As we work and grow, we learn. We learn many new things and in the process forget as many things.

At times we have to learn the same lesson many times before it “sticks” in our mind.

Our lives get busy and we are driving as hard as we can but in the process we miss some of the lessons in front of our noses.

Recently I was reminiscing with some friends about the many years I owned and flew hot air balloons, when one of them asked about how much control one has in directing such a craft and whether one was simply at the mercy of the prevailing winds. This lead to a detailed discussion on the subject that to many could be quite boring, so I will not repeat it here.

Later that night several thoughts popped up in my mind. I could of course claim that my brilliant mind extracted these nuggets, but that would be a lie.

Controlling a hot air balloon is simple in principle but a lot harder in practice. The basics are that one is heating air inside an envelope so as to create lift ( hot air rises ) and the amount of lift required depends on the total weight one is lifting and the ambient temperature of the air.

Once one has the heat in the envelope such that it starts rising, one has to determine at what height one wants to fly level. At that point one has to reach an accurate balance with inside and outside temperatures and the weight balanced to produce level flight. Most trainees struggle with this aspect of flying and end up “porpoising”, oscillating up and down while they struggle to maintain level flight.

Easy so far, BUT the outside air temperature changes all the time and the hot air inside the balloon cools down unless more hot air is added. Therefore, what sounds and looks easy is, in fact, quite challenging.

Now consider what happens when one wants to go higher or lower. One has to adjust the temperature inside the envelope to either ascend ( more heat ) or descend ( less heat ) and one has to be careful as too little heat could result in an uncontrolled crash landing and too much heat will result in an uncontrolled “lift”, hopefully with lesser consequences.

There, now you can go and fly a balloon. Well not really, but what I described are the basics of level flight. However what is required to achieve even this simple level of proficiency is a lot more. One has to learn the theory of flight, meteorology, aerostatics and a lot more besides.

Then we have the big BUT - once you have acquired all these skills and knowledge one has to practice, make mistakes, more practice, more mistakes and lots of physical effort.

Part of this one can do in the classroom, but the real stuff must be done in the real world where we also require a well trained crew to setup and retrieve the balloon as nobody can fly a balloon entirley on their own !

In our daily lives we strive to achieve many things, but compare your business activities to the process I described and ask yourself a few questions.

Determine how much you have learnt, how much you have practiced, have you failed enough, can you ‘fly level’, how good is your crew, do you have all the required equipment.

In the end we must be able to pilot our ventures with confidence and that will require, learning, failing, falling down and the occasional crash-landing, but if we stick to it, continue to improve our skills and work with a good crew, we can achieve and maintain level flight at any altitude.

end

A recent newspaper article had this headline “ Female anger is on the rise as time-stretched women struggle to keep up with hectic schedules…”

Even allowing for some “artistic license”, we have to acknowledge some truth in this headline and it raises the question as to what can be done to alleviate this challenge.

Having cogitated, deliberated and ruminated on this problem I suspect I might have found one positive action we can all take towards reclaiming our sanity.

We have all learnt the flexibility in the words that are used around us, when No means Maybe and Yes means No and Maybe means Yes but not now, all very confusing.

Somehow in all the rush we respond with a Maybe when we have not had time to consider a proper answer and that Maybe will come back to bite us in the rear when we least expect it, as it was probably translated as an implied YES.

All this ambivalence with words has a cost and if we can all see the impact of a hurried Maybe, then we have to definitely consider all those other words we use, when we are in a rush.

Now the really big words will be discounted for now as they are always very clearly understood, but even they carry a cost in that we will, at some point, still have to address the issues that caused these big words to escape our lips. Fortunately our mothers are out of earshot and the soap safely in the bathroom.

Not for one minute am I implying that bad language is the order of the day, but there are times when they slip out despite our best endevours. I mean even our ex Prime Minister confessed to not even remembering what happened, much less what was said, on a small outing to a strip club or was that a bar with special benefits !

The words we use matter – they matter in that if we do not create clarity by what we say, then we are contributing to the confusion that creates frustration and uncertainty or even ultimately to some bad words being used.

We have all experienced a hurried response that three weeks later results in everybody being surprised that nobody ordered the sausages for the sausage sizzle but three people each managed to order twice the number of bread rolls required.

Recently I found some study notes for a communications module dating back 30 years and to my surprise, every word I read in it, is as applicable today as it was then.

I know we have strayed off the topic a bit but there were just so many words I had to get out….. anyway as promised I did reach some conclusion.

If we are to reclaim some time then we have to make better use of the time we expend and an easy way to do that is to improve our communications through clarity of words.

