10 Tips to Keep Your Digital Photos Organized – Techlicious

10 Tips to Keep Your Digital Photos Organized – Techlicious.

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The Dream Manager

Cover of The Dream Manager

By Matthew Kelly

 

Maybe you are still asking yourself: Why should we implement the Dream Manager Program? At every step in the process the Dream Manager Program provides significant insights about what motivates and engages individual employees. As a manager this knowledge is indispensable. Most managers spend too much time trying to guess what motivates and inspires their employees. How much time is spent, or wasted, every year in corporate America trying to work out what incentive programs will be most effective? The beauty of the Dream Manager Program is that employees tell you what engages and motivates them.

Understanding what drives different people is critical to managing people and teams.

In my work with teams, organizations, and individuals, I am always interested in the many unique differences that exist. Though lately, I have been more intrigued by the recurring similarities that I am witnessing.

In the closing decades of the twentieth century, we saw a number of trends dominating the workplace, particularly of note here are the trends that related to the attitudes of workers.

In the 1980’s there was an enormous emphasis on financial compensation and extended working hours. In the 90’s we saw a noticeable shift toward leisure. Workers were still willing to work hard, and still wanted to be generously compensated, but they were less willing to sacrifice their personal lives and well-being. Now, in this new millennium, a new shift is emerging in the attitudes of workers. It exists just as a faint whisper now, but before long it will become a deafening roar. This new trend is toward meaningful work. The twenty-first century worker is no longer willing to work just to get paid, modern workers want to have a sense of satisfaction in the work they do.

This evolution of worker attitudes finds us far from the days when people were simply grateful to have a job, any job.

In each case these trends emerged first among those who could afford the change. Those who decide they won’t work an eighty-hour week are usually those who can afford not to. Those who step away from the corporate world to work for a non-profit they are passionate about are usually those who can afford to. It may be a relatively small number of people who are able to take these steps, but they tell us something about the whole worker population, and predict a sentiment that will explode among the general population of workers before too long. Some people may not be able to afford an entire shift but will make lifestyle adjustments to ensure a more fulfilling existence.

One of the significant ways we can track this sentiment among workers who cannot afford to make a full-time professional move toward more meaningful work is by examining the explosion of volunteer hours that people are contributing to their favorite causes each year. They are trying to fill a void, to satisfy their real and legitimate need for meaningful work.

Volunteering is many people’s attempt to compensate for their disengagement at work. Consciously or unconsciously they sense the need to be more fully engaged, but volunteering will only quench the desire to be more meaningfully engaged for so long. Often, volunteering to participate in a more meaningful endeavor only exaggerates the problem by creating a greater discontent for one’s daily work. This tends to lead people to start thinking about making a change professionally.

A couple of years ago I met a woman who was in the middle of this journey. She had a great job, was making good money, had a lot of fringe benefits that came with her role including A-list parties, first-class travel, and front row seats for any concert, to name a few. But over time that world began to feel increasingly shallow and superficial, so she started volunteering for the American Cancer Society. About two years later she accepted a full-time position with ACS, taking a significant cut in compensation in order to be more fully engaged.

More and more people are making a shift of one type or another, and that trend is only going to continue. Many, perhaps most, will stay doing exactly what they are doing, but only because they must in order to survive. It does not mean that they do not yearn for more meaningful work. Be assured, they do. It is these workers who have no other option – or think they have no options – who we should be most concerned about. These are the workers who are at highest risk of actively disengaging.

Corporate cultures around the world will pretend that this awakening is not taking place, and the more it is ignored the more workers will actively disengage. First they will disengage from the organization they work for, then from the work itself, and lastly, always lastly, from their colleagues, the people they work with.

Nothing will cause plummeting profitability like this disengagement. You can rest assured that this disengagement will be the greatest challenge modern managers and organizational leaders will face in the future.

The overwhelming desire of the twenty-first century worker will be for meaningful work. The consciousness of the worker has been evolving for centuries and it will necessarily lead to its highest expression in this desire for meaningful work.

