Patience and time can be our friends or our enemies. When we try to disguise procrastination as patience we are losing precious time. We usually need to stop making excuses and just get started. However, patience and time are powerful when we take the time to invest in ourselves and others and exercise patience as we grow.
Just having a great idea is never enough. I wish I could just direct others to make my ideas a reality…we would all be rich. Take what you learn and apply it. Take one of your ideas and try it.
We spend so much time at work reacting to the things that happen and lose sight of finding the true issues. It is like the doctor giving us Vitamin-M every time for the pain when we go in. I don’t care about the pain, fix the cause of the problem. Most of our issues in the Air Force and society in general is that we are not investing in those on our teams. If we took the time to help them the way we focus on making new checklists, many of these issues would take care of themselves.
This is amazing on two accounts: 1) this is great advice and 2) his hair is amazing. Tact is a skill many do not possess. I was brought up to believe it is important to be honest, but not how to do so with tact. I really have to work hard to balance the two. I have found that by making the advice/opinion about the issue and not the person is a great way to do this. It can still get touchy when you are talking about another’s sacred cow, but you can still exercise tact. If you are forced to choose between honesty and tact, which would you choose?
Rank doesn’t give you anything. It temporarily loans you its authority. When you are the ranking person you can tell others how to act and what to do. However, when you take the rank off, who is still there with you?
We all face those moments in our lives and in our careers where we learn something we didn’t know about ourselves. Sometimes it is good, but most of the time it is something that annoys others. It takes those courageous folks to tell us and as we gain more rank or position even fewer are willing to share their thoughts. Surround yourself with those who are willing to share their unfiltered thoughts and listen. What they are telling you holds the key to getting to the next level.
I think this is a very interesting notion. Although, we have very little control over what base or unit we are a part of, we do have complete control over ourselves. Often times, the problem isn’t our unit; rather, how we view and respond to what happens to us. Look within yourself first to see if there is anything you can change and then work on one person at a time. Eventually, you will either change the culture or will have moved on to better things.
In our current EPR system where people feel as if they are competing for stripes, this is a fear I have. I would hate to see people taking short cuts and sacrificing their personal integrity to get a few steps ahead of their peers. I saw it happen in the aircraft maintenance world when the demands far exceeded the capabilities. People took short cuts to try and get ahead. This worked for awhile until there was a death on the line. I am not afraid of someone actually dying from careerist short cuts, but I do think our culture would quickly erode if we start taking short cuts.
We have all worked with those people who have been on the job for 20 years but seem to know nothing. Then there are those 20-year-olds that seem to be experts. It is not how long you have been doing something or how old you are that makes you great; it is what you have done in those years that make you great. Go do something great for another today!
