December 2005

Positive energy rituals—highly specific routines for managing energy—are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.

Change is difficult. We are creatures of habit. Most of what we do is automatic and non-conscious. What we did yesterday is what we are likely to do today. The problem with most efforts at change is that conscious effort can't be sustained over the long haul. Will and discipline are far more limited resources than most of us realize. If you have to think about something each time you do it, the likelihood is that you won't keep doing it for very long. The status quo has a magnetic pull on us.

A positive ritual is a behavior that becomes automatic over time - fueled by some deeply held value.

We use the word "ritual" purposefully to emphasize the notion of a carefully defined, highly structured behavior. In contrast to will and discipline, which require pushing yourself to a particular behavior, a ritual pulls at you. Think of something as simple as brushing your teeth. It is not something that you ordinarily have to remind yourself to do. Brushing your teeth is something to which you feel consistently drawn, compelled by its clear health value. You do it largely on automatic pilot, without much conscious effort or intention. The power of rituals is that they insure that we use as little conscious energy as possible where it is not absolutely necessary, leaving us free to strategically focus the energy available to us in creative, enriching ways.

Look at any part of your life in which you are consistently effective and you will find that certain habits help make that possible. If you eat in a healthy way, it is probably because you have built routines around the food you buy and what you are willing to order at restaurants. If you are fit, it is probably because you have regular days and times for working out. If you are successful in a sales job, you probably have a ritual of mental preparation for calls and ways that you talk to yourself to stay positive in the face of rejection. If you manage others effectively, you likely have a style of giving feedback that leaves people feeling challenged rather than threatened. If you are closely connected to your spouse and your children, you probably have rituals around spending time with them. If you sustain high positive energy despite an extremely demanding job, you almost certainly have predictable ways of insuring that you get intermittent recovery. Creating positive rituals is the most powerful means we have found to effectively manage energy in the service of full engagement.

Loehr and Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement © 2005

**A special thanks to Bob Erikkson of the AVEDA Corporation in Minneapolis for sharing the book with me.

November 2005   Here's a secret...an excerpt from "Copy This" by Paul Orfalea

 ...We all think we're the boss, but it's a bunch of baloney.  If you are confused about who really runs your business, consider this: A co-worker with a bad attitude can (a) steal your money or products, (b) fudge on his hours, (c) undermine your relationship with customers, and (d) poison the morale of everyone else. So if you think you're the head honcho at the office, think again. Your co-workers really run the business.

 The same goes with your family.  I may be the father, but do you think I'm going to be content if my kids or my wife aren't?  I don't think so. Someone once said to me, "Happy wife, happy life."  It's true.  At work a different motto applies, "Happy fingers, happy registers?'  If somebody is ringing a register that has my name on the deposit slip, do you think I should slap that hand —or kiss it?  The choice is mine.

At Kinko's, I had basically one advan­tage over our competitors.   I could make Kinko's a great place to work.  The way I saw it, we had to.  What else did we have beyond our culture?  All we had going for us at Kinko's was the sparkle in our co­workers' eyes.  I couldn't accomplish this by berating everybody or by forcing them to work long hours.  As it happens, we did work long hours, but I didn't want to work with a bunch of exhausted automatons.  I wanted co-workers who would be "empowered entrepreneurs."  One way we did this was by giving everyone—managers and the guys behind the counter—a share of the profits from their stores.

"Co-worker" became the official term to designate all the people we worked with at Kinko's.  Do you know what the keyword is in that last sentence? It's "with."  I don't believe anybody really works for anybody else.  We all work with each other.  It's a fundamental distinction.  We work together because we choose to.  Nobody wants to follow a leader who is tired, haggard, and miserable.  I heard once that 80% of the people in America think they're smarter than their boss.  I've always believed that to be true.  The first Kinko's co-workers ran our Xerox machines in flip-flops and cutoffs.  They brought their pets to work.  While pulling late shifts, we cracked open beers and laughed and talked late into the night.

