Want more evidence of why a Team of leaders must step up and pursue excellence?  I was sent this article written by Susan Jacoby that captures the love affair with mediocrity in America.  If I were to begin personally mentoring every one of the blog readers—I would start by encouraging you to read Magic of Thinking Big.  No single book describes the importance of having a big dream to create hunger, as well as this book.   David Schwarz wrote this book in the 1950’s, but its lesson is so relevant today.  Read the book and take notes on the key points to focus on now.   I love the readers of this blog, because they represent a group of men and women prepared to make a difference.  If you want to make a difference in this world, then you need to be different from the world.  The world may shout out a message of hate, mediocrity and situational ethics, but inside of you is a voice that whispers of your God-given destiny.  A life filled with love, honor, courage, and perseverance.  Every day that passes, the voice grows weaker.  Reading and listening to other leaders revives the faint voice inside of you!  God’s gives us the gift of life—what a shame to return it unopened.  The Team training teaches people to read, listen and think again.  We can and will make a difference because we are different!  Enjoy the article.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

“The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.” Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that observation in 1837, but his words echo with painful prescience in today’s very different United States. Americans are in serious intellectual trouble — in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

This is the last subject that any candidate would dare raise on the long and winding road to the White House. It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an “elitist,” one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just “folks,” a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980. (Just imagine: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain . . . and that government of the folks, by the folks, for the folks, shall not perish from the earth.”) Such exaltations of ordinariness are among the distinguishing traits of anti-intellectualism in any era.

The classic work on this subject by Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” was published in early 1963, between the anti-communist crusades of the McCarthy era and the social convulsions of the late 1960s. Hofstadter saw American anti-intellectualism as a basically cyclical phenomenon that often manifested itself as the dark side of the country’s democratic impulses in religion and education. But today’s brand of anti-intellectualism is less a cycle than a flood. If Hofstadter (who died of leukemia in 1970 at age 54) had lived long enough to write a modern-day sequel, he would have found that our era of 24/7 infotainment has outstripped his most apocalyptic predictions about the future of American culture.

Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture (and by video, I mean every form of digital media, as well as older electronic ones); a disjunction between Americans’ rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism.

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Reading has declined not only among the poorly educated, according to a report last year by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1982, 82 percent of college graduates read novels or poems for pleasure; two decades later, only 67 percent did. And more than 40 percent of Americans under 44 did not read a single book — fiction or nonfiction — over the course of a year. The proportion of 17-year-olds who read nothing (unless required to do so for school) more than doubled between 1984 and 2004. This time period, of course, encompasses the rise of personal computers, Web surfing and video games.

Does all this matter? Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists. In his book “Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter,” the science writer Steven Johnson assures us that we have nothing to worry about. Sure, parents may see their “vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouths agape, at the screen.” But these zombie-like characteristics “are not signs of mental atrophy. They’re signs of focus.” Balderdash. The real question is what toddlers are screening out, not what they are focusing on, while they sit mesmerized by videos they have seen dozens of times.

Despite an aggressive marketing campaign aimed at encouraging babies as young as 6 months to watch videos, there is no evidence that focusing on a screen is anything but bad for infants and toddlers. In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching videos.

I cannot prove that reading for hours in a treehouse (which is what I was doing when I was 13) creates more informed citizens than hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox or obsessing about Facebook profiles. But the inability to concentrate for long periods of time — as distinct from brief reading hits for information on the Web — seems to me intimately related to the inability of the public to remember even recent news events. It is not surprising, for example, that less has been heard from the presidential candidates about the Iraq war in the later stages of the primary campaign than in the earlier ones, simply because there have been fewer video reports of violence in Iraq. Candidates, like voters, emphasize the latest news, not necessarily the most important news.

No wonder negative political ads work. “With text, it is even easy to keep track of differing levels of authority behind different pieces of information,” the cultural critic Caleb Crain noted recently in the New Yorker. “A comparison of two video reports, on the other hand, is cumbersome. Forced to choose between conflicting stories on television, the viewer falls back on hunches, or on what he believed before he started watching.”

