Why Leaders Tell People What to Do

When I was sixteen, I worked as a grocery clerk.  On my second day on the job, I showed up at my work station a few minutes after the time to start to work.

The store supervisor called me over. He told me that I was late for work. He told me that the next time I was late for work, I would lose my job.

He said that the best way to arrive on time to come to the store fifteen minutes early and go to the break room. I could sit there on a fifteen minute break to relax, have a cup of coffee, put on an apron, and get mentally ready to go to work.
I enjoyed working for that store manager. He never told me not to do anything. However, he did teach me how to do a lot of things.  He taught me how to deal with short-change artists.  He taught me how to work with two hands when stocking shelves or putting groceries into a bag. He taught me how to pack bags so they would not burst and how to put similar goods in the same bag for the shoppers’ convenience.

I try to practice the same approach in all areas of my life.  I tell people what I want, not what I do not want.  Leaders tell people what to do, because simple, direct instructions are effective.

7 Action Steps to Productivity

Assess and Adjust.  Life does not always go according to my plans.  I can do several things when I meet frustration.

1. I can ruminate on how unfair life is to me.
2. I can blame other people for my frustrations.
3. I can feel sorry for myself and play the victim.

On the other hand, I can look for ways that I can turn life’s surprises into opportunities.  I make a list the actions and tools for adjusting to the change.

1. What is my new situation?
2. How practical is it for me to continue to pursue my goals?
3. Should I make my goals larger or smaller?
4. What things do I already know to take advantage of these opportunities?
5. What do I need other people to do?

As life changes and my business opportunities change, I assess and adjust.

Finish.  Some projects need an extra effort and attention.  Sometimes completing the project is frustrating, boring, or even annoying.  I enjoy writing programming language.  Sometimes the projects are long and involve of a lot of detail.  Often I take programming code I have used in one place and move it to another place.  There is nothing creative about this type of process.  Usually I find that I need to edit the code for the new place.  It is easy to make errors.  I have to concentrate to make sure that the codes are exact before they will work.

Further frustrating is that the codes may produce good results in one browser and not in other browsers.

To finish the project, I slow down.  I focus on the details.  I find that being patient and using the right tools, I finish the most tedious and frustrating projects.

My extra effort of adding new code makes the program much more appealing and effective for the reader.  I enjoy the results of finishing these types of projects.

Act once and act now.  I read so much material that it is easy for me to skim instructions for a project and then put the project aside.

If I continue to start and stop on projects, I do a lot more work than acting once.

If I cannot act on the project when I first come to it, I put it on my schedule so that I can start the project and finish it without stopping.  The “act now” phase of the project becomes the time for which I have scheduled it.

By acting once and acting now, I do a lot work and have less on my mind.

Own your mistakes.  Conflicts arise for everyone.  Blaming other people sometimes may feel like the right thing to do.  If I focus on the things I need to do I sometimes find that my own adjustments are all that I need to change to get the project completed.

Control your schedule.  Whenever someone asks me to do something, I check my schedule.  If the person is asking me to do things that I do not believe are the best things for me, I simply say, “My schedule is full.”

Take responsibility.  I started a number of softball teams and soccer teams.  I knew people who wanted to play, but no one would organize the teams and contact the City Parks department to schedule games and register the teams.  I took responsibility for starting the teams and had a lot of fun taking a leadership role and from taking responsibility.

I have had clients who were slow to conduct interviews.  I took the responsibility.  I would find out when the hiring manager and the applicant were available.  I would offer the hiring manager options for interviewing the applicant.  “Here are the times.  Which ones work for you?”  By taking responsibility, I made the process of interviewing simpler for the hiring manager.

Building a Successful Business or Career Never Ends. It is a continual process of expanding your goods, services, skills, and network.

Building a Successful Business or Career Never Ends.

