Despite a litany of corporate failures there remains an obsession with growth driven by shareholder value which when you cut through the jargon actually means greed. In many ways the greed of shareholders is eclipsed by the greed of executive directors who communicate publically that their aim is to grow the business for the good of all concerned on the premise that growing the business is good. Yet, as we have learned and experience regularly, executive directors are often more interested in growing their own wealth base and achieving this very quickly. The old Japanese style business model which set out 1,000 year plans have been replaced with 'here and now' planning. In the UK the Thatcher years replaced traditional five year planning cycles with twelve month planning cycles. Within ten years this became a three month planning cycle; today it is almost hourly.
Generic expansion having proven to be a slow process, modern expansion strategy is fuelled by takeovers. Takeovers allow a company to grow both revenue and profits instantly giving the impression of good management. Inevitably the underlying problems of combining disparate businesses into one come to surface but by this time those who have been rewarded for stellar growth have moved on; or retired to their place in the sun; or have been locked up - but not without significant pay-offs. The staff and management of businesses taken over have little in common with their takeover masters and as a consequence of losing out on real senior management power bide their time for revenge.
https://www.wikipedia.org
The obsession with business expansion is often explained by the maxim 'if you're not growing, you're declining'. Business schools back this up by charting the typical life cycle of products and businesses, suggesting that merger and takeover activity will lengthen the upward curve. However within a very short time-scale the absorbed profits of the newly acquired enterprise become history, and the new financial year is replaced with the dawning reality of increased costs of running an increased business. Head office becomes monolithic and tensions between those at the front end and those cosseted by a lack of customer exposure increase dramatically.
Sometimes the takeover gravy train comes off the rails as either availability of takeover targets dry up or the amount of money needed to fund them reaches such a colossal level that it is seen as financial suicide to continue. Sometimes the aphrodisiac effect of these immense deals become so potent that they go ahead anyway but soon after the whole thing unravels and both the target and the predator collapse. In some situations, expansion is fuelled by partnerships and franchise arrangements. However these take far longer than quick conquest and involve patience, hard work, and recognition that profit has to be shared for this to work and sharing is not something which is common in the recent corporate world. Yes, the sound bites may say 'we're all in this together' but when it comes to financial reward that's not the case.
It does not take a genius to work out that if I am working as hard as I can, but I am being paid a fraction of my bosses who appear not to care whether I turn up at work or not, my motivation will be low. Not just that, I learn to agree with everything and say yes to everything, and play the part of a loyal and committed worker, but I also learn that the most important person to look out for is myself. This is after all what I learn from my leaders.
At higher levels in many organisations motivation is extremely high, but often not in the way that leaders hope. The game in head office is to expand personal empires to the detriment of peers. More staff, bigger offices and larger budgets become the trappings of success. Energy is expended on beating internal rather than external competition. It is often the case that when senior executives retire they are ill-prepared for life in the real world, as the only plotting they become involved in is who gets stuck with putting out the recycle bins on Thursdays.
The focus on short-term profitability and growth allows executive directors to amass fortunes in bonuses and shareholding undreamt of in the more austere approach of the past. The long haul is rejected in favour of the 'I deserve this now'. Whilst there are only twenty four hours in any day whether you're the chairman or the janitor, the disparity between the value of those twenty four hours for those at the top and those at the bottom of the organisation becomes so glaring that it creates fractures across the whole organisation; some obvious, most hidden. It's easy to see your enemy if they come out in the open, but the latter part of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty first century clearly demonstrates that if you have fewer resources than the ruling class, coming out in the open is not a good idea. Which is why guerrilla warfare is the most difficult to tackle.
As with Emperors, Dictators, and Prime Ministers, senior management eventually begins to believe they are infallible and those around them feed that illusion in the hope that some of their godlike aura may be transferable. They begin to act as though only they know and truly understand the meaning of business and how to make it grow. Decisions begin to be made with little or no reference to the reality of the workplace and rely heavily on employing highly expensive advisers to tell them what they want to hear - that they are visionaries, and that they will be enrolled into the legend that is the company.
In the financial services industry, where the availability of money makes it easier to spend and amass fortunes, collapse of organisations such the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Anglo Irish Bank, Northern Rock, and HBOS are classic examples of corporate blindness towards risk and personal responsibility. It is easy to be reckless when it does not involve your personal money. Even failure is rewarded by handsome pay-offs, but only if you are at the top.
We appear to know nothing of history - of a plethora of short-lived rulers who thought they knew it all and forgot what it was like to be at the bottom of the pile. Whilst it may seem ridiculous to us now, many Roman Emperors either believed themselves to be Gods or were promoted to Godlike status during their short lifetimes by those closest to them. This phenomenon has been repeated across numerous empires. Consumption of nectar and ambrosia is not a good diet for stimulation of common sense and awareness that not all is well around you. Euripides said 'those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad'. And is it any different now?
Recent history is littered with the Gods of industry and banking, once hailed as heroes in their own land, who now are the subject of the previous sycophantic saying 'I always knew he/ she was no good'. Yes, I'm sure you did, but at the time said nothing.
There is a myth that the Roman Empire declined and fell because of excess and debauchery. Whilst both were common enough what really contributed to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and many others since (Britain, the Soviet Union, and the short-lived German Reich) was a combination of increased citizenship, internal turmoil, and primarily and probably as a consequence of the first two: unsustainable costs in running the empire. The army gained the empire and was supported in its efforts by resources raised as tax revenue from the existing population and the newly conquered population. Eventually as the empire grew it became unmanageable for a number of reasons, not least the cost of maintaining an expanded empire.
The Romans were never satisfied with what they had. Success was measured in conquest. From Rome they conquered the rest of Italy and from there the known world. The cost of maintaining a standing army of between 250,000 and 450,000 in order to a) continue expansion and b) to hold the borders began to outstrip income. In order to reach these numbers legions of auxiliaries were used to supplement Roman citizens. The auxiliary soldiers quickly learned to employ the fighting tactics of their new masters and eventually learned to use this against Rome.
https://exed.canvas.harvard.edu/eportfolios/2877/Home/_Valid_VMware_5V03119_Dumps_Pdf__Your_VMware_Cloud_on_AWS_Management_Victory_Partner
https://exed.canvas.harvard.edu/eportfolios/2877/Home/Updated_5V03219_Dumps_Pdf_Verified_by_VMware_Certified_Professionals
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https://exed.canvas.harvard.edu/eportfolios/2877/Home/Amazing_2V06119_Exam_Hacks_with_Valid_2V06119_Dumps_Pdf
The solution to the rising cost of expansion was to offer Roman citizenship and self rule to the conquered territories thereby placing a buffer zone between themselves and the barbarians beyond the borders. Whilst in theory this would give people a stake in Empire it also gave them an acquired taste for freedom.
The distance between the centre of control (the senate), and the dispersed workforce (the legions), resulted in significant delays in communication and feedback. Generals were often in the field for a number of years during which time they became self-absorbed and increasingly convinced of their own importance to the Empire. In the meantime those at 'head office' spent their time feathering their own nests and careers, ignoring and forgetting that their continued existence relied on the 'workers' at the front end of 'the business'. As a consequence, front line generals became significantly disenchanted with the senate which in turn became resentful of the power base being created by upstart soldiers.
It is the same in business. It is difficult enough to manage a company with one thousand employees let alone hundreds of thousands, especially if they are spread across the globe. Leaders quickly become disenfranchised and detached from staff at the customer end of the business and rely on reports generated by managers who are wary of publicising the negative aspects of trading. Communication relies on sound bites and positive messages of support of senior management strategy. Telling the truth becomes career debilitating.
Senior management spends less and less time in the field and any problems that emerge are blamed on a lack of understanding by the workforce of how tough it is being at the top.
The emotional distance between different factions within the Roman Empire, the lust for power, and the excess availability of paid muscle to enforce individual will, often resulted in internal violence. Gradually, as much time was spent fighting each other as was spent on fighting the barbarians.
The normal tenure for a Roman soldier was twenty five years. The average rule of a Roman emperor was 7 years, with some holding office for only a few days (in AD69 there were five emperors). Many emperors died violently. It appears that working in head office, despite the fringe benefits, was a lot more dangerous than working in the front line.
As the slave population grew so did the Roman's strength to resist, despite the fatal consequences of rebellion. What the Romans failed to realise is that when people have nothing to lose they also have nothing to live for.
What lessons can we learn if any?In 1973 E. F. Schumacher's book 'Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered' was published. Schumacher questioned the very idea of growth for growth's sake and warned that the way in which economies slavishly followed the idea that measuring gross national product was an indicator of well-being was a flawed concept. Whilst the 'small is beautiful concept' was widely adopted for worthwhile consideration in many business schools, it has clearly remained an academic concept with only cosmetic transference to the business practices on the ground. Madeleine Bunting writing in the Guardian in November 2011 commented that 'Small became cool but only as part of a branding strategy which masked the ongoing concentration of political and economic power. Gigantism has triumphed'.
In the 1930s Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi promoted the philosophy of economic self-sufficiency at the village level. He believed that the industrialisation of India being promoted by others would lead to dehumanising and was both unnecessary and beyond the basic needs of most people. For the most part his argument lost out to those who wanted India to be the stimulus for a 21st Century industrial revolution. Yet Ghandian economics has a significant following, though little political clout.
In 2012, the European Union's budget (€130bn) coupled with committed expenditure will reach a staggering €276bn. What began as a common trading platform has mushroomed into an organisation that employs 33,000 people to administer policy and you might rightly ask 'what do they all do' and more to the point 'why'? On top of the 33,000 administrative staff there are 754 Members of the European Parliament. The official website for the EU says that the central operating cost for the EU is value for money, costing each EU citizen only 67cents each. It further assures us that a mere 6% of the 2012 budget is spent on administration and only 6% of that on salaries. Mentioning these figures and the way in which they are presented is indicative of people running large organisations who eventually lose touch with the reality of most people's lives. Those who put these figures together represent them as 'only 6%' - but that's actually eight billion euro! And 'only 6% of 6%' is still five hundred million euro. 67 cents each might not sound a lot, but 504 million people paying it is. But is anyone interested enough to do anything about this? Apparently not.
There was a time when to have two or three close friends was sufficient for most people. Now social and business websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter encourage us to count our friends and contacts in the hundreds. The World Wide Web enables us to reach billions of people and distance is no longer an obstacle to communication, but is it? Email and texting reduces our ability to interact and sensitise us to really understanding each other. The complaint of many employees is that 'nobody listens to me' and in the main that is probably true. Senior managers communicate by email and via layers of management until eventually the message becomes distorted and unrecognisable from what was meant at the outset. People sitting within touching distance in offices communicate by email. People standing and sitting next to each other in social situations constantly use their iPhones to send, update and receive messages from other people. Does it matter? Isn't it just part of progress? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is simply part of the unrelenting process of reaching out beyond the confines of our local environment and embracing the expansion of that environment, and encouraging us to grow.
At a local political level councils are obsessed with attracting large conglomerates to their area with the aim of creating new jobs. In the process they usually have to offer significant incentives costing millions. In many cases the large conglomerate, having milked as much profit from the deal as possible during the years of reduced business rates and easing of planning restrictions, eventually closes the business in order to find some other mug council to exploit. Councils do not seem to consider how supporting small businesses might be a better sustainable bet in the long term. Large businesses going bust cause mayhem. Small ones don't.
I agree with Schumacher that the slavish drive for growth is a flawed concept. There is nothing wrong with staying as you are, provided that you continue to meet your obligations. In order to do so you also probably need to be innovative and react to changing markets and the world at large. This is easier if you are a small operation. As you grow the problems become bigger and so do the number of people creating and attempting to solve those problems.
We need to question exactly what the purpose of growth is and it seems to me that its purpose is to make some people, a small number of people, very rich. Yet how rich is enough? It is not uncommon to see people with so much money that they could never spend it in a dozen lifetimes. Why does anyone need to be paid millions? Why does anyone need to be paid one million? Take away the financial incentive of growth and I guarantee that the mergers and takeovers which are deemed necessary to improve customer choice and services would disappear overnight.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
This Foolish and Destructive Obsession with Growth: Lessons from the Roman Empire (and Others)
Despite a litany of corporate failures there remains an obsession with growth driven by shareholder value which when you cut through the jargon actually means greed. In many ways the greed of shareholders is eclipsed by the greed of executive directors who communicate publically that their aim is to grow the business for the good of all concerned on the premise that growing the business is good. Yet, as we have learned and experience regularly, executive directors are often more interested in growing their own wealth base and achieving this very quickly. The old Japanese style business model which set out 1,000 year plans have been replaced with 'here and now' planning. In the UK the Thatcher years replaced traditional five year planning cycles with twelve month planning cycles. Within ten years this became a three month planning cycle; today it is almost hourly.
