Life Lesson

Subsidizing Delegation to Acquire More Time

Garth Beyer

Team-Work Accountability

In a haste to delegate and decrease your responsibilities, you may hand tasks and duties to someone else. I highly encourage it when you are looking to acquire more freedom from stress and more time to take part in what you love. But when the tasks are for a shared vision you need to take the time in the beginning to make sure you are not putting the extra weight on their back before you teach them how to work with it on their back. Delegation is a shared process and will be added as a chapter by itself in the eBook “Parents Cost Us Money Too”, as a matter of prevention over clean-up.

In the beginning the vision needs to merge between the partners. Not only the desired result of both parties, but also the process and timeline. By communicating a timeline together there is a lesser necessity to make frequent meetings in the future, which results in exactly what you wanted: more time!

Delegation is tough… to start

When you begin delegating you will often feel that you are doing even more work than before. I thought the point of delegation was to give you freedom and remove stress from your life? This empowering result of delegation comes AFTER you follow the four D’s of delegation.

1. Define the problem

What is the issue at hand? What are you delegating?

2. Discover the resolution for the issue

Ask questions to focus on the result of the delegation.

3. Discern the ideas by brainstorming

How are you going to get the desired result? What will work? What wont? What needs to be taught?

4. Direct the partner– the most important.

What resources do you have available to increase their success rate? What role will you play while they carry out the task? Are there other members of your team that assist?

There you have it, a quick and straightforward approach to delegating.  Remember, it is often difficult to start but you only have to focus on the results that delegating will offer. Need further help or a more in-depth reasoning behind an aspect of delegation, feel free to comment and I will get back to you within 24 hours.

 

Stay Positive and Delegate

Garth E. Beyer

An Accord With Greatness

An Accord With Greatness

Garth Beyer

Today we focus on positive perspectives and cultural knowledge. What do you get when you combine the two? If you thought of the Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing), then you are correct. This incredible piece of literature has two to twenty lessons per Chapter and 81 chapters in all. Since there is so much knowledge to discover, I do not want to overwhelm you. Let’s read the second and third stanza of Chapter 63 and discuss how it can affect your life, business, and relationships.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 63, by Lao Tzu

Second Stanza:

The difficult problems in life
Always start off being simple.
Great affairs always start off being small.
Therefore the sage never deals with the great
And is able to actualize his greatness.

Third Stanza:

Now light words generate little belief,
Much ease turns into much difficulty.
Therefore the sage treats things as though they were difficult,
And hence, never has difficulty.”

–   Translated by Charles Mueller, 2004

Can you visualize the power behind Lao Tzu’s words? In life we often take problems and set them aside, saying that we will deal with them later. We are all examples of this mistake. Before we know it, the problem has grown to a size we could never have fathomed. It then begins to come out of hiding and crush us. Can you think of a way or two that would prevent this from happening? Does being honest and strong come to mind? Be honest to yourself and others and muster up the strength to overcome the obstacle early on. By doing so, your reward is time and supplementary strength to strive for life success. For example, you have a couple of tasks to carry out for work. You have to write-up an introduction to the meeting you have tomorrow and file a summary to your boss of an interview you established. In regards to the second stanza, it would be in your best interest to follow through with these tasks early in your day. If you decide to contradict Lao Tzu’s philosophy, you will find yourself full of stress and pressure to complete the task before the following morning. Not only that, but your boss called you up hoping that you had a rough draft of the report done yet so that he could get prepared for the meeting as well. That was a lost opportunity for progress and greatness for you. To have the power to activate greatness, you must continuously distinguish the small tasks, duties, and callings of each day.

You may be feeling that this is irrelevant to your life. That you plan your day and you knock out all the simple tasks and to-do’s early on so that you can focus on your greatness the rest of the day. Whether this is you, or not, you might be interested more in what stanza three offers to enlighten you with. So I begin by asking you this? When you execute the small tasks, do you accomplish them? REALLY accomplish them? Or do you put forth just the right amount of effort to cross it off your list and move on? You will be more fortunate to discover greater success if you truly delve deep into the meaning that stanza three carries. Why don’t we extend the previous example to encompass the lessons from stanza three as well?  As Lao Tzu’s suggests, by taking the time and maximum energy to write an introduction for your meeting tomorrow and file a summary to your boss of the interview you partook in the previous day, you are paving your path to even further success than you deemed imaginable. Having put forth so much effort into such small tasks, your boss allowed you to run the meeting the following morning, allowing you to get on a first name basis of the CEO of your company. Not only that, but now your boss wants you to do a full-scale interview with other clients and he is going to your completed work to the Wall Street Journal. Does this inspire you and help you see the importance of putting forth your greatest effort even with the smallest of tasks? How can this relate to your career?

But wait, your success does not end there. I said at the beginning of this blog post that you can affect all areas of your life by following Lao Tzu’s factual philosophy. By executing the advice of dealing with small obligations, and dealing with them with all your effort — you show others that you are ready for the opportunity to excel in your business. In doing so, you become more prosperous. After becoming more prosperous by being an honorable hard-working person, you have more time and energy to devote to balancing your personal and family life. By using all of your will and effort to get tasks done, both small and large, you become wiser and stronger, you are able to do more of what you love, and have more time, energy, and money than ever before. The effort of positivity, honesty, encouragement, and success in daily tasks, is what you will receive in return from your accomplishments.

Stay Positive and be Sage-like

Garth E. Beyer

An Apple A Day, Will Make Success Stay!

Garth Beyer

Every store, every online market, every shop; is a business. And every business has a goal. Already, every goal for a business is the same; they want to succeed. Now as consumers we run over the speed bump too quickly of what the meaning of success is to the owner and how they strive to achieve it. We want what we want when we want it, right?

