As we approach the end of the year, it is a good time to reflect upon the meaning of our lives and work, as well as focus on the things that and people who really matter the most to us.  Of course, there are many folks who just want to put 2009 behind them with a “good riddance” sigh of relief.  Let’s face it, it has been a very difficult, challenging year; one that we’d probably like to forget.  The economic climate proved to be more of a perfect storm.  Like a tsunami, it generated monstrous waves that were intent on destroying anything in their path.  And economic concerns were not the only source of turbulence, fear, and insecurity during the year.  In this regard, I’m sure that the mass media’s “end of the year” reviews will provide many other examples of why 2009 is a year that deserves to be forgotten. 

More on End of Year reflection, this time from Alex Pattakos.

What are you going to do now to make sure you have your best year ever? What one thing will mean the difference in actually achieving your goals rather than chalking them up to yet another year’s unfulfilled resolutions? What can you do to enhance an aspect of your life that you’ve neglected in your single-minded pursuit of that elusive brass ring? Think about it.

Year-end articles with advice on how to make next year a good year are starting to pile up. This one is from Success Magazine. Click through for a list of 44 ideas. I see that number 44 is "Lower your blood pressure." I should have seen this advice a long time ago.

 

1. We say about 12,000 words a day. Unless you are in solitary confinement, or in a psycho ward, you say most of those words to other people, And you do it mostly at work, often trying to convince other people to do things you feel are important.  Most of the time you open your mouth you are a kind of public speaker. Yet most of us are ignorant of how our brains process speech, what separates a convincing person from a boring one, and what brain science has to say about listening and learning. We’re all speakers and we all benefit if we improve.
2. Good public speaking drives better thinking.  Speaking, and writing, is a forcing function for your thoughts. An opinion only in your mind seems perfect, but only when you write it or explain the argument to someone else that the details and nuances you overlooked become real. To speak about something forces you to think about it more clearly, which is good for you.
3. I’ve learned more from public speaking than almost anything else I’ve done.  By traveling around the world to lecture, I’ve met more interesting people, heard more interesting opinions, and been forced to rethink more thoughts than nearly any other activity. Speaking is a forcing function for many of the good things people say they want from life: dealing with fear, understanding themselves, making connections and learning new things.
4. Ideas do not sell themselves. From Edison, to Einstein, to Steve Jobs, if you have ideas, you will be speaking about them to others to convince them of their value.  It’s an unavoidable and essential part of the job of getting your ideas to the world. If you haven’t studied presenting, you are betraying your ideas as pitching and presentations are the lens through which your ideas will be judged. The best skill creatives, entrepreneurs and inventors need to learn is how to talk about their work to people who know nothing about their work.
5. We are teaching and learning all the time.  Speaking is often the means for sharing what we know with friends, children, students or even co-workers. By getting better at speaking we amplify not only our ability to share what we know, but our capacity to help people teaching us do it effectively.
6. We learn best by making mistakes, and in the book I make many of them for you.  I found most books on public speaking really boring, since they leave all the good stuff out. Namely what goes wrong, what happens back stage or between gigs, and that’s the focus of my book. It’s a narrative driven book, largely telling the stories of things going wrong, what I learned and how I got improved.  You get the benefit of all my embarrassments.
7. Funny, inspiring, business books are rare.  I fought hard to get the word Confessions in the title, since that gave me license as a writer to be completely honest, and share the same kind of perspective I’d share if I were out to a few beers with some friends who wanted to know all the big secrets. I worked very hard to make it a fun, fast paced, provocative read – unlike many books, this is one you’re likely to finish and enjoy it all the way through. The Wall Street Journal and Slashdot among other reviews, agree with the big upsides of the choice I made.

Scott Berkun titles this blog post "Why You Need A Publlc Speaking Book." I've seen a lot of traffic on the net about his new book, Confessions of a Public Speaker and think I need to pick up a copy. I really like his emphasis on Point 2, good speaking drives better thinking, and Point 4, you speak to convince others of the value of your ideas." In Toastmasters, I think we tend to overemphasize the technical and showy aspects of speechmaking and underemphasize our argument and content.

It wasn't really a sleepless night. But it was "one of those nights" (not that infrequent for me) when some words start rumbling around ... and around and around. I just wanted a list of "stuff" that gets to the essence of human behavior, and thence is directly related to individual effectiveness at pretty much anything. (NB: And, ain't it always the case, "stuff" that business schools either recklessly take for granted or decide is not sophisticated enough to merit their attention.)

So here are "the real basics"—in five words. Achieve Excellence at these five things and the world (of human organizations) will pretty much be your oyster. To wit:

Read.

Write.

Talk.

Listen.

Appreciate.

Once the keyboard was at my command, I ended up (surprise!) extending the list to 19 words. Herewith:

1. Read.
2. Write.
3. Talk.
4. Listen.
5. Appreciate.

Walk.

Work.

Sweat.

Sweat.

Enthuse.

People.

Frontline.

Act.

Anger.

Band.

Apologize.

Weird-out.

Network.

EXCELLENCE.

Here, also in very few words, is my more or less definition of the 19 words:

Read. (Outstudy 'em.)

Write. (Clear, concise, powerful.)

Talk. (Presentation mastery. Study. Practice-practice-practice. Storytelling, mastery of.)

Listen. (Study. Practice-practice-practice. Understand enormous power thereof.)

Appreciate. (Engaged. Thoughtful. Compassionate. Appreciative always, enormous power thereof.)

Walk. (MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. In touch. Again, learning, and learning is required, through practice.)

Work. (Work harder than the next person. "Balance"? Uhm ...)

Sweat. (Sweat the details with maniacal passion!)

Sweat. (Sweat the details with maniacal passion!)

Enthuse. (Enthusiasm moves mountains.)

People. (Great and engaged people>>>Great strategy. Best bosses = Best people developers.)

Frontline. (Firstline supervisors, quality of, determine just about everything. Must become an obsession.)

Act. (Most tries wins. Hence "most failures" is a concomitant reality—celebrate 'em.)

Anger. (Raging impatience with dumb stuff. Constantly question the status quo.)

Band. (Small, passionate, relentless bands of people/renegades change the world. Period. Avoid the hierarchy—it tenaciously defends the past in 9.9 cases out of 10.)

Apologize. ("I'm sorry," enormous power thereof. And rare, particularly among men.)

Weird-out. (Multiple, unusual sources of information and feedback.)

Network. (Develop wider-deeper-downward relationships. Think "suck down for success." Think-obsess on R.O.I.R./Return on investment in relationships. Again, women take to this instinctively.)

EXCELLENCE. (The only standard. ALWAYS CAPITALIZE ALL LETTERS.)

Over to you ...

Tom Peters consistently writes lists that I find useful. Here's another one.