As video consumers become progressively more impatient with the process of acquiring information through written language, all politicians find themselves under great pressure to deliver their messages as quickly as possible — and quickness today is much quicker than it used to be. Harvard University’s Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate — featuring the candidate’s own voice — dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds. By 2000, according to another Harvard study, the daily candidate bite was down to just 7.8 seconds.

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping “I’m the decider” may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio “fireside chat” so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, “they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin.”

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today’s public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it “very important.”

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it’s the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism — a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

There is no quick cure for this epidemic of arrogant anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism; rote efforts to raise standardized test scores by stuffing students with specific answers to specific questions on specific tests will not do the job. Moreover, the people who exemplify the problem are usually oblivious to it. (“Hardly anyone believes himself to be against thought and culture,” Hofstadter noted.) It is past time for a serious national discussion about whether, as a nation, we truly value intellect and rationality. If this indeed turns out to be a “change election,” the low level of discourse in a country with a mind taught to aim at low objects ought to be the first item on the change agenda.

Here is a fantastic article on empathy by Kelly Gerling, Ph.D. published in The Spinal Column, Nelson Marlborough Health Services, Nelson New Zealand, in December 2000.  Empathy is the ability to put yourself into someone else’s shoes to feel and think what they are feeling and thinking.  Every great leader must develop the ability to think from the perspective of those they lead.  Without this ability, you will not build deep connections with others.  People follow leaders who they feel understand them.  Here is the article. God Bless, Orrin Woodward

On a planet far away, the creature had been tunneling through underground rock, killing miners and sabotaging life support systems needed for the miners to survive underground. The USS Enterprise was called in by the mining authorities to help stop this violence against the miners on this planet. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock took the lead to try and remedy the situation.

This episode of the original Star Trek TV series, called Devil in the Dark, features a species called the Horta, a creature that lives underground.

Rather than kill the creature, the away team decides to attempt to negotiate with it to develop a win/win solution. The trouble is, they had no understanding of its life cycle, intelligence or motives.

They decided that Mr. Spock would attempt a Vulcan mind-meld with the creature to understand its violent behavior. The creature allowed the mind-meld. By doing the Vulcan mind-meld, Mr. Spock developed a deep, accurate and felt understanding of the creature. He realized that the she lives her whole life underground, is the last of her kind, her environment was threatened by the mining activities, she was a mother and the miners have been killing her eggs. She was defending the eggs when she attacked and killed the miners, and began sabotaging their life support systems.

This understanding became the basis for negotiations whereby the miners could mine in certain areas, and stay away from the Horta’s eggs and environment. In return, the Horta would help them with some tunneling and otherwise leave the miners alone.

It was the mind-meld and the empathy it enabled Mr. Spock to experience that made a win/win, cooperative solution possible.

Empathy

The literature of Star Trek has other characters that exemplify the use of empathy and its importance in improving relationships. For example, Counselor Troi from the Next Generation series comes from a planet inhabited by “empaths” who can experience the feelings, images, words and intentions of others through a form of empathic telepathy.

Fiction often makes clear what is possible in the real world. In my work in helping people in conflict, the use of or development of empathy is nearly always necessary for healing values violations, giving relationships new and healthy beginnings, and allowing real win/win solutions to emerge.

The easiest way to understand the importance of empathy is to recall times when you have been misunderstood or have been in pain. Think of how nice, how pleasant, indeed, how heart-warming it is when someone develops and demonstrates empathy for you.

When someone understands our situation, feels our pains, and deeply cares for our well-being, it changes their behavior and ours. It makes it possible for a damaged relationship to heal and even to emerge from the discussion even stronger than it ever was. This is what empathy makes possible.

Obstacles to Empathy

Perhaps the most common obstacle to empathy for others, is a failure to set aside our own pain long enough, and well enough, to walk in the steps of others. When we get stuck in our own pain, it makes it difficult to feel the pain of others, or to understand them deeply.