Generic expansion having proven to be a slow process, modern expansion strategy is fuelled by takeovers. Takeovers allow a company to grow both revenue and profits instantly giving the impression of good management. Inevitably the underlying problems of combining disparate businesses into one come to surface but by this time those who have been rewarded for stellar growth have moved on; or retired to their place in the sun; or have been locked up - but not without significant pay-offs. The staff and management of businesses taken over have little in common with their takeover masters and as a consequence of losing out on real senior management power bide their time for revenge.
https://www.wikipedia.org
The obsession with business expansion is often explained by the maxim 'if you're not growing, you're declining'. Business schools back this up by charting the typical life cycle of products and businesses, suggesting that merger and takeover activity will lengthen the upward curve. However within a very short time-scale the absorbed profits of the newly acquired enterprise become history, and the new financial year is replaced with the dawning reality of increased costs of running an increased business. Head office becomes monolithic and tensions between those at the front end and those cosseted by a lack of customer exposure increase dramatically.
Sometimes the takeover gravy train comes off the rails as either availability of takeover targets dry up or the amount of money needed to fund them reaches such a colossal level that it is seen as financial suicide to continue. Sometimes the aphrodisiac effect of these immense deals become so potent that they go ahead anyway but soon after the whole thing unravels and both the target and the predator collapse. In some situations, expansion is fuelled by partnerships and franchise arrangements. However these take far longer than quick conquest and involve patience, hard work, and recognition that profit has to be shared for this to work and sharing is not something which is common in the recent corporate world. Yes, the sound bites may say 'we're all in this together' but when it comes to financial reward that's not the case.
It does not take a genius to work out that if I am working as hard as I can, but I am being paid a fraction of my bosses who appear not to care whether I turn up at work or not, my motivation will be low. Not just that, I learn to agree with everything and say yes to everything, and play the part of a loyal and committed worker, but I also learn that the most important person to look out for is myself. This is after all what I learn from my leaders.
At higher levels in many organisations motivation is extremely high, but often not in the way that leaders hope. The game in head office is to expand personal empires to the detriment of peers. More staff, bigger offices and larger budgets become the trappings of success. Energy is expended on beating internal rather than external competition. It is often the case that when senior executives retire they are ill-prepared for life in the real world, as the only plotting they become involved in is who gets stuck with putting out the recycle bins on Thursdays.
The focus on short-term profitability and growth allows executive directors to amass fortunes in bonuses and shareholding undreamt of in the more austere approach of the past. The long haul is rejected in favour of the 'I deserve this now'. Whilst there are only twenty four hours in any day whether you're the chairman or the janitor, the disparity between the value of those twenty four hours for those at the top and those at the bottom of the organisation becomes so glaring that it creates fractures across the whole organisation; some obvious, most hidden. It's easy to see your enemy if they come out in the open, but the latter part of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty first century clearly demonstrates that if you have fewer resources than the ruling class, coming out in the open is not a good idea. Which is why guerrilla warfare is the most difficult to tackle.
As with Emperors, Dictators, and Prime Ministers, senior management eventually begins to believe they are infallible and those around them feed that illusion in the hope that some of their godlike aura may be transferable. They begin to act as though only they know and truly understand the meaning of business and how to make it grow. Decisions begin to be made with little or no reference to the reality of the workplace and rely heavily on employing highly expensive advisers to tell them what they want to hear - that they are visionaries, and that they will be enrolled into the legend that is the company.
In the financial services industry, where the availability of money makes it easier to spend and amass fortunes, collapse of organisations such the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Anglo Irish Bank, Northern Rock, and HBOS are classic examples of corporate blindness towards risk and personal responsibility. It is easy to be reckless when it does not involve your personal money. Even failure is rewarded by handsome pay-offs, but only if you are at the top.
We appear to know nothing of history - of a plethora of short-lived rulers who thought they knew it all and forgot what it was like to be at the bottom of the pile. Whilst it may seem ridiculous to us now, many Roman Emperors either believed themselves to be Gods or were promoted to Godlike status during their short lifetimes by those closest to them. This phenomenon has been repeated across numerous empires. Consumption of nectar and ambrosia is not a good diet for stimulation of common sense and awareness that not all is well around you. Euripides said 'those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad'. And is it any different now?
Recent history is littered with the Gods of industry and banking, once hailed as heroes in their own land, who now are the subject of the previous sycophantic saying 'I always knew he/ she was no good'. Yes, I'm sure you did, but at the time said nothing.
There is a myth that the Roman Empire declined and fell because of excess and debauchery. Whilst both were common enough what really contributed to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and many others since (Britain, the Soviet Union, and the short-lived German Reich) was a combination of increased citizenship, internal turmoil, and primarily and probably as a consequence of the first two: unsustainable costs in running the empire. The army gained the empire and was supported in its efforts by resources raised as tax revenue from the existing population and the newly conquered population. Eventually as the empire grew it became unmanageable for a number of reasons, not least the cost of maintaining an expanded empire.
The Romans were never satisfied with what they had. Success was measured in conquest. From Rome they conquered the rest of Italy and from there the known world. The cost of maintaining a standing army of between 250,000 and 450,000 in order to a) continue expansion and b) to hold the borders began to outstrip income. In order to reach these numbers legions of auxiliaries were used to supplement Roman citizens. The auxiliary soldiers quickly learned to employ the fighting tactics of their new masters and eventually learned to use this against Rome.
https://exed.canvas.harvard.edu/eportfolios/2877/Home/_Valid_VMware_5V03119_Dumps_Pdf__Your_VMware_Cloud_on_AWS_Management_Victory_Partner
https://exed.canvas.harvard.edu/eportfolios/2877/Home/Updated_5V03219_Dumps_Pdf_Verified_by_VMware_Certified_Professionals
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https://exed.canvas.harvard.edu/eportfolios/2877/Home/Updated_2V05119_Dumps_Pdf_To_Pass_2V05119_Exam
https://exed.canvas.harvard.edu/eportfolios/2877/Home/Amazing_2V06119_Exam_Hacks_with_Valid_2V06119_Dumps_Pdf
The solution to the rising cost of expansion was to offer Roman citizenship and self rule to the conquered territories thereby placing a buffer zone between themselves and the barbarians beyond the borders. Whilst in theory this would give people a stake in Empire it also gave them an acquired taste for freedom.
The distance between the centre of control (the senate), and the dispersed workforce (the legions), resulted in significant delays in communication and feedback. Generals were often in the field for a number of years during which time they became self-absorbed and increasingly convinced of their own importance to the Empire. In the meantime those at 'head office' spent their time feathering their own nests and careers, ignoring and forgetting that their continued existence relied on the 'workers' at the front end of 'the business'. As a consequence, front line generals became significantly disenchanted with the senate which in turn became resentful of the power base being created by upstart soldiers.
It is the same in business. It is difficult enough to manage a company with one thousand employees let alone hundreds of thousands, especially if they are spread across the globe. Leaders quickly become disenfranchised and detached from staff at the customer end of the business and rely on reports generated by managers who are wary of publicising the negative aspects of trading. Communication relies on sound bites and positive messages of support of senior management strategy. Telling the truth becomes career debilitating.
Senior management spends less and less time in the field and any problems that emerge are blamed on a lack of understanding by the workforce of how tough it is being at the top.
The emotional distance between different factions within the Roman Empire, the lust for power, and the excess availability of paid muscle to enforce individual will, often resulted in internal violence. Gradually, as much time was spent fighting each other as was spent on fighting the barbarians.
The normal tenure for a Roman soldier was twenty five years. The average rule of a Roman emperor was 7 years, with some holding office for only a few days (in AD69 there were five emperors). Many emperors died violently. It appears that working in head office, despite the fringe benefits, was a lot more dangerous than working in the front line.
As the slave population grew so did the Roman's strength to resist, despite the fatal consequences of rebellion. What the Romans failed to realise is that when people have nothing to lose they also have nothing to live for.
What lessons can we learn if any?In 1973 E. F. Schumacher's book 'Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered' was published. Schumacher questioned the very idea of growth for growth's sake and warned that the way in which economies slavishly followed the idea that measuring gross national product was an indicator of well-being was a flawed concept. Whilst the 'small is beautiful concept' was widely adopted for worthwhile consideration in many business schools, it has clearly remained an academic concept with only cosmetic transference to the business practices on the ground. Madeleine Bunting writing in the Guardian in November 2011 commented that 'Small became cool but only as part of a branding strategy which masked the ongoing concentration of political and economic power. Gigantism has triumphed'.
In the 1930s Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi promoted the philosophy of economic self-sufficiency at the village level. He believed that the industrialisation of India being promoted by others would lead to dehumanising and was both unnecessary and beyond the basic needs of most people. For the most part his argument lost out to those who wanted India to be the stimulus for a 21st Century industrial revolution. Yet Ghandian economics has a significant following, though little political clout.
In 2012, the European Union's budget (€130bn) coupled with committed expenditure will reach a staggering €276bn. What began as a common trading platform has mushroomed into an organisation that employs 33,000 people to administer policy and you might rightly ask 'what do they all do' and more to the point 'why'? On top of the 33,000 administrative staff there are 754 Members of the European Parliament. The official website for the EU says that the central operating cost for the EU is value for money, costing each EU citizen only 67cents each. It further assures us that a mere 6% of the 2012 budget is spent on administration and only 6% of that on salaries. Mentioning these figures and the way in which they are presented is indicative of people running large organisations who eventually lose touch with the reality of most people's lives. Those who put these figures together represent them as 'only 6%' - but that's actually eight billion euro! And 'only 6% of 6%' is still five hundred million euro. 67 cents each might not sound a lot, but 504 million people paying it is. But is anyone interested enough to do anything about this? Apparently not.
There was a time when to have two or three close friends was sufficient for most people. Now social and business websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter encourage us to count our friends and contacts in the hundreds. The World Wide Web enables us to reach billions of people and distance is no longer an obstacle to communication, but is it? Email and texting reduces our ability to interact and sensitise us to really understanding each other. The complaint of many employees is that 'nobody listens to me' and in the main that is probably true. Senior managers communicate by email and via layers of management until eventually the message becomes distorted and unrecognisable from what was meant at the outset. People sitting within touching distance in offices communicate by email. People standing and sitting next to each other in social situations constantly use their iPhones to send, update and receive messages from other people. Does it matter? Isn't it just part of progress? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is simply part of the unrelenting process of reaching out beyond the confines of our local environment and embracing the expansion of that environment, and encouraging us to grow.
At a local political level councils are obsessed with attracting large conglomerates to their area with the aim of creating new jobs. In the process they usually have to offer significant incentives costing millions. In many cases the large conglomerate, having milked as much profit from the deal as possible during the years of reduced business rates and easing of planning restrictions, eventually closes the business in order to find some other mug council to exploit. Councils do not seem to consider how supporting small businesses might be a better sustainable bet in the long term. Large businesses going bust cause mayhem. Small ones don't.
I agree with Schumacher that the slavish drive for growth is a flawed concept. There is nothing wrong with staying as you are, provided that you continue to meet your obligations. In order to do so you also probably need to be innovative and react to changing markets and the world at large. This is easier if you are a small operation. As you grow the problems become bigger and so do the number of people creating and attempting to solve those problems.
We need to question exactly what the purpose of growth is and it seems to me that its purpose is to make some people, a small number of people, very rich. Yet how rich is enough? It is not uncommon to see people with so much money that they could never spend it in a dozen lifetimes. Why does anyone need to be paid millions? Why does anyone need to be paid one million? Take away the financial incentive of growth and I guarantee that the mergers and takeovers which are deemed necessary to improve customer choice and services would disappear overnight.
Generic expansion having proven to be a slow process, modern expansion strategy is fuelled by takeovers. Takeovers allow a company to grow both revenue and profits instantly giving the impression of good management. Inevitably the underlying problems of combining disparate businesses into one come to surface but by this time those who have been rewarded for stellar growth have moved on; or retired to their place in the sun; or have been locked up - but not without significant pay-offs. The staff and management of businesses taken over have little in common with their takeover masters and as a consequence of losing out on real senior management power bide their time for revenge.
https://www.wikipedia.org
The obsession with business expansion is often explained by the maxim 'if you're not growing, you're declining'. Business schools back this up by charting the typical life cycle of products and businesses, suggesting that merger and takeover activity will lengthen the upward curve. However within a very short time-scale the absorbed profits of the newly acquired enterprise become history, and the new financial year is replaced with the dawning reality of increased costs of running an increased business. Head office becomes monolithic and tensions between those at the front end and those cosseted by a lack of customer exposure increase dramatically.
Sometimes the takeover gravy train comes off the rails as either availability of takeover targets dry up or the amount of money needed to fund them reaches such a colossal level that it is seen as financial suicide to continue. Sometimes the aphrodisiac effect of these immense deals become so potent that they go ahead anyway but soon after the whole thing unravels and both the target and the predator collapse. In some situations, expansion is fuelled by partnerships and franchise arrangements. However these take far longer than quick conquest and involve patience, hard work, and recognition that profit has to be shared for this to work and sharing is not something which is common in the recent corporate world. Yes, the sound bites may say 'we're all in this together' but when it comes to financial reward that's not the case.
It does not take a genius to work out that if I am working as hard as I can, but I am being paid a fraction of my bosses who appear not to care whether I turn up at work or not, my motivation will be low. Not just that, I learn to agree with everything and say yes to everything, and play the part of a loyal and committed worker, but I also learn that the most important person to look out for is myself. This is after all what I learn from my leaders.
