The Classic Pamela Positive: “You Have to be Able to Tell People ‘Great Job’ on Things That Didn’t Work”

“You have to be able to tell people ‘great job’ on things that didn’t work.”

– J. Kermit Campbell, former CEO of Herman Miller

Campbell has it right.  A CEO is not an expert except in one area: getting the right people. Actually, let’s add another area: values. You must be a leader who gets the best people and demonstrates the highest values.

Even if you are a manager, you should still think this way. Empower your people to learn and maintain a domain of expertise. Hopefully you can hire them with it. If you can’t, make sure they have the rapid capability to do so.  Let’s learn from Campbell’s advice to us:

“I don’t believe that my job is to lead design at Herman Miller.  My job is to make sure we have great design leaders, continue to listen and try to learn from them…My job is not to be a creative guy, my job is to create a culture that allows and promotes creativity…

You’re going to have to take risks. It’s not all going to work.

You have to be able to tell people ‘great job’ on things that didn’t work.”

J. Kermit Campbell is a former CEO of Herman Miller, and the current Lead Independent Director of SPX Corporation.  He is an investor or board member for a number of companies and charitable organizations.  Herman Miller is a leading furniture company, founded by D. J. DePree, with a more than 100-year history.  They focus on innovation, and designing products to create a better world.

The Classic Pamela Positive: “When You Believe Everything Is Finished…” – Louis L’Amour

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished.  This will be the beginning.”

- Louis L’Amour

Louis L’Amour was an American author. He is best known for his Western fiction novels, though he also wrote historical fiction, science fiction, nonfiction, poetry and short-story collections.  He was born Louis Dearborn LaMoore on March 22, 1908, the last of seven children.  He grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota, a medium-sized farming community.  As he grew older, he traveled throughout the United States and abroad, in various positions including as a mine assessment worker, a professional boxer and a merchant seaman.  In the 1930s, Louis and his family settled in Oklahoma, and Louis turned his focus to writing.  He began to have success with short stories in the late ‘30s and ‘40s, beginning to sell novels in the 1950s.  Louis also served in the United States Army during World War II.  Louis ultimately wrote 89 novels and more than 250 short stories.

The Classic Pamela Positive: If We Center Down…What Is the Vital Part That Remains?

“…if we center down…and live in that holy Silence, which is dearer than life, and take our life program into the silent places of the heart, with complete openness, ready to do, ready to renounce according to His leading, then many of the things we are doing lose their vitality for us.”

– Thomas R. Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, Section: The Simplification of Life

What is absolutely vital in your life today?  Are you truly called to be doing what you’re doing…or is it simply your agenda?  Align your purpose with a divine motive…

Thomas R. Kelly (1893-1941) was a Quaker educator and writer, with a focus on mysticism.  He graduated from Wilmington College, and studied at Hartford Theological Seminary with an interest in being a missionary.  During World War I, he joined the YMCA to work with the troops, and worked with German prisoners of war.  His pacifist position eventually lost him this position.  He returned to Hartford to complete his training, and married Lael Macy.  In the 1920s, Kelly and his wife went to Germany, where they were significant in founding a Quaker community.  He returned to Germany in 1938 to encourage Quakers living under Hitler.  Kelly taught at a number of universities throughout the 1930s.  His collection of writing, A Testament of Devotion, was published posthumously by a colleague.

The Classic Pamela Positive: “Enjoy When You Can, and Endure When You Must”

“Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.” 
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is so much to enjoy… and so important that we focus on it.  It can be easy to be distracted into something that isn’t working, when we really should enjoy and relish what is before us.  It need not be a big event. It can be a small gratitude.