Yielding to victim behaviors such as blaming, avoiding, whining, labeling negatively or sarcasm also prevents empathy for the object of one’s negativity. Instead of yielding to destructive impulses, it is far better to heal the wounds that underlie them. Then empathy and other thinking skills become available to you.

Many of our automatic reactions to people with unmet needs or people in conflict come from family or cultural patterns. The various inner capabilities in the VBL system have different degrees of emphasis in different families and cultures. Not all families and cultures promote empathy as a good skill to develop and use. Therefore it is important to recognize thinking limitations that you have inherited from your family and cultural background. Once you’ve done that you can work on overcoming such limitations.

So What If I’m Not Good At Empathy?

If you recognize that you are not so good at empathy, that is the first step toward developing this skill.

Empathy is not limited to particular families, genders, cultures or classes. It is a human skill, one that any of us can develop. When another person is in pain, you can feel it, or learn how to. When another is in a situation different from your own, you can learn to fully understand their experiences. In short, you can develop empathy, each of us can — it is not genetically withheld. It is part of our cognitive heritage as human beings.

How to Develop Your Empathy

One way to develop or activate your empathy for someone is to do so directly. That is, mentally and emotionally use your imagination to step into the other person’s experience. Some actors do this as a way to create their character. Doing so is like the Vulcan mind-meld from Star Trek stories — it happens all at once. Most people have the capability of bringing about empathy in this way. Anyone who dreams at night can use the same skill of imagination, during the day, to put themselves into the experience of others.

Another way to develop your empathy is to remember when you have been in a situation similar, in crucial respects, to the situation the other person is in. If the other person feels disrespected or wronged, remember when you have been disrespected or wronged. If the other person is angry, recall when you have been angry, and feel it. If the other person has dug in their heels and refuses to budge from a position or point of view, remember when you have done the same thing.

Other methods include meditating for understanding, interviewing and listening to learn about the person’s inner world, praying for compassion, and activating values such as a feeling of caring and a sense of responsibility.

Using any of these methods to develop a felt understanding for another person will result in an increase in your empathy. And this will give you a chance to lead the way to deepening understanding, resolving conflicts, and ultimately fulfilling values.

Empathy in Balance with Other Capabilities

A good way to understand VBL inner capabilities like empathy, integrity and objectivity is to visualize them like chairs around a table of leadership intelligence. (Other “chairs” in the VBL system are analytical thinking, seeing the good in others, preventing the victim cycle, long-term and wide-angle vision, and values in action to bring about a leadership cycle.)

In the table scheme, the other person’s chair is the 2nd person position that enables us, when we sit in their chair, to experience empathy; one’s own chair becomes is the 1st person position from which integrity becomes possible; a dispassionate observer’s chair is the 3rd person position that bring about objectivity. (The other chairs expand thinking even further.)

Any excessive “getting stuck” in one chair to the long-term exclusion of the others will throw one’s leadership out of balance. For example, while empathy is a necessary inner skill for leadership, if the needs of others are always the main emphasis, the inevitable result will be some form of co-dependence, and your own values will be neglected. Likewise, an overemphasis on one’s own needs, values and situation, that is, getting stuck in the integrity chair, leads to egotistical self-centeredness. Furthermore, too much objectivity leads to a cold and distant detachment.

It is best for a leader to rotate around the table of leadership intelligence, sitting in each chair, mentally, in a dynamic balance. This type of balance between these and other chairs brings about a coherent type of expanded thinking — leadership intelligence — the result of an integration of our various capabilities.

Results of Empathy in Balance

The way to enjoy good relationships with nearly anyone is to approach them as complete equals. By that I don’t mean equal skills or equal positions or the same roles in an organization. Rather, I mean you can see others as equals in a basic, human sense.

Each person you or I meet is the same as us in that they, like us, seek to fulfill positive healthy values and to prevent values violations and their resulting pain. They, like us, have moments of weakness and make mistakes. They, like us, want to be understood.

