Waging War Against Ourselves...

The more important an activity is to your soul’s the evolution, the more resistance you will feel to it - the more fear you will feel.

                               ~Steven Pressfield
                                   The War of Art

As I pulled into the parking lot at the gym last night, I couldn’t help but notice that there were a lot fewer cars than there were only 6 short weeks ago.

I didn’t know for sure exactly where the missing people were... perhaps they were back home... maybe  helping their kids with their homework... or reading a good book... possibly they were working late at the office... or even having a quiet romantic dinner with their loving spouse at a local restaurant...

What I was keenly aware of was the one place that they weren’t... that is at the gym.

For weeks leading up to the new year, they told themselves, as well as others, that they were on a mission... that as soon as 2016 arrived they would be a new person with a new lifestyle.

Some of these people had specific goals in mind...

Maybe it was to lose some weight, save some money, quit smoking, become a better spouse or go back to school to learn something new... all of those endeavors are indeed noble goals...

The greatest of intentions mean absolutely nothing if they are not deliberately acted upon...

We just can’t wish things and watch them come true. There is no magic pill or button to push. Achieving a goal takes hard work, discipline and resolve.

Unlike every other species of plant and animal on this earth, human beings are not driven strictly by instinct to survive. We have a free will to do as we please, even if it is against our own self-interest.

The route from my office to my home requires that I come to an intersection in the road. Go right to go home... go left to go to the gym.

If I turned right... I could go home to have my dinner, spend time with my family, and relax a bit before going off to bed.

On the surface, no one would have faulted me for taking a right turn... but I would have known. I would have gone to bed angry at myself for taking the easy road, knowing that I had succumbed to my weaker self.

In the moment, I would then vow to myself that tomorrow I would turn left instead of right... allowing myself to sleep comfortably knowing that I have told myself a reassuring rational lie.

However, if I turned left... I would spend the next 90 minutes on the Stairmaster, being short of breath and drenched with sweat. I would end up eating dinner by myself leaving little time to interact with my family before taking a shower and heading to bed exhausted.

And although I’ll awake the following morning with sore and achy muscles, I would have gone to bed with a great satisfaction that I had beaten resistance, if only just for a day.

Resistance and its friends, procrastination and rationalization, are mighty foes who are constantly fighting to take control of our will while offering us the solace of comfort and ease. Together these enemies of the mind allow us to settle for mediocracy rather than achieving some modicum of success.

Every day we wage a battle against our internal resistance... some days we beat resistance... while other days we yield to its powerful forces.

The good news is that each and every day is a new battle to be fought. From the moment we wake up in the morning, we start with a clean new slate.

Although our past has already been written, our future is unblemished. No matter what happened in our lives before today, we still have the opportunity to change the course of our future.

No matter what we want to do... we have the unlimited opportunity to actually do it.

My father was a smoker for nearly 45 years. His friends and family pleaded with him to quit... knowing that it was the right thing to do, he tried over and over to stop smoking... but never succeeded... until the weekend he spent in the hospital in an oxygen tent unable to breathe... at that point he made the conscious decision that he was never going to smoke another cigarette again... and after 20 years he has kept that promise to himself.

The fact that he had tried and failed to stop smoking several times before didn’t prevent him from ultimately achieving success.

From that day forward, he drew a line in the sand and told himself that this was no longer negotiable. He was done.

So today, what line in the sand will we draw?  What will become non-negotiable in our lives?

Now, I’m not suggesting that we go complete "cold-turkey" and do a complete make-over on our lives (unless of course you feel compelled to do so).

What most of us need are small corrections not entire do-overs.

Over the course of time we have acquired a bunch of small bad habits that we need to break ourselves of. Individually these small vices may not be life threatening, however taken as a sum, they can have a devastating effect on our total well-being.

The key to our success in life is to stop focusing on what we need to do and start focusing on the person we want to become.

We need to imagine ourselves as that person... what that person thinks and what that person does.

Starting from the end and working our way backwards will provide us with a road map to get to the place we are looking to go.

Old habits that keep us in a place of comfort must be eliminated by making them harder to do.

Conversely, those habits that contribute to our success need to be easier to do.

Then we need to make changes in our lives to transform us into that person. We then need to make commitments to ourselves to become that person we want to be.

We need to start learning to fight back at the resistance focusing on the result not the process...

I hate going to the gym... but I love the results of having gone to the gym.

On that night, my overwhelming desire to become that person I wanted to become successfully defeated the resistance against the process of going to the gym.

Today is a new day and a new battle.

There is nothing magical or mystical about New Year’s Day.

Today can be the day that we finally decide to make the commitment to ourselves to become that person we desire to be.

Thank you for your support of OptiFuse where open and honest communication is one of our core values and helps to make the world a better place to live by allowing its population to thrive.

The Sworn Enemy of Tradition...

