Leadership Lessons- Part II: Urgency

(Originally published 21 July, 2009)

In my last entry, I dealt with Focus, the ability to concentrate on the task at hand, as well as those that may present themselves in the future. This time, the focus will be on Urgency. As a sense of urgency is a remarkable quality to posess, the following lessons regarding urgency should be considered:

• Urgency should not be interpreted as haste, as haste can often lead to failure, but as purposeful action. Such action should be deliberate and executed with as much patience as the situation permits. Deliberation is not procrastinating or delaying the action, but a careful consideration and weighing of all options available. Patience is not excessive indulgence, but dilligence. The leader who acts with a proper sense of urgency is the leader who selects the best option to maximize opportunity at the most opportune time.


• An intelligent leader leader is one who acts with a sense of urgency in any given situation. He knows what the task at hand, and he knows the its purpose. As a result, his energy is more easily focused, and not careless, haphazard, or thwarted.


• An officer with a strong sense of urgency will become the master of his circumstances and not be slave to them, and will rarely be prevented from successfully completing the task at hand.


• The most talented leader is one who has a sense of urgency in the performance of his duties, and expects the same degree of urgency in his team.


• It is rarely better to at quickly in any given situation and err than it is to procrastinate until it is too late to properly act on it, as the time when action is required for any one thing is often limited, and many errors are fatal.


• It is important to note understand that, in many difficult situations, a moment will arise when a decision is critical to successfully completing the task at hand. Oftentimes, sensing when this moment has arrived is more difficult than the decision itself.


• Acting with a sense of urgency gives a sense of satisfaction, security, and strength. Often, that which is done with proper deliberation and patience is often done with less trouble, and greater effectiveness.


• It is a fact that some tasks have limited time parameters in which to be completed, but virtually all tasks have time enough to be completed successfully if the team works together and applies itself to the best of its abilities.


• When a team acts with a sense of urgency, it first understands the task at hand, and then applies itself by doing what must be done until the best possible results are achieved.

In conclusion:

• The extent of a leader's accomplishments is dependent on his ability, opportunity, and how he applies himself to whatever tasks he is presented with. Ability and opportunity are largely static conditions, but can be modified. How he applies himself is the only one that is in his own control, and he may choose how much application will be combined with his abilities and opportunities. Furthermore, the results of how well he applies himself are what measure his accomplishments.

If one approaches whatever tasks he is presented with, however difficult to achieve, with a proper sense of urgency, he will be able to achieve success, and accomplish more, even under the most trying conditions.

(Next: Lesson III- Initiative)

Leadership Lessons- Part I: Focus

(Originally Published 21 July, 2009)[Note, this was the first of nine posts dedicated to leadership, and how to be a GOOD leader]

A few weeks ago, I posted my thoughts on leadership, and gave my recommendation for a good book ("Make It So: Leadership Lessons from Star Trek, the Next Generation", by Wess Roberts, Ph.D, and Bill Ross). At the time, I couldn't find the book in my pile of stuff, and now that I've found it, I will start a short series on leadership. I will take the important ideas from the book, and present them as they apply.

Lesson I is Focus. I will focus on the aspect of focus (heh, I made a pun) as it is the cardinal quality of an effective leader. Without focus, the goals and aspirations of the group will never reach fruition. The following are important points.

• An effective leader must maintain a clear and unclouded vision about situations that may arise in the future. Such vision requires the leader to deal with all his priorities, but not necessarily sequentially. An effective leader must develop the ability to see and deal with the consequences of his action, or inaction, immediately.


• The degree of effectiveness of any leader is directly proportionate to the amount of focus he applies to his most important duties.


• An effective leader should cultivate and expand the full mental ability to adapt and atune himself readily to miscellaneous demands as well as new and unusual situations, and to be inventive when dealing with any crisis that may arise.Such leaders are of far greater value to othrs than they would be if their mental abilities were arrested at mere immitation.


• The demands of time and attention that are placed on a leader by those on his team increase with rank and position. However, since the leader can not be in more than one place at any given time, it is of vital importance that he be able to distinguish between that which is profitable, and that which is wasteful use of his time and proximity


• A clear and persistent goal reduces the extent of the effort needed to be effective.


• While being sidetracked from the main focus may bea result of of taking on too many responsibilities, a gifted officer will most often fail as a result of hasty or uncertain distribution of his talents.


• An effective leader can not afford to allow his team to be distracted by misdirected competition, as this inevitably leads to failure.