By recognizing, through empathy, that each other person is the same in such a deep and basic ways, it is easier to communicate genuinely, to understand them, to bring about cooperation, and to lead the way to the fulfillment of healthy values like trust and respect, excellence and service, love and caring.

Develop your empathy. You’ll be a better, more understanding, more compassionate leader as a result. You’ll confirm how others are similar to you. And you will enjoy discovering more of the mysteries of how others are different from you, even those who seem like creatures, whose behavior seems to make no sense.

I’m reminded of a line from the song, Colors of the Wind from the Pocahontas soundtrack, written by Stephen Schwartz:

” . . . if you walk the footsteps of a stranger

you’ll learn things you never knew you never knew”

If I were to pick the most important art in dealing with people it would be the art of listening.  Nothing increased my ability to lead people as much as learning how to listen.  No matter how powerful a speaker you develop into, it is not as effective as powerful listening.   I am hesitant to share this topic because I am aware of how much I need to improve in this area still!   With that said, I can still remember the day I focused on listening to others before drawing wrong conclusions and solving the wrong problems.  What a breakthrough it was to realize that not everyone wanted the problem solved as much as they wanted someone to listen!  If I were to pick one area for all Team Leaders to improve in, I would pick listening over all others besides character.   You cannot connect with others until you have listened long enough for them to feel understood by you.  When a person feels you understand; you can work together to solve any issues that need to be addressed, in a spirit of teamwork.  Without listening to others, your solutions come across as domineering and not heartfelt.  Remember, people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care!  Do you care for your community?   If you do, then close your mouth and actively listen to them.  You have two ears and one mouth – please use in that proportion.  Ask questions and listen – save the seminars for when you are asked to speak!  Here is a great article on listening that was emailed to me.  If someone knows the author of the article please add it to the comments.  I would like to recognize the talented authors of the articles shared.  Keep sending me the great articles and if I like them, I will post on our blog! God Bless, Orrin Woodward

We all take talking for granted. Though you may occasionally feel your hands grow cold before giving a speech, you often talk without recognizing the simultaneous changes that occur in your body.

Research shows that while we speak with our words, we also speak with every fiber of our being. This ‘language of the heart’ is integral to the health and emotional life of all of us.

Blood pressure and heart rate elevates every time you speak, even when discussing the most neutral topic. Even those who speak through signing had the same results.

For people who are hypertensive, the rise caused by talking was much greater than for healthy people, and often well into the danger zone. How do hypertensive people handle this? After all, most do not drop dead during social encounters. Other studies show that they subconsciously maintain distance in their relationships and minimize what can be for them ‘lethal dialogues’.

What makes the cardiovascular system of hypertensive’s so vulnerable to verbal communication? Though the hypertensive’s studied were outwardly calm, many tended to talk intensely and breathlessly, interrupting and speaking over other people. This kind of speech is typical of Type – A behavior, an impulsive, hard driving life style linked to increased risk of heart disease.

Most normal talk is a seesaw. The rising of blood pressure when one talks is balanced by a rapid lowering of pressure when one listens. But the rhythm is out of sync in hypertensive’s. They frequently fail to listen; they are on guard, defensive. So their pressure stays up.

Learning to calmly listen to another person helps lower blood pressure. By learning to listen more, by breathing regularly while talking, and paying attention to what the other person is saying, you can learn to lower your blood pressure.

Since so few people genuinely attend to others, those who will learn to draw out the other person can be guaranteed all the friendships they can handle and can be assured of deepening the relationships they presently own.

The road to the heart is the ear. – Voltaire

Why are so many of us poor listeners? Much of our listening education was in the form of be quiet, listen and pay attention. Most of the people in our society are passive listeners, geared to react on trigger words, and shut out tedium.

Time spend learning in school:

40% learning how to read

35% learning how to write

25% learning how to talk

1% learning how to listen or communicate

We can learn to be good listeners with some work and practice. The rewards can be great.

1. Know when you are not listening.

Check yourself by asking silently: Can I repeat, rephrase or clarify what has just been said?” If you can’t, the sound may be on but the replay is broken.