At higher levels in many organisations motivation is extremely high, but often not in the way that leaders hope. The game in head office is to expand personal empires to the detriment of peers. More staff, bigger offices and larger budgets become the trappings of success. Energy is expended on beating internal rather than external competition. It is often the case that when senior executives retire they are ill-prepared for life in the real world, as the only plotting they become involved in is who gets stuck with putting out the recycle bins on Thursdays.
The focus on short-term profitability and growth allows executive directors to amass fortunes in bonuses and shareholding undreamt of in the more austere approach of the past. The long haul is rejected in favour of the 'I deserve this now'. Whilst there are only twenty four hours in any day whether you're the chairman or the janitor, the disparity between the value of those twenty four hours for those at the top and those at the bottom of the organisation becomes so glaring that it creates fractures across the whole organisation; some obvious, most hidden. It's easy to see your enemy if they come out in the open, but the latter part of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty first century clearly demonstrates that if you have fewer resources than the ruling class, coming out in the open is not a good idea. Which is why guerrilla warfare is the most difficult to tackle.
As with Emperors, Dictators, and Prime Ministers, senior management eventually begins to believe they are infallible and those around them feed that illusion in the hope that some of their godlike aura may be transferable. They begin to act as though only they know and truly understand the meaning of business and how to make it grow. Decisions begin to be made with little or no reference to the reality of the workplace and rely heavily on employing highly expensive advisers to tell them what they want to hear - that they are visionaries, and that they will be enrolled into the legend that is the company.
In the financial services industry, where the availability of money makes it easier to spend and amass fortunes, collapse of organisations such the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Anglo Irish Bank, Northern Rock, and HBOS are classic examples of corporate blindness towards risk and personal responsibility. It is easy to be reckless when it does not involve your personal money. Even failure is rewarded by handsome pay-offs, but only if you are at the top.
We appear to know nothing of history - of a plethora of short-lived rulers who thought they knew it all and forgot what it was like to be at the bottom of the pile. Whilst it may seem ridiculous to us now, many Roman Emperors either believed themselves to be Gods or were promoted to Godlike status during their short lifetimes by those closest to them. This phenomenon has been repeated across numerous empires. Consumption of nectar and ambrosia is not a good diet for stimulation of common sense and awareness that not all is well around you. Euripides said 'those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad'. And is it any different now?
Recent history is littered with the Gods of industry and banking, once hailed as heroes in their own land, who now are the subject of the previous sycophantic saying 'I always knew he/ she was no good'. Yes, I'm sure you did, but at the time said nothing.
There is a myth that the Roman Empire declined and fell because of excess and debauchery. Whilst both were common enough what really contributed to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and many others since (Britain, the Soviet Union, and the short-lived German Reich) was a combination of increased citizenship, internal turmoil, and primarily and probably as a consequence of the first two: unsustainable costs in running the empire. The army gained the empire and was supported in its efforts by resources raised as tax revenue from the existing population and the newly conquered population. Eventually as the empire grew it became unmanageable for a number of reasons, not least the cost of maintaining an expanded empire.
The Romans were never satisfied with what they had. Success was measured in conquest. From Rome they conquered the rest of Italy and from there the known world. The cost of maintaining a standing army of between 250,000 and 450,000 in order to a) continue expansion and b) to hold the borders began to outstrip income. In order to reach these numbers legions of auxiliaries were used to supplement Roman citizens. The auxiliary soldiers quickly learned to employ the fighting tactics of their new masters and eventually learned to use this against Rome.
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The solution to the rising cost of expansion was to offer Roman citizenship and self rule to the conquered territories thereby placing a buffer zone between themselves and the barbarians beyond the borders. Whilst in theory this would give people a stake in Empire it also gave them an acquired taste for freedom.
The distance between the centre of control (the senate), and the dispersed workforce (the legions), resulted in significant delays in communication and feedback. Generals were often in the field for a number of years during which time they became self-absorbed and increasingly convinced of their own importance to the Empire. In the meantime those at 'head office' spent their time feathering their own nests and careers, ignoring and forgetting that their continued existence relied on the 'workers' at the front end of 'the business'. As a consequence, front line generals became significantly disenchanted with the senate which in turn became resentful of the power base being created by upstart soldiers.
It is the same in business. It is difficult enough to manage a company with one thousand employees let alone hundreds of thousands, especially if they are spread across the globe. Leaders quickly become disenfranchised and detached from staff at the customer end of the business and rely on reports generated by managers who are wary of publicising the negative aspects of trading. Communication relies on sound bites and positive messages of support of senior management strategy. Telling the truth becomes career debilitating.
Senior management spends less and less time in the field and any problems that emerge are blamed on a lack of understanding by the workforce of how tough it is being at the top.
The emotional distance between different factions within the Roman Empire, the lust for power, and the excess availability of paid muscle to enforce individual will, often resulted in internal violence. Gradually, as much time was spent fighting each other as was spent on fighting the barbarians.
The normal tenure for a Roman soldier was twenty five years. The average rule of a Roman emperor was 7 years, with some holding office for only a few days (in AD69 there were five emperors). Many emperors died violently. It appears that working in head office, despite the fringe benefits, was a lot more dangerous than working in the front line.
As the slave population grew so did the Roman's strength to resist, despite the fatal consequences of rebellion. What the Romans failed to realise is that when people have nothing to lose they also have nothing to live for.
What lessons can we learn if any?In 1973 E. F. Schumacher's book 'Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered' was published. Schumacher questioned the very idea of growth for growth's sake and warned that the way in which economies slavishly followed the idea that measuring gross national product was an indicator of well-being was a flawed concept. Whilst the 'small is beautiful concept' was widely adopted for worthwhile consideration in many business schools, it has clearly remained an academic concept with only cosmetic transference to the business practices on the ground. Madeleine Bunting writing in the Guardian in November 2011 commented that 'Small became cool but only as part of a branding strategy which masked the ongoing concentration of political and economic power. Gigantism has triumphed'.
In the 1930s Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi promoted the philosophy of economic self-sufficiency at the village level. He believed that the industrialisation of India being promoted by others would lead to dehumanising and was both unnecessary and beyond the basic needs of most people. For the most part his argument lost out to those who wanted India to be the stimulus for a 21st Century industrial revolution. Yet Ghandian economics has a significant following, though little political clout.
In 2012, the European Union's budget (€130bn) coupled with committed expenditure will reach a staggering €276bn. What began as a common trading platform has mushroomed into an organisation that employs 33,000 people to administer policy and you might rightly ask 'what do they all do' and more to the point 'why'? On top of the 33,000 administrative staff there are 754 Members of the European Parliament. The official website for the EU says that the central operating cost for the EU is value for money, costing each EU citizen only 67cents each. It further assures us that a mere 6% of the 2012 budget is spent on administration and only 6% of that on salaries. Mentioning these figures and the way in which they are presented is indicative of people running large organisations who eventually lose touch with the reality of most people's lives. Those who put these figures together represent them as 'only 6%' - but that's actually eight billion euro! And 'only 6% of 6%' is still five hundred million euro. 67 cents each might not sound a lot, but 504 million people paying it is. But is anyone interested enough to do anything about this? Apparently not.
There was a time when to have two or three close friends was sufficient for most people. Now social and business websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter encourage us to count our friends and contacts in the hundreds. The World Wide Web enables us to reach billions of people and distance is no longer an obstacle to communication, but is it? Email and texting reduces our ability to interact and sensitise us to really understanding each other. The complaint of many employees is that 'nobody listens to me' and in the main that is probably true. Senior managers communicate by email and via layers of management until eventually the message becomes distorted and unrecognisable from what was meant at the outset. People sitting within touching distance in offices communicate by email. People standing and sitting next to each other in social situations constantly use their iPhones to send, update and receive messages from other people. Does it matter? Isn't it just part of progress? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is simply part of the unrelenting process of reaching out beyond the confines of our local environment and embracing the expansion of that environment, and encouraging us to grow.
At a local political level councils are obsessed with attracting large conglomerates to their area with the aim of creating new jobs. In the process they usually have to offer significant incentives costing millions. In many cases the large conglomerate, having milked as much profit from the deal as possible during the years of reduced business rates and easing of planning restrictions, eventually closes the business in order to find some other mug council to exploit. Councils do not seem to consider how supporting small businesses might be a better sustainable bet in the long term. Large businesses going bust cause mayhem. Small ones don't.
I agree with Schumacher that the slavish drive for growth is a flawed concept. There is nothing wrong with staying as you are, provided that you continue to meet your obligations. In order to do so you also probably need to be innovative and react to changing markets and the world at large. This is easier if you are a small operation. As you grow the problems become bigger and so do the number of people creating and attempting to solve those problems.
We need to question exactly what the purpose of growth is and it seems to me that its purpose is to make some people, a small number of people, very rich. Yet how rich is enough? It is not uncommon to see people with so much money that they could never spend it in a dozen lifetimes. Why does anyone need to be paid millions? Why does anyone need to be paid one million? Take away the financial incentive of growth and I guarantee that the mergers and takeovers which are deemed necessary to improve customer choice and services would disappear overnight.
Saturday, September 28, 2019
God's Infallible Word: Something's Screwy Somewhere
I know I probably shouldn't pick on God and the Bible as often as I do, but, you know, it's so damn easy it's like taking candy from a baby. God sure leads with His chin. Anyway, if I haven't been struck down by lightning by now, I probably won't be, so here goes another round. As per usual, all references are from the King James Version (KJV) of the so-called "Word of God".
Biblical Close Encounters
Way more people have had a close encounter with the Loch Ness Monster than all the various Biblical characters put together have had with respect to an up-close-and-personal chinwag with the Almighty. If you put faith in ancient Greece mythology, way more mortals had a close encounter - a very close encounter - with Zeus, than ever conversed with God.
In The Biblical Beginning: Genesis
Genesis 1:24-25 tells us God created the terrestrial animals (cattle, beasts, creeping things). Man was then created in Genesis 1:26-27. In Genesis 2:7, God created man (as in the first male), and then the beasts, etc. in Genesis 2:18-19. So which came first the human or the animal?
God says (Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:3) that if you eat of the forbidden fruit that contained the knowledge of good-and-evil (the Bible never mentions it being an apple by the way) you will kick the bucket, immediately if not sooner. Adam and Eve however had a taste of that good-and-evil brand of snack food (Genesis 3:6), and guess what, like the serpent said (Genesis 3:4); thou both survived and didn't kick the bucket. So, God was telling fibs! In fact, Adam lived to a ripe old age of 930 years (Genesis 5:5), doing his fruitful and multiplying bit long after tasting the forbidden fruit. So God indeed cried 'wolf'. In God we trust? I think not.
And does that serpent who lurked in the Garden of Eden know something we don't, that in fact there is not a god, but gods (plural). Check out the wisdom of the serpent in Genesis 3:5. Polytheism rules, OK? In fact, later on down the track in Exodus, and in other Biblical books, God says the same thing - there are indeed other gods.
Sarah's age according to Genesis 17:17 was 90 years old when she gives birth to Isaac; Genesis 23:1 records her age as 127 years old at time of death. That should be in the "Guinness Book of World Records" as well as "Ripley's Believe It or Not".
You all know the story of Noah's Ark and the Biblical Flood and how the animals (every living thing of all flesh) went in two by two, male and female (Genesis 6:19-20; Genesis 7:8-9 and 7:14-15) But in Genesis 7:2-3, clean animals go in sevens, male and female, ditto the fowls of the air, but unclean beasts only go in pairs, male and female. Something's screwy somewhere when the Bible can't get the story straight and consistent in one lone chapter.
What age do you expect to live to? If you believe in Genesis 6:3, you'll live until you're 120 years old! And here I thought threescore and ten years was the Biblical norm - well I was wrong. I still have another fifty-five years of paying taxes to go, not five. That's not 120 maximum by the way, but 120 years minimum (since a lot of Biblical characters, like Adam, lived way beyond that). Anyway, 120 years it is. That's God's promise. But in reality, sigh, that's just another of God's fibs. So if you don't, live to be 120, you know who to bellyache too!
Genesis 4:17 makes mention of Cain's wife. Where did she come from?
Then you have that Towel of Babel tale. But it wasn't just God who went down to confound the language of the builders so that no one would understand anyone else. There is a mysterious, and anomalous other(s), noted in Genesis 11:7 as "let us go down" and do the dirty deed. Who is that "us"? Who knows?
In fact, to be perfectly honest, the entirety of Genesis is one big anomaly from start to finish.
Other Biblical Contradictions
Now where exactly did Aaron, kid brother of Moses, kick the bucket? If you believe Numbers 33:39, Aaron died, at 123 years of age, at Mount Hor. On the other hand, if you believe Deuteronomy 10:6, Aaron died and was buried at Mosera. They certainly didn't employ fact-checkers back in those days.
Who provoked David to number Israel? Well, according to 1 Chronicles 21:1, it was Satan. But, let's not give the devil his due quite so fast, because in 2 Samuel 24:1, it was the LORD Himself who did the deed! There's never a good editor around when you need one.
How many brat kids did Michal, the daughter of Saul have? Well, 2 Samuel 6:23 said she was barren until the day she died. No descendents did she have. But, do not despair for her, because in 2 Samuel 21:8 she gave birth to a total of five strapping boys. Someone (Samuel?) didn't study enough maths to distinguish zero units from five units.