• When one is not precisely fitted for a job, the best way to hone and develop the skills needed to become successful at it is to concentrate on the enthusiasm and devotion required to do it


• The most guaranteed way to be selected for a higher position is to concentrate on doing one's present job thoroughly, and to the best of one's abilities.


• When a leader becomes convinced that the power of concentration leads to success, he will go to great lengths to propagate this power in his team, and will carefully and tirlessly work to prevent wanton waste of profitable effort and valuable resources.

And in conclusion:


• Concentrating on the most important aspects of one's duties gives all the secondary or mechanical operations of one's efforts the ease and expertise of habit.

If you focus your efforts on matters of the highest priorities associated with your position, you will liberate more of your own, and your team's, initiative, power, innovation, and imagination- all which are vital proponents of a successful endeavor.

(Next: Lesson II- Urgency)

'Alone in Enola'

Spring is here... FINALLY!!!

Hello again, it's been a while, again, since I've posted, but it's been a bit hectic around here with the job search and other stuff. However, I'm still here, much to the chagrine of some people, and still kicking. I've got the USS LoPresto (my Star Trek club) up and somewhat running again, and got some nice logo wear for the members to show off their club pride at outings and "away missions". Also been mucking around with some online gaming as well. Still playing Star Trek Online, although I took a short break from the game until the Romulan faction becomes open in May. My latest inursion is into the world of Star Wars: The Old Republic, where I have multiple characters of each faction on the Jedi Covenant server, so if you're a player, or wish to play and game with me, you can find me there.
Now for the big news... SPRING IS FINALLY HERE!!! We've had a few really nice days this week, with temperatures in the 70s and above. This is a nice change from the cold and snow of the winter months, which seemed to be endless. Admittedly, I grew up in the colder reaches of Northwestern PA, and lived there most of my life, but the endless cold from this past winter was even too much for me. Maybe I'm just getting old. We had some thunderstorms last night, where it got rather windy and nasty for a while, but we got nothing like they had down south with tornados and wind damage. We may get more later today and into tonight and tomorrow, and I look forward to it. I always love a nice thunderstorm. :)

Blogging Again- The Long Road from August

Hello again, It's been a while (what? 6 months?) since my last post here, but life has been hectic. Let's see if I can remember everything that has happened since then.

The last day of August, I was at work with my then manager, Kim, when someone came into the store and robbed us at knife-point. What was weird was that it happened in broad daylight (4:30pm) and after the guy robbed us, while the police were at the store taking statements and checking for evidence, he robbed another store, a tanning salon, in another part of town. Needless to say, it got more and more undesireable to work at the Turkey Barn. In October, Kim left the store (who could blame her) for another job, and we got some military dictator punk as a replacement. He didn't last long, as he wasn't doing his job as he was supposed to, and was more interested in doing my friend Jess (who had no interest whatsoever in him) and eliminating any "threat" (aka me) to his conquest. Things finally came to a head there, and Kim stepped in for Jess and the rest of us there, and Sargeant Stupid was out the door quicker than he could sneeze. He was replaced by Nancy's (the supervisory (?) manager's) brother/friend (nobody was exactly sure what his relation to her was) Richie, who refused to adhere to people's availability, and, after my Heart Cath- details shortly- I was fired because I could not adhere to THEIR schedule when they would schedule me outside of my availability. So, my time with Turkey Hell (as it was then dubbed) ended in mid-December, and I've been waiting for unemployment to make a decision on my eligibility since. Oh yea, almost forgot the best part (that's sarcasm there) when Nancy accused me of sending in all the customer compliments that I got. I mean, really? I had much better things to do with my time than to make false claims to make myself look good. I told a couple of the customers, and Kim about that, and they all said basically that Nancy was full of it.

OK, enough of the Hellpit. I mentioned that I had a heart catheterization done in early December, after the doctor did a stress test on me as part of my routine physical, and found some questionable spikes on the EKG. Well, the proceedure required my absence from work for a couple of days (Nancy insisted I scheduled it on purpose to purposely inconvenience the store, and told me she wouldn;t let me take the 3 days off - that was over-ruled quickly by the doctor). Anyway, proceedure done, they found nothing out of the ordinary, and in fact told me my heart was as healthy as if I was 10 years old.

Game-wise, I have been doing a variety of things. Played World of Warcraft briefly after the expansion was released, but got bored with it quickly, and turned back to Star Trek Online. Recently, I've been playing Diablo 3, since it doesn't have a monthly fee to play, and recently discovered a new game online called "The Rockstar Game" (link here: http://www.therockstargame.com ).