Wrong. In a world where someone can create a business in less than a month, we find ourselves pushed and forced to make impulse purchases, unacknowledged buys and cheaply made items from one way advertising messages. On top of all that, there is the lack of honest help and service from employees or even the owner.

Just because a customer leaves happy does not mean the business interaction was a success. They might catch an advertisement on TV of the same product being sold cheaper at a closer store, or the item might have broken already, or they come to find that they aren’t even using it. But business owners tend to live in ignorant bliss with this fact.

But not all.

Every now and then, we, as customers, come across a really great store. When was the last time you walked into a store and were actually greeted by the owner of it? What a difference it is to be greeted by the owner then by a paid greeter at Wal-Mart! The first thing you catch is the passion of the owner. Isn’t a passion how every business gets created? Yet through the expansion or the lack of business, customers quickly no longer see the passion, but only see a large red sign that says “SALE”. Let me make a comparison here, there are businesses who will post a sale on a specific item, because they need some extra money or it just needs to be sold. Then there are businesses that charge you the full price but offer you a discount when you go to ring it up because it is your first time there, or the business noticed YOUR passion for what you are buying. Let me tell you, getting items scanned is not a business relationship. And in the long run, a 10% discount beats a “SALE” anyway.

So when was the last time you went to a store where the owner was there and could answer any question about any product? Rare, isn’t it? It is time for everyone to reevaluate the meaning of success. A business ran with passion, overflowing with knowledge and the willingness to share it with their customers, and striving to establish a connection through the business relationship is TRUE SUCCESS!

Credit for this idea of a blog post goes to Apple Wellness (Located in Fitchburg, WI 608-663-2640). I would like to thank Tim O’Brien, owner and manager of Apple Wellness for taking the time to make sure his customers are knowledgeable before their purchases and promoting better health for people through fitness and nutrition. Thanks!

Stay Positive and Have An Apple

Garth E. Beyer

 

1 Step For Time Maximization

Garth Beyer

Each and everyone one of us needs to make time for maintenance.  Almost everything we use that will bring us closer to success needs to be warmed up, prepared, kept up to-date, tuned up, ready to go, recharged, and so on. Take cars for example, so many of us need to change the oil in our cars, or change our brake pads. We do not do it because we are wise enough to know that we can be doing more productive things: working on a paper, spending time with our loved one, making business calls. But will the time and effort we spend on not doing maintenance work create more of a benefit than if we blocked out a time period to work on the brakes and change the oil? Some are now thinking that you will just take it in and have it done. Yet, I respond with a similar question. Is paying the extra money to have someone else do it worth it? Is showing your loved one that you are not Mr.SexyMechanic worth it? Is not bonding through teaching your kids how to do it themselves worth it? I know that changing the oil or replacing the brakes on our vehicles is not a top priority, but in asking all that you will be missing out on by not taking the time to do it, move it to the top of our priorities?

It is no different than how humans need time to recharge, to sink in information, to let the feedback loop keep spinning so we learn what we can do better next time. In all honesty, I am not writing now to tell you to make time for maintenance. I am writing to tell you a story to encourage you to TAKE your time for maintenance. As I said, maintenance is never really at the top of our priorities.

On November 15th, 2011 my girlfriend’s safety was my number 1 priority. That day we had planned to go to Dale Suslicks “Currency Is More Than Cash” Un-Workshop. It began at 6:30pm and it was already 5:55pm. Consider that it takes 20 minutes to drive there. That leaves my girlfriend and I 15 minutes to do what we needed to do to get ready. But suddenly I remembered that the car had eaten up all the oil and I had said to my girlfriend earlier that day that we would have to fill our oil up before we left to the Un-Workshop. Since there were no gas stations in the direction we would be heading for at least 15 miles, we were forced to go to the nearest one which was in the small section of town; the ghetto. I pulled as close to the station as possible, ran in, grabbed two quarts of oil, paid for it hastily with my debit card (Once you begin to know me, you will find out that I only like to spend Cash), and ran back out to the car. All the while I checked to make sure the car doors were locked and my girlfriend safe inside while I put the oil in the car. In my haste, I neglected using a funnel to insert the oil and consequently spilled a fair amount of oil. I do not want you to be under the impression that this was the absolute worst place in the world, but it was not normal for my girlfriend and I to be in such a place. So this unfamiliarity lead me to be more fearful and kick the adrenaline in. I quickly closed the hood, tapped the glass to have my girlfriend open the door and we took off. Since my girlfriend and I budget our income, she asked me as she always does after I make a purchase, how much I spent. “I have no clue, but here is the receipt. I just grabbed the first bottle I saw, paid for it and bolted.” As we slowly began leaving the area, she yelled “You spent $30 dollars on two quarts of oil? What the heck!” I did not believe it, I have never spent more than 7 dollars for a quart of oil. But in my hurry, I must have grabbed the most expensive kind. As my mom has always said, “Haste Makes Waste”. Now, my girlfriend is a real positive, go-getter, fun and loving person. With this sort of purchase not in our budget, her initial reaction was logical. We then began to joke about it saying how we loved our car so much that it deserved the best oil there was. We took what many couples would have fought all the way to the meeting about, lightheartedly.

My message to you, in order to maximize your daily, weekly, monthly, yearly time, you can take one step by not only making time for maintenance, but taking time for maintenance. As far as vehicles go, I say expect any maintenance to take an entire day as it should be for our bodies as well. If it takes more than that, than it is not worth using the time that could otherwise be spent more productively. Do not make just enough time to replace your breaks, or recharge your body, or mend a broken friendship. Take extra time to allow for unexpected occurrences, or to simply follow all the way through a task.

Stay Positive and Repaired

Garth E. Beyer