Building a business or a career is a continual process of expanding your goods, services, skills, and network.  The day I sat down to start my career as a recruiter; I had a telephone, an empty legal pad, and a box of blank 5 x 8 index cards.  My contact management systems today contain tens of thousands of contacts.  These are people I have personally tracked and for whom I created files.  Most of them I have reached out to by phone, email, or professional networks.  I still make new connections every day.  Little has changed except that my file system has gone from paper to a computer.

I have continually added clients.

Here is a partial list of companies where I have placed managers:

1. 1. PepsiCo
   2. Pepsi Bottling Group
   3. Frito-Lay
   4. Coca Cola, USA
   5. Coca Cola Foods
   6. Mobil Oil Company
   7. Soft Soap
   8. Pillsbury Green Giant
   9. International Playtex
   10. Quaker Oats
   11. Dannon Corporation
   12. No Nonsense Fashions
   13. Coca-Cola Foods
   14. Del Monte Foods
   15. The Clorox Company
   16. Nestle
   17. Brach & Brock
   18. Catalina Marketing
   19. Health Resource Corporation
   20. Majers Corporation
   21. Welch Foods
   22. Softsoap
   23. E & J Gallo
   24. Sunny Delight
   25. M & M Mars
   26. Tambrands
   27. Nabisco
   28. News America Marketing
   29. El Dorado Marketing
   30. Imagitas
   31. ConAgra Foods
   32. ConAgra Armour Swift-Eckrich
   33. Polaroid Corporation
   34. Dial Corporation
   35. Dep Corporation
   36. United Vintners
   37. 7-Up
   38. Miller Brewing Company
   39. 13-30 Corporation
   40. Hain Celestial Group
   41. Q-Interactive
   42. Label Dollars
   43. Promo Edge
   44. Centiv
   45. The Sunflower Group
   46. PromoWorks
   47. The Wine Spectrum of Coca Cola
   48. Kaiser-Roth
   49. DSD Communications
   50. Black & Decker
   51. ActMedia
   52. Linkewell Health
   53. Bush Brothers Beans
   54. Marketing Technology Solutions
   55. Sunny D
   56. Twenty-Ten Corporation
   57. InStore Broadcasting Network
   58. Insignia Pops
   59. The Beecham Group
   60. GlaxoSmithKline – GSK
   61. Jacobs Suchard
   62. Cody Kramer
   63. SVP Worldwide
   64. Mauna Loa
   65. Garden Burger
   66. EAS
   67. New World Pasta Company
   68. Vacation Connections
   69. Lala USA
   70. Continental Promotion Group
   71. Kayser Roth
   72. Morningstar Farms
   73. Duracell
   74. Kiss Products
   75. Phillips Food Brokerage
   76. Unicous Marketing
   77. Kelley Clarke Food Brokerage
   78. Wizards of the Coast
   79. Oberto Sausage
   80. Fanfare Media
   81. Linkwell Communications
   82. Lindt
   83. Nurserymen’s Exchange
   84. Maybelline
   85. Advantage 360
   86. American Italian Pasta
   87. Warner Lambert
   88. Fuel Rewards/Centego
   89. First Flavor
   90. Potlatch Corporation
   91. Crossmark Food Brokerage
   92. RB (Reckitt Benckiser)
   93. Marketing Force
   94. J&J Snack Foods Corporation
   95. Cartera Commerce Inc.
   96. Alcon Laboratories
   97. Ray-O-Vac
   98. Naterra
   99. ICOM
   100. Slim Fast (Unilever)
   101. Potlatch Corporation
   102. Dean Foods
   103. …and others

   In the list are many companies that no longer exist.  In some cases, the brands still exist, but these brands are part of another company.

   Building a Successful Business or Career Never Ends.

   Companies come and go.  People come and go.  Processes change.  Opportunities that are here today are gone tomorrow.  Even if a person only has one large, sustained client, may see frequent buyer turnover.  People who build new relationships and expand their relationships within that one client will become more effective.

   Change is constant in business and careers.Building a business and a career is not like building a house or a wall.  The process of building a business and building a career never ends.

