principles of being an effective leader require neither great intellectual understanding nor large sums of money to apply. However, for whatever reason, some managers find it difficult to, praise genuinely, ensure people have accurate job descriptions, talk to people on a regular basis about their jobs, find ways to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and to communicate regularly on topics such as company progress and strategy.

Many change initiatives fail because some managers are not prepared to do the mundane and boring tasks required. No matter how expensive and grandly named and intellectually exciting a people-development programme is, it will in the end come down to doing certain basics. We have to get managers to accept this reality and to motivate them to follow through.

5 Lasting benefit takes time.

As with all interventions it is possible to get some quick results - and that’s good. However, the real and lasting benefits can only come with time. For example, when an organisation installs a new appraisal system, maximum participation and involvement occurs only when trust is established in the second or third year. This means that there has to be sustained action, follow-up and monitoring. One of the biggest complaints from managers on the Performance Improvement Workshops I run, is that “We’ll do all this talking and deciding and then nothing will happen!” It’s often the many small tasks that seem unimportant that make the difference.

Another example of ignoring the “gestation” element is leadership training. What good does it do to send someone on a crammed 5-day leadership course? What chance do participants get to reflect on and apply what they have learned on day one? People need time to develop because it’s from application that the really important questions and learning come. Rather do one day per month over a few months.

6 Concentrate on HOW not what.

Experience proves that most people know what they should do to be a good leader, to give a good presentation, to manage their time better, to write an effective report and so on. Their real problem is that they don’t know HOW to do what they know they should. This means that lectures and slides and theory about what should be, are a waste of time.

People want practical solutions to help them fix real workplace problems. In any workshop it is the participants who should be doing most of the talking and problem solving. The facilitator is there to guide the discussion and at times add additional advice from hard-earned experience. Lecturing, no matter how entertaining, does not usually change people’s behaviours. People have to come to their own realisation of what is required and they do this by participating and having their views challenged. People don’t need gurus, but experienced colleagues who can help them to see that they are, to a large extent, capable of and responsible for, solving their own problems.

7 Ignore the pseudo-science.

We humans, as rational as we are, are still tempted to find the “magic wand” - the cure-all. There isn’t one! That’s why, in my experience, psychometric tests, handwriting analysis, 360 degree feedback questionnaires, psychological team profiling, and surveys with 90 questions to assess the relationship between managers and their workers and “what our customers think of us”, are a waste of time, effort and money. These schemes sound good but in reality they don’t get results. To try to turn the results into numbers and pretend that they mean something is an attempt to avoid the straightforward but sometimes onerous work that has to be done to ensure success.

The worst example is an appraisal scheme where you have to rate a subordinate on a scale of 1 to 5 on twenty criteria, and average the result. Statistically it’s incorrect to do this, but what does it tell you in the end? The appraisee and appraiser often end up having 20 disagreements on whether “it should be a 4 or a 5″.

8 People learn more when they are relaxed and having fun

There is no place for silly game-playing that embarrasses people, or all-night sessions that put people under pressure to see if “they crack”, or outdoor challenges which expose people’s incompetence and fear. Only when people know they are not being “watched” and that they will not be “called to account for their words”, will they be willing to take the risks required to face and deal with real workplace problems affecting their and their company’s performance.

9 Set an example and think strategically about employment

In almost every Leadership or Performance Improvement Workshop I am asked this difficult question: “Why isn’t our senior manager here - he/she needs this more than we do?” Several benefits occur when senior managers attend development events with their middle managers. Openness, commitment and mutual learning are fostered, to mention only one. For training and development to be really successful we have to do more to show that people are not just “human resources” like any other production input to be used during good times and fired in the bad. How to do this will not be easy.

Much of what you’ve just read is commonsense. However, for some people the advice offered here may seem unorthodox and simplistic. But, it works for all concerned and isn’t that what counts in the end?

Copyright (c) 2004 Dr William Robb Electronic publishing permitted but publication in print prohibited without written permission

For 20 years Dr Bill has helped people and organisations improve their performance by asking a series of simple questions about why people are not doing what they know they should be doing. He delights in showing people that getting better results can be simple and straightforward. Bill enjoys getting to the heart of te matter - quickly. http://www.mytimemanagementsecrets.com/

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The most powerful resource that we have is time. Everything we do is time-dependent and changes forever with the passage of time. Even though we may think that we are repeating things in fact there is no such thing as a repeatable cycle in the pure sense of the word as time is only ever going forward and cannot be slowed, stopped or reversed.

Time can not be changed itself but it does possess the supreme power to effectuate anything it touches. Conside for a moment that Man is initially driven by basic needs like hunger, shelter, love and security but as these are slowly fulfilled, he begins to desire more and more things like cars, houses, recognition, financial security for the future, etc. The future times for which he is so busily preparing, however, will come to pass quickly even whilst he is in the process of gathering things he believes to be important in this life. In other words, what we do in our allocated time is vital to a rich and fulfilling life.

We are all employees of “Eternal Time Limited” being clocked in on our individual shifts.

Time can change our moods, aspirations and how we look at ourselves and Life itself. We evolve our thoughts to a degree and then as time passes we degenerate into a state of fear, apprehension and not being so sure about that which we were previously positive about.

So how do we control Time and become masters of it? How do we use it for our advantage, even though we know that it is measured by others around us to categorise us in terms of how efficient we are in dealing with life’s affairs. Our successes and failures are measured in terms of what we have achieved in a given time.

There is an ever-increasing pressure for us to achieve more in less time. However, most of us procrastinate every day of our lives. We let the precious time roll on by without doing anything that will lead us to an improved state. We need direction, goals, aims and objectives to achieve more in less time. We can manage our time better if we have the desire to achieve smaller goals.

Frustration grows when things around us either go faster than what we would like them to or slower than our internal clocks allow. We find ourselves constantly adjusting to the speed of our environment, matching it as closely as possible so we can synchronize our collective aims and objectives.

One technique that works well is to impose a time limit on any task. If you mentally restrict the amount of time allocated for achieving a mini goal, and actively fight the urge to perfect the task then achievement of the overall goal becomes easier. We spend far more time in perfecting and completing tasks then we do in starting them and keeping them going towards completion. We hang on for the ultimate perfect result for self-satisfaction and admiration of others whereas we could in fact complete a whole series of mini tasks quite quickly and without stopping if we consciously enact this secret of major successes.

Another powerful way to achieve more in less is to automate your processes wherever possible. Use your computer for focussing on specific tasks. If you are a business owner, you can actually create pockets of Creative Time by removing yourself from a significant part of your business through automation of business processes. We have achieved a great deal of success at my company InfiNET Point Ltd http://www.infinetpoint.co.uk by automating many time-consuming processes.

However, you do not need to be a computer whiz-kid to achieve Automation. Automation can be a manual process that is carried out by others on your behalf. You only need to define the process once and keep on refining it until it is perfected. It should ultimately work without your physical presence.

Awareness of the passage of time is crucial because although it is good to have an end to journey toward, it is the journey that matters in the end!

Having to achieve more in less time is something that I have had to do in almost all areas of my own life and I attribute my entire success to taking action in limited time. In business we have developed various time-saving automation products including a marketing product called CMS Desktop, http://www.cmsdesktop.co.uk, geared for automation of Email Marketing and Customer Contact.

If you want to discuss Automation in any area of your business please contact moz@infinetpoint.co.uk.

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