Category Archives: Communication

You Wish You Had Marissa Mayer As Your CEO!

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You know what I’ve learned in 20 years of being in HR?  It’s really hard to find a CEO that is worth a damn! Really hard!

To find a CEO who is willing to make tough calls, difficult changes and push an organization outside it’s comfort zone without caving to the pressure of the previous culture.  A CEO who is unrelenting in their beliefs of what it is going to take to make a difference for the organization they work for.  A CEO that demands better.

All you Yahoo haters – or should I say Marissa Mayer haters – can suck it!

Mayer was criticized publicly by almost everyone for wanting to hire better – from The Star:

Yahoo Inc. chief executive Marissa Mayer was asked at an all-staff meeting several weeks ago whether her rigorous hiring practices had caused the company to miss out on top engineering talent in Silicon Valley’s hyper-competitive job market.

Mayer dismissed the complaint that she had refused good candidates because they did not have degrees from prestigious universities, and instead she challenged her staff to get better at recruiting, according to an employee who was at the meeting.

“Why can’t we just be good at hiring?” Mayer said

Mayer didn’t say – “I only want engineering talent if they come from prestigious universities”, what she said was “I only want great engineering talent AND I want them from prestigious universities”.  She is raising the bar at Yahoo in terms of hires.  Which will raise the bar in performance at Yahoo.

Look, I hear you haters that believe you can find great talent at ‘B’ level schools and even great talent that didn’t even go to college!  I get it – I don’t disagree with you.  But when you’re trying to build a world class organization and culture – you need to draw some lines in the sand.  You need a vision.  You need, at some point, to be ‘exclusive’ – not ‘inclusive’.  To turn around an organizations culture, you need clear marching orders.  This is exactly what Mayer has done.  Which is very similar to other great leaders of our time.  I’m not saying Mayer is a great leader – but she is following a pattern of behavior which follows many great leaders of our generation. Great talent, with a clear vision, will help you get better.

I find it comical that anyone would ever criticize a CEO for sharing a vision of wanting to hire and attract world class talent from some of the best universities in the world. Who truly believes that is a bad plan? While it might not the plan you’ve chosen for your organization – I love the fact that Mayer is willing to come out and publicly state what Yahoo’s recruitment direction will be – it puts the entire organization on notice.  Kudos.

What say you Mayer haters?  Let me have it in the comments.

 

 

Do You Offer Unique Employment Experiences?

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It is said that:

“Experiences are the new Luxury goods.”

Think about what people are paying for –

  • Navy Seal inspired Bootcamp
  • Tough Mudder
  • Marathons
  • Haunted House Vacations
  • Survival Vacations
  • The Death Race
  • To be challenged mentally and physically beyond anything they have ever experienced!

We are spending our free time and our hard earned money, not on relaxation, but on experiences that we will never have or find in our daily life.  Experiences that make us feel good about ourselves – doing things we thought we would never be able to do.

Why?

You could go out and buy yourself a new Rolex for $5,000 or you could backpack across the desert over two weeks in brutal conditions.  Which one would you remember most?  Which one would you talk about more? Which one would make you most proud of yourself?  Experiences are the new Luxury goods.

I’ve thought about this recently in terms to employee engagement and loyalty.   In my company we have had a Sales Retreat a number of times in our history.  We don’t have one each year, but we’ve had a number of them in our history.  It’s part education, part team building, part motivation, part party.  Everyone of them offers a great ’employment’ experience and they are talked about often, months and years later.  During these retreats – no sales happen, no recruiting happens, our normal daily work stops.  Yet, these are the experiences my team remembers most.  Same with the chili cook-offs, the football tailgates, the Friday after-work happy hours.  We laugh, we share, we learn more about each other than we knew before.

My recruiters also get to travel to client sites – some are close, within driving distance – some they have to fly to.  All of them love going to meet with clients at their locations, seeing their operations, meeting the people face-to-face.  Maybe not totally ‘unique’ – but different from their daily tasks for sure.  This doesn’t happen weekly, maybe not even monthly – but they all get to get out from time to time.

I’m wondering how often do you give your employees unique experiences?  It doesn’t have to trips or picnics.  It can be something that fits right into your daily operations and your employees development plans.  These experiences can all be tied right to the betterment of your business.  Think about that up and coming leader who just isn’t that well known.  How hard would it be to have that person co-present at your next department meeting or even at a board meeting!  While that might not ‘challenge’ you – it might challenge the heck out of them!  What about having your HR Director go on a sales call with your VP of Sales?  And not just sit there, but have one portion of the sales presentation they have to answer to!

