Too Big to Succeed

Lately I have heard the term "too big to fail" so often its use has become stomach turning. I have observed really large organizations - businesses, governments, non-profits, churches - from the inside and the outside and have begun to wonder if the term should be turned around.

Instead of an organization being too big to fail; if it continues to grow, does an organization finally reach a size that makes it too big to succeed.

Small organizations exist to provide services and sell goods to customers. Minimal energy is spent on other activities such as those aggravating necessities to continue operations, retain employees, pay taxes, etc. Ethics manuals, for instance, tend to be of the single page variety - do not do anything illegal, do not do anything you would not want your loved ones to read about in the paper tomorrow.

Larger organizations, on the other hand, spend significant energy maintaining their existence, keeping their stock price up, and keeping a solid public image. To maintain their existence, they need to manage problems, employees, customers, public opinion. Policies must be developed. The single page ethics manual becomes a volume that references other volumes that must be maintained and approved by legal and HR and ... The service providing and product selling become less important while providing more for less becomes more important as fewer employees who directly contact customers support more layers of employees who support the organization.

Eventually, the large organization will collapse on itself because it has become so self focused it can no longer adapt to its customers' changing needs and sustain itself. When it fails and breaks up into smaller pieces, smaller organizations will spring up to provide customers with goods and services and the cycle will begin again. If, however, the organization is propped up because "it is too big to fail" the failure date is only deferred until the failure is larger and more devastating than would have occurred naturally.

The problem with the "too big to fail" strategy is that once you start down the path, it is difficult to go back. I believe our society still has the opportunity to leave its current path. The next time a large organization is about to fail we should reject the temptation to prop it up or let it be taken over by another large organization. Instead, we should let it fail and encourage those new small organizations to rise from its collapse and go forward.

Comfort Zones

I was regularly active, teaching a physical activity four evenings a week, also training on one of the four. On one or two of the off days, I took 3 - 4 mile brisk walks. I had hit a plateau noticing little change.

My physical trainer told me my body and my mind had become accustomed to my routine workout and developed a comfort zone. If I wanted to see a positive difference from my workouts, I had to get outside my comfort zone, shaking up both my body and my mind and allowing myself to progress.

Since my teaching and training class regimens were fixed, he devised a new program for my walking workouts. Instead of just walking, I walked, I skipped first with forward then reverse shoulder rotations, I heel - toe walked, I high knee walked, I side skipped right side forward, then left side forward. He threw in a few trips to the weight room during the walk to break things up. He showed me the written program, and then taught me by demonstration. He then gave me an essential piece of information that would make the program work.

It went something like this:

'I can write a workout program for you. I can teach you to do it. The program will get you out of your current comfort zone and allow you to make progress. However, you are the only one who can make the decision to change the way you are doing things. Only you can get yourself out of your comfort zone and make a positive change.'

He was right.

Life lesson:

At those times in your life when things are not going right and you know they need to change, you may have fallen into a comfort zone where you are stuck and are not making progress. Maybe it is time to modify your approach in a way that will get you out of your comfort zone and return to making progress. You may not need to make major changes, just shake things up a bit

Thanks, son.

Life Changes

When the horse you are riding is dead, recognize that fact, fondly remember the good times, then get off and find another horse.

Looking for Perfection

If you look for perfection, you will never find it. No matter how hard you look, there is no perfect job, no perfect life, no perfect mate, no perfect child, no perfect car, no perfect pet. There will always be something less than perfect with what you find. Instead, look for and be satisfied with finding better.

For instance, if you feel you need to look for another job, look for one that is better than the one you currently have. If you find one that is sufficiently better than what you have now, take it. You may well discover it is a better job than the one you thought you were getting. Even if you leave it in a few years for another job, you may discover your previous experience was a pleasant one. If you keep it long enough to retire from it, you may discover it was the perfect job after all.

A flawless diamond does not come out of the ground that way. The diamond in the rough must first be discovered, then cut and polished. Each of these steps takes considerable effort before the diamond can be judged flawless.