God says that Jesus preaches peace unto the children of Israel in Acts 10:36. But, Jesus counters that in Matthew 10:34 with his sword overriding any purpose he might have regarding peace on earth. Jesus makes crystal clear that "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth".
But the biggest contradiction of all is God's commandment "Thou shall not kill" when not only does God kill again, and again, and again, and again (the Biblical Flood; Sodom & Gomorrah; the Tenth Plague; the drowning of Pharaoh's army, etc.), but instructs others to kill on His behalf, like in Exodus 32:27 (kill them all) or Deuteronomy 20:17 (destroy them: kill, kill, kill).
So much for the infallible so-called "Word of God", but then I'm sure that if God decreed that three plus seven equalled a bakers dozen, that His good flock would accept that too without question.
The Source of All Evil
Who is responsible for evil? Is it because Adam and Eve did a naughty and got the heave-ho from paradise for their troubles? Is it because of Satan? Are the fallen angels responsible? No. Who is responsible for evil? God is responsible for creating evil and He admits it. Just check out Isaiah 45:7. So, if there is evil in this world, don't blame anyone other than the Almighty. Whodunit - The Lord, that's whodunit!
Biblical Unicorns
The Bible lends credibility to the existence of unicorns, mentioning them nine times over in the KJV.
The Angle on Angels
These are multi-thousands of images from stained glass church windows, to artworks and sculptures, to Christmas cards that show Biblical angels with two wings. I'm damned if I can find any reference in the Bible (KJV at least) that describe angels with a pair of wings - something's screwy somewhere.
https://www.wikipedia.org
The Bible's Sir Joseph
Joseph was 'knighted' for services rendered unto ancient Egypt, well unto the pharaoh for Joseph had a talent interpreting dreams, especially the pharaoh's dreams. This really impressed the pharaoh.
Genesis 41: 39-46 notes that Joseph, at age 30, was anointed by the pharaoh at be basically his second in command and ruler over all the land of Egypt
Genesis 45:26: Joseph is governor over all the land of Egypt.
Now Joseph dies at 110 years of age (nice going, though a decade less than expected!) at Genesis 50:26, and is embalmed and buried in Egypt. So Joseph was a very important person in ancient Egypt for about 80 years.
But when we come to Exodus 1:8, we have a new king (pharaoh) of Egypt "which knew not Joseph". WTF? Obviously the new pharaoh could not have known Joseph personally, since Joseph was dead, but to not even know the name, the famous Joseph, who must have had all manner of texts written about him and monuments and a grave site and so on and so forth. That's an anomaly. It's like a new President of the United States (POTUS) who never heard of the existence of a previous POTUS, any previous POTUS.
The latter pharaoh (whoever he was) can probably be excused however for his faulty memory seeing as how to this very day no ancient records, documents, hieroglyphs, stele, far less a tomb has ever verified there being a Biblical Joseph in Egypt full stop.
By the Rivers of Babylon
If God smote Sodom and Gomorrah for being wicked and sinful (Genesis 13:13; Genesis 18:20), why did He not smite Babylon? Despite a lot of godly huffing and puffing in Isaiah and Jeremiah (Isaiah 13:19 and Jeremiah 25:12 & Jeremiah Chapters 50 & 51) that seems to suggest Babylon will cop what Sodom and Gomorrah copped, it was left to the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the desert to take care of and bury wicked Babylon (which virtually became synonymous with all things evil in the Bible). Maybe that was God's master plan all along, but it sure was the longwinded way of doing things. If God had been consistent, He would have given Babylon the Sodom and Gomorrah treatment directly. Of course if God were really a fag-hater, He would have smote ancient Greece too and dealt with those upstart Greek deities to boot who weren't exactly Mr. & Mrs. Purity.
Biblical Sightseeing
WTF? It takes forty years for the Chosen People to get from N.E. Egypt to the Promised Land (Israel) - it only took the American pioneers six months to get to their Promised Land across the Great Plains and mountain ranges and deserts by covered wagon - something's screwy somewhere unless the Israelites just stopped to smell the roses and take in the local sights and scenery. Then you figure the distances travelled by Captain Cook and crew, Magellan, Columbus, and all those other seafarers in the golden age of sail. They travelled vastly greater distances in vastly shorter time frames. The more you compare the Exodus trek with other treks, the more anomalous it appears.
Biblical Generation Gaps:
One of the most idiotic themes in the Bible is that the innocent suffer because their ancestors were guilty of some sin or other in the eyes of God, whether it's on the grand scale of humanity condemned to hardship and suffering because of Adam and Eve's giving in to temptation (Genesis 3), or the examples of the sons and daughters unto the third, fourth even tenth generation being persona non grata to the Almighty because of an iniquity preformed by dear old great, great, great grandpa or grandma (Exodus 20: 5; Exodus 34: 7; Numbers 14: 18; Deuteronomy 5: 9; Deuteronomy 23: 2-3). That our loving, forgiving, merciful, compassionate Almighty would act in such a manner is anomalous.
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Biblical Aliens: The Extraterrestrial Jesus
Several times Jesus admits he is "not of this world". Check out John 8:23 and 18:36.
Biblical End Times
According to Matthew 24:3-14 and Mark 13:4-13 the signs of the end times are to be along the lines of wars; rumours of war; conflicts between nations and kingdoms; famines; pestilences; earthquakes, false prophets; deadly family feuds; worldwide distribution of the gospels.
So what's changed in over 2000 years? Why would this be interpreted on being now, not then? That interpretation is highly anomalous, yet it's what a lot of Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists would have you believe.
Biblical Geography
Though Biblical geography is good in general - no glaring oops like describing massive ice caps and glaciers, that's no big plus seeing as how the various Biblical authors lived in the areas described by the Bible. I could write a totally unbelievable tale of BEMs (Bug Eyed Monsters of the extraterrestrial kind) on the Moon and yet get the lunar geography spot-on. Not that Biblical geography doesn't have it's oops moments, like why no physical evidence or remains of Sodom and Gomorrah; where's Noah's Ark to be found that hasn't already been explored high and low? And if the weather be part of geography, then having a global spell of very persistent wet weather for forty days and nights (960 hours) is highly anomalous, so much so as to be impossible. It's called Planet Earth, not Planet Ocean, because there's not enough of the wet stuff to make it so. Parts of Biblical geography are anomalous.
Biblical Hot Air
The Bible is chock-a-block full of prophets and prophecies, right up through and including the end of the world as we know it (Armageddon). Amazingly, all this soothsaying failed to note and log anything about global warming, climate change, etc., rather major issues in our times. The Bible is big on prophecy; the proof of the prophecy pudding is lacking. That's an anomaly.
Biblical Characters
There are no independent, verifiable documents, statues, pictograms, stele, inscriptions, grave sites, or any other historical or archaeological evidence that yields any additional credibility to the actual existence of various famous Biblical characters like Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Abraham, Joseph, Moses & Aaron, Noah, Solomon, David & Goliath, Jonah, Methuselah, Joshua, and a host of others. You just gotta take the Bible's word for the reality of these individuals. It's like the only reference to Homer & Plato, Aristotle & Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid & Archimedes, was in an ancient Greek school primer for a beginners' reader and that's it. Would the very real existence of these half dozen ancients be given any real credibility given just a reference in a lone text? What makes the Bible a special case then? If Biblical characters are as really real and as really the VIPs they are made out to be, then it's highly anomalous that there just is no other independent confirmation of that status.
A Biblical Piece of the Action
Both the Bible and the Koran are as two peas in the same monotheistic pod. They collectively have influenced billions upon billions of people - whole societies in fact. These texts therefore somewhat remind me of the "Star Trek: The Original Series" TV episode 'A Piece of the Action' (aired January 12 1968) where an entire alien society was in the manner of the Bible/Koran subservient to a 'religious' text - in this case a book about Chicago gangsters in the roaring 1920's. That's what the aliens patterned their culture after. I'm sure that episode was a deliberate dig at the influence our religious texts have on us. But I consider it anomalous that much of the world's culture is centred on minor variations on and of a single religious text.
The Biblical Face of God
We've all seen images of God, from stained glass windows to Michelangelo to Hollywood. The anomaly is that it's all make-believe. Unless I've missed something somewhere along the line, no where in the Bible is God's physique noted; no physical description exists. He's not described as white, somewhere between middle and old age, with a very long flowing grey-white beard and long flowing grey-white hair who looks entirely human. The popular image is that the image of God was created in Zeus's image. Zeus was the model as Zeus's image was widely known from statues, pottery, etc. For all you know, God could look extremely alien, or for that matter pass you on the street without you blinking an eye.
You Can't Trust the Bible
We're used to current events being set down in the here and now. Journalists, camera crews, microphones, tape recorders, etc. will give you today's events on today's evening TV news broadcasts. Reviews of recent events will be covered in your weekly magazines. But if I were to write a new biography of say Alexander the Great, you'd know that it could not be 100% spot-on since there's no way to interview old Alex or those who knew him. Many a document, monument, inscription, etc. from that era would now be lost or destroyed. But when you read your Bible, do you think of the text as you would the evening news bulletin or weekly magazine news roundup, or, as you would my biography of Alex, someone who died way over 2000 years ago? If the former, you're sadly mistaken, for those who penned Biblical texts describing Biblical events can no more be trusted for 100% accuracy than my new biography of Alex, and for a similar reason. Words were put to paper long after the facts of the matter transpired. And as for Biblical quotations, well, no tape recorders existed back then, so take any pithy sayings with a very large grain of sodium chloride. Trusting in the Bible is an example of rather strange and anomalous human behaviour.
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Twiddling His Thumbs
Presumably, at the close of the Old Testament, God has retired to His throne room and penthouse in Heaven, and that's where He's been couped up for way over 2000 years now. The question is, what does God do with His time up there in La-La-Land? Even if He eats and sleeps and goes to the bathroom and taken daily heavenly showers and trims His beard weekly, that still leaves a lot of hours for - well what's the answer? Perhaps He stands at the Pearly Gates greeting new arrivals, or conducting Heavenly orientation sessions for new arrivals. Maybe He plays chess with Jesus or the archangels. Perhaps He conducts graduate classes in advanced Christian theology. Perhaps He ghost-writes articles for religious-themed magazines; watches those hellfire and brimstone televangelists on YouTube, or maybe once a year takes on the role of playing Santa Claus - no mortal could fill those shoes. Like Santa, God needs to keep a list and check it twice to find out who's been naughty and who's been nice to ensure that only those with the Right Religious Stuff enters through those Pearly Gates! It remains however that what God does with His spare time is an anomaly that has never been adequately explained.
Conclusions
This little exercise is barely scratching the surface that exposes that God's infallible word, as recorded in the Bible, is anything but. It is riddled with fallacies, errors, enigmas, anomalies, and a potful of similar synonyms.
Biblical Close Encounters
Way more people have had a close encounter with the Loch Ness Monster than all the various Biblical characters put together have had with respect to an up-close-and-personal chinwag with the Almighty. If you put faith in ancient Greece mythology, way more mortals had a close encounter - a very close encounter - with Zeus, than ever conversed with God.
In The Biblical Beginning: Genesis
Genesis 1:24-25 tells us God created the terrestrial animals (cattle, beasts, creeping things). Man was then created in Genesis 1:26-27. In Genesis 2:7, God created man (as in the first male), and then the beasts, etc. in Genesis 2:18-19. So which came first the human or the animal?
God says (Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:3) that if you eat of the forbidden fruit that contained the knowledge of good-and-evil (the Bible never mentions it being an apple by the way) you will kick the bucket, immediately if not sooner. Adam and Eve however had a taste of that good-and-evil brand of snack food (Genesis 3:6), and guess what, like the serpent said (Genesis 3:4); thou both survived and didn't kick the bucket. So, God was telling fibs! In fact, Adam lived to a ripe old age of 930 years (Genesis 5:5), doing his fruitful and multiplying bit long after tasting the forbidden fruit. So God indeed cried 'wolf'. In God we trust? I think not.
And does that serpent who lurked in the Garden of Eden know something we don't, that in fact there is not a god, but gods (plural). Check out the wisdom of the serpent in Genesis 3:5. Polytheism rules, OK? In fact, later on down the track in Exodus, and in other Biblical books, God says the same thing - there are indeed other gods.
Sarah's age according to Genesis 17:17 was 90 years old when she gives birth to Isaac; Genesis 23:1 records her age as 127 years old at time of death. That should be in the "Guinness Book of World Records" as well as "Ripley's Believe It or Not".
You all know the story of Noah's Ark and the Biblical Flood and how the animals (every living thing of all flesh) went in two by two, male and female (Genesis 6:19-20; Genesis 7:8-9 and 7:14-15) But in Genesis 7:2-3, clean animals go in sevens, male and female, ditto the fowls of the air, but unclean beasts only go in pairs, male and female. Something's screwy somewhere when the Bible can't get the story straight and consistent in one lone chapter.
What age do you expect to live to? If you believe in Genesis 6:3, you'll live until you're 120 years old! And here I thought threescore and ten years was the Biblical norm - well I was wrong. I still have another fifty-five years of paying taxes to go, not five. That's not 120 maximum by the way, but 120 years minimum (since a lot of Biblical characters, like Adam, lived way beyond that). Anyway, 120 years it is. That's God's promise. But in reality, sigh, that's just another of God's fibs. So if you don't, live to be 120, you know who to bellyache too!