Make sure that NO means NO and Yes means Yes and never use MAYBE. You will be surprised how quickly the people around you get used to you being explicit with either Yes or NO.

Just think of it this way, they say it is not good to mix spirits and beer. In our scenario that would be the equivalent of MAYBE , so stick to Yes or No as you have a better chance of staying "sober" and avoiding the big words.

END

In the process of building our businesses one of the most frustrating issues must surely be the difficulties we encounter in contacting people in other businesses. 

The “firewalls” that people create around themselves are normally justified on the basis that a person is busy and really should not be bothered by some insignificant “outsider” who will probably only waste their time.
These are all bad reasons and completely unnecessary while also showing a large degree of ignorance and arrogance.

Most of us have encountered this, especially when trying to make contact with somebody in a medium to large organization.

Then there is the officious secretary, PA or telephone operator who demands to know just what is it that you want to speak to Mr. X about, or the assistant who is quick to inform you that you could write a letter to corporate relations where the matter will be attended to by an appropriate person.

Any manager who delegates to an assistant the right to interrogate people who are trying to contact them, should hide their heads in shame for they are likely to miss many opportunities.

Considering the dismal record of organizations to innovate and the regularity with which innovation emanate from small businesses, these “Firewalls” do not only keep people out they also keep ideas and opportunities out.

Anybody in a small business will probably be able to identify with this, but the most remarkable thing is that by the time a small business can afford to employ somebody to answer phones or act as a PA they themselves often adopt this same behaviour.

If we are serious about growing our businesses and our own abilities, we should not create “firewalls” to keep people or ideas out and stay mindful that “firewalls” often works in both directions.

It might be a good idea to examine any “firewalls” you may have created around yourself and your business.

We simply have to develop a mechanism whereby message can be taken in a friendly manner and calls returned promptly, it is not a difficult process to establish and it is easy to implement.

As for contacting people hidden behind “firewalls”, there too, we have to find solutions and as Percy Ross put it, a clever, imaginative, humorous request can open closed doors and closed minds.

We encourage everybody that works with us to read and to learn, never stop and always look for new sources of knowledge.

We generally accept that attending a fitness class is good for us and that the frequency of partaking in such activities will determine the results we achieve.

Reading is the mental equivalent to physical exercise. If we are not prepared to determine what we feed our brain, it will have to subsist on "junk food" as in TV, media delivered messages or random sources in our environment.

This might not be all bad, providing consumption is in moderation, but leaves open the question as to what "healthy food" we are consuming to grow and expand our abilities and capacity.

You cannot loose weight when your friend goes on a diet and you cannot improve your knowledge and abilities by placing a book on the shelf.

The choice in life is simple, be a spectator or a participant. We become participants when we start applying what we learn, but learning without application creates spectators.

* "Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone" - Horace

We know you can do it and once you acquire the habit of improving your mind you will never stop, it feels that good and it explains the old saying that nothing succeeds like success.

As a treat we have included a special verse for you today.

The Sluggard

from Divine Songs for Children

'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,
"You have wak'd me too soon, I must slumber again."
As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed,
Turns his sides and his shoulders and his heavy head.
"A little more sleep, and a little more slumber;"
Thus he wastes half his days, and his hours without number,
And when he gets up, he sits folding his hands,
Or walks about sauntering, or trifling he stands.
I pass'd by his garden, and saw the wild brier,
The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher;
The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags;
And his money still wastes till he starves or he begs.
I made him a visit, still hoping to find
That he took better care for improving his mind:
He told me his dreams, talked of eating and drinking;
But scarce reads his Bible, and never loves thinking.
Said I then to my heart, "Here's a lesson for me,"
This man's but a picture of what I might be:
But thanks to my friends for their care in my breeding,
Who taught me betimes to love working and reading.

Isaac Watts
1674-1748

What have we done to improve ourselves lately ?

Some years ago, Cornell University published a somewhat technical paper, titled

“ Unskilled and Unaware of it :

How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated Self-Assessment - “.

They say -

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.

It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense.

What this research shows is simply that we don’t know what we don’t know, but we often assume that we do know.

More importantly, that once we recognise that we are lacking knowledge or skills in a particular area, we have already started doing something about it.

We have to stay mindful of acknowledging to ourselves that we do not have all the answers and have open minds about our own skills and abilities.

Socrates claimed that the only knowledge he had, was that of his own ignorance, we should maybe examine what we claim for ourselves.

Click below for a view on

Where we pitch our expections of ourselves and others ?