I do not, however, live in the utopian delusion that we can find work for everyone that is intrinsically meaningful or of life-changing significance. I am not the first to recognize this truth. In fact, this truth has become so universally recognized that we have falsely accepted it as law. I do, however, want to boldly suggest that there is another way. If we cannot find work that is intrinsically meaningful for everyone, the other option is to teach people to bring meaning to even the most seemingly meaningless work. The Dream Manager concept makes this possible by linking a person’s work today with his or her dreams for the future.

Some work is highly meaningful in and of itself. Examples would include providing micro-financing in third-world countries, helping young people discover and pursue their passions, and seeking a cure for cancer. But only a very small number of jobs hold this level of meaning. Most jobs are several steps removed from the meaning and value they contribute to society, and so it is easy for workers to lose sight of their contribution. Collecting the trash may not seem that important to most people, but if we stopped collecting it for a few weeks, it would quickly become an urgent and important priority. In the same way, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that every time we buy or sell something, anything, we help create a job for someone, somewhere.

There are many jobs that have become so soulless and most managers would have a hard time convincing anybody that such work had meaning or could be fulfilling. This is true not only at the low paying end of the spectrum. There are a great many people on mid-six figure incomes, wondering what they are doing with their lives and yearning to make a more meaningful contribution.

It is this group of people that the modern manager must find a way to engage. The genius of the Dream Manager concept is that it creates the connection between the work of our daily lives and the dreams we have for our future. In the process it changes the way we see our work.

We cannot create work that is intrinsically meaningful for every person on the planet. But we can show people how to bring meaning to their work by encouraging them to expand their vision of themselves, to explore their possibilities for the future, and to look at their work in a new way.

My father went to work everyday to give my seven brothers and me opportunities that he never had. He was a salesman and enjoyed his work, but my father was under no illusions that his work was deeply meaningful or changing the world. That didn’t matter to him. It was honest work and he brought meaning to his job by seeing it as an opportunity to provide for his family and to grow in character.

The modern worker is desperately in need of a new approach. The modern manger is charged with the responsibility of teaching the worker to bring meaning to his or her work. Any honest human activity, however trivial or menial, can be transformed to become deeply meaningful in two ways.

First, by making the connection between our work and the opportunities it will create for our self and for others in the future. This is the dream factor. Working to achieve a sales goal, for example, is most successful when we consciously make the connection between achieving that goal and the dreams that it will enable us to fulfill.

The second way to bring meaning to our work, and elevate it exponentially, is to see our work as an opportunity to grow in character. When I work hard I become a-better-version-of-myself, and everything and everyone in my life benefits from this personal growth. When I pay attention to the details of my work I develop patience – and that makes me a better friend, son, colleague, employee, manager, and lover. When we grow in character everyone who crosses our path benefits. No honest work, however mind-numbing, lacks this possibility of infinite meaning.

So, if you look at your work and find less meaning in it than you would like, don’t despair – bring meaning to your work. In this way you decide how meaningful your work is.

It is a mistake to ignore the shifting attitudes of workers. Our employees are, after all, our first customers, and to ignore the changing attitudes of our customers is to commit corporate suicide. Therefore, as the attitudes of our employees change, the way we manage them must change if our organizations are to thrive.

A New Breed of Loyalty

By Matthew Kelly

 There are many who say that loyalty in the corporate world is dead forever. I could not disagree with them more. The kind of corporate loyalty that was based on hanging around for a certain number of years in order to get a pension and benefits forever may be dead, but I think that both employees and employers are better off that it is. It wasn’t good for people or companies then, and it isn’t good for people or companies now. I do, however, believe that the corporate world desperately needs to foster and encourage a new and more evolved form of corporate loyalty.

This new breed of loyalty will be built on the principle of adding value. An employee is responsible for adding value to the life of a company, and a company is responsible for adding value to the life of an employee. This is the great unspoken contract that exists between all employees and employers.