Genesis 4:17 makes mention of Cain's wife. Where did she come from?
Then you have that Towel of Babel tale. But it wasn't just God who went down to confound the language of the builders so that no one would understand anyone else. There is a mysterious, and anomalous other(s), noted in Genesis 11:7 as "let us go down" and do the dirty deed. Who is that "us"? Who knows?
In fact, to be perfectly honest, the entirety of Genesis is one big anomaly from start to finish.
Other Biblical Contradictions
Now where exactly did Aaron, kid brother of Moses, kick the bucket? If you believe Numbers 33:39, Aaron died, at 123 years of age, at Mount Hor. On the other hand, if you believe Deuteronomy 10:6, Aaron died and was buried at Mosera. They certainly didn't employ fact-checkers back in those days.
Who provoked David to number Israel? Well, according to 1 Chronicles 21:1, it was Satan. But, let's not give the devil his due quite so fast, because in 2 Samuel 24:1, it was the LORD Himself who did the deed! There's never a good editor around when you need one.
How many brat kids did Michal, the daughter of Saul have? Well, 2 Samuel 6:23 said she was barren until the day she died. No descendents did she have. But, do not despair for her, because in 2 Samuel 21:8 she gave birth to a total of five strapping boys. Someone (Samuel?) didn't study enough maths to distinguish zero units from five units.
God says that Jesus preaches peace unto the children of Israel in Acts 10:36. But, Jesus counters that in Matthew 10:34 with his sword overriding any purpose he might have regarding peace on earth. Jesus makes crystal clear that "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth".
But the biggest contradiction of all is God's commandment "Thou shall not kill" when not only does God kill again, and again, and again, and again (the Biblical Flood; Sodom & Gomorrah; the Tenth Plague; the drowning of Pharaoh's army, etc.), but instructs others to kill on His behalf, like in Exodus 32:27 (kill them all) or Deuteronomy 20:17 (destroy them: kill, kill, kill).
So much for the infallible so-called "Word of God", but then I'm sure that if God decreed that three plus seven equalled a bakers dozen, that His good flock would accept that too without question.
The Source of All Evil
Who is responsible for evil? Is it because Adam and Eve did a naughty and got the heave-ho from paradise for their troubles? Is it because of Satan? Are the fallen angels responsible? No. Who is responsible for evil? God is responsible for creating evil and He admits it. Just check out Isaiah 45:7. So, if there is evil in this world, don't blame anyone other than the Almighty. Whodunit - The Lord, that's whodunit!
Biblical Unicorns
The Bible lends credibility to the existence of unicorns, mentioning them nine times over in the KJV.
The Angle on Angels
These are multi-thousands of images from stained glass church windows, to artworks and sculptures, to Christmas cards that show Biblical angels with two wings. I'm damned if I can find any reference in the Bible (KJV at least) that describe angels with a pair of wings - something's screwy somewhere.
https://www.wikipedia.org
The Bible's Sir Joseph
Joseph was 'knighted' for services rendered unto ancient Egypt, well unto the pharaoh for Joseph had a talent interpreting dreams, especially the pharaoh's dreams. This really impressed the pharaoh.
Genesis 41: 39-46 notes that Joseph, at age 30, was anointed by the pharaoh at be basically his second in command and ruler over all the land of Egypt
Genesis 45:26: Joseph is governor over all the land of Egypt.
Now Joseph dies at 110 years of age (nice going, though a decade less than expected!) at Genesis 50:26, and is embalmed and buried in Egypt. So Joseph was a very important person in ancient Egypt for about 80 years.
But when we come to Exodus 1:8, we have a new king (pharaoh) of Egypt "which knew not Joseph". WTF? Obviously the new pharaoh could not have known Joseph personally, since Joseph was dead, but to not even know the name, the famous Joseph, who must have had all manner of texts written about him and monuments and a grave site and so on and so forth. That's an anomaly. It's like a new President of the United States (POTUS) who never heard of the existence of a previous POTUS, any previous POTUS.
The latter pharaoh (whoever he was) can probably be excused however for his faulty memory seeing as how to this very day no ancient records, documents, hieroglyphs, stele, far less a tomb has ever verified there being a Biblical Joseph in Egypt full stop.
By the Rivers of Babylon
If God smote Sodom and Gomorrah for being wicked and sinful (Genesis 13:13; Genesis 18:20), why did He not smite Babylon? Despite a lot of godly huffing and puffing in Isaiah and Jeremiah (Isaiah 13:19 and Jeremiah 25:12 & Jeremiah Chapters 50 & 51) that seems to suggest Babylon will cop what Sodom and Gomorrah copped, it was left to the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the desert to take care of and bury wicked Babylon (which virtually became synonymous with all things evil in the Bible). Maybe that was God's master plan all along, but it sure was the longwinded way of doing things. If God had been consistent, He would have given Babylon the Sodom and Gomorrah treatment directly. Of course if God were really a fag-hater, He would have smote ancient Greece too and dealt with those upstart Greek deities to boot who weren't exactly Mr. & Mrs. Purity.
Biblical Sightseeing
WTF? It takes forty years for the Chosen People to get from N.E. Egypt to the Promised Land (Israel) - it only took the American pioneers six months to get to their Promised Land across the Great Plains and mountain ranges and deserts by covered wagon - something's screwy somewhere unless the Israelites just stopped to smell the roses and take in the local sights and scenery. Then you figure the distances travelled by Captain Cook and crew, Magellan, Columbus, and all those other seafarers in the golden age of sail. They travelled vastly greater distances in vastly shorter time frames. The more you compare the Exodus trek with other treks, the more anomalous it appears.
Biblical Generation Gaps:
One of the most idiotic themes in the Bible is that the innocent suffer because their ancestors were guilty of some sin or other in the eyes of God, whether it's on the grand scale of humanity condemned to hardship and suffering because of Adam and Eve's giving in to temptation (Genesis 3), or the examples of the sons and daughters unto the third, fourth even tenth generation being persona non grata to the Almighty because of an iniquity preformed by dear old great, great, great grandpa or grandma (Exodus 20: 5; Exodus 34: 7; Numbers 14: 18; Deuteronomy 5: 9; Deuteronomy 23: 2-3). That our loving, forgiving, merciful, compassionate Almighty would act in such a manner is anomalous.
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Biblical Aliens: The Extraterrestrial Jesus
Several times Jesus admits he is "not of this world". Check out John 8:23 and 18:36.
Biblical End Times
According to Matthew 24:3-14 and Mark 13:4-13 the signs of the end times are to be along the lines of wars; rumours of war; conflicts between nations and kingdoms; famines; pestilences; earthquakes, false prophets; deadly family feuds; worldwide distribution of the gospels.
So what's changed in over 2000 years? Why would this be interpreted on being now, not then? That interpretation is highly anomalous, yet it's what a lot of Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists would have you believe.
Biblical Geography
Though Biblical geography is good in general - no glaring oops like describing massive ice caps and glaciers, that's no big plus seeing as how the various Biblical authors lived in the areas described by the Bible. I could write a totally unbelievable tale of BEMs (Bug Eyed Monsters of the extraterrestrial kind) on the Moon and yet get the lunar geography spot-on. Not that Biblical geography doesn't have it's oops moments, like why no physical evidence or remains of Sodom and Gomorrah; where's Noah's Ark to be found that hasn't already been explored high and low? And if the weather be part of geography, then having a global spell of very persistent wet weather for forty days and nights (960 hours) is highly anomalous, so much so as to be impossible. It's called Planet Earth, not Planet Ocean, because there's not enough of the wet stuff to make it so. Parts of Biblical geography are anomalous.
Biblical Hot Air
The Bible is chock-a-block full of prophets and prophecies, right up through and including the end of the world as we know it (Armageddon). Amazingly, all this soothsaying failed to note and log anything about global warming, climate change, etc., rather major issues in our times. The Bible is big on prophecy; the proof of the prophecy pudding is lacking. That's an anomaly.
Biblical Characters
There are no independent, verifiable documents, statues, pictograms, stele, inscriptions, grave sites, or any other historical or archaeological evidence that yields any additional credibility to the actual existence of various famous Biblical characters like Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Abraham, Joseph, Moses & Aaron, Noah, Solomon, David & Goliath, Jonah, Methuselah, Joshua, and a host of others. You just gotta take the Bible's word for the reality of these individuals. It's like the only reference to Homer & Plato, Aristotle & Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid & Archimedes, was in an ancient Greek school primer for a beginners' reader and that's it. Would the very real existence of these half dozen ancients be given any real credibility given just a reference in a lone text? What makes the Bible a special case then? If Biblical characters are as really real and as really the VIPs they are made out to be, then it's highly anomalous that there just is no other independent confirmation of that status.
A Biblical Piece of the Action
Both the Bible and the Koran are as two peas in the same monotheistic pod. They collectively have influenced billions upon billions of people - whole societies in fact. These texts therefore somewhat remind me of the "Star Trek: The Original Series" TV episode 'A Piece of the Action' (aired January 12 1968) where an entire alien society was in the manner of the Bible/Koran subservient to a 'religious' text - in this case a book about Chicago gangsters in the roaring 1920's. That's what the aliens patterned their culture after. I'm sure that episode was a deliberate dig at the influence our religious texts have on us. But I consider it anomalous that much of the world's culture is centred on minor variations on and of a single religious text.
The Biblical Face of God
We've all seen images of God, from stained glass windows to Michelangelo to Hollywood. The anomaly is that it's all make-believe. Unless I've missed something somewhere along the line, no where in the Bible is God's physique noted; no physical description exists. He's not described as white, somewhere between middle and old age, with a very long flowing grey-white beard and long flowing grey-white hair who looks entirely human. The popular image is that the image of God was created in Zeus's image. Zeus was the model as Zeus's image was widely known from statues, pottery, etc. For all you know, God could look extremely alien, or for that matter pass you on the street without you blinking an eye.
You Can't Trust the Bible
We're used to current events being set down in the here and now. Journalists, camera crews, microphones, tape recorders, etc. will give you today's events on today's evening TV news broadcasts. Reviews of recent events will be covered in your weekly magazines. But if I were to write a new biography of say Alexander the Great, you'd know that it could not be 100% spot-on since there's no way to interview old Alex or those who knew him. Many a document, monument, inscription, etc. from that era would now be lost or destroyed. But when you read your Bible, do you think of the text as you would the evening news bulletin or weekly magazine news roundup, or, as you would my biography of Alex, someone who died way over 2000 years ago? If the former, you're sadly mistaken, for those who penned Biblical texts describing Biblical events can no more be trusted for 100% accuracy than my new biography of Alex, and for a similar reason. Words were put to paper long after the facts of the matter transpired. And as for Biblical quotations, well, no tape recorders existed back then, so take any pithy sayings with a very large grain of sodium chloride. Trusting in the Bible is an example of rather strange and anomalous human behaviour.
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Twiddling His Thumbs
Presumably, at the close of the Old Testament, God has retired to His throne room and penthouse in Heaven, and that's where He's been couped up for way over 2000 years now. The question is, what does God do with His time up there in La-La-Land? Even if He eats and sleeps and goes to the bathroom and taken daily heavenly showers and trims His beard weekly, that still leaves a lot of hours for - well what's the answer? Perhaps He stands at the Pearly Gates greeting new arrivals, or conducting Heavenly orientation sessions for new arrivals. Maybe He plays chess with Jesus or the archangels. Perhaps He conducts graduate classes in advanced Christian theology. Perhaps He ghost-writes articles for religious-themed magazines; watches those hellfire and brimstone televangelists on YouTube, or maybe once a year takes on the role of playing Santa Claus - no mortal could fill those shoes. Like Santa, God needs to keep a list and check it twice to find out who's been naughty and who's been nice to ensure that only those with the Right Religious Stuff enters through those Pearly Gates! It remains however that what God does with His spare time is an anomaly that has never been adequately explained.
Conclusions
This little exercise is barely scratching the surface that exposes that God's infallible word, as recorded in the Bible, is anything but. It is riddled with fallacies, errors, enigmas, anomalies, and a potful of similar synonyms.
Me VS Myself On And Off The Court
Who is the Anxious Athlete?
