Take a moment to ponder: where do you have your roots? Where are you established? Is it a place, your family? Or is it your career, maybe your possessions? Reflecting on these questions can lead to a deeper understanding of your values and beliefs.
We live in a time of great anxiety. Stock market portfolios look shaky. We fight over values and may even compromise our values because the ends justify the means.
It doesn’t matter what you want to achieve. Nobody gets there by happenstance. Nobody drifts to success. Sure, we hear stories that may convince us this is the case. Some are born with silver spoons in their mouths, but nobody drifts into doing something meaningful and successful.
Show up and do the hard work. Every Monday, be the one who faithfully puts in the hours and the effort because drifting isn’t a strategy. It’s a recipe for failure. I would rather make the effort and fail, than fail by default because I have never tried.
Let’s face it: it’s too easy to drift. The good news is that you can wake up and correct your course once you realize you are drifting.
How can anyone consider it pure joy when we face trials? How can anything good come from the pressures and challenges in our lives?
Untested faith is unproven. How can you know if your faith holds without putting it into practice? In a story, a hero without a trial is a hero without a story. How can the hero save the day if there is no problem to confront?
We don’t like trials and tribulations. Yet, problems have benefits. We need them. So when it comes to trials of various kinds, consider it pure joy.
In The Essential Drucker, Peter Drucker insisted that management increasingly needs to lead knowledge workers as if they were volunteers because their skills make them mobile. They can always go somewhere else to work. So, what motivates volunteers?
I’ve had the advantage of witnessing how my wife has effectively motivated volunteers in a ministry. Some of the factors that motivate volunteers are:
Perks such as doughnuts don’t hurt either. The bottom line is ordering knowledge workers around doesn’t work. An effective boss of knowledge workers leads instead of dictates. Knowledge workers are paid to think. Indeed, What motivates volunteers also motivates them.
Peter Drucker asserted that people encounter sudden incompetence when they believe in a new role; they can continue doing what made them successful in the old role. This YouTube video summarizes his thoughts and the cure for sudden incompetence.
Making mistakes isn’t fun, but it’s necessary. What happens when mistakes occur and a person doesn’t learn but stubbornly does the same thing again?
At what point does someone become unteachable? That is when sudden incompetence occurs; a person in a new role keeps doing the things that gave them success before, but they no longer work. Yet, they refuse to learn and adjust to their new role.
The cure for sudden incompetence is to be humble enough to remain teachable regardless of experience or past successes. Be humble enough to remain a lifelong learner.