WORK: FAILURE NOT AN OPTION ?

You wake up in the morning and feel uncomfortable about going to work. You have this gut feeling that you're not going to make it. You will fail at the task(s)assigned to you. But you need the job. And so you must go to work.
Can you, or anyone you know, relate to this situation?
Let's find out what Susan M. Heathfield has to say.

From Susan M. Heathfield, your Guide to Human Resources
Vol. 11 No. 21 - ISSN: 1533-3698 February 23, 2010
Dear People:
oyee job satisfaction most recently.
Please forward this newsletter, in its entirety, to your colleagues, coworkers and friends, because you want to add value to their work and lives.
Regards and wishing you and yours happiness this week,
Susan

If You Knew You Couldn't Fail...
Thursday February 18, 2010
"What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" Robert H. Schuller asks a great question and, in one of the top Vancouver Olympic moments of 2010, Shaun White, snowboarding Halfpipe 2006 gold medalist, asked himself the same question.
Then, he dug deep inside of himself and performed as if he knew he could not fail.
Earning a 46.8 (out of 50) on his first run, he had earned the gold medal, assuming his challengers scored lower. When all of the contestants had taken their second runs, and Shaun's score continued to earn him the gold medal, he could have walked; danced; done a ceremonial, easy run; or anything he wanted. What did he choose to do?
What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? He did a second run that earned him a 48.4 as he riskily tried out some of the newer moves that are defining his sport. What did Shaun do when he knew he couldn't fail? He pushed himself to do even more.
According to Olympics Fanhouse: "He exploded out of the chute, zipped up the massive structure, going higher, higher, and absurdly even higher, twisting sideways, slantways, and then here it came, the beyond dangerous, spiral Double McTwist 1260 he invented earlier this winter on the private halfpipe Red Bull built him. He has said it's the hardest trick he's ever done, a double-flipping, 3.5-spinning extravaganza that winds him into a human pretzel... 'I wanted a victory lap that would be remembered,' White said. 'I achieved that.'"
Each of the Olympic medal winners like Shaun, and Lindsey Vonn (gold) and Julia Mancuso (two silvers) in downhill skiing, and Evan Lysacek, gold in Figure Skating, dedicated years of practice and devotion to achieve top performance in their sports. Can you emulate them in your own work?
Questions for Work Success
In the midst of the 2010 winter Olympics, here are questions that each of you might want to consider. Your answers say a lot about who you are, how you work, how you get along with other work players, and they highlight our methods, innovations and contributions on the playing field.

What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?
How many years are you willing to invest to achieve your goals?
Are you a follower or does your work define your game, project, or industry?
Do you play well with others so team mates are happy when you win? (If not me - you.)
Does the camaraderie you exhibit with your team members make all of you more successful? Or does it emphasize failure, remorse, and excuses?
Does your interaction with your coach bring out the best in you, challenge you to do and accomplish more, and provide recognition as you conquer each new mountain?
Let's put the EMPLOYER on a spot:
Contradictory Employer Actions
Wednesday February 17, 2010
In a recent interview with a reporter from a retail magazine, I identified some of the actions that employers take that impede the team building they say they want. The interview has me thinking.
Let's start with commission-based pay. In the retail environment, paying a commission on sales guarantees that employees are competing with each other for customers and money. This can result in dysfunctional behavior.
Customers are descended upon by hoards of employees competing for the sale. People are not rewarded for helping each other. As an example, why would an employee put away clothes after they are tried on in a dressing room, if their only compensation comes from direct sales? Another potentially anti-team work action I have noted is when an employee is held accountable for the contents of the cash register. In this environment, no other employee can touch that machine even if it would benefit customers.
Additionally, if the majority of an employee's pay is commission on based on sales, what is the worth of running the cash register? Not picking solely on the retail environment, as it is just one example, but so frequently employers are rewarding and recognizing behavior that they say they don't want.
For me, it goes back to the Dr. W. Edwards Deming statement: What about the work system is causing the employee to fail? If you see behavior that is contrary to what you think you want, ask what you are doing to reward, recognize, and make the employee believe the behavior is appropriate. I guarantee most employees don't make it up. They are taught.


What needs to be done to EMPOWER employees, so they don't gas about failure?
(more review later).
Glad if you can share your thoughts on the human condition in the work place.

ABOUT OBSTACLES

OBSTACLES ARE THE STEPPING STONES OF SUCCESS by Harvey Mackay (yoursuccessstore.com), May 16,2009.

A man was walking in the park one day when he came upon a cocoon with a small opening. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It looked like it had gotten as far as it could, so the man decided to help the butterfly. He used his pocketknife and snipped the remaining bit of the cocoon.
The butterfly then emerged easily, but something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected at any moment the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and deformed wings. It was never able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to emerge was natural. It was nature's way of forcing fluid from its body into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives.
If we were allowed to go through life without any obstacles, we would be crippled. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.
History has shown us that the most celebrated winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.
My good friend, Lou Holtz, football coach of the University of South Carolina, once told me, "Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity."
Beethoven composed his greatest works after becoming deaf. George Washington was snowed in through a treacherous winter at Valley Forge. Abraham Lincoln was raised in poverty. Albert Einstein was called a slow learner, retarded and uneducable. If Christopher Columbus had turned back, no one could have blamed him, considering the constant adversity he endured.
As an elementary student, actor James Earl Jones (a.k.a. Darth Vader) stuttered so badly he communicated with friends and teachers using written notes.
Itzhak Perlman, the incomparable concert violinist, was born to parents who survived a Nazi concentration camp and has been paralyzed from the waist down since the age of four.
Chester Carlson, a young inventor, took his idea to 20 big corporations in the 1940s. After seven years of rejections, he was able to persuade Haloid, a small company in Rochester, N.Y., to purchase the rights to his electrostatic paper- copying process. Haloid has since become Xerox Corporation.
Thomas Edison tried over 2,000 experiments before he was able to get his light bulb to work. Upon being asked how he felt about failing so many times, he replied, "I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2,000-step process."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected President of the United States for four terms, had been stricken with polio at the age of 39.
Persistence paid off for General Douglas MacArthur. After applying for admission to West Point twice, he applied a third time and was accepted. The rest is history.
In 1927 the head instructor of the John Murray Anderson Drama School, instructed student Lucille Ball, to "Try any other profession. Any other."
Buddy Holly was fired from the Decca record label in 1956 by Paul Cohen, Nashville "Artists and Repertoire Man." Cohen called Holly "the biggest no-talent I ever worked with."
Academy Award-winning writer, producer and director Woody Allen failed motion picture production at New York University (NYU) and City College of New York. He also flunked English at NYU.
Helen Keller, the famous blind author and speaker, said: "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. Silver is purified in fire and so are we. It is in the most trying times that our real character is shaped and revealed."
Mackay's Moral: There is no education like the university of adversity.
-- Harvey Mackay

Get more of what you want in your life .
________________________________________
"The history of the human race is the history of ordinary people who have overcome their fears and accomplished extraordinary things." Brian Tracy