2. Know why you are not listening.

As you define your excuses for not listening you will systematically eradicate the ‘watching someone talk’ syndrome.  Check the following common reasons for not listening and begin to take silent control of the communication.

            * We hear only what we want to hear.

            * We consider the topic or information unimportant.

            * We jump to conclusions

            * Too many other problems on our minds.

            * Radical departure from our own thinking.

            * Waiting for our turn to talk.

3. Avoid judgments.

Nearly all the reasons for not listening focus on our own ego and our inability to grant equal attention to another person.  As soon as the person speaking is elevated to a pinnacle of importance, the active listening process begins and we weigh each thought mightily as if our lives depended on a total recitation of the prior narrative. As you fine tune your listening skills avoid listening only when you deem the speaker worthy of hearing.

4. Match your thought process to the speaker’s words.

We think and hear about 1.000 words per minute. The average speaking speed is 125 words per minute. What then do we do with the time lapse? Human nature combats the problem with anything from boredom to rudeness. Good listeners use the time to clarify, validate and reiterate the conversation topic in their mind.  Listen for ideas and emotions rather than facts. Fact listening is defensive. Emotion listening is offensive. Idea listening is progressive.

5. Know thyself.

Do words like difficult, stupid, revolutionary, or assignments shut off your listening process? Does a reference to love, food or fun cause your ears to perk and your antenna to turn in?  Understand where your hot and cold buttons are and adjust your listening process to circumvent any sudden shut down because of an emotion laden word or phrase. (This seems to me to be what happens with communication with husbands and wives. We allow too many words to become hot or cold buttons and therefore we render ourselves unable to really communicate)

6. Conversation always moves from agreement to disagreement and then stops.

Listeners who are involved in two way conversation and are prepared to repeat and clarify information will immediately direct the conversation back to agreement and then reach an understanding.

7. Keep alert.

Listening shuts down when both apathy and anxiety set in. Strive for enthusiasm in listening. Communicate with you body; lean forward, smile, nod, become involved by maintaining direct eye contact.  If you are on the telephone; stand up, walk. The more attentive and alert, the better you listen.  Listening is an acquired skill that is critically important to success in life. Adults spend about 75% of each day in verbal communication. 45% of this time is spent listening. Persons in a business or social situation who do not have good listening skills are ineffective. Mistakes due to poor listening skills cost organizations thousands of dollars each year.  Listening to another is the highest form of building personal self esteem. For only when we feel good about ourselves and the world around us do we go beyond ‘waiting for our turn to talk’ or ‘watching someone else talk’ to ‘passionate’ listening that elevates us to pinnacles of thought and action separates us from animals making noise.

The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention. –  Richard Moss

A smile is the light in your face that lets others know your heart is at home.

Listening attentively to another is to pay the highest compliment to them.  You do not have to be witty to be a good conversationalist you simply have to know how to listen. The secret of being interesting is to be interested in the other person. Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves. But don’t be the silent partner in the conversation. Silence can be described as negative feedback. Like a failed monitoring system on a moon rocket, it tells you something is wrong, but it doesn’t go very far toward telling you what. “Respond to their questions and especially their comments that can open the emotional connection between you.

Conversation with your friends will indeed get sparse if you restrict yourselves to facts, but when you talk about your feelings there will always be plenty to discuss.  It’s amazing the way a man listens to you. When you talk to him he looks you squarely in the eye. He seems to shut out all other interests and hang on every word you utter. It is flattering to have someone give you that much of his attention. The eye lock is a powerful magnet for making contact with people. Look people squarely in the eye it is one of the surest indicators that you are interested in the other person.

Be careful not to give advice too quickly. Often people ask for advice when what they really want is for someone to listen to them. By listening to them you help them get the problem outside of themselves and on the table between you, the issues become clear and they are able to arrive at their own decision.

When people confide in you they are often afraid they have said too much. They will be watching you to see if you raise your brows or appear to have lost confidence in them. It is important to alley those fears by not over reacting to what has been said. To put them at ease compliment them on being able to share with you. By all means don’t reveal anyone’s private matters. When you tell something told to you in confidence you identify yourself as an untrustworthy confidant. So the way to be a confidant is to let no one know that you are a confidant to others.