I was warned by my dad that life throws you a lot of curveballs, but this roller coaster ride I was not ready for. Living with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder), Panic Disorder, Hypochondria and Depression diagnosed by many different doctors, is definitely something that takes its toll on you and can beat you down worse than any opposition you will ever meet. It's sort of a mix of twenty Mike Tyson right hooks, a gigantic wave crashing down on you and brushing you to shore, and The Riddler taunting you mercilessly in any way he can all day wrapped up in a tightly tied box ready for you to open each morning. My morning routine was usually the same each day: wake up and feel relief that I was still alive. Check if the pounding feeling and pain in my chest was still there... which it was. Stagger to the bathroom by holding on to something due to the dizziness to look in the mirror and notice how God-awful I looked and wonder what the hell my fiancée saw in me. This followed by the morning shower, thinking about how I would ever get through the day, working on my fake smile and attitude so I could stay positive enough to keep my tennis coaching position. Then I would go over how much I hated every aspect of everyone I would come into contact with that day and finally the worry and fear process would be going full speed ahead.
https://www.wikipedia.org
My biggest fan and the person who started it all for me was my dad. To give you a mental picture of my dad, imagine this: a 9 year old has just reached the final of his first tennis tournament, comes off the court with a proud smile being hugged by his loving mom, only to be on the way home and told to throw the trophy out of a moving car with the kind of scream a lion would be proud of. The reason? Apparently I hadn't given a hundred and ten percent on the court, and this was followed up by being sent to my room and the door slammed behind me. Yep, my dad had a dream for me and that was to be the next Andre Agassi and whether I wanted this dream or not didn't matter. 6 am practices followed by being home schooled followed by more tennis in the afternoon followed by fitness was my daily life. All the while I just wanted to be a regular kid having fun on the playground and meeting kids my own age. The worst part about my situation as a kid growing up in Vancouver, BC as a junior tennis star was that in this sport you had no partners to shoulder the blame with - unlike team sports where you can blame your goalie or your linebacker. Nope, tennis is two gladiators going head to head and there can only be one winner... and one loser. It's even tougher to bring out your best game when you have the father from hell staring you down on the sidelines, ready to verbally give it to you if you lost the match.
Now I am 32 years old and have suffered from extreme anxiety for the past six years and have lived to tell the story (barely). As I look back on my junior years I realize how early my Anxiety started and how year after year I just found different things to attach myself to so that my anxiety would continue to grow. If deep down I had the tools I knew would work and if I just had the patience to stay with them for a long period, why couldn't I push through and detach myself from the prison I was feeling each day? I'll tell you why - because from a young age my mind had been programmed to fight everything even if that thing had a positive side to it. That just wasn't good enough, and my mind would find the threatening part only and the Anxiety cycle would begin. Over and over I basically treated everything in my life like it was a tennis match and I needed to do what I could to be the victor. A simple walk in the park where someone would look at me a second too long and the Anxiety cycle would begin, all of a sudden I would start looking out for people that stared too long from the fear of being judged for something like my clothes or my walk or whatever. Being at a shopping mall where a sales clerk would ask, 'Can I help you with something?' - A normal person would realize this is her job and she gets paid to help customers. I would say, 'No thank you, I'm just looking', but really I would be thinking 'Why am I being pressured to buy something - if I needed her help I would ask for it! Geez I hate pushy people!' This usually started the cycle that people with Anxiety and Panic Disorder deal with and what usually followed was either a slight cough, my usual spitting routine, cracking my knuckles, and the most popular one of them all - nail biting. Quickly thoughts became negative and fearful, which manifested into some kind of physical symptom - extreme dizziness, heart palpitations, and migraines in my case - which leads to leaving the mall asap. Oh yes, then comes the shortness of breath which is followed by feeling like you are dying which is actually the worst feeling I've ever felt in my life and wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I will cover later on in the book what comes after all that which is usually a stranger calling emergency and landing me in a bed next to people I was starting to know quite well. Hmmm I wonder why I avoided shopping malls for the next few years?
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Agoraphobia is avoiding places that can cause unusual panic and anxiety for a person and boy did I have a long list of places to avoid from my mid 20's to early 30's. Not only would certain places trigger these emotional reactions that led to more panic attacks and chronic Anxiety, but it was also food, drinks, people, pets, and even music. To a person that doesn't suffer from GAD or Panic Disorder, having a beer on a warm day on the patio is as relaxing as lying next to the ocean listening to the sound of the waves. However for me, having a glass of beer would bring up memories of another incident where I would find myself in the ER or shaking in uncontrollable fear in bed at home. So I avoided it, but being a tennis coach it was difficult to say no to a client who wanted to share a few beers after a tennis lesson or a group inviting me to their usual weekend tennis social. Of course, thinking it would be rude to say no, I would go to these get-togethers and have a few beers. Sometimes people would ask me if I was alright after my first beer, because I would be so stricken with fear that another deadly scenario would happen that night and my panic would set in. Next thing I knew the physical sensations would come back, I would be extremely dizzy again and around and around and around I would go. For years this was my daily struggle. I had nights where I would cry and ask 'why me?' and surf the web trying to find solutions to the evil thing that had taken over my life. In my early 20's I remember being free from negative thoughts and having an anxiety level that would match the rest of the world. If someone stepped on my foot on the bus, I would brush it off in a few seconds and move on. But in my late 20's, if the same thing happened it would ruin my whole day. Not only that, if the person who had stepped on my foot was a woman, for example, I would hate all women because of their lack of awareness and therefore generalized women.
See how this all works? What I really hope is as we get deeper and deeper through this book, you readers can find similarities with what I have dealt with. I also hope you will use the suggestions I give through the chapters as well as the main steps that I outline at the end to help you get on the right track again and slowly turn these fearful thoughts, feelings, and reactions around. Over the six years of my struggle with GAD and Panic Disorder I've read many self- help books that describe so-called 'miracle techniques' that would get rid of my Anxiety in an instant. I have also had a cabinet totally full of pills and remedies that Doctors and websites recommended that would really help me. I'll tell you something, though - none of those books or websites has been from the perspective of someone who has gone through the levels of Anxiety first-hand and for as long as I have and come out of it in the end better than they were before like I have. I am a brand new man, and I hope this will motivate you and if you have the patience to stick to my suggestions, then you will also come through this and be able to look back at the man or woman you once were a few months ago and realize what a waste of time and energy that cycle of Anxiety was.
I remember one day, walking around on my day off from work on a beautiful weekend, feeling absolutely exhausted, even though I had a good eight hours of sleep and a healthy breakfast. I was thinking to myself that something was terribly wrong, why was I feeling as if the world was like a dream? That day I realized that I had been hit with the experience of depersonalization, the sense that the world had become less real and lacking in significance. I dragged myself around in a sort of daze, almost like being on a street drug. People were walking past me but it felt as if I was in a dream and this wasn't real. This off-balance, unreal feeling had kicked in so badly that I would act in ways that I never thought I would. My thoughts spiraled out of control and that day I knew that if I didn't make some drastic changes in my life in every aspect then I was headed down a road that deep down I didn't want to be on. But I was comfortable, GAD was my comfort zone. My mind said if I didn't worry about these things and didn't take care of these threats around me that I would lose control, and if I lost control that would lead to the ultimate fear that being a hypochondriac brings, which is an early death. My mind was in full on fight or flight mode from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to sleep, and on top of all the physical manifestations that Anxiety brought, now I was also stuck in this dreamlike trance all day. Sometimes my fiancée Robyn would be talking to me and mention something that would be important for me to remember, but of course it didn't register because I was too busy keeping an eye on my physical symptoms and how I was feeling. It must have been so frustrating for someone that close to me trying to understand what was really going on and have a regular conversation with and instead this man, this love of your life, has turned into a mute who is clearly miserable and with no end in sight.
Yes, those were dark days and I am glad they are over. Do I still experience some dizziness and fatigue? Yes, but compared to the man I used to be I've made a complete turnaround and have regained control of my thoughts and my life, and have stopped the fear from rushing in and overtaking me. If there was a funny part to all of this it was this: how I could be feeling like I was on my deathbed before going into the ER, and then after being checked out feeling amazing with a sense of being born again? In fact, there was one instance that I can remember when one of my good friends Eric, whom I was living with at the time, took me to the ER around midnight due to the shortness of breath I was feeling. He must have been so confused to see his friend and roommate suffering this panic like this and not knowing what to say or do he dropped me off there and I came out as the sun was rising feeling great again. Only to notice immense chest pains and dizziness later that day, so this time I went to my family doctor to figure out the situation. Through all of these years, I've realized that Anxiety is a very tricky thing. Our ancestors needed this fight or flight response in case of danger like some kind of creature chasing after them and becoming their dinner. They needed to be quick and react in an instant, the mind needed to recognize a threat and the body needed to be ready to do battle or run. My mind and body were reacting as if there were a sabre-toothed tiger around every corner, but of course there wasn't. Why couldn't I realize that these physical sensations were just a way for my body to prepare itself to fight a threat and they weren't some life threatening illness or heart attack? Especially after doctors of all kinds reassuring me that I was completely healthy and had nothing to worry about? Because I continued to fear the unknown, my mind kept saying 'this is it', 'this time it will end me', or 'maybe the doctor missed something because he hesitated a little when he was explaining something to me'. There was always that 'what if' and that was enough to continue to add fuel to my fear and anxiety cycle. During prize money tennis tournaments I remember always getting sick or injured before a match and having to default the match (not play due to an injury). My fearful thoughts of a potential panic attack, and how deep those amazingly fearful physical symptoms of ultra-high levels of anxiety were rooted in me, many times forced me to not even walk on the tennis court
even if I was a real underdog with nothing to lose.
Of course, during those dark years there were things that helped me get by and made life enjoyable, for example I didn't have my dad breathing down my neck during tennis practices and matches anymore. I really started to enjoy training and competing in tournaments again in my early 30's. I also enjoyed lifting weights if the fatigue and dizziness I felt on a daily basis took a few hours off during the day. Another thing I absolutely loved to do was to DJ. In fact this was the greatest release for me, because for a few hours my thoughts were directed towards synching beautiful music for people to dance and enjoy themselves to instead of indulging in my usual negative and worrisome thinking. It gave me so much freedom whether it was DJing in my own home or in a bar I was hooked to that feeling - no thoughts, just pure positive energy all around me. Eventually I would start my own mobile DJ company, Sev Productions, and would do weddings, private parties, graduations, and pretty much any event I could get. I really don't know how I was able to do something I had never done before and run with it the way I did with DJing. I wasn't in the right place mentally to just pick something up like that because I was already so busy trying to find a diagnosis and eventually a cure for what I was dealing with. I remember House Music being one of the biggest triggers to my Anxiety, but shortly after getting my DJ equipment I decided to spin some. I think House Music was a trigger because of the fast tempo that electronic music brings with it - sort of like when you're at the peak of your panic and everything is going out of control. This was the beginning of what was to be a real solution to my Anxiety problems. I remember a song being played loudly in my place from one turntable and another song about to be mixed in on the other one and I was listening to it through my earphones. I could just feel my body go into the fight or flight mode and that sent my thoughts into a frenzy again, and for the first time I didn't run. I actually withstood the feeling of losing control of my mind and body and stayed right where I was, sweating profusely, I continued to mix song after song and for some reason at the top of my lungs I yelled, "Go to hell Anxiety!!!" I was worried and scared to death but I kept going and going, feeling horrible but awesome at the same time, kind of like Mel Gibson in Braveheart at the end of the movie yelling "Freedom!!!"
After another twenty minutes of mixing music and yelling, I was absolutely exhausted but surprisingly alive and for the first time I felt some retreat from my physical sensations. My negative thoughts were still there, but I was too tired to care anymore. How come I didn't collapse? How come I didn't run away this time?
I was warned by my dad that life throws you a lot of curveballs, but this roller coaster ride I was not ready for. Living with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder), Panic Disorder, Hypochondria and Depression diagnosed by many different doctors, is definitely something that takes its toll on you and can beat you down worse than any opposition you will ever meet. It's sort of a mix of twenty Mike Tyson right hooks, a gigantic wave crashing down on you and brushing you to shore, and The Riddler taunting you mercilessly in any way he can all day wrapped up in a tightly tied box ready for you to open each morning. My morning routine was usually the same each day: wake up and feel relief that I was still alive. Check if the pounding feeling and pain in my chest was still there... which it was. Stagger to the bathroom by holding on to something due to the dizziness to look in the mirror and notice how God-awful I looked and wonder what the hell my fiancée saw in me. This followed by the morning shower, thinking about how I would ever get through the day, working on my fake smile and attitude so I could stay positive enough to keep my tennis coaching position. Then I would go over how much I hated every aspect of everyone I would come into contact with that day and finally the worry and fear process would be going full speed ahead.
https://www.wikipedia.org
My biggest fan and the person who started it all for me was my dad. To give you a mental picture of my dad, imagine this: a 9 year old has just reached the final of his first tennis tournament, comes off the court with a proud smile being hugged by his loving mom, only to be on the way home and told to throw the trophy out of a moving car with the kind of scream a lion would be proud of. The reason? Apparently I hadn't given a hundred and ten percent on the court, and this was followed up by being sent to my room and the door slammed behind me. Yep, my dad had a dream for me and that was to be the next Andre Agassi and whether I wanted this dream or not didn't matter. 6 am practices followed by being home schooled followed by more tennis in the afternoon followed by fitness was my daily life. All the while I just wanted to be a regular kid having fun on the playground and meeting kids my own age. The worst part about my situation as a kid growing up in Vancouver, BC as a junior tennis star was that in this sport you had no partners to shoulder the blame with - unlike team sports where you can blame your goalie or your linebacker. Nope, tennis is two gladiators going head to head and there can only be one winner... and one loser. It's even tougher to bring out your best game when you have the father from hell staring you down on the sidelines, ready to verbally give it to you if you lost the match.