At Kinko's, we were building a family together at the same time we were building a business.

 (an excerpt from "Copy This") Paul Orfalea

October 2005          Personal Branding:  Becoming More of Who You Are   (an excerpt)

Ever get the feeling that people—even people who know you (or should know you) very well—just don't "get" you? That they don't quite understand who you really are and what they can rely on you to do for them?

Ever get the feeling that the relationships in your life—some of them, anyway—are a little out of sync with your ideals and what you really want? That you're being forced to make choices, some of them uncomfortable, between who you know yourself to be and who someone else wants you to be?

Ever get the feeling that there's a troubling disconnect—maybe only minor, maybe profound—between your personal life and your professional life? That the demands of your job, your career, your business, are in conflict with your values?

In every case described above, there seems to be a gap between perception and reality, between the "real you" and the you other peo­ple see and interact with. At work, at home, in the community, in life in general, you're not getting as much credit as you think you should for who you really are and what you really believe. Somehow, it's as though you are being asked—even compelled—to be less of yourself rather than more.

Businesses deal with this dilemma constantly. Their most success­ful responses tend to focus on one key concept—brand.

• Brand is how businesses tell customers what to expect. Things can change rapidly in the business world, and customers are more comfortable if they know what to expect.

• Brand is a familiar bridge across which businesses and their cus­tomers conduct transactions that lead to long-term and mutu­ally beneficial relationships.

• Brand is the embodiment of what businesses and their customers value, the means through which businesses get credit for the quality they represent and deliver.

We think successful people can do what successful businesses do.

The principles businesses use to "teach" their customers what to expect from their products and services can have powerful applications in both our personal and our professional lives.

 An excerpt from:  BE your own BRAND  A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd  McNally & Speak 2002

September 2005

This was an e-mail message that was sent to me by my son Matt...

I read this article in Oprah magazine about "Getting Unstuck". Basically it was about going after what you want in life in terms of jobs, relationships, and what not. There were five questions to ask yourself about your job and I just thought they were questions that we should all ask ourselves. Let me know what you think.

1. Does this job allow me to work with "my people" - individuals who share my sensibilities about life - or do I have to put on a persona to get throughout the day?

2. Does this job challenge, stretch, change, and otherwise make me smarter - or does it leave my brain in neutral?

3. Does this job, because of the company's "brand" or my level of responsibility, open the door to future jobs?

4. Does this job represent a considerable compromise for the sake of my family, and if so, do I sincerely accept that deal with all of its consequences?

5. Does this job - the stuff I actually do day-to-day - touch my heart and feed my soul in meaningful ways?

Bob/Dad's comment:  I think they are darn good reality therapy evaluation questions for our repertoire!

August 2005

When my three sons were in elementary school, there were a few days each year when they would come home and say, "Dad, we have to get a good night's sleep and eat breakfast tomorrow."  Knowing full-well that they had the Iowa Test the next day, a couple of times over the years I would play dumb and ask "Why?".  The answer was always , "We have Iowa's Tests this week."  A couple of times I said to them, (using a reality therapy evaluation question) "So getting a good night sleep and having a good breakfast isn't important when you are just learning, its only important for a test?"

Have you experienced this as a parent?  Have you sent this message to your students?

Is that the message we want to send?  "Don't worry about the daily learning which produces higher test scores, just have good habits on the days of standardized testing."

The same principle applies to first day of school.

Is the first day of school full of discipline problems? 

If not, does starting the first day of school discussing your "Classroom Discipline Policy" and  "School Rules and Policies" set the tone you want to set?

Does it send the message that discipline policy and school policies are more important than learning?

What is the "real" message you want to send on day one, or class one, to set the tone for the school year?

July 2005     Responsibility vs. Compliance

Is it responsibility or compliance that we want?

If an employee/student broke a rule, or ignored our instructions/expectations, and said, "That's my choice and I'll accept the consequences."  Is that what you really want?  What is the difference between responsibility and compliance?  Most of us do not want people/students that accept responsibility; we want "compliance".