That which is in the well of the heart is bound to come up in the bucket of speech.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird

Seek first to understand and then to be understood.  Most people do not listen with the intent to understand: they listen with the intent to reply.  They’re filtering everything through their own paradigm, reading their autobiography into other people’s lives.  The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – Covey

I found this great article about the role of the entrepreneur in society and free enterprise by Brian Tracy.  The leaders reading this blog are entrepreneurs.  Study this article and be prepared to constantly improve your business as we move our leadership community to millions of people and change the world!   Brian Tracy has captured the essence of the central role the entrepreneur plays in the economy.  Any company or country that destroys the incentive and motivation of the entrepreneur ends up destroying themselves.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

By understanding your place in the economy, you can better position yourself for success.

Entrepreneurs occupy a central position in a market economy. For it’s the entrepreneurs who serve as the spark plug in the economy’s engine, activating and stimulating all economic activity. The economic success of nations worldwide is the result of encouraging and rewarding the entrepreneurial instinct.

A society is prosperous only to the degree to which it rewards and encourages entrepreneurial activity because it is the entrepreneurs and their activities that are the critical determinant of the level of success, prosperity, growth and opportunity in any economy. The most dynamic societies in the world are the ones that have the most entrepreneurs, plus the economic and legal structure to encourage and motivate entrepreneurs to greater activities.

For years, economists viewed entrepreneurship as a small part of economic activity. But in the 1800s, the Austrian School of Economics was the first to recognize the entrepreneur as the person having the central role in all economic activity. Why is that?

Because it’s entrepreneurial energy, creativity and motivation that trigger the production and sale of new products and services. It is the entrepreneur who undertakes the risk of the enterprise in search of profit and who seeks opportunities to profit by satisfying as yet unsatisfied needs.

Entrepreneurs seek disequilibrium–a gap between the wants and needs of customers and the products and services that are currently available. The entrepreneur then brings together the factors of production necessary to produce, offer and sell desired products and services. They invest and risk their money–and other people’s money–to produce a product or service that can be sold at a profit.

More than any other member of our society, entrepreneurs are unique because they’re capable of bringing together the money, raw materials, manufacturing facilities, skilled labor and land or buildings required to produce a product or service. And they’re capable of arranging the marketing, sales and distribution of that product or service.

Entrepreneurs are optimistic and future oriented; they believe that success is possible and are willing to risk their resources in the pursuit of profit. They’re fast moving, willing to try many different strategies to achieve their goals of profits. And they’re flexible, willing to change quickly when they get new information.

Entrepreneurs are skilled at selling against the competition by creating perceptions of difference and uniqueness in their products and services. They continually seek out customer needs that the competition is not satisfying and find ways to offer their products and services in such a way that what they’re offering is more attractive than anything else available.

Entrepreneurs are a national treasure, and should be protected, nourished, encouraged and rewarded as much as possible. They create all wealth, all jobs, all opportunities, and all prosperity in the nation. They’re the most important people in a market economy–and there are never enough of them.

As an entrepreneur, you are extremely important to your world. Your success is vital to the success of the nation. To help you develop a better business, one that contributes to the health of the economy, I’m going to suggest that you take some time to sit down, answer the following questions, and implement the following actions:

What opportunities exist today for you to create or bring new products or services to your market that people want, need and are willing to pay for? What are your three best opportunities?

Identify the steps you could take immediately to operate your business more efficiently, especially regarding internal operating systems.

Tell yourself continually “Failure is not an option.” Be willing to move out of your comfort zone, to take risks if necessary to build your business.

Use your creativity rather than your money to find new, better, cheaper ways to sell your products or reduce your costs of operation. What could you do immediately in one or both of these areas?

Imagine starting over. Is there anything you’re doing today that, knowing what you now know, you wouldn’t get into or start up again?

