Remember George Orwell's Animal Farm? What was written on the barn wall tended to change frequently.

 
 

Balancing Act®: The Newsletter

(No. 268, December 2021)

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Balancing Act® is in four sections this month:

  1. This Disruptive World
  2. The Human Condition: Propaganda
  3. Musings
  4. ORTIYKMWOYBNT-O Department

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A Personal Message

Amazingly, I’ve been writing Balancing Act for over 22 years. I thank you for your interest and support. Maria and I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah and best of the season no matter whether you celebrate it religiously or secularly (and even if it’s Festivus). In our Christian faith, this is a celebratory time and one of tolerance and forgiveness, traits all too lacking in these troubled days. We wish you and your families and loved ones health, peace, and prosperity, and the best for the New Year.

Predictions

This Disruptive World

  • GE was once the darling of the Fortune 500, then was kicked out of the DOW index, and is now splitting itself into three companies. That’s not about changing times, it’s about horrible board governance and terrible leadership succession.
  • The “great resignation” is greatly over-hyped. People leave bosses, not organizations. It is a good time to find out whom they are leaving, and get rid of the toxin.
  • “Supply chain shortages” are the equivalent of “the devil made me do it” or “the dog ate my homework” (my dogs eat food, not paper or computers).
  • “An abundance of caution” really means “an abundance of fear.”
  • Whenever any politician of any party begins a sentence with, “What the American people want….” I stop listening, because the remainder of the sentence is really about how it benefits the politician.
  • Please don’t talk to me about rigid, inflexible enforcement of the law because, if applied, 90% of the traffic on interstates and city streets would be stopped and ticketed.
  • What does the dearth of new writing and the proliferation of revivals and updates of old programming tell you? Perhaps we need to break that mold?
  • I find it hysterically absurd when a streaming program warns about “nudity, violence, profanity, and smoking.” Smoking? I’ll cover my eyes.
  • Why are some restaurants and hotels fully staffed and not others? That’s the distinction worth noting.
  • Mediocre organizations are downgrading their products and services until they receive too many customer complaints. Great organizations are upgrading products and services and expect better business than ever.
The Human Condition

Propaganda

Remember George Orwell’s Animal Farm? What was written on the barn wall tended to change frequently. The work was written as the Cold War began in 1945 and turned out to be prescient.

The New York Times published a piece on how to buy presents (as is done at Christmas and Hanukkah) citing “the coming gift-giving season.” Brown University, the hypocritical monolith on the hill here in Providence, refers to “holiday trees.” Now, I wasn’t religious at all for the first 50+ years of my life, but I recognized that Christians celebrated and gifted at Christmas, which was a celebration of Jesus’s birth. I also knew that Hanukkah involved the celebration of the dedication of the Second Temple of Jerusalem.

I always thought—and I still do—that a secular celebration of what were originally (and remain) religious observances was fine. I can’t think of anything wrong with exchanging gifts, sharing family meals, taking time off for snow sports. (Well, not in Florida or California, just more surfing.) “I’m Dreaming of A White Christmas,” one of the best-selling songs in history, was written by Irving Berlin, a Jew living in California amongst the palm trees.

Our “newspaper of record,” the Times (“all the news that [we see] fit to print”), along with social media sources, the evening news on TV, radio talk shows, and boards of education attempt to tell us their truths by writing and rewriting on that barn wall. It is not inconceivable that a future generation of kids will not understand any religious connection at all to “the gift giving season.”

I read an interview with a high school kid who was asked what he knew about George Washington. “Not much, but I know he was a slaveholder,” was his only reply.

Musings

It’s astounding to me how much we deal with superficiality and annoyances and how little we deal with root causes and actually removing problems.

When I was graduated from grammar school, I knew the eight parts of speech, could diagram a sentence, and had the multiplication tables memorized, just to name a few stellar attributes. This was a public school (a former cheese factory where they continued to place traps for the rats) in a poor, blue collar area. We learned to play competitive games, and to accept defeat when it inevitably arrived. There were music and art appreciation lessons. If you didn’t show up, a truant officer pursued you. If you didn’t perform well academically, you were “left back” to repeat the year. As the great influx of Cuban people arrived, their kids attended classes and learned English. They taught us to dance in gym class and once a week after school there was a “dance” in a classroom where the seats had been removed and a record turntable installed.