Bob Hoglund

June 2005

As a former high school special education teacher of "emotionally handicapped" students (and department chair), I'd like to challenge the belief that many people have regarding "responsibility for choices" - especially for special education students.

Several times a year, one of my students would say to me, "I can't control my behavior, that's why I'm in your class." 

Here are some of the approaches I used to challenge that "excuse":

Bob         "If you can't control your behavior, how do you know where to buy drugs and how to use them?"

---

Bob:         "If you can't control your behavior, why don't you fight the biggest football player on campus?"

Student:    "Are you crazy, he'd kill me!"

Bob:         "So you only can't control your behavior if someone is your size or smaller."

---

Bob:        "If you can't control your behavior, how come you know how to work quietly and calmly on the computer?"

My student's may have had difficulty dealing with some of their learning, frustration with low grades and relating to others in the class, but they DID have control of their choices!

Bob Hoglund

May 2005     Better Teaching, Higher Scores

If you wanted to be sure to do well on your annual physical, would you practice the physical in advance? Or would you eat right, exercise, and get enough sleep? Grant Wiggins used this analogy to help his audience think through issues related to teaching and test scores. Wiggins is president of Learning by Design and co-creator of A.S.C.D.'s Understanding by Design program.

"To practice the physical gets it backwards, he said. "I should practice being healthy, and then the physical will take care of itself." Similarly, he argued, educators should use good teaching practices and let state tests take care of themselves.

"The teachers who say, 'I'd like to teach for understanding, but I have to cover the content' don't even have research on their side," Wiggins said, because research does not support the notion that covering content maximizes test scores. "There's no research to support the claim by teachers that [doing] that will optimize memory, recall, or retention," he said.

The physical is an indicator of health or its absence, Wiggins said. Similarly, a state test is an indicator of students' intellectual health. "The state comes in and does an intellectual physical once a year, just like your doctor," he noted. "A physical is a quick-and-dirty operation. Does that mean it's wrong or invalid? No."

Grant Wiggins - An excerpt from Education Update, Association of  Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA  January 2001, page 4.

April 2005     Remember the Parable of the Cow in the Ditch   Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox.

March 2005

In most schools, we are so busy "getting everything done that we are supposed to", we forget one of the most important elements of what we do.  We forget to ask the question, "Who is the customer?"

There are major complications with the answer to that question.  A better question is, "What is the role of the person we are currently working with?"

Deming asked,  "Who receives DIRECTLY the product or service that you provide?  That is your CUSTOMER!"    

The answer to this question is THE STUDENT.

Within a "quality" or "systems" approach, the student takes on a second role.  Glasser:  (paraphrased)  The teacher assigns work and the students do it!  They are the WORKERS in the system.

Finally, schools are judged by the “abilities” of the students.  This puts the student in the role of the PRODUCT of the school system.

What other business or organization exists where the customer, the worker and the product are all the same person?  I would answer NONE!

The classroom teacher is responsible for assessing WHEN the student is customer (relationships, useful instruction and assessment); WHEN the student is the worker – once the work is assigned and WHEN they are the product – grades, standardized tests and graduation into the world of work.

That is why teaching and running an educational system is so unique and DIFFICULT.  To be effective, we must continually clarify the role of the STUDENT (Stakeholder).

Bob Hoglund

February 2005     HOW TO “MESS UP” CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT from Improving Student Learning by Lee “Jenkins 

Mess-Up #1:  “This Doesn’t Work.”  These teachers, so accustomed to attending staff development to hear a new method, mistakenly classify continuous improvement as yet another method.  They believe that continuous improvement means that all they have to do is give quizzes and graph; learning will then automatically occur. 

