When I was kid my family vacationed every summer in Eagle River, a small tourist town in northern Wisconsin. My great-uncle Bill - a retired Milwaukee fire-fighter - had moved up there with his wife Irene and hand-built a log house on Deerskin Lake about 10 miles out of town on a gravel road. It was a real get-away for my parents and their five kids and a welcomed chance to go fishing every day (nothing large, but it was still great fun). Anyway, I can still remember sitting in a little rowboat with Uncle Bill (chewing his tobacco and sipping a few cans of beer), putting worms on a hook and just relaxing on the water…

After a while he would simply ask me, "Well, Ron, what do you know for sure?" I had no clue what he meant – maybe he was just trying to make conversation – and at times I admit I thought he was a bit wacky.

Uncle Bill passed away at 91 after a full life. Now… it makes me wonder: What DO I really know for sure?

A. So, please join my Uncle Bill and me, and list a few things you are absolutely certain about…

• ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMERS...

• ABOUT YOUR EMPLOYEES...

• ABOUT EACH OTHER AS FAMILY BUSINESS PARTNERS…

• ABOUT THE WORLD OF BUSINESS…

• ABOUT LIFE…

• ABOUT YOURSELF…

B. At this stage in your life, what are you very uncertain about…

C. … and how does all of this affect you as a manager/leader, and as a person…

Gandalf, the wizard in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – I: The Fellowship of the Ring, is speaking privately with Frodo, who is faced with having to make tough decisions that affect himself and his friends. He is having difficulty in the what and how of these challenging decisions – in fact, decisions which actually may not be his to make. Gandalf patiently counsels him, "The only thing we can decide is what to do with the time we have been given." In our moments of quiet self-reflection, it is daunting to ask ourselves "what am I doing with the time I’ve been given?" And maybe more importantly, how do I decide? This is not a search for yet another set of daily to-do lists, or a schedule for rummaging through time management articles and productivity apps. Instead (to apply a simplistic economic image, if it’s true that time is money), how do you decide the amount of time you will spend or waste – and how do those get defined?

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal reported about a new study – the Executive Time Use Project – from the Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics. One finding is that organizational leaders spend 1/3 of their time in meetings (not all of them productive or inspirational). Further, after time spent was added up among meetings, calls, business meals, and adding in travel and exercise – roughly just six hours a week remained for solitude and working alone, which the leaders said they wanted more of simply to think and plan.

If you conducted such a self-survey of an average week, which categories would house the majority of your time? In what areas do you want to spend more time? What adjustments might be needed?

In other words, what are you doing with the time you have been given?

In the for-kids-of-all-ages movie Babe, Farmer Hoggett wanders over to the booth at the county fair where folks guess the weight of the animal in the pen. He reaches in, pulls up a small pig and holds it in mid-air to estimate its weight. For a brief moment he and Babe end up face-to-face, staring at each other. The narrator in the movie says, "And the farmer and the pig regarded each other." Well, since I found this choice of words more than a little curious, I went to Webster for help, and found that regard means:

• To take notice of; to pay attention to... • To show thought or consideration for... • To respect... • To care for...

Made me wonder a little about who or what I genuinely regarded, and made enough of an impression that since then I sign most of my emails with Best Regards...

To what degree would your employees, clients or customers vouch that you regarded them...?

And of course it continues to make me wonder who in my life could use my best regards right now, which in turn asks me to be a little more aware, and be ready to translate that awareness into action...

And all from a silly film about a farmer and a pig...

Best regards,

ron

January: We have a clean slate regarding what we will do with our year and how we look at it. This of course is at the center of leadership effectiveness -- 'Leadership Development from the Inside Out' -- or -- 'The Inner Life of the Leader': How we view the time we have been given; making room for new and creative ways of thinking and ways of doing; developing our awareness and resiliency. ... And so oosouji. My understanding is that in Japan, preparing for and celebrating a new year is accompanied by a cleansing called 大掃除 -- oosouji, sometimes translated literally as the ‘Big Clean’ or as what we might call ‘Spring Cleaning’ – a time when Japanese families clean their homes for the new year and to drive out impure influences. Even if they do not follow the old ways precisely, many Japanese use 大掃除 oosouji as an opportunity to clear out clutter and dirt from the old year.

And so our path continues to be something like:

• Self-awareness, openness to shift -->

• Organizing how we will use our time with priorities and creativity -->

• The doing -- and the not-doing -- ACTION, not just mere resolutions.

So, we ask ourselves:

• What's on the top of my list for oosouji right now, beyond the physical stacks of stuff in our workspace or unfinished tasks? What interior clutter -- unchallenged assumptions - forgotten promises - stale intentions - mental roadblocks - prejudices (pre-judgments) – fears - doubts?

• Any items that seem to re-appear on each year’s oosouji exercise?

• What might be getting in the way of a good oosouji -- what needs to happen for such an effective personal, team, or organizational clean-up? Is there something we just can’t seem to purge / get rid of / let go of?

• As I approach the next hour, day, week... what will I resolve not to do, simply because it does not work, has never worked, only gets in the way of personal or team progress, actually adds to mental / physical clutter, and prevents energy for new ways of thinking or doing?

If we attack and accomplish a January oosouji, we should be ready for inspirations of renewed creativity and innovation!

And a healthy oosouji to you, 2017!

Best regards,