Imagine reinventing your business. If your business burned to the ground today, and you had to start over, what would you not get into again? What would you do differently?

Here is a wonderful parable on learning to thrive through adversity.  All of us will go through moments of boiling in our own life.  How we respond to these challenging times will determine our destinies.  Enjoy the parable and ask yourself which of the three items: Carrot, Egg, or Coffee Bean, best describe how you handle the boiling waters of life.   God Bless, Orrin Woodward

You may never look at a CUP OF COFFEE the same way again. A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose. Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In the first, she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs and the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, “Tell me, what do you see?” “Carrots, eggs, and coffee,” she replied. She brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. She then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard-boiled egg. Finally, she asked her to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, “What does it mean, mother?” Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity–boiling water–but each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard and unrelenting. However after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But, after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water they had changed the water. “Which are you?” she asked her daughter.  When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?” Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity, do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength? Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and a hardened heart? Or am I like the coffee bean? The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you can get better and change the situation around you with God’s help. How do you handle adversity? When adversity strikes, ask yourself…ARE YOU A CARROT, AN EGG, OR A COFFEE BEAN?

Here are the definitions for the terms MLM, Network Marketing and Benchmarking. 

Multilevel Marketing (MLM) – or Network Marketing, is a system for selling goods or services through a network of distributors.  The typical Multilevel Marketing program works through recruitment. You are invited to become a distributor, sometimes through another distributor of the Multilevel Marketing Company’s products and sometimes through a generally advertised meeting.  If you choose to become a distributor with the Multilevel Marketing Company, you’ll earn money both through the sales of the MLM’s products and through recruiting other distributors, by receiving a portion of the income these distributors generate.  The distributors that you sign up with your Multilevel Marketing plan are called your downline. The distributor that originally recruited you is called your upline. Often he or she will give you some help getting started, including training.

Network Marketing / MLM – is the sale of a consumer product or service, person-to-person, away from a fixed retail location, basically a home based business.  These products and services are marketed to customers by independent sales consultants. Depending on the company, the salespeople may be called distributors, consultants or various other titles. Products are sold primarily through personal relationships and one-on-one retailing.  Commissions are paid not only to the MLM Consultant that made the sale, but they are also paid to the person who referred that consultant to the Network Marketing Company in the first place.

Benchmarking – A process of searching out and studying the best practices that produce superior performance. Benchmarks may be established within the same organization (internal benchmarking), outside of the organization with another organization that produces the same service or product (external benchmarking), or with reference to a similar function or process in another industry (functional benchmarking).

Benchmarking – The process by which a company compares its own performance, products, and services with those of other organizations that are recognized as the best in a particular category. The product or service that is determined to be the industry standard is known as a benchmark.

Benchmarking – Searching for the best practices or competitive practices that will help define superior performance of a product, service, or support process.  Competitive benchmarking allows a company to know precisely where their operation is in relation to a direct competitor, to determine its competitive position, and to identify major performance gaps.  Process benchmarking searches out the best practices of a particular industry process and compares the performance of the company to a recognized performance leader. It focuses on the process not who the company is or whether or not they are a competitor.

In an industry much like the old (wild) west, with rogue companies, individuals, inflated myths & visions of grandeur—I have committed to separate the fact from fiction in the MLM industry.  As an engineer I was trained by some of the best benchmarking guru’s dating back to Xerox original developments in benchmarking.  Rochester Products, a former division of General Motors had studied extensively at Xerox Corporation located in Rochester on the new techniques (at the time-late 80’s to early 90’s) of benchmarking.  When Rochester division merged with AC/Delco to form AC Rochester, I was exposed to these techniques.   I loved the benchmarking processes developed and devoured all the literature and studies available in the field.  I accepted an assignment in the fuel systems area and through hard work, God’s Providence and an excellent team—we won a National Benchmarking Award.  Through the benchmarking process, I also created or co-created four U.S. Patents.   In my opinion the MLM industry is ripe for an extensive benchmarking study and I have volunteered to do this free of charge.   Almost ten years ago, I would charge rates of three to four thousand a day to do the same studies as an engineering consultant.  Today the rates would be upwards of five to eight thousand per day. 