Unique experiences challenge people.  They challenge people to sharpen their saw, to get out of their comfort zone and stay engaged with your business.  It’s something money or extra benefits can’t touch.  Unique experiences are priceless.  They don’t cost of anything, yet it’s one of the most valuable things we have to offer.  Great leaders and great HR Pros can make these experiences happen.  It doesn’t have to be a crazy position description or job design, it just has to be different from what the person normally does.  An average day for one of your operations leaders, could be a crazy day for one of your marketing associates, and vice verse.

 

Na-na Na-na Boo Boo, I’m Better Than You!

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Quick question:  Would you rather have $50,000 salary or $100,000 salary?  (Same job – no strings)

$100,000, every single time.

File this under why we are all very stupid – From Fast Company:

A few years ago, students at Harvard University were asked to make a seemingly straightforward choice: Which would they prefer, a job where they made $50,000 a year (option A) or one where they made $100,000 a year (option B)?

Seems like a no-brainer, right? But there was one catch. In option A, the students would get paid twice as much as others, who would only get $25,000. In option B, they would get paid half as much as others, who would get $200,000.

What did the majority of people choose?

Option A. They preferred to do better than others, even if it meant getting less for themselves. They chose the option that was worse in absolute terms but better in relative terms.

We (yes – all of us) are so stupid that we will logically decide to make less money for the simple fact that it would be more than those working with us versus making more but making less that others!?  Compensation Managers take note!   Social Comparison Theory is very real.  If we think we are better off than others, we feel better about ourselves.  If we feel worse off than others, we feel worse.  Even if the reality is that we are better!  We compare our own self by those who are around us, doing similar things.  It’s one reason why your employees get so upset when they feel like they are paid less than someone else doing the same job – even though that other person might have more experience, more education, higher performance, etc.  “I’m going the same job – I should make the same!”

The awesome part of this, is that it’s totally adaptable to HR programs and doing what we do better.  Think about your dying referral program.  You launched it – had a really cool new poster in the break room – spent weeks crafty catchy communications to go along with your very creative theme “Here We Grow Again!” – it was going to solve all of your recruiting problems – 6 weeks later it was dead – no referrals.  One way to engage the concept of social comparison in a work environment is through gamification.  Weather you like it or not, competition within your work environment will deliver more results, almost always in the short-term.  Put up a scoreboard – and people will work to get their name up on it! Or their department, their function, etc.  Individual or team – both work.

If you have a monthly contest on which department refers the most candidates that month – and you’re showing it visually and communicating it often – Accounting will want to be beat Marketing! And, Marketing will want to be Operations, and the end result will be more referrals.  The key to gamification is keeping the game fresh.  Having a new game each week, month, period, etc. is key to giving everyone another shot at winning, and keep them motivated to play the game.  It’s not about the prize – it’s about the friendly competition and having fun with your competitions in your work environment.  It’s also about kicking their peer’s butts!  Sound like a lot of work? It might be to get started – but it’s more work to recruit talent on your own – then creating a great referral program and having your staff do the heavy lifting for you!

 

The Propinquity Effect

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Ok, kids – it’s Readers Digest Word Power time!

I’m constantly trying to get my HR and Talent peers to spend more time with those they serve.  Shared time – face-to-face – lunch, coffee, cigarette breaks, drinks after work, Thursday night bowling league – it doesn’t matter.  The time and space is the important thing.  More time. Closer together.

There’s a name for this, it’s called the Propinquity Effect:

The propinquity effect is the tendency for people to form friendships or romantic relationships with those whom they encounter often, forming a bond between subject and friend. Occupational propinquity based on a person’s career, is also commonly seen as a factor in marriage selection. Workplace interactions are frequent and this frequent interaction is often a key indicator as to why close relationships can readily form in this type of environment.[1] In other words, relationships tend to form between those who have a high propinquity.

It’s hard to get most HR Pros to believe this.  It’s science that has real personal value to your overall HR effectiveness within your organization.  Spend more time, building a relationship with another individual outside of HR in your organization, and you’ve just added to your organizational influence.

I’m not saying you have to become close friends and go on vacation with each other.  What I’m saying is you need to find value in building personal relationships at work – if – and this is a big ‘if’ – you have a goal to be more effective in HR.  That might sound slightly facetious – but it’s not.  Some of you are fine with where your role in HR is in your organization.  Others of you are not satisfied with how your role is seen in HR.   Propinquity is easiest way to change that.

