The Achievement Digest ®

Practical Information For Personal Growth And Organizational Productivity
Winter 2000
Editor: Gene Griessman, Ph.D.

PERMISSION:  You have our permission and encouragement to share
this complimentary issue of THE ACHIEVEMENT DIGEST ® with
your friends or associates.

IN THIS ISSUE
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  1. Ideas and Quotations
  2. On Books/People:  Tar Heel Coach Dean Smith Tells Secrets
  3. On Places:  What To Do And What To Avoid In Las Vegas
  4. Lincoln Log:  The Wisdom Of Abraham Lincoln
  5. On Macroforces:  Economic Trends
  6. Time Savers: Tips You Can Use To Get More Out Of Every Day

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1.  Ideas and Quotations
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"Love means intensity, connection, some Mecca toward
which your soul can pray."
               Scott Turow, THE LAWS OF OUR FATHERS
                         ***
FOR PERFECTIONISTS WHO NEED TO CUT THEMSELVES A LITTLE SLACK
The following quote comes from Tiger Woods, the young man
who is shattering every golf record ever made: "Ben Hogan once
said that the best week he ever had, he only had four perfect
shots.  I have yet to get to that higher level"
        Interview in the LA Times, October 10, 2000
                                ***
"No man can fail if some one person sees him successful."
        Quoted by Florence Scovel Shinn in THE GAME OF LIFE
                                ***                                 ***
"If you want anything badly enough, long enough, consistently
enough, don't be surprised if you get it."
        Gene Griessman
                                 ***
The master in the art of living makes little distinction between
his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his
body, his information and his recreation, his love and his
religion. He hardly knows which is which.  He simply pursues
his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others
to decide whether he is working or playing.  To him he's
always doing both.
    James Michner quoted in Don Shula and
    Ken Blanchard, EVERYONE'S A COACH
                                ***
When I was compiling information for TIME TACTICS OF
VERY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE, I called noted consultant Allen
Weiss, author of MILLION-DOLLAR CONSULTING for a
time-management tip.   Weiss's idea paralleled what
James Michner wrote: 

"Blur the boundaries.  About 8 or 10 years ago, I realized that
there shouldn't be a rigid line between work and pleasure," Weiss
told me. "So I blurred the line deliberately.  I work out of my
home.   At times, at 2:00 in the afternoon, I'm at the pool where
I'm watching my kids play sports or I'm reading a book or I'm out
with my wife.  At times, on a Saturday, or at 10:00 in the evening
during a weekday, I might be doing some client work.  I do things
when the spirit moves me and I do things when they're appropriate.
I try to get my priorities in order that way."

Clearly, Weiss's advice is not for everyone or every occupation. 
Some careers don't lend themselves to this strategy.  Some jobs
must get done in unpleasant or isolated or dangerous surroundings. 
Family or close friends cannot always be close at hand.

But blurring the boundaries is possible more often than most people
think.  One way to involve people you care about in what you do for
a living.."
           
    TIME TACTICS OF VERY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE
    By Gene Griessman (McGraw-Hill) pp. 215

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2. On Books/People
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A good read for anyone who does coaching of any kind:
    A COACH'S LIFE   NY:  Random House, 1999.
    By Dean Smith, with John Kilgo and Sally Jenkins,
   
One of the most successful college basketball coaches
of all time tells why his teams earned 23 consecutive NCAA
tournament bids, won 2 national championships, and made 13
consecutive trips to the Sweet 16, an NCAA record.   His
last 31 teams averaged 26 wins a year.  And, just in case
you didn't make the connection, Dean Smith was the college
coach of Michael Jordan.

No one who ever watched a Dean Smith team get ahead
and then during the final moments lock up the win knew a master
craftsman was at work.  I taught at two ACC universities-North
Carolina State and Georgia Tech-and vividly recall that if you let
a Carolina team get ahead late in the second half, you might as
well kiss the game goodbye.

I particularly like chapter seven "The Carolina Way"
because I learned, among other things, how they did it time
after time.  They practiced it.  Carolina would
do a scrimmage with 3:00 minutes left in the game, with
White 68 and Blue 75.  Then they would do a scrimmage with
3:00 minutes left in the game and reverse the score.   When
that happened in a real game, the players knew what to do
because they had been there before-in practice..

Another reason the book is valuable is because, as an
executive coach, I found proven tactics that work outside the
basketball arena.  Here are some of them:

For Players
    *Don't showboat after a great shot or dunk.   Act like
you've done it before.
    *Be unselfish.
    *But don't pass up a great shot just to make a
spectacular pass.
       
For Coaches
        *Be demanding. Quickly praise action that deserves
praise, but if you must criticize, criticize the act, not the person.
        *Care about your players.  "The coach's job is to be
part servant in helping the player reach his goals."
        *Teach more than basketball.  At the top of Dean Smith's
plan was a Thought for the Day.  Here are typical quotes:  "Don't
let one day pass without doing something for a person who cannot
repay you."  "You can tell more about a person from what he says
about others than what others say about him"
        *Keep score.  Dean Smith and his coaching staff kept
careful count not for a single practice but for an entire career. 
Pure scoring didn't count, but execution and effort did.
                                        ***
FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
My friend Jim Blasingame publishes a wonderful email newsletter
THE SMALL BUSINESS ADVOCATE that's full of practical information.
If you'd like to see a complimentary issue, just send an
email to Jim Blasingame at jwb@smallbusinessadvocate.com
and tell him you heard about it in The Achievement Digest®.
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3. On Places
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>> Las Vegas Travel Tips <<

If you're headed for Las Vegas for a meeting,
here are some tips on how to make the most of this big convention
town (based on some personal experiences when I recently performed
"Lincoln Live" and led a time management seminar for the
International Beverage Dispensing Equipment Association.)

