Musings on a Monday Morning from Mike Mullin…

The weekly Newsletter of Without A Vision Consultancy LLC

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February 3, 2020 – Mr. Groundhog Day (Week)

Good morning!

Happy belated Mr. Ground Hog Day — yesterday if you missed it — and if you celebrate the whole week, good for you. Mr. Ground Hog shares a day with my wife’s half-birthday — and I suppose, several million other half-birthdays. Today is the day when light starts to return to the Northern Hemisphere at the rate of more than three additional minutes each day… roaring toward spring and summer… not slowing its rapid and methodical advance until early May… hold on! Get outside, and feel it, watch it, hear it, smell it — even taste it when the sap starts to run… it truly is an exciting time of year. And yesterday was Perfect Palindrome Day in case you missed it:  02/02/2020 — backwards or forwards.

• If you live within 100 miles of this writer and can get tickets, go to the Paramount Theatre’s outstanding production of Newsies; the Ensemble is the star of the show.
• Yesterday’s Sunday edition of The St. Cloud Daily Times did a pretty good job of framing Black History Month… we have so much to learn, and then to apply.
• Are you up-to-speed on the geographic locations of all 200+ countries in the world?  How about major rivers?  Mountain ranges?  Fifty largest cities?  Capitals?
  • My advice:  Grab a map and start studying… you never know when you’ll be called upon and you’ll want to avoid embarrassment.
  • Quick, point to Bhutan… and now, point to Timor-Leste… and now, for a bonus, point to Togo.  Aruba?
• This discomforting and sobering head scratcher from 1789 Innovations AG:
  • “Are you ready to explore what it means to transform your organization?
  • Into rethinking what work means in your organization?
  • To give your organization a vision of an aspired future state?
  • To redesign all the structures and systems (hierarchies, roles, departments, performance management, promotions, compensation, Etc.)?
  • And, are you willing to guide your organization through the (difficult) transformational journey?
  • They say such organizations tend to be more innovative, that they’re made for our current hyper-competitive era…
    • … Or, maybe just wait until someone else takes over.”
• How about those Amazonians?!  Changing the world as we watch — and buy… (Berg and Knights, 2020)
  •  How did a small on-line bookstore from Seattle manage to grow into a global empire in just two decades?
  • One simple truth of retail is that you can’t have a store without customers…
  • … which is why Amazon puts its customers at the center of its business strategy from day one.
  • In fact, customer obsession is the very first of Amazon’s 14 leadership principles.
• Do you spot a trend here?  These were the largest companies in the United States sixty years ago — in 1960
  • Have we adjusted our educational, cultural, political, economic, and other institutions accordingly?

1. General Motors
2. Exxon Mobil
3. Ford Motor
4. General Electric
5. US Steel
6. Mobil
7. Gulf Oil
8. Texaco
9. Chrysler
10. Esmark

• Reprinted from a previous Musings because of your special request:
  • The consequences associated with not paying attention are enormous.  Yet most of us go about life as if it will last forever and as if there will be few changes.  We tend to like things as they are even if the situation is far from perfect.  Perfection is unattainable, the status quo has an insatiable appetite.  As a result, we fail to listen and we fail to anticipate the storms of change on the horizon.  Especially in this age of instant information, change happens at an ever-increasing speed.  Those who don’t pay attention are likely to be negatively impacted in ways they haven’t imagined.
  • I suspect a significant majority of people would say, “I pay close attention everything/ everyone around me.”  This response would result in unintentional false claims from millions of people, not because they’re dishonest, but because they’re innocently and naively delusional.  It’s a rare person who pays attention occasionally, let alone usually.  There is precious little education related to listening and paying attention and thus it should come as no surprise that it is little understood and seldom practiced.  (more next week)

• What do you get when you work with Without a Vision Consultancy LLC?
  • We listen, we learn, and then we customize our response to deliver:
  1. Confidence
  2. Clarity
  3. Coaching… even Yo Yo Ma, Oprah Winfrey, and Lindsay Whalen need it; why do most eschew it?
  4. Companionship on your journey… sometimes it gets lonely and it’s good to have a friend.

Do you enjoy the format of this Newsletter?  Some readers have suggested it should be more colorful, formal, or professional…Weigh-in with your opinion — which is valued and appreciated.

Everyone loves taking little quizzes; here’s one for you right now:  could you benefit from leadership coaching?

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