 

Have A Poor Performer, Call Their Parents!

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It’s a different world we live. 30 is the new 20, which makes 20 the new 10, which makes me, still old.  I’ve mentioned this before, and people always felt like it was always tongue in cheek, but I think it’s time as HR pros and leaders we start having parents in on our performance conversations. I’m serious!  I have a great real-life example from the world of the NBA. Klay Thompson, a member of the Golden State Warriors, was involved in a fight recently and fined $35,000. No big deal, right? Typical NBA pro sports behavior. But, wait! His dad, former NBA player Mychal Thompson, keeps his son’s finances and “grounded” him from his weekly allowance! From the Bleacher Report:

“The 23-year-old doesn’t have access to his money, all cheques are paid to Mychal and Julie who take care of his accounts for him to make sure Klay’s financial situation is set up for his post NBA career. So, naturally, Papa Thompson’s going to teach Klay a lesson of his own by fining him personally also, however Klay will find out the old fashioned way.

“He will [find out he’s been fined by us] when he sees that cash envelope show up a little short this week,” he said.”

23 years old.  How many young 20’s do you have working in your office?  How many of those young 20’s and late 20’s and possibly 30’s – could use a little wake up call from Mom and/or Dad!?

If HR has taught me anything, it’s most leaders are terrible at holding their employees accountable and managing performance.  It’s not getting better, it’s gotten worse over the past 5 years.  Most organizations eliminated or reduced leadership training during the recession, so our leaders haven’t gotten better, they’ve gotten worse.  We can start spending a ton of resources to train them and get them up to speed – or – we could just hand them Billy’s Mom’s number and have her come by the office one day.  Kind of like a conference at school!

“Mrs. Sackett, we are glad you could take time out of your busy day to talk about Timmie.  You see, Timmie is a little…well, let’s say Tim’s performance isn’t where it should be for someone of his age, experience and education. I was hoping you might be able to help me get Tim back on track.  Here are some examples of what Tim’s been doing…”

Can you imagine how 99% of those poor performers involved in this conversation would change!?  We laugh because it seems absurd that we would have to call in someone’s parents to adjust their performance, but I truly think in the right circumstance, it could really work.  I’ve seen it work well with good performance.  I’ve had a past boss speak to my mother about my good performance and she lite up like a Christmas tree, made me feel proud.  After that happen to me, I did it with some employees who worked for me, with the same result.  If it works so well on the positive side – why should we dismiss it wouldn’t work on the correction side?

Before you let go of your next poor performer – do me one favor – make one more call – one last ditch effort – call Mom and Dad in for a meeting.

Who’s In Your Circle of Trust?

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I have a small “Circle of Trust” – it’s probably an outcome of being in HR for 20 years.  Too many times I’ve shared things with people I thought would ‘know’ better, only to later find out some stuff was shared, that shouldn’t have been shared.  Ultimately, I blame myself – and the circle grows smaller.  Circles of trust work professionally and personally – some of us will have overlaps – or you might have two completely different circles.   Your circles will change as you change organizations and positions – your lunch pal Ted was in the circle of trust, then he got promoted to a new position – alas, Ted is now out of the circle.

The cool thing about a Circle of Trust is that you don’t have actually tell someone you’re in the circle, or that they are out of the circle.  You can – but it isn’t necessary.  When someone’s in the circle the thing that is important is that ‘you’ can trust them with information.  Others might not find them trustworthy, but you do, so they make your circle.  The individuals within your circle don’t even have to know each other, or know each of them are in the circle.  It’s yours – you decide, you undecide – keep it to yourself.

A question I like to ask Leaders and Executives is who is in your Circle of Trust?  Not names – but give me function and level – I.E., a VP in Finance, Operations Director, etc.  I’m looking for one ingredient in the answer – do they have someone in HR in their circle?  You would be shocked at how often a non-HR leader does not have someone from HR in their circle.  I like to think of myself and my peers in HR is being the ‘ultimate’ circle of trust partners!  If there was a Circle of Trust draft – HR should always have first round selections.  Simple – we are the keepers of the secrets. So, why don’t leaders have HR in their circle?