You may have trouble checking in early at some hotels.
Some of them like for you to check in after 4:00 pm. The day I
arrived at the Riviera, there was a long, slow-moving line
at 1:00pm.  Call your hotel before arriving to see what
works best.

Food.  I love buffets. Some of the buffets in Las Vegas are fabulous.
Others are pretty bad.  One of the best dinners I've eaten in a long
time was at the Monte Carlo buffet.  Spectacular pasta with
shrimp and scallops prepared on the spot, really fresh
salads, and scrumptious desserts.   The price, a mere $9.95.

And the worst was at the Excalibur.  It brought back memories
of day camp.  Long lines-cafeteria style-pasteurized eggs,
greasy meat, and limp toast.  And they charge the same
amount as the Monte Carlo does.

The new hotels are pretty amazing.   The fountain
display-free-in front of Bellagio is a treat.   The Bellagio
lived up to the advertisements--elegant, ornate--but the common
areas were crowded at the time of my visit.
Speaking of common areas, the Venetian's lobby is stunning.
The interior of New York, New York is
impressive, too.   When you're inside, you get the feeling
of being on a street at night in turn-of-the century New
York.
 
Entertainment.  Gone are the days of inexpensive
entertainment in Vegas, except for the entertainers in the
bars.  Expect to pay at least $75 or more per person for a name entertainer.                                          
(I paid $75 to see Rodney Dangerfield.)   "O" at the Bellagio
is the talk of the town, but tickets are hard to come by
unless you stay at the Bellagio.

Tips and comments on other destinations will appear
in the next issue of The Achievement Digest ®

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4. Lincoln Log: The Wisdom Of Abraham Lincoln
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"A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient
for the ripening of the fruit.   Let him attempt to force
the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree.   But let
him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into
his lap!"

Lincoln's patience was due to the practical side of his
nature.  He had observed as a lawyer and a politician that
forcing an issue often spoiled a desired outcome.  He came
to the conclusion that political and legal processes, like
flowers and trees. Followed a natural sequence of
development.

    THE WORDS LINCOLN LIVED BY
    52 TIMELESS PRINCIPLES TO LIGHT YOUR
    PATH,

LINCOLN RETURNS TO GETTYSBURG
Recently I was invited to perform "Lincoln Live" after the awards
dinner of the Ultimate Farmland Preservation Tour, sponsored
by the Rural Development Council of Michigan.  The next day I
did a general session presentation entitled "Characteristics
of Leaders."  Then my brilliant director Jay Richardson and
I left for the battlefield, where be began shooting preliminary
Footage for a video/TV feature "Lincoln Returns To Gettysburg."
It was a haunting experience to stand where Lincoln actually gave
the Gettysburg Address and ponder what he must have felt that
winter day long ago.
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5. On Macroforces ®
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One reason inflation has been kept under control:
The Labor Department reported that, during the last
quarter of 1999, productivity in the US grew an amazing 5%.
While productivity was advancing, labor costs actually fell
1%.  Investor's Business Daily's Peter McKenna believes
these numbers indicate that businesses "are investing in
technology to get more productivity from fewer workers."

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6. Time Savers
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Here's a tip from an anonymous participant who attended
one of my time management seminars:

"No subordinate is allowed in my meetings unless they
bring pad and pen to write notes on." 
A good practice. If someone who
reports to you comes to meet with you without pad
and pen, it may signify that they don't think you will say
anything worth remembering, or they have an incredible
memory, or they haven't been well trained.
                                 ***
Recently, I did a program for Hewlett Packard consultants. 
One of the participants, Peter Evans, Managing Consultant,
HP Consulting, Australia and New Zealand, shared this
valuable time saving tip about how to prepare for the
first presentation to a client:

"It is easy to waste time over-preparing for the first,
short presentation on a new topic to a new client that
my sales force has identified as worth investigating. 
These presentations are important, and need to be very
professional, as you 'never get a second chance to make
a first impression.

"However, the actual presentation typically lasts 20-30
minutes and some people spend days preparing.  This is
over-investment before knowing if there will be any business.

"As many of my clients are based in Sydney, while I live in
Melbourne, I spend about 1 hour (sometimes a little more,
depending on air traffic control) on the plane to Sydney to
meet the client.  So I have developed a technique that I
call "the 1-hour expert", as I need to be able to speak
knowledgeably for up to "1 hour".   I use people in my
team for the more detailed presentations that follow if I am
successful.

"Rather than spend lots of time preparing, I cap the time
as follows.  Firstly, I access a couple of white papers or
presentations from HP's corporate intranet a day or two
before I am due to present, but spend no more than "1 hour"
doing this, as there is always more information than I will
need.  Then I spend the "1 hour" on the plane reading and
reviewing those inputs that look best. Finally, I spend the
time in the taxi from the airport to the client (typically
between 30 minutes and "1 hour") reviewing the information
I remember, collecting my thoughts and working out how to
sequence it for best impact.

"I find this pressured activity, focusing on one thing,
normally (not always!) leads to a reasonable level of
learning that can be used with the first client and reused
readily if another presentation on this topic follows within
about 12 months.  As this is normally the
technology/business lifecycle of the topics, it scales
well.

"By the way, the only time I really got caught out using
this is when I had to prepare to talk about data warehouses
to a new person in an existing client.  I found out when we
started the meeting that he had a Ph.D. in database design,
specializing in data warehouses, so I was out of my depth
very quickly.  But even days of preparation would probably
have had the same result!  The lesson - spend "1 minute"
finding out about the audience!"
    Peter Evans/HP Consulting/Australia and New Zealand

Thank you Peter Evans for sharing.