These traits were meant to prepare you for high school, where we met some tough characters and learned to deal with them. There were no appeals, no officers in the halls. But there was a school newspaper and a student council, and six different competitive sports, plus a debate team. No one ever was awarded anything for merely showing up. If you didn’t show up you were “awarded” a very hard time. We took driver’s education and learned how to parallel park.

This experience was supposed to prepare you for the job market, a trade school, or for some of us, college. We recently met for our 55th high school class reunion.

It seems to me this isn’t nostalgia or “the old times were better.” We’ve lowered standards continually in public education, due to pressure from teachers’ unions, misguided attempts at new math and an avoidance of memorization, and a disregard for the demands of proper English and language use. We’ve “papered this over” with online learning, teaching assistants, “social promotion,” and every other device to minimize students actually being rewarded for performing well.

If I ask a random student what a gerund is today, they think it’s a kind of fruit. And they think I’m a kind of nut. Perhaps so, but they’re not going to lead the life I lead despite having a better starting point.

Only Read This if You Know Me Well

The only hotel in the area I had to visit was mid-tier, but clean and quiet. However, the amenities weren’t great, and the single, small bar of soap in the shower wouldn’t lather no matter how hard I tried to rub it.

It was only when I tossed it against the shower wall in frustration that I noticed it was shrink-wrapped in plastic.

Development Opportunities
Million Dollar Consulting® Global Online Program

Million Dollar Consulting® for the World

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Sentient Strategy

Sentient Strategy

My next certification program is via Zoom on the mornings of November 16-17. Over 60 people certified in six countries and a dozen sales have already ensued. EVERY business needs a new post-pandemic strategy, and this process can be applied virtually or in person in as little as a day. I recommend a minimum $35,000 fee. The certification is only $12,000, and I support you for 90 days.

Read about it here and/or write me here: [email protected].

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Controlling Conversations

Controlling Conversations

How do you subtly yet assertively keep the conversation with prospective buyers moving toward trust, disclosure, and the agreement to accept a proposal? Master this, and you’ll raise your hit rate by 100%. This is a Zoom experience at 10 am US eastern time on January 18, with a recording provided afterward. $450.

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Hosting Revenue-Generating Meetings

Hosting Revenue-Generating Meetings

Join me for this live event from 9 to 4 in Boston on January 27. We’ll focus on how to set up a meeting with prospects, how to improve your lists and leverage others’ lists, the proper content, how to involve “attractors” in your publicity, the three sales-potential areas to pursue, provocative content, and we’ll practice and create a plan, too! I’ll take six hours to show you how to create a dynamic, revenue-generating 90 minutes (and the weeks of preparation).

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Six Figures to Seven (627)

Six Figures to Seven (627)

I haven’t run this in several years, and then only twice in the US and once in London, once in Sydney. It’s occurred to me that I now know additional and faster ways to reach seven figures, having helped hundreds of people to get there. And the pandemic experience has major implications. Million Dollar Consulting and “seven figures” are metaphors for achieving the lifestyle and true wealth (discretionary time) that you desire. This experience, which I may never repeat at this stage, will get you there.

February 10-11, 2022 (two full days)Las Vegas, Nevada

Fee: $3,500 through December 31, 2021, $4,500 as of January 1, 2022.

LEARN MORE
Book in A Day in LA

Book in A Day in LA

Now, during my first time in Los Angeles in over two years, I’m running a six-hour program (and buying lunch) in which everyone will create a full commercial book proposal or completed template for a self-published book. You will develop—with me that day—a title, subtitle, at least ten chapter headings, annotated chapter descriptions, competitive analysis, marketing platform, and an outlined sample chapter. You can submit these to an agent, acquisitions editor at a publishing house, or a vanity press (or simply publish it yourself in hard copy and/or electronic form).

No one else—no one, nadie—can do this with you in this amount of time but me. And you’ll have a rollicking good time, meet colleagues with whom you’ll create long-term relationships, and tell people you spent a day with “the Rock Star of Consulting.”

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Alan Weiss’s Balancing Act® Newsletter is a registered trademark of Alan Weiss and Summit Consulting Group, Inc.
© Alan Weiss 2021

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