Now I am 32 years old and have suffered from extreme anxiety for the past six years and have lived to tell the story (barely). As I look back on my junior years I realize how early my Anxiety started and how year after year I just found different things to attach myself to so that my anxiety would continue to grow. If deep down I had the tools I knew would work and if I just had the patience to stay with them for a long period, why couldn't I push through and detach myself from the prison I was feeling each day? I'll tell you why - because from a young age my mind had been programmed to fight everything even if that thing had a positive side to it. That just wasn't good enough, and my mind would find the threatening part only and the Anxiety cycle would begin. Over and over I basically treated everything in my life like it was a tennis match and I needed to do what I could to be the victor. A simple walk in the park where someone would look at me a second too long and the Anxiety cycle would begin, all of a sudden I would start looking out for people that stared too long from the fear of being judged for something like my clothes or my walk or whatever. Being at a shopping mall where a sales clerk would ask, 'Can I help you with something?' - A normal person would realize this is her job and she gets paid to help customers. I would say, 'No thank you, I'm just looking', but really I would be thinking 'Why am I being pressured to buy something - if I needed her help I would ask for it! Geez I hate pushy people!' This usually started the cycle that people with Anxiety and Panic Disorder deal with and what usually followed was either a slight cough, my usual spitting routine, cracking my knuckles, and the most popular one of them all - nail biting. Quickly thoughts became negative and fearful, which manifested into some kind of physical symptom - extreme dizziness, heart palpitations, and migraines in my case - which leads to leaving the mall asap. Oh yes, then comes the shortness of breath which is followed by feeling like you are dying which is actually the worst feeling I've ever felt in my life and wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I will cover later on in the book what comes after all that which is usually a stranger calling emergency and landing me in a bed next to people I was starting to know quite well. Hmmm I wonder why I avoided shopping malls for the next few years?
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Agoraphobia is avoiding places that can cause unusual panic and anxiety for a person and boy did I have a long list of places to avoid from my mid 20's to early 30's. Not only would certain places trigger these emotional reactions that led to more panic attacks and chronic Anxiety, but it was also food, drinks, people, pets, and even music. To a person that doesn't suffer from GAD or Panic Disorder, having a beer on a warm day on the patio is as relaxing as lying next to the ocean listening to the sound of the waves. However for me, having a glass of beer would bring up memories of another incident where I would find myself in the ER or shaking in uncontrollable fear in bed at home. So I avoided it, but being a tennis coach it was difficult to say no to a client who wanted to share a few beers after a tennis lesson or a group inviting me to their usual weekend tennis social. Of course, thinking it would be rude to say no, I would go to these get-togethers and have a few beers. Sometimes people would ask me if I was alright after my first beer, because I would be so stricken with fear that another deadly scenario would happen that night and my panic would set in. Next thing I knew the physical sensations would come back, I would be extremely dizzy again and around and around and around I would go. For years this was my daily struggle. I had nights where I would cry and ask 'why me?' and surf the web trying to find solutions to the evil thing that had taken over my life. In my early 20's I remember being free from negative thoughts and having an anxiety level that would match the rest of the world. If someone stepped on my foot on the bus, I would brush it off in a few seconds and move on. But in my late 20's, if the same thing happened it would ruin my whole day. Not only that, if the person who had stepped on my foot was a woman, for example, I would hate all women because of their lack of awareness and therefore generalized women.
See how this all works? What I really hope is as we get deeper and deeper through this book, you readers can find similarities with what I have dealt with. I also hope you will use the suggestions I give through the chapters as well as the main steps that I outline at the end to help you get on the right track again and slowly turn these fearful thoughts, feelings, and reactions around. Over the six years of my struggle with GAD and Panic Disorder I've read many self- help books that describe so-called 'miracle techniques' that would get rid of my Anxiety in an instant. I have also had a cabinet totally full of pills and remedies that Doctors and websites recommended that would really help me. I'll tell you something, though - none of those books or websites has been from the perspective of someone who has gone through the levels of Anxiety first-hand and for as long as I have and come out of it in the end better than they were before like I have. I am a brand new man, and I hope this will motivate you and if you have the patience to stick to my suggestions, then you will also come through this and be able to look back at the man or woman you once were a few months ago and realize what a waste of time and energy that cycle of Anxiety was.
I remember one day, walking around on my day off from work on a beautiful weekend, feeling absolutely exhausted, even though I had a good eight hours of sleep and a healthy breakfast. I was thinking to myself that something was terribly wrong, why was I feeling as if the world was like a dream? That day I realized that I had been hit with the experience of depersonalization, the sense that the world had become less real and lacking in significance. I dragged myself around in a sort of daze, almost like being on a street drug. People were walking past me but it felt as if I was in a dream and this wasn't real. This off-balance, unreal feeling had kicked in so badly that I would act in ways that I never thought I would. My thoughts spiraled out of control and that day I knew that if I didn't make some drastic changes in my life in every aspect then I was headed down a road that deep down I didn't want to be on. But I was comfortable, GAD was my comfort zone. My mind said if I didn't worry about these things and didn't take care of these threats around me that I would lose control, and if I lost control that would lead to the ultimate fear that being a hypochondriac brings, which is an early death. My mind was in full on fight or flight mode from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to sleep, and on top of all the physical manifestations that Anxiety brought, now I was also stuck in this dreamlike trance all day. Sometimes my fiancée Robyn would be talking to me and mention something that would be important for me to remember, but of course it didn't register because I was too busy keeping an eye on my physical symptoms and how I was feeling. It must have been so frustrating for someone that close to me trying to understand what was really going on and have a regular conversation with and instead this man, this love of your life, has turned into a mute who is clearly miserable and with no end in sight.
Yes, those were dark days and I am glad they are over. Do I still experience some dizziness and fatigue? Yes, but compared to the man I used to be I've made a complete turnaround and have regained control of my thoughts and my life, and have stopped the fear from rushing in and overtaking me. If there was a funny part to all of this it was this: how I could be feeling like I was on my deathbed before going into the ER, and then after being checked out feeling amazing with a sense of being born again? In fact, there was one instance that I can remember when one of my good friends Eric, whom I was living with at the time, took me to the ER around midnight due to the shortness of breath I was feeling. He must have been so confused to see his friend and roommate suffering this panic like this and not knowing what to say or do he dropped me off there and I came out as the sun was rising feeling great again. Only to notice immense chest pains and dizziness later that day, so this time I went to my family doctor to figure out the situation. Through all of these years, I've realized that Anxiety is a very tricky thing. Our ancestors needed this fight or flight response in case of danger like some kind of creature chasing after them and becoming their dinner. They needed to be quick and react in an instant, the mind needed to recognize a threat and the body needed to be ready to do battle or run. My mind and body were reacting as if there were a sabre-toothed tiger around every corner, but of course there wasn't. Why couldn't I realize that these physical sensations were just a way for my body to prepare itself to fight a threat and they weren't some life threatening illness or heart attack? Especially after doctors of all kinds reassuring me that I was completely healthy and had nothing to worry about? Because I continued to fear the unknown, my mind kept saying 'this is it', 'this time it will end me', or 'maybe the doctor missed something because he hesitated a little when he was explaining something to me'. There was always that 'what if' and that was enough to continue to add fuel to my fear and anxiety cycle. During prize money tennis tournaments I remember always getting sick or injured before a match and having to default the match (not play due to an injury). My fearful thoughts of a potential panic attack, and how deep those amazingly fearful physical symptoms of ultra-high levels of anxiety were rooted in me, many times forced me to not even walk on the tennis court
even if I was a real underdog with nothing to lose.
Of course, during those dark years there were things that helped me get by and made life enjoyable, for example I didn't have my dad breathing down my neck during tennis practices and matches anymore. I really started to enjoy training and competing in tournaments again in my early 30's. I also enjoyed lifting weights if the fatigue and dizziness I felt on a daily basis took a few hours off during the day. Another thing I absolutely loved to do was to DJ. In fact this was the greatest release for me, because for a few hours my thoughts were directed towards synching beautiful music for people to dance and enjoy themselves to instead of indulging in my usual negative and worrisome thinking. It gave me so much freedom whether it was DJing in my own home or in a bar I was hooked to that feeling - no thoughts, just pure positive energy all around me. Eventually I would start my own mobile DJ company, Sev Productions, and would do weddings, private parties, graduations, and pretty much any event I could get. I really don't know how I was able to do something I had never done before and run with it the way I did with DJing. I wasn't in the right place mentally to just pick something up like that because I was already so busy trying to find a diagnosis and eventually a cure for what I was dealing with. I remember House Music being one of the biggest triggers to my Anxiety, but shortly after getting my DJ equipment I decided to spin some. I think House Music was a trigger because of the fast tempo that electronic music brings with it - sort of like when you're at the peak of your panic and everything is going out of control. This was the beginning of what was to be a real solution to my Anxiety problems. I remember a song being played loudly in my place from one turntable and another song about to be mixed in on the other one and I was listening to it through my earphones. I could just feel my body go into the fight or flight mode and that sent my thoughts into a frenzy again, and for the first time I didn't run. I actually withstood the feeling of losing control of my mind and body and stayed right where I was, sweating profusely, I continued to mix song after song and for some reason at the top of my lungs I yelled, "Go to hell Anxiety!!!" I was worried and scared to death but I kept going and going, feeling horrible but awesome at the same time, kind of like Mel Gibson in Braveheart at the end of the movie yelling "Freedom!!!"
After another twenty minutes of mixing music and yelling, I was absolutely exhausted but surprisingly alive and for the first time I felt some retreat from my physical sensations. My negative thoughts were still there, but I was too tired to care anymore. How come I didn't collapse? How come I didn't run away this time?
Top 10 Gadgets to Have for the Holidays
1. The most qualified candidate does not necessarily get the job offer
Many times, candidates with lesser qualifications get job offers simply because they've prepared and presented themselves in a more compelling way. In other words, they're better self-marketers than the other candidates!
In a tight job market, being qualified is never enough. You must DEMONSTRATE to the employer that you're the best candidate for the job. Depending on your age and how your parents raised you, you may be operating under a "wishful thinking" mindset regarding the concept of meritocracy. This would include the following cultural messages and ingrained assumptions that many of us had "drilled into our heads" by well-meaning parents and teachers:
* Getting good grades guarantees success in college and in life
* Being smart means that you'll do better than people who are not smart (or at least not as smart as you)
* Hard work is its own reward - and is also the best path to other rewards
* Achievement and recognition go hand-in-hand. In other words, just do well and other people (teachers, professors, employers, bosses, the CEO) will recognize and reward you for it
In a difficult employment landscape, strong qualifications and accomplishments are necessary, but not sufficient, to find a job you love and earn what you deserve.
Let's say that you're competing against another candidate whose qualifications are just as strong as yours. What is the hiring manager supposed to do? Well, the answer is obvious - they will be influenced by how good a job you do in MARKETING, SELLING and POSITIONING those strong qualifications.
At the end of the day, it's the best self-marketer who gets the job. Don't be fooled into believing that the business world is a meritocracy - it's not. This can, obviously, be either good news or bad news, depending on how you've positioned yourself up to this point in your career. You need to boost your self-marketing skills to the point where you can land a great job regardless of the economic "weather," unemployment news, or latest Wall Street implosion!
2. The best time to work on your career is when your job is secure
Even if you're very happily employed today, you never know what may happen tomorrow! To avoid a career disaster, you should incorporate the concept of "Perpetual Career Management" into your professional life.
Vital tasks like keeping your success stories up to date, or networking regularly with professionals in your industry, should be incorporated into your routine whether the economy is good or bad - and whether you feel you need to or not.
Here's a real-life example. A few years ago, I had a client who was in a senior-level sales and marketing position at a large manufacturing company. He had everything going for him with the employer - he was a member of the senior management team, he had been with the firm for 13 years, and he was consistently praised for his hard work and professionalism. Needless to say, he felt very comfortable and secure in his position. He never saw what was about to happen.
Due to an economic downturn and an eventual acquisition of the company, my client was suddenly let go on a crisp November morning. An hour later, he found himself sitting in his car in the parking lot - asking himself over and over, "How could this have happened? I did such a good job for them!" And worst of all, my client was totally unprepared! He had none of the tools necessary to find another appropriate position within a reasonable period of time. Naturally, he felt concerned and scared. He later told me that toughest part was feeling completely helpless.
What does this mean for you? It means that you should consider adopting a different approach, the "Perpetual Career Management" approach - not only to avoid feeling helpless, but to truly take charge of your career once and for all.
As we said earlier, instead of focusing completely on your job, you should focus on managing your career - at all times, regardless of where the economy or job market happens to be!
That's the key that will help you to chop months off your next job search, significantly boost your salary, get promoted faster, and never worry again about job security or layoffs.
Instead of focusing completely on your job, you should focus on managing your career - at all times, regardless of where the economy or job market happens to be!
3. Graduating from school is the beginning of your education, not the end
In good economic times or bad, you should always look for ways to advance your industry knowledge and professional qualifications. Attending seminars, reading trade journals, pursuing certifications, etc. - these activities should be a part of your ongoing professional development process. It's imperative that every professional remain current in his or her field. No company wants to hire a candidate whose base of knowledge is out of date. Moreover, why would your current organization and current boss want to work with someone like that? NOT upgrading your knowledge and skills on a continual basis is a risk you can't afford to take.