Let’s answer that by looking at our own Circle membership.  Most of us come into contact with the same folks on a daily basis.  Most of those folks are within our direct functional area, and those closest to us in proximity. If I’m in Marketing – my circle will probably have marketing folks in it, maybe a finance person, maybe even a marketing vendor that is critical to our business, etc.  Unless HR is sitting next to me, or across the hall, and I don’t have daily dealings with them – why would they make my circle?  The reason HR isn’t in enough leaders Circles of Trust in your organization is because HR isn’t making this happen.

That being said, I tell leaders constantly, you ‘Must Have HR In Your Circle of Trust“.  Leaders hate being told this.  “Oh, Tim, they just muck everything up and tell me ‘No’!”  Yep – that’s what they do – because you don’t have a relationship with them – so they go all CYA.  Leaders need to reach out and create a strong relationship with HR – so strong that when the Circle of Trust gets pulled together – someone from HR is there closing the circle with them.  Don’t get me wrong – if you’re an HR pro and you can’t count a number of Circles you are a part of with Leaders outside of HR – you’re probably thought of us worthless.  Sorry, but it’s true.  Get out and build relationships – and when given a chance to join a Circle of Trust – don’t blow it – don’t break the trust – the eventual success of your HR career demands this.

 

Don’t Ask Me To Take Less Money!

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I love pro sports – football, basketball, baseball – it doesn’t matter, I love watching the best athletes in the world compete against each other.  I also love watching college sports – but for a different reason.  Pro sports and college sports are different.  One is a business of entertainment and one is competition.  While their is an element of competition in pro sports – the bottom line business proposition is still to entertain.  99% of college sport athletes will never go on to become pro sport athletes and get paid for playing the game they love.  They play for a number of reasons, the biggest one is that they love playing the game and they love the competition.  Some pro sports athletes also do this – but if they weren’t being paid, most would not be putting their bodies through the punishment they do. Still, there talent is awesome and it’s why we pay big bucks to see them ‘perform’.

That is why I love the Tom Brady story.  An all-pro NFL quarterback who takes less money then he could get on the open market, so his ‘team’ can go out and get better talent for him to play with and possibly compete for future Super Bowls.  Great pro athlete story.  Here’s the breakdown from the NY Times:

“Brady took a deal that will pay him well below the market rate for a quarterback of his caliber at a time when the Patriots and every other team are struggling to manage against a salary cap that is expected to remain nearly flat for several years.

Brady is now under contract through the 2017 season, when he will be 40. But the contract will pay him just $27 million, far below the annual $20 million that is the current average for the game’s top quarterbacks. The terms of the contract were first reported by Sports Illustrated.

Brady also took a below-market deal in 2005, with the thought that he wanted to give the Patriots the chance to sign and keep other players. That is what drove his decision-making this time, too.”

I love when guys from the teams I root for do this because of all the reasons Brady is doing this.  When anyone turns down millions of dollars to make your organization better – that means something! But, this doesn’t make it right for everyone!

Let’s face some facts.  Brady has more money then he’ll ever need, a super-rich wife and incredible earning power after sports in the broadcast booth.  He can take the pay cut and not flinch.  The problem with these kinds of stories is that companies believe you should be willing to do the same thing.  “Hey Tim, we need you to take a $10K cut to help us out through this rough patch we’re facing.”  Um, No!  I’m not Tom Brady – and I’m guessing you aren’t either – pay cuts in ‘real’ life, don’t work.  Yet, we see organizations, even our own government, trying to do this.  It’s a disaster.   Don’t get me wrong – I understand why organizations do this.  If the alternative is to go out of business – I’m going to offer up some pay cuts.  The reality, though, is this a downward spiral of doom – 99.9% of organizations that force pay cuts don’t make it.

They don’t make it because the good people, the real talent, bail as fast as possible.  Leaving you less talented, under paid, desperate employees – that is not a recipe for success.  So, what can you do?  Do more with less.  Don’t cut everyone – just eliminate the lowest performers and keep the pay at where it should be.  People are willing to pick up more if they feel like it truly is going to make a difference. Cutting pay, across the board, only demotivates the entire staff, further compounding your problem of survival.  As an HR Pro don’t allow yourself to be pulled into this leadership trap – it won’t work.

The ‘F’ Word’s Final, Shallow Breath

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By Cali Ressler

The memo from Yahoo!’s CEO Marissa Mayer has put telework, flexible work schedules, and other work/life balance programs into the spotlight in recent days. It’s perplexing, laughable, and almost unfathomable that we’re still debating whether or not people should be able to work outside of the office.