Welcome to the new world... God save your soul, if it is right that he should do so...

             ~ William (as played by Heath Leger)
                         in, "A Knight’s Tale"

So it’s back to the scene of the crime...

It was 19 years ago when a few friends and I went to New Orleans in early February to attend the world’s greatest party, Mardi Gras.

Some may debate me, as I describe the event as the "world’s greatest"... and they might be correct as I have never had the opportunity to attend Carnival in Rio, the running of the bulls in Pamplona, or the Melbourne Cup, celebrated in all corners of Australia. 

I do, however, have some experiences attending other spectacles such as the Super Bowl, World Series, the Kentucky Derby, Indy 500, Presidential conventions, and the Rose Parade and Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

Mardi Gras along Bourbon Street, is as wild and crazy as it comes. It is an event reserved for the young (and young at heart) who have the capacity and fortitude to drink and dance from sunset until sunrise. It’s a "party until you drop" environment where hordes of revelers fill the bars, saloons, and streets; throbbing music fills the air, and the exchange of beads for skin is found every few feet.

The Mardi Gras of the French Quarter is the decadence and debauchery of an ancient Roman orgy.

This week, I find myself back in New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

However, on this adventure, I don’t imagine that I’ll be stepping foot in the French Quarter after dark.

My family and I have been graciously invited to experience the other side of Mardi Gras. 

Where Krews (local social organizations) decorate floats and parade through the streets of the city, throwing handfuls of beads to those lining the routes; where the pageantry of royal courts fill the ballroom of hotels, where the women wear floor-length formal gowns and the men wear white ties, white gloves and tails rather than tuxedos.

This is the Mardi Gras of rich heritage, that sows its seeds in the French occupation of New Orleans, and that has been carried forward for some 213 years.

This is the Mardi Gras that concerns itself with customs, traditions and a significance of pomp and circumstance, many of which have been carried forward by generation after generation.

This is the Mardi Gras of the social and financial elites. Many of the Krews are devoid of women members and people of color. These are private organizations so they are not under any obligation or directive to be inclusive. This is also tradition.

Innovation is the sworn enemy of tradition.

Traditionalists are afraid of change. They want to go back in time... when things were simpler and clearer to understand... when ideas and concepts were not so complicated...

Traditionalists harken for the days of less choices and options. Everything could be compartmentalized, categorized and easily described... they have no interest in fifty shades of gray... or purple... or brown...

They often speak of "getting back to the fundamentals or basics".

Living in the past also helps them to relive their glory days... when they were the alpha male of the herd... the top salesman... the captain of the football team. 

Back then, they were somebody... a person of power and of influence... they knew the right people... and they belonged to the right clubs.

Most of us were taught at a young age to respect authority and the laws. We were told to never question our parents... our teachers... our civic leaders... our bosses. 

Theirs was the final word which could not be debated.

They were morally and intellectually our superiors. To question their authority would be to advocate anarchy and chaos. 

A call for change would be considered heresy and dissenters would be punished for their actions.

...but then something happened...

Whereas the ideas and actions of a solitary person were easily rebuked and admonished by the establishment, those same ideas and actions brought forth by a large constituency could not be ignored.

Individually or divided, the group is weak... but united by principle, they are strong.

Using the ideas of civil disobedience, the rules began to change... slowly at first... and then as an avalanche.

The structures that were once laid on the solid foundations of society were being razed and replaced with these new set of rules and laws.

At first there were great rationalizations as to why the old ways were still better than the new.

The old ideas were tried, tested and true... why should we change when the traditional ways had worked perfectly fine since the beginning of time? 

If it’s not broke why try to fix it...

...but that’s just it... the system was broke and it needed to be fixed.

Which brings us to the current state of the world...

Today there are still a great many injustices being perpetrated against inhabitants of the earth by those who have the power or by those who desire power...

Many of these injustices are rationalized by fundamental religious or governmental doctrine, where the ruling class imposes its will by creating laws that ultimately strip the people of their inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The technology of today, including internet connected cameras, smart phones, and social media, has allowed those fighting against tyranny to better organize into a cohesive force by casting a light on the injustices and sharing them through a globally connected network.

These technological advances have allowed people to unify into a cohesive and united front when the cause is right and just.

No longer do we feel alone in our fights. We are all connected (or will be in the near future).

Traditionalists (along with fundamentalists) are under siege. No longer can they hide in the shadows as technology continues to a beacon of light casting truth in all directions.

The informed are beating down the doors of intolerance, ignorance, and others attempting to force their will unto others.

It’s only a matter of time until they succeed.

Welcome to the new world...

Thank you for your support of OptiFuse where open and honest communication is one of our core values and helps to make the world a better place to live by allowing its population to thrive. 

Living in a Glass House...