You may wonder why I have volunteered for this assignment.   I feel that someone needs to perform a public service and improve the prospective business owner’s ability to make the proper choices.  I feel strongly that the future MLM businesses must quit hiding behind a cloak of secrecy and share openly the positive and negative facts about their business and industry.  If something is not positive then fix it!  Right?  Why call everything confidential and trade secret information if you have a good business?   If it is good then the last thing you would want is to keep it a secret!   If the facts are negative then no wonder the company would want to keep everything top secret and confidential.  It is time to shed some light on the good and bad of this industry and take it out of the old (wild) west stage and into a more civilized mainstream business occupation.  

The benchmarking process falls into four systematic steps:

1.  Identify –Identify all companies and processes to be studied.

2. Evaluate – Develop the criteria to evaluate from each company.

3. Analyze – Study the data and let the facts speak for themselves.

4. Implement – Announce the best practices and best companies as benchmarks.

This process works in any problem solving endeavor and I count my blessings that I was exposed to this process as a 23 year old engineer.   I will share more details on the four step process and MLM specific criteria chosen for the MLM Benchmarking Project.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

I read a beautiful parable today from Steve Goodier.  Everyone one of us has an impact in others lives.  The only question is, will it be a positive or negative impact?  What makes this leadership community so special to me is the amount of people focused on making a positive impact in others lives.  This has to be the most other-people centered community on the web!  I am proud of each and every one of the readers of this blog and know the future is bright for this servant leadership spirit.  Enjoy the article and think of the students are you influencing in your life.  Students can be any age, because you are a student when you are hungry to learn.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

“There is a difference between education and experience. Education is what you get from reading the small print. Experience is what you get from not reading it!

But isn’t it true that great learning comes from both education and experience? Let me tell you a parable:

A young school teacher had a dream that an angel appeared to him and said, “You will be given a child who will grow up to become a world leader. How will you prepare her so that she will realize her intelligence, grow in confidence, develop both her assertiveness and sensitivity, be open-minded, yet strong in character? In short, what kind of education will you provide that she can become one of the world’s truly GREAT leaders?”

The young teacher awoke in a cold sweat. It had never occurred to him before—any ONE of his present or future students could be the person described in his dream. Was he preparing them to rise to ANY POSITION to which they may aspire? He thought, ‘How might my teaching change if I KNEW that one of my students were this person?’ He gradually began to formulate a plan in his mind.

This student would need experience as well as instruction. She would need to know how to solve problems of various kinds. She would need to grow in character as well as knowledge. She would need self-assurance as well as the ability to listen well and work with others. She would need to understand and appreciate the past, yet feel optimistic about the future. She would need to know the value of lifelong learning in order to keep a curious and active mind. She would need to grow in understanding of others and become a student of the spirit. She would need to set high standards for herself and learn self discipline, yet she would also need love and encouragement, that she might be filled with love and goodness.

His teaching changed. Every young person who walked through his classroom became, for him, a future world leader. He saw each one, not as they were, but as they could be. He expected the best from his students, yet tempered it with compassion. He taught each one as if the future of the world depended on his instruction.

After many years, a woman he knew rose to a position of world prominence. He realized that she must surely have been the girl described in his dream. Only she was not one of his students, but rather his daughter. For of all the various teachers in her life, her father was the best.

I’ve heard it said that “Children are living messages we send to a time and place we will never see.” But this isn’t simply a parable about an unnamed school teacher. It is a parable about you and me — whether or not we are parents or even teachers. And the story, OUR story, actually begins like this:

“You will be given a child who will grow up to become….” You finish the sentence. If not a world leader, then a superb father? An excellent teacher? A gifted healer? An innovative problem solver? An inspiring artist? A generous philanthropist?

Where and how you will encounter this child is a mystery. But believe that one child’s future may depend upon influence only you can provide, and something remarkable will happen. For no young person will ever be ordinary to you again. And you will never be the same.