Category Archives: Philosophy

Philosophy, Politics

I Guess I’m Sexist

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President Obama was chastising men in his speech yesterday. He said that men need to get over their male dominance and bias, and vote for Hillybob. He opined, “I want every man out there who’s voting to kinda look inside yourself and ask yourself, if you’re having problems with this stuff, how much of it is that we’re just not used to it?”

Michael Moore, the communist film maker echoed a similar opinion, He said men need to give up the 10,000 years of control and let a woman lead.

“Just not used to it”?  10,000 years of only men running countries? Ummm, maybe I’m not much of a historian, but isn’t Angela Merkel running Germany? Wasn’t Margaret Thatcher the Prime Minister of The United Kingdom? Didn’t Golda Meir do a couple of piddly tasks in Israel?

Oh and what about in the 1400s, wasn’t there a young woman named Joan of Arc who led the French Army to victory over the invading English?

As the ‘Most Enlightened Man In The World’, doesn’t President Obama recognize the leadership of women throughout history?  Why is that not considered sexist?  Has he never thought, folks don’t want to vote for Hillybob because of what she’s done (and not done) and what she stands for, and not the fact that she has ovaries?

I guess we Neanderthals would never let the RIGHT woman lead a country.  Now back to my beer and scratching my crotch.  What channel is NASCAR on?

Business, Culture, Philosophy

Backup Plans

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When I was working in the corporate world I led a new product development team.  During the course of developing a product for an “unnamed” customer we had a new Program Manager (PM) named Gary, assigned to our team.  I had known Gary, from a previous life when I was working as a software consultant many years ago.

I brought Gary up to speed as to where we were and what the plan of execution was. After giving the lay of the land to PM-Gary he asked me a question that almost every PM asks, “What’s your backup plan?”.

“Backup plans are for losers”, is what I told him.

I almost laughed at the shocked look on his face. I doubt anyone ever said that to him before.  I will tell you that I stand behind my statement. As I explained to Gary, if I didn’t think my plan was going to succeed I wouldn’t be executing that plan. My goal was and is success and failure is not an option.  My advice is,  “Plan for success.  Don’t plan for failure”.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, how you envision your goal is how you will execute it.  If you have a backup plan, you are giving yourself an option to fail and you will most likely fail.  If you envision success, you’re on the path to success.  This is not to sound Pollyanna about progress.  Projects and plans will fail.  Course corrections (pivots as they are called) will occur.  In many cases the plan will radically alter during the course of execution.  However, no matter what happens, your mindset needs to be success.

Gary had my statement “Backup plans are for losers” written on the top of his office whiteboard.  It was still up there when I left the company.

Culture, Philosophy

Dream It. First Step To Failure

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There’s a tagline spread around by one of the presidential candidates, “If you can dream it, you should be able to build it”. This is a loser’s mentality. Why is that you ask?

One of my earlier articles was “Imagine it. Build It!”. I was very specific when I chose to say “Imagine” versus “Dream”.  There is a wide gulf between a person who can IMAGINE something  and a person who just DREAMS about it.

When you IMAGINE a goal your brain CREATES and PLANS an IDEA.  IMAGINE something and you are taking positive steps towards your goal.  A dream is the brain firing synapses without a specific purpose, direction, or end goal.  Dreaming about something can be pleasing and relaxing but it doesn’t accomplish much.

Okay, you may say this is just semantics, but words have meanings and they affect your thought process which ultimately controls your actions.  In future post I’ll explain why this is.

Ask any athlete and they will tell you they use IMAGERY and VISUALIZATION in their brain which enables them to see how they will score the point, make the play, break the record. I used to road race motorcycles many years ago. One of things that I did was called a “track walk”. I would walk the course and I would VISUALIZE and IMAGINE how I would approach a turn, how much speed I would carry through a turn, where are my braking points, where to apex the turn, how I would link up a “line” through several turns, where I would pass other riders.  I would take notes and draw pictures to allow me to create and replay a plan in my head.  During the race I already knew how I was going to run the track.  I didn’t just DREAM about taking the checked flag. The images were very specific about how I was going to accomplish my goal.  Ask a chess player if they can see what moves their opponent will make.  They imagine the board in their brains and calculate what are the most likely moves to come.  This ability to IMAGINE and execute action applies to all walks of life.

The ability to IMAGINE a product, business, or goal is also a key part of LEADERSHIP.  No matter if you are an employee, a small businessman, the CEO of a corporation, or the leader of a country, the first priority of a leader is to have an IMAGE of what to accomplish and then have the ability to convey that vision to others.  LEADERSHIP is a topic for another day.

Don’t “Dream it”.  IMAGINE IT!