There is an inescapable financial component to the principle of adding value in business. A potential employee should be able to walk into an interview and confidently say, “Hire me and I will generate three… five… seven times more revenue that it costs to employ me.” This is one of the ways employees are responsible for adding value. Part of adding value in a corporate environment means generating revenue or supporting someone else so they can generate revenue.

As I walked out of a keynote presentation several months ago the president of the company took me aside and said, “I just want to thank you for adding value. I know this is going to help my people take it to the next level.” His words gave me pause. People often say “great talk,” but as I reflected on what he had said to me it crystallized a realization that when I speak at corporate events I’m not there just to motivate, entertain, and inspire. I aim to do those things, but I am there to add value – to help that company and its employees thrive. That is why companies invite me to speak and if I cannot do that, I cannot reasonably expect them to invite me back.

A new breed of corporate loyalty is both possible and necessary. We simply need to change our expectations. No company can keep an employee that doesn’t add value and help that company become the-best-version-of-itself. Simple economics demand that such an employee cannot remain. At the same time, a company cannot reasonably expect an employee to be loyal, if that company’s demands and expectations consistently lead an employee to become a lesser-version-of-him or herself.

The new breed of loyalty will be based upon an understanding between employees and companies of each other’s purpose – to become the-best-version-of-themselves. Some may scoff and beg this conversation to return to reality, but consider the companies that find themselves among Fortune’s elite list that names the best companies to work for. They still strive for and achieve better than average profits. But if you glance down the list of criteria, you discover a list of company initiatives that, directly or indirectly, help employee’s become better-versions-of-themselves. These companies believe that if they help their employees become better-versions-of-themselves the company will necessarily become a-better-version-of-itself.

Walk through the hallways of these companies and you will see a highly evolved form of corporate loyalty emerging. These companies understand that if they help their employees achieve their purpose as individuals, the employees will in turn be more passionate about helping the corporation achieve its purpose and goals. Both sides recognize that the company has to make a profit in order to continue, and both sides are willing to commit to the pursuit of that profit.

This new breed of corporate loyalty is the clay from which a highly evolved and cohesive type of team can be built and managed. The ‘us versus them’ mentality that has been fostered for hundreds of years in the workplace desperately needs to be replaced by a spirit of dynamic collaboration. This level of collaboration can only be achieved when both managers and employees are convinced that each has the others best interest in mind.

Sooner or later both a company and its employees will gravitate toward their respective purposes. If they cannot do this in collaboration, employees will begin to disengage or self-destruct and the organization will pay a huge price.

When a company’s culture opposes its employees’ purpose (that is, hinders employees from becoming the-best-version-of-themselves) the employees will consciously or sub-consciously oppose the company’s goals and objectives. This in turn will prevent the company from achieving its purpose (that is, becoming the-best-version-of-itself). The individual purposes of employees and companies are inseparably linked.

A manager’s role is to organize employee effort for the attainment of an organizations goals and purpose. In the past managers have relied heavily on the stick and the carrot. Now it is time to discover the awesome effectiveness of management by dreams.

Don’t React, Respond

By Matthew Kelly

 Too often I find myself reacting to things that happen during the course of a busy day. And more often than not there is a living, breathing, human being on the other end of my reactions. So I have tried this year to seek a calm inner response to the happenings of my day as a first step. Whether a happening is good or bad, I have found that by seeking a calm inner response first… I avoid reacting in ways that are neither healthy nor helpful.

Try it. Be mindful when things happen, especially the unexpected. If you are able to be conscious of your inner response, you will find you’re responding more… and reacting less.

Lincoln High School FFA Fund Raiser

The Lincoln High School FFA students will sell moss  baskets, fuchsia baskets, color bowls, annuals, perennials and vegetables at their annual plant sale April 28-30 at the Lincoln greenhouse on G Street behind the Lincoln Bowl.

The sale will open at 2:30 and run to 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 28, and Friday, April 29. You can purchase plants on Saturday, April 30, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Worst Roads in America

Bad roads effect all of us. We are well aware . This posting will put a face to the problem.

http://www.mainstreet.com/slideshow/lifestyle/travel/worst-roads-us