The evidence is clear that every important metric goes up when you give people freedom to work where and when they want: employee engagement and satisfaction, productivity, customer satisfaction, to name a few. But with autonomy comes accountability. Are employees accountable for results or just accountable for ‘showing up’? Is everyone aware of how their results are being measured? If people aren’t delivering, why do they still have a job? Just pulling people back into an office does not, in any way, shape or form set a better foundation for collaboration, communication, or innovation.

We know that communication and collaboration can (and does) happen between and among people anywhere at any time. So what’s the real problem? We’re still following a very deeply rooted formula of time + presence = results. If I can see you in the office, I believe you’re working! When I see you talking with your colleagues, I get all warm and fuzzy because I think you’re solving our business challenges or coming up with the next big idea. When I hear everyone talking about working 80 hours a week, I feel like they’re earning their keep.  When I see them complaining about missing out on important aspects of their lives, I feel good because I’m in the same boat…and really, we’re all in this together.

We need to stop using this formula. We need to stop using the F word. Flexibility and these other terms are not worth of our energy. Yahoo! has organizations all over the country asking if they should do a rigorous study of their telework programs. Um, no. Instead, do a rigorous study of whether your people know what they’re supposed to be doing…regardless of where they are. And so…death to the following words:

1. Telework

Back in the days when dinosaurs walked the earth, someone came up with the brilliant idea to allow some people to telework. Now there are a million different flexible work programs to make people excited about flexibility–like My Work, iWork, My Mobile Workplace, Mobility ‘R’ Us, Mobile Me, and Teleriffic.  No matter how you market it, it’s the same thing: a program that manages people’s time because we know they can’t be trusted to manage it themselves. A program that says “I’m inept at managing what you need to achieve, so I’m going to manage how you spend your time.”  We need to go beyond telework. Its time is so over.

2. Flexible Schedule

Flexible schedule is an oxymoron. Think about the poor manager who is managing their employees’ flexible schedules. We’ve seen it time and again: “Bob, you’re telling me you want to switch your flex days from Tuesday and Thursday to Monday and Friday.  Hmmm…I’ll have to think about that and get back to you next week.” Is Bob incapable of knowing when he needs to be in the office and when he doesn’t need to be?  The manager might think so.  But in the end, if the results aren’t achieved, it’s a performance issue that must be dealt with, not an attendance issue.

3. Remote workers/virtual workers/teleworkers

Telework implies that you’re not a real worker, just a teleworker. It is the label we put on people who are just not where they should be: the office! Everyone back at the office is talking about the people who get to work outside the office. “I wish I could work from home!” “Those of us in the office do all the work!” Sound familiar?  Telework programs foster a sense of entitlement – not consciously, but because they cause people to think in a backwards manner: “I want to work from home…so my work better fit into that.” Without a telework program in place – when you have an environment that determines measurable results, and fosters and accountability, you have people instead thinking “These are my results, this is how I’m being measured, so now I can figure out the most productive, efficient ways to do that.”

4. Permission

With discussions of flexibility and telework, the end result is the employee asking managers for what amounts to a hall pass.

You have my permission to work from home on Fridays. You have my permission to leave work at 4:30 to pick up your child. We allow employees to telework twice a week – aren’t you happy about that?!  I let my employees go to the dentist. 

If you want to work from a different place or at a different time than the socially accepted standard office hours, you have to ask permission. And at that moment, the manager is in the position of managing your work location and time … not the work itself. It makes you feel like you’re back in high school asking your parents’ permission to stay out an extra hour on Friday night.

5. Flexibility

The more we talk about flexibility, the further we remove ourselves from talking about the one thing that’s important: the work.  Change the conversation. Get crystal clear about the measurable results each person is accountable for, and get out of the managed flexibility game. People can manage their own time. [“But what if they can’t?”  Then they most likely aren’t getting to their results and need to head into the land of consequences.]

Let’s face it. The world is changing. Fifty years from now nobody will be talking about flextime, compressed workweek, telework, reduced hours, remote working, virtual working or home-officing.

We will not be segmenting people who do work by labeling them. LIFE will happen. Work will happen. Wherever. Whenever.

 

Cali’s Bio

cali

Cali Ressler, along with her partner Jody Thompson, is the Founder of CultureRx and co-creator of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). Cali is a nationally recognized keynote speaker and author of bestselling business book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. Her second book, Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It is the field guide for how to manage work in the 21st century.