Thank you everyone for your support in nominating JayWren.com to Forbes top career sites.  I learned this morning that I made the list.

Forbes writers Jacquelyn Smith and Susan Adams reviewed hundreds of websites and thousands of comments to reach their decision.  It is a real honor to be among their choices.
The excellent articles that Smith and Adams write should place Forbes among the top websites for your career.

Clap your hands.   Have you ever noticed how American football teams huddle before each play?  What is the last thing that the players do before breaking the huddle?  They slap their hands together in unison.  They clap.  They are practicing the rhythm of focus.  In the huddle, each player receives the assignment for the next play.  Clap, their mind is on their assignments.

Turn off your computer monitor.  If you are on an important phone call and you are not using your computer to record information for that call or to research information to answer a question, just turn off your computer monitor.

Make notes with pen and paper.  It is impossible for me to write down what you are saying and at the same time think about something else.  When I go to an important meeting, I use a pen-and-ink list to ask questions and take notes.  The other person in the meeting can see what I am writing and participate in my note taking.  After the meeting, when I record my handwritten notes on my computer, I review and memorize the important points of what I just learned and take action on the things I need to do.

Look, listen, and ask yourself a question?  How many times have we all heard a person’s name and not be able to recite it immediately afterward or looked at a clock and have no idea of the time of day?  When I meet someone, I can look at the person’s eyes and ask myself, “What color are the eyes?”  Then I say the name of the person in my mind and state the color of that person’s eyes.  “Sue has hazel eyes.”

Eat, but eat light.  If I am suffering from a drop in blood sugar or if I am in a food coma from a heavy meal, my mind travels to far-away places.   If I eat a few carrot sticks or an apple or a few bites of almost anything a half hour before a meeting, my mind comes back to the present moment for that meeting.

8 Ideas for Enjoying Work

Find the beat of your own drum and march to it.  It is so easy for me to get distracted and off course when I look at what other people are doing and imitate those people.  What I often find is that the direction that those people are going is completely off track from where I want to be.   If I can just trust the beat of my drum, I can stay on task, trust my instincts, and create work that is original and produces fantastic results.

Be happy today.  Happiness is an inside job.  When I feel sad, I acknowledge that I am sad.  I do not focus on the things that I believe are making me sad.  Often my feelings come along and I seem to find ideas to hang them on.  I admit that I am sad, I experience the feeling of sadness, and I let it pass on its way.  If I do not attach ideas to my feelings, most of the time my feelings only hang around for a minute or two, and I get a fresh, often invigorating sense of my world.

Focus on doing things accurately.  My baseball coaches said see the ball and hit the ball.  In football, the coaches said see the ball and catch the ball.  Watch the baseball all the way into your bat.  Watch the football all the way into your hands and arms.

Create new things instead of perfecting old things.  I have worked drafts of articles so many times that I have lost track of what I had in mind when I started writing the article.  I have found that the best way to work on any project and carry it forward to the finish is to write day a statement of what I want to do.  Then I create an outline of the things that I need to do to do the task.  Next I fill in the details of completing the task.  Whether I am washing my car or writing an article, the process of the same.

Keep projects simple.  The steps are pretty much the same for each project

Emphasize the things that are working and build on those things.  Sometimes it is easy for me to get off track, discouraged, and loose my sense of direction.  What seems to help me to focus on the things that I did when things were working and simply repeat those things.

Keep an open mind to new ideas to simplify and make your life easier.  I see new, simple, even free ways to do the same things that have been a struggle.   I created the table above in Microsoft Word.  For anyone who has ever tried to insert a table in a website, you will know that tables make some material easier to read can the table can be a challenge to create and support through editing.

Take criticism as suggestions not rules and certainly not as corrections.  I remember working with an applicant on her resume.  She told me that the things that I told her she had already covered with other recruiters and had even had her resume written professionally.  I said simply that I understood and that the only thing that mattered is that she manage her resume in the way that she feels will be most effective for getting her interview.