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.

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.

Million Dollar Consulting® for the World

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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.

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).

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.