Also, I have resurrected my original Star Trek club, the USS LoPresto in this area, and have a few people interested. The registry has changed slightly, from the original, due to restrictions in the Star Trek Online game, and also due to it being the sixth incarnation of the ship- the new registry is NCC-94100-E. Hopefully, we will get a regular meeting schedule set up, and new members down the road. (Pictured to the left is the NCC-94100-E, Vesta Class Science vessel from Star Trek Online).

Also, I've gotten rather hooked on the SyFy hit show, "Haven" since December. I was watching the Episode entitled "Sarah" around the holidays, and got instantly hooked. The show just finished its 3rd season, and will be back in the fall with a 4th season, but of course it left us with a cliffhanger until then. The show takes place in the town of Haven, Maine, and there are a lot of strange happenings every episode that the main characters, Audrey, Nathan, and Duke, have to solve each week. If you liked X-files, you will like this show. As I said, I was hooked, and ended up buying the first two seasons on DVD just to get caught up.

Last, but not least, I have made some great friends since August. I've become good friends with both Jess and Kim from the "Hell".  I don't see Kim or Jess as often as I'd like to, but we keep in touch on Facebook, which is OK.

Well, that's all for now. I will try to update this more often since I have time now.

Appreciation

It's been a pretty busy week or two, but I figured I'd post something short and sweet before going to bed. I've been living in Enola for three months now, and working at the new job for just over two.  In that short period of time, I've received more Customer Appreciation comments at my current job than I have since I worked for Verizon 7-8 years ago.  When I was working for my last job, which I will now refer to as "the big red barn", I had begun to think that politeness and kindness, and putting customers first was all for naught, since the only ones that got any kind of recognition for their work were the slackers and brown-nosers. I remember one in particular that really set mine and my friend Lena's hackles on end. This person, that I had sarcastically come to refer to as 'Miss Congeniality' because of her extremely poor customer service skills and reluctance to do her job, had received TWO awards in one week, and she really did nothing to deserve it, while we busted butt and even worked overtime when she would call off or just leave early for no reason.  Fast forward to new job. I have, as I have said, been there slightly over two months, have gotten to know quite a few of the customers, if not by name, by their regular orders, and have received praise from customers at least five times, and been mentioned on the monthly Customer Service Update a couple of times. What am I doing differently? Nothing, and I just don't get it. It just feels good to be appreciated for doing my job. Anyway, I just thought I'd get that off my chest. Have a good week everybody.

Life, Work, Weather, and Star Trek Online

It's been a couple of weeks since I last updated, but things have been rather hectic at work (losing an assistant manager, losing a coworker to a new [better for her] job, store reorganizations and schedules changes, etc), that I just haven't felt much up to posting once I've gotten home. But, I'm back with yet another post. (Yay!)

So, what with working 6 day (36 hour) weeks at the Turkey Barn, and everything else, I finally get another day off (the second in three days) so I feel a bit more relaxed. The weather here has been nothing short of crazy for the past couple of weeks. It's been in the upper 80s to early 90s, temperature-wise, and we've had some pretty stormy days as well. Three days out of the week, I got drenched while leaving work. By drenched, I mean I was literally soaked clean through to the bone just getting to the car upon walking out the door. One night, I believe it was last Friday night, I had to drive to my parents' to move the car back into their newly repaved parking lot so that they could go get my aunt's medicine early the next morning. Well, it was 9:30 in the evening, and the sky was so dark, it looked more like midnight. It was raining so hard that I could barely see fifty feet in front of the car, and made three wrong turns because I couldn't tell where I was going. Thankfully, the rain had stopped or let up by the time I arrived. Saturday and Monday were more of the same. The past couple of days have been fairly decent, although it's still HOT! We may get a storm or two later in the day today or tomorrow, but the best chance is Sunday with a risk of severe storms.

In my spare time, I've been playing Star Trek Online, and helping my Trek friend, Sam Cummings (Fleet Admiral Emeritus of Maquis Forces International) and the fleet of Deep Space 7 in game build a starbase. It's pretty tough going for such a small fleet with few active players, but we're making progress. I just fear that we will run out of resources before too long. It does keep me occupied and out of trouble, though. If you or anyone you know would like to play the game (it's free to play now) and join our humble fleet, send me comment here, message me on Facebook, or simply download the game at the following link: https://register.perfectworld.com/sto_splash  and send me a friend invite ingame once you've downloaded (my name there is @shikyrie) and I'll toss you out a fleet invite.

Well, that is all for this time. Until next time, be well, and be wary of strange people and their even stranger blogs. ;)