If you never lie, you’ll never need to remember what you said.
                                     ~Mark Twain

At the beginning of each hand of Texas Holdem poker, each player is dealt two down cards that only they alone can see and which can only be used by that player. 

Later in the game, five additional cards are dealt face up that are displayed for everyone to see and are considered "community" cards that all players can collectively use to improve their own hands.

The key to winning in Texas Holdem, is to try to gather as much information about the other players’ hand without divulging anything about your own hand. 

Ascertaining information about an opponent’s hand can come from employing certain betting strategies, observing what actions a player makes with their own betting, and/or looking for subtle clues in your opponents mannerisms that might give an indication as to whether they are playing a strong hand or bluffing to steal a pot.

In poker, quality information regarding your opponents’ hands is the single-most important factor in winning and losing over the long haul (short-term it’s still the luck of the draw).

The well-known adage "keep your cards close to your vest" stems from the idea of collecting information while divulging none.

This same mind-set was the prevailing sentiment for most business transactions prior to the advent of the Internet. 

Those who had better information, in terms of quantity and quality, were often in a superior position when any negotiation was taking place. 

Information 20 years ago was expensive and time consuming to acquire, but worth every penny when it came time to close the deal.

That was then and this is now...

Today, information is cheap and plentiful. It is aggregated, cataloged, and freely dispersed through places like Google, Wikipedia, and Yahoo. 

No longer does the entity with strictly the best information automatically get the best deal.

In today’s environment, deals are completed not because one party has more information than the other, but rather by determining the actual needs of each entity involved through a collaborative effort.

The business world is no longer driven by information, but by the value delivered to the buyers and sellers.

The buyer doesn’t help themselves by creating a situation where the product and/or service provider has to guess what their needs actually are. It is far better for the buyer to provide sellers a window into their businesses allowing the providers the opportunity to craft better solutions than originally thought possible by the buyer.

Allow me to give you an example of how sharing information, instead of limiting it, allowed one of our customers to create a much better solution to a problem that they didn’t even know that they had.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit a contract manufacturer (CM) in Texas who was building a wire harness assembly for a large telecommunications company in California.

This CM was currently buying fuse holders from OptiFuse through a local distributor but was not buying the fuses to go into the fuse holders, so I wanted to see if I could convince them to buy the fuses and the fuse holders as a package.

Within the first few minutes with the buyer, I was told that the only factor that could cause them to switch fuse vendors was a significant reduction in price from their current source, which would be hard to do since the fuses only had a cost of a few pennies to begin with.

I explained to the buyer that we would do our best to lower their price, but that they were already paying a low cost with their current supplier so the likelihood of a "significant reduction" was improbable but that perhaps we could save them some money in other areas.

I suggested to her, that if I could perhaps see how the product was installed, I might be able to find some additional ways to help lower their costs.

Twenty years ago, the willingness of a buyer to allow a sales person direct access to the company’s manufacturing process was highly controlled and regulated... but in today’s world, not only is access provided, but it is encouraged.

After seeing the cable assembly, it only took a matter of seconds to see that the CM was splicing a long wire, measuring almost 1 meter, onto the end of the fuse holder wire. I asked the buyer if she might consider purchasing a customized fuse holder with the one meter of wire already installed, saving them the cost of the additional wire, the splice connector, and the labor to install it. 

Additionally, I suggested that the fuse be pre-installed into the fuse holder also saving them time and labor (costing more than the fuse itself).

Lastly, I noticed that a special connector was being added to both ends of the wire where I suggested that the connectors could also be added at the time of manufacture.

Whereas, the buyer was looking to grind off a few pennies off of the cost of the fuse, I was able to save them several dollars (about 40% of their current cost) per assembly.

This saving only occurred by the customer’s willingness to provide transparency into their manufacturing process and cost structure.

Transparency is not only effective in an external buyer / seller environment but it also can be a useful method to increase productivity among the company’s workforce.

By sharing financial data with employees, along with providing financial literacy and training, employees can now see where their individual efforts contribute to the growth and the company’s bottom line.

This can be highly motivating to the company’s workforce, especially if a portion of those bottom line dollars is shared with the employees. 

By sharing profit and loss, balance sheet and cash-flow information with employees, the company has implicitly created a partnership between their management and their employees.

Transparency in any organization builds trust and awareness between the constituents. Trust, in turn, gives people opportunity to freely contribute without fear of retribution.

It helps to build a collaborative effort where people readily share information and ideas rather than horde it.

Transparency can also provide a vehicle for feedback, helping to demonstrate a cause and effect. It helps to motivate people at the company by giving them a common goal or common enemy.

An organization employing open book management will ultimately find that their employees will work harder, smarter, and help to develop solutions that will propel the organization forward amid increasing competition.

Thank you for your support of OptiFuse where we believe in benefits of cooperation and collaboration as a way to better serve those who support us.