Then, too, there are times to patiently persevere.  Not all is easy, peaceful; at times we must stay the course, step by step, like a diligent marathon runner, committed to her course, unrelenting until the final finish line.  It might not be a quick race, but more a matter of a marathon.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, and natural philosopher, best known for his two-part poetic drama Faust, which he started around the age of twenty-three and didn’t finish till shortly before his death sixty years later. He is considered one of the greatest contributors of the German Romantic period. At the age of sixteen, in 1765, Goethe went to Leipzig University to study law as his father wished, though he also gained much recognition from the Rococo poems and lyric he wrote during this period. In 1766 he fell in love with Anne Catharina Schoenkopf (1746-1810) and wrote his joyfully exuberant collection of poems Annette.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe now rests in the Fürstengruft or “Royal Tomb” in the “Historic Cemetery” in Wiemar where his dear friend Schiller is also laid to rest. In honour of these two famous German men of letters, a statue of Goethe and Schiller now stands at the German National Theatre in Munich. UNESCO’S “Memory of the World” list includes the handwritten works of Goethe preserved by the Goethe-Schiller-Archive.

Bio Source: The Literature Network

“We Are Losing Our Listening” – Julian Treasure

 

“We are losing our listening. We spend roughly 60% of our communication time listening, but we’re not very good at it. We retain just 25% of what we hear. Now, not you, not this talk, but that is generally true. Let’s define listening as ‘making meaning from sound.’ It’s a mental process, and it’s a process of extraction.“

Julian Treasure

“Five Ways to Listen Better“

TED talk

 

What a powerful opportunity we have to really listen to someone. It gives them our full attention and our devotion. In a way, it’s a potent way to love someone.  That person can be your husband, your friend, the doctor, the postmaster, the intern or the CEO at work.

I agree we should be mentally alert and strive to extract as much information as we can. At the same time, a compassionate, sincere listening will do wonders for your speaker’s soul, and your own.  It’s about honoring one another, which includes their heart, their ideas.

 

Julian Treasure studies sound, and advises businesses on how best to use it.  He is the chair of the Sound Agency. He asks us to pay attention to the sounds that surround us. How do they make us feel: productive, stressed, energized, acquisitive?  Treasure is the author of the book Sound Business and keeps a blog by the same name that ruminates on aural matters. In the early 1980s, Treasure was the drummer for the Fall-influenced band Transmitters.

Bio Source: TED.com

The Classic Pamela Positive: “Death Is Nothing At All”

My beloved Oma was one of my best friends. And yet she is with me constantly. It’s not easy, it never will be, but it changes. I am learning to become more natural in my connection with her, even though I can’t see her. I can still feel her presence, I can still feel her love.

I spoke this from memory at her service, and I still love it to this day. Oma, I know you are “just around the corner.” I love you, Oma.

Eternally Yours,
Pamela

Death Is Nothing At All
Henry Scott Holland

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.

All is well.

Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918) was Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, one of Oxford’s oldest and most prestigious seats.  He was also canon at St. Paul’s Cathedral, the founder of the Christian Social Union, and a strong advocate for social justice.  “Death Is Nothing At All” is his best-known writing.

Extreme Poverty Better Defined – by Mahbub al Haq, Former Finance Minister of Pakistan and Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize for Economics

“Extreme poverty is better defined as the lack of meaningful choices for basic human rights. With this definition, three necessary attributes must exist if extreme poverty is to end: an individual must be empowered to make choices, they must be equipped to make choices, and they must live in an enabling environment where they can act on those choices.” – Mahbub al Haq,  Former Finance Minister of Pakistan and Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize for Economics

Poverty has to be defined in a new way. We’ve said it is in dollars, but we know two things:

1. Poverty Redefined:  Poverty is not just about money.  It’s not necessarily about how much someone makes.  It depends on their opportunities, their country’s situation, their cost of living and their ability to ask.

2. Wealth Redefined.   Wealth is not just about money either.  True wealth has to do with community, family, meaning, purpose.

May we help everyone have the opportunity to live a life of richness. It’s not only defined by their ability to provide, but also in personal growth, meaning, and relationships.  That’s true living.

Mahbub-ul-Haq (1934 – 1998) was a game theorist, economist, and professor of Microeconomics at the University of Karachi. He was involved in the human development theory (HDP), and the founder of the Human Development Report (HDR). According to Haq’s 1996 book Reflections on Human Development, his work also opened new avenues to policy proposals for human development paradigms.  Mahbub was married to Khadija Haq, and they had two children.

Amartya Kumar Sen is an Indian philosopher and economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society’s poorest members. Sen is best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food.  Sen has received honorary degrees from more than 90 universities around the world.

Bio Source: Wikipedia