Tag: fear

Contagious

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The surest way to get ahead is to be kind.

Not because it is easy, it is incredibly difficult most of the time. Not because it is immediate, in fact it is mainly long term. Not because it is tangible, it’s mostly about practice and belief. Not because it is popular, there are not many business books who praise kindness over hustle. Not because it is visible, mostly it is about standing in the back of the stage.

But because it is contagious.

Kindness spreads, and if you start pouring some around, everyone will be better off.

Starting with you.

Incremental

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One time is better than no time.

Two times is better than one time.

Three times is better than two times.

And so on.

That’s the great thing about showing up, consistently, time after time. It’s continuous, incremental progress.

Of course, you can also try to go from no time to ten times, but that’s probably going to take a lot of your resources. And it’s not the way you can build habits.

Cascade

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What you do at the top will cascade to the rest of your organisation.

It’s not what you say. Not what you think. It’s not your ideas or your intentions. It’s not your principles or your mission statement.

It’s what you do in the LT meeting and in the board room.

Because you are in control.

P.S.: this is valid even for very small organisations. A family, for example.

Deep inside

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What we do is always a manifestation of something deep we feel inside.

When we shout, it might be because we got scared.

When we hit somebody, it might be because we feel insecure.

When we say something mean, it might be because we got treated unfairly.

That’s an explanation of course, but it should not be an excuse. We need to identify what’s deep inside, and tackle it with all our possible resources, because it’s difficult to get rid of the behavior if the feeling is still there.

Easy and difficult

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Managing projects is easy, managing people is difficult.

And that’s not because projects always succeed or achieve what they were supposed to achieve, but because they are made of tasks, timelines, deadlines, deliverables, priorities. All things that, one way or the other, even in the most difficult circumstances, are defined and controllable.

People are not.

People have no limit and they cannot be controlled. They have values, feelings, triggers. They establish relationships and break them. They are motivated and demotivated. They need to talk and to be listened to. They want to progress, take on new challenges, and they panic in the face of change.

We know how people are, because we are people too. And that’s what scares us and makes managing people so difficult.

Exactly the reason why, in a situation of crisis or uncertainty, most management resorts to assigning more tasks, asking for more visibility, setting stricter deadlines, and cracking down on inefficiencies.

Because managing projects is easy, while managing people is difficult.