Sorry, continuous improvement is not a teaching method.  The graphs inform the students and their teachers if the methods being used a working.  For example, “Jeff Burgard once analyzed errors in his students’ writing and found that the largest number of conventions errors were with commas.  He then assigned comma worksheets, but the students’ performance with commas did not improve.  The graph showed that the selected method did not work; other methods must be used until one is found that works.  It is so healthy for teachers to be able to say to students, "I had a hypothesis that these worksheets would solve the comma problem.  Well, as you know, not all hypotheses are correct; please help me establish a new hypothesis.”  “Jeff and his students understand that the graphs do not teach; they tell us if our selected teaching methods are working.

Jenkins, Lee Improving School Learning Applying Deming’s Principles in the Classroom ASQC Quality Press:  Milwaukee, WI. 2003.

*Idea from Don Bryant, Principal  Tropic Isle Elementary Newsletter (N. FT. Myers, FL)

January 2005

An excerpt from the Introduction, written by Bill Walton,  in the John Wooden autobiography, They Call Me Coach .

COACH WOODEN IS a humble, private man who has selflessly devoted his life to make other people's lives better. John Wooden, while hired to coach basketball, never stopped at something so simple. He taught life at UCLA for 27 years before officially retiring in 1975, estab­lishing records for success that will never be touched. All of the approximately 168 UCLA basketball lettermen John Wooden coached know that when he stopped actively running Bruin basketball, it did not signify an end to his lifelong commitment to teaching. With John Wooden, there is never an end to anything. His ability to always be about what's next, always about the future, enables him to lead an incredibly active, constructive, positive, and contributing life to this very day.

Today, John Wooden is still our coach in so many ways. And just as if it were 33 years ago and we were leaving Dykstra hall early in the morning on yet another of life's journeys, he is there with us each and every day, pushing, shaping, molding, challenging, driving us to be better, faster. Now, as then, this is not done in an overbearing fash­ion but always in the lowest key imaginable. John Wooden teaches by example. He never asks or expects anyone to do anything that he hasn't already done himself He teaches by creating an environment that people want to be a part of, where we want what he has to give. While we haven't always known this - and some of us are certainly very slow learners - learn we eventually did.

That is what John Wooden teaches: the ability to learn how to learn, the same thing that he promised us as high school recruits 35 years ago. While all the other schools chasing us promised basketball, material, and individual success, John Wooden talked about the chance of coming to UCLA and being part of something special: the opportunity to train your mind, to learn how to think, to develop skills, to make decisions, to dream, to achieve peak performance. And, by the way, if you lived up to your responsibilities as a student and a human being, then you earned the privilege of becoming a member of the UCLA basketball team.

John Wooden gave us the necessary tools to overcome the adver­sity and obstacles that he knew from the beginning would always be in our way. He taught us how to practice against an imaginary, ideal opponent so as not to waste time and effort. He taught us to find a source of motivation to inspire us to ever higher levels of preparation and work. He taught us how to be in balance so we could quickly get to what's next and that quickness is a mental skill based on anticipa­tion, not a physical skill based on athleticism. He taught us that con­fidence is an integral part of achieving peak performance but that confidence must come from a lifetime of preparation that ensures deliverance to the championship level.

All of this was done in the subtlest of ways. While our practices were the most demanding endeavors that I've ever been a part of—so physically, emotionally, mentally, and psychologically taxing—there was always the sense of joy, of celebration, and of people having fun playing a simple game. Always positive, always constructive, John Wooden drives us in ways and directions that we are not aware of, always with the goal of making us better. It is never about him, never about the struggle for material accumulation, but always about indi­vidual skill and personal development within the framework of the team, the game, and UCLA. Our practices, our lives are constantly structured around the four laws of learning: demonstration, imita­tion, correction, and repetition. 

And repeat we do—everything, everyday, until we have become John Wooden ourselves. But that is not his goal, for he knows that the strength of the team is the strength of the individual and that when everyone thinks alike, no one is thinking.  That is what and how he teaches: rarely by telling us the what or why, but rather by showing us how and letting us come up with the answer on our own.  He never talks about winning and losing, but rather about the effort to win. 

They Call Me Coach by John Wooden with Jack Tobin  McGraw Hill ©2004