 

I Love Work From Home

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Now that everyone has calmed down about Yahoo pulling their ‘Work From Home’ program and making those Yahoos working from home come back to the barn – I wanted to comment.

“I LOVE Work From Home.”

You can quote me on this.  I know, I know – all you big business, strategic HR types have come out and given us WFHers a real ear full.  Good for you strategic HR pros!  It only took you the last 10 years and a Great Recession to figure out you better get on the business side of things and jump off the sinking employee boat!  Well played.  Screw work-life balance – nobody wants to support those kinds of crazy programs!  We’re HR Business partners – not HR Employee partners.

I love WFH – my wife works from home.  And what they say about WFH employees is exactly correct – she faces communications challenges every single day.  She doesn’t get the respect or appreciation that non-WFH employees get.  Getting people to understand the amount of work you do, is almost impossible.  Everyone wants to change positions with her, believing It is easy.  Everyday is a struggle, but at the same time a blessing.

You see – my wife is a stay at home mother.  She is raising 3 smart and well adjusted boys to go out into the world.  Boys don’t communicate very well – it’s a challenge she faces everyday. Children have a hard appreciating all that their mother does for them, and her husband doesn’t appreciate her enough.  It’s hard – financially.  We don’t have brand new cars.  We don’t have a 2nd lake house. We don’t go on Disney Cruise vacations.  We are saving for 3 college educations, while at the same time attempting to give our kids all ‘those things we never had’.   Our WFH arrangement is the best decision we have ever made.

I’m envious many days of my wife’s WFH job.  While it’s a job I could not do successfully – she gets to see some of the most wonderful moments of my kids lives. Things I will never get to see.  She has a relationship with my children, I’ll never have.  She has sacrificed most of her career and professionalism to raise 3 young men.   We are winning.

I hear you – a Stay At Home Mom is not the same as the WFH Yahoos.  You’re right – instead of Yahoo paying for my wife to “WFH”, I’m paying her.  I’m not asking a corporation to pay my wife a full-time salary to raise my family.  The fact of the matter is organizations who are failing, like Yahoo, can’t sustain paying employees to work at home and raise their family. Raising your family isn’t a part-time job, so who’s getting the short end of the stick – Yahoo or your kids?  “Well, I don’t have a family and I was a WFH Yahoo Employee.”  Good for you – but it begs the question – if you didn’t have to be at home to raise a family or take care of a loved one, etc. why were you working from home to begin with?

Regardless – I love my Work From Home arrangement – I wish more people would find a way to do it.

You Make My World Happier

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I was watching an update on Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, recently, in regards to her battle with Cancer and MDS (Yeah – how unlucky are you to get both!).  I like Robin, because before GMA, she was an ESPN announcer and before that a basketball player.  She also spoke at my wife’s NCAA Female Athlete of the year ceremony way back in our college days – so we have been fans of her for a long time.  Anyway, she is a fighter and returned to GMA this past month.  This post is not about her – it’s about how she makes people feel.

In the ABC update on her health, they interviewed some of her co-workers and one of them said this:

“Robin makes my world Happier, every day.”

I’ve really never been one to think about how others think of me. Or for that matter how others will think of me when I’m gone, but this struck me instantly.  Everyone thinks about how they want to be remembered in very different ways.  Maybe you want people to remember you as kind, or charitable, or caring.   Some will want to be remembered for helping others, or helping a certain cause they are fond of.  Others will want to be remembered as a good partner or parent or friend.  Everyone thinks of this in a very personal context and some refuse to think of it all, scared of even thinking of their own mortality.

I like the happiness concept.  I like it a lot!  You see, I have high expectations in life and I know I put those expectations onto others – my wife, my sons, my family and friends – those who I work with.  I expect that when someone sees something wrong, they’ll fix it.  I expect when you’re not doing your best work, you’ll make the necessary changes to turn that around.  I expect greatness, not goodness, not average, and I want people around me who want better, who want more, who aren’t satisfied.

That being said – I don’t want to be remembered as being someone who wasn’t satisfied with life.  I love life.  I love my wife and kids.  I love what I do for a living.  I want to be like Robin.  I want to be that person when someone asks to describe ‘Tim’ they say – “He makes my world Happier.”  I’m not there right now.  I have some happiness work to do.  But I love the goal I’ve set for myself: Make someones world Happier!  That’s a goal I can strive for everyday.