As a professional, you should continually build your credentials, which will make you more attractive and marketable as a candidate - both inside your company and in "the outside world."
NOT upgrading your knowledge and skills on a continual basis is a risk you can't afford to take.
Plus, in a down economy, the greatest asset you have to sell is your knowledge and intellectual resources. When business gets tough, the demand for people who can think strategically and deliver results goes UP, not down!
https://www.wikipedia.org
4. An employer's first offer is NEVER their best offer
Employers expect that you've done salary research, and they anticipate having dynamic negotiations with you. In fact, they'll often be disappointed and question your candidacy if you DON'T negotiate - even when no one's hiring. You might be tempted to think ANY job offer is great in a tough economy or that this is the WORST time to negotiate - but you'd be dead wrong.
Employers usually start with a low salary offer merely as a "trial balloon," to see how you'll react - and there's almost always room to improve on the initial compensation offer, even in a tight job market. In a way, compensation negotiation is a game, with its own set of rules and guidelines. Be aware that the first offer is merely a starting point. If you don't negotiate further, I guarantee that you'll be leaving money - and possibly a whole lot more - on the table.
5. Always research and be "plugged in" to the competition
Research and be aware of the competition - whether it be information about other companies or other professionals in your industry. Always know who they are and what they're doing. Endeavor to "know the competition better than they know themselves." This will greatly enhance your competitiveness when jobs are hard to come by, and it will allow you to jump on opportunities that others might not yet be aware of!
If you don't negotiate, I guarantee that you'll be leaving money - and possibly a whole lot more - on the table.
Here's an example of how important it is to be "plugged into" your competitors. One of my clients is the President of a small advertising agency. Her client base is solid, her creative work is excellent, and she makes a very good living in this role. But the thing that my client is most proud of is the fact that her firm is the envy of every small-to-medium sized agency in town.
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Not because of the creative awards my client has won, and not because of how impressive her offices are - although these are certainly noteworthy achievements. The reason my client is so envied is that she always seems to get the most prestigious accounts and the most interesting assignments. My client also has a real knack for getting the best designers in the region to work for her. The other agency owners in the region just stand around, shaking their heads in disbelief and frustration. "How does she do it?" they ask themselves, repeatedly.
Well, just between you and me - it's not because my client's work is so much better than the work of the other agencies. No, the way she keeps winning, over and over, is that her investigative research is superior to that of any of her competitors. She makes it her business to know what's going on in her market - what company is doing what; which accounts are going where, who's working for whom, what challenges or trends are affecting local companies - and all the rest. The bottom line is simply that my client is far more "plugged in" - and she has used this knowledge to beat out the competition, year after year after year!
So what does this mean to you? It means you should start to "research your way to success." Read industry publications, trade magazines, your local Business Journal, your daily newspaper's business section, Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and so on. Pay attention to other local, regional, and national sources of "business intelligence," such as web sites, newsletters, blogs, and radio or TV shows. Learn to frame your expertise, your ideas, and your value in terms that are relevant to the current business and economic landscape.
Learn to frame your expertise, your ideas, and your value
in terms that are relevant to the current business and
economic landscape.
Connect with people, companies, and groups that you read about. If you can move and shake with the movers and shakers, so much the better. If you can't - you should at least know what they're thinking, what they're concerned about, and what opportunities they see ahead. The more you know about the competition, the easier it will be to get a job when no one seems to be hiring.
6. Networking is not as important as you think it is
It is more important!! Put time aside every week for active networking to maintain established relationships and develop new ones - both inside and outside the company where you work.
You should always be positioned to leverage your professional and personal contacts when the need arises. So, adopt the discipline of blocking-out time on your calendar specifically for networking activities - every week, every month, and every year, for the duration of your career!
I'll never forget a story I heard when I was facilitating a "job search team" several years ago. We had about 15 people in the conference room. After I conducted a brief presentation about professional networking, one of the participants asked if she could share a personal story.
She said that she had just been laid-off from her employer of almost 25 years! She had started at the company as an entry-level Customer Support Representative. On that same day, another individual started at the company in the same job. They discovered that they were just about the same age, and that their backgrounds were very similar, in terms of education, interests, family history, and so on. My client and this man worked well together for about two years, when he was suddenly transferred to another department, and at a higher level, within the company.
She didn't see him much after that, but she did occasionally hear about how well he was doing with the firm. Years passed, until eventually she was laid-off and wound-up at my office in need of career help. "By the way," she said, "that man who started at the company with me became, and is still, the President of that company!"
At the time of her layoff, on the other hand, my client had held the same position for which she was hired nearly 25 years ago. When I asked her to tell the group why she thought she had remained at the same level, while her colleague had moved up to claim the Presidency of their company, she said, without hesitation, "Oh that's an easy one. He was always a master networker. Me? I was just doing my job."
This story proves, without any doubt, how important it is to keep networking in both good economic times and bad - and to continually update your success file so that you can "promote yourself" to greater levels of responsibility!
Adopt the discipline of blocking-out time on your calendar specifically for networking activities - every week, every month, and every year, for the duration of your career.
7. If YOU'RE not managing your career, nobody is!
When I speak to audiences about career management strategies, I show a slide that has the following quiz on it:
QUIZ: Who is responsible for managing your career?
Human Resources Executive Search Firm
My Manager Career Consultant
Recruiter None of the above
At different times and under different circumstances, perhaps any combination of these would have been the correct answer. But in today's economy, the answer is clearly "None of the above."
It doesn't matter what your Human Resources department says about "succession planning" or "leadership development" or "career pathing." It doesn't matter that you have great relationships with recruiting firms - perhaps even the one that connected you with your current position (remember: recruiters work for employers, not for candidates). It doesn't matter if you're working with the world's best Career Coach. It doesn't even matter if your boss loves everything you're doing, has big plans for you, and has nothing but glowing praise for you at every performance review.
The bottom line is that YOU, and only you, hold the keys to your career, your future, and your own brand of "career security" - even if there is no longer such a thing as "job security" (and there isn't).
This may seem like a lot of responsibility "on your shoulders," but this is also liberating in the sense that you have a lot more control over your career success than you might have thought!
Copyright © 2012, Career Potential, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to Reprint: This article may be reprinted, provided it appears in its entirety with the following attribution: Copyright © 2011, Career Potential, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Ford R. Myers, a nationally-known Career Expert and author of "Get The Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring." Download your free career success gifts now at http://www.careerbookbonuses.com.
Many times, candidates with lesser qualifications get job offers simply because they've prepared and presented themselves in a more compelling way. In other words, they're better self-marketers than the other candidates!
In a tight job market, being qualified is never enough. You must DEMONSTRATE to the employer that you're the best candidate for the job. Depending on your age and how your parents raised you, you may be operating under a "wishful thinking" mindset regarding the concept of meritocracy. This would include the following cultural messages and ingrained assumptions that many of us had "drilled into our heads" by well-meaning parents and teachers:
* Getting good grades guarantees success in college and in life
* Being smart means that you'll do better than people who are not smart (or at least not as smart as you)
* Hard work is its own reward - and is also the best path to other rewards
* Achievement and recognition go hand-in-hand. In other words, just do well and other people (teachers, professors, employers, bosses, the CEO) will recognize and reward you for it
In a difficult employment landscape, strong qualifications and accomplishments are necessary, but not sufficient, to find a job you love and earn what you deserve.
Let's say that you're competing against another candidate whose qualifications are just as strong as yours. What is the hiring manager supposed to do? Well, the answer is obvious - they will be influenced by how good a job you do in MARKETING, SELLING and POSITIONING those strong qualifications.
At the end of the day, it's the best self-marketer who gets the job. Don't be fooled into believing that the business world is a meritocracy - it's not. This can, obviously, be either good news or bad news, depending on how you've positioned yourself up to this point in your career. You need to boost your self-marketing skills to the point where you can land a great job regardless of the economic "weather," unemployment news, or latest Wall Street implosion!
2. The best time to work on your career is when your job is secure
Even if you're very happily employed today, you never know what may happen tomorrow! To avoid a career disaster, you should incorporate the concept of "Perpetual Career Management" into your professional life.
Vital tasks like keeping your success stories up to date, or networking regularly with professionals in your industry, should be incorporated into your routine whether the economy is good or bad - and whether you feel you need to or not.
Here's a real-life example. A few years ago, I had a client who was in a senior-level sales and marketing position at a large manufacturing company. He had everything going for him with the employer - he was a member of the senior management team, he had been with the firm for 13 years, and he was consistently praised for his hard work and professionalism. Needless to say, he felt very comfortable and secure in his position. He never saw what was about to happen.
Due to an economic downturn and an eventual acquisition of the company, my client was suddenly let go on a crisp November morning. An hour later, he found himself sitting in his car in the parking lot - asking himself over and over, "How could this have happened? I did such a good job for them!" And worst of all, my client was totally unprepared! He had none of the tools necessary to find another appropriate position within a reasonable period of time. Naturally, he felt concerned and scared. He later told me that toughest part was feeling completely helpless.
What does this mean for you? It means that you should consider adopting a different approach, the "Perpetual Career Management" approach - not only to avoid feeling helpless, but to truly take charge of your career once and for all.
As we said earlier, instead of focusing completely on your job, you should focus on managing your career - at all times, regardless of where the economy or job market happens to be!
That's the key that will help you to chop months off your next job search, significantly boost your salary, get promoted faster, and never worry again about job security or layoffs.
Instead of focusing completely on your job, you should focus on managing your career - at all times, regardless of where the economy or job market happens to be!
3. Graduating from school is the beginning of your education, not the end
In good economic times or bad, you should always look for ways to advance your industry knowledge and professional qualifications. Attending seminars, reading trade journals, pursuing certifications, etc. - these activities should be a part of your ongoing professional development process. It's imperative that every professional remain current in his or her field. No company wants to hire a candidate whose base of knowledge is out of date. Moreover, why would your current organization and current boss want to work with someone like that? NOT upgrading your knowledge and skills on a continual basis is a risk you can't afford to take.
As a professional, you should continually build your credentials, which will make you more attractive and marketable as a candidate - both inside your company and in "the outside world."
NOT upgrading your knowledge and skills on a continual basis is a risk you can't afford to take.
Plus, in a down economy, the greatest asset you have to sell is your knowledge and intellectual resources. When business gets tough, the demand for people who can think strategically and deliver results goes UP, not down!
https://www.wikipedia.org
4. An employer's first offer is NEVER their best offer
Employers expect that you've done salary research, and they anticipate having dynamic negotiations with you. In fact, they'll often be disappointed and question your candidacy if you DON'T negotiate - even when no one's hiring. You might be tempted to think ANY job offer is great in a tough economy or that this is the WORST time to negotiate - but you'd be dead wrong.
Employers usually start with a low salary offer merely as a "trial balloon," to see how you'll react - and there's almost always room to improve on the initial compensation offer, even in a tight job market. In a way, compensation negotiation is a game, with its own set of rules and guidelines. Be aware that the first offer is merely a starting point. If you don't negotiate further, I guarantee that you'll be leaving money - and possibly a whole lot more - on the table.
5. Always research and be "plugged in" to the competition
Research and be aware of the competition - whether it be information about other companies or other professionals in your industry. Always know who they are and what they're doing. Endeavor to "know the competition better than they know themselves." This will greatly enhance your competitiveness when jobs are hard to come by, and it will allow you to jump on opportunities that others might not yet be aware of!
If you don't negotiate, I guarantee that you'll be leaving money - and possibly a whole lot more - on the table.
Here's an example of how important it is to be "plugged into" your competitors. One of my clients is the President of a small advertising agency. Her client base is solid, her creative work is excellent, and she makes a very good living in this role. But the thing that my client is most proud of is the fact that her firm is the envy of every small-to-medium sized agency in town.
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Not because of the creative awards my client has won, and not because of how impressive her offices are - although these are certainly noteworthy achievements. The reason my client is so envied is that she always seems to get the most prestigious accounts and the most interesting assignments. My client also has a real knack for getting the best designers in the region to work for her. The other agency owners in the region just stand around, shaking their heads in disbelief and frustration. "How does she do it?" they ask themselves, repeatedly.
Well, just between you and me - it's not because my client's work is so much better than the work of the other agencies. No, the way she keeps winning, over and over, is that her investigative research is superior to that of any of her competitors. She makes it her business to know what's going on in her market - what company is doing what; which accounts are going where, who's working for whom, what challenges or trends are affecting local companies - and all the rest. The bottom line is simply that my client is far more "plugged in" - and she has used this knowledge to beat out the competition, year after year after year!
So what does this mean to you? It means you should start to "research your way to success." Read industry publications, trade magazines, your local Business Journal, your daily newspaper's business section, Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and so on. Pay attention to other local, regional, and national sources of "business intelligence," such as web sites, newsletters, blogs, and radio or TV shows. Learn to frame your expertise, your ideas, and your value in terms that are relevant to the current business and economic landscape.
Learn to frame your expertise, your ideas, and your value
in terms that are relevant to the current business and
economic landscape.
Connect with people, companies, and groups that you read about. If you can move and shake with the movers and shakers, so much the better. If you can't - you should at least know what they're thinking, what they're concerned about, and what opportunities they see ahead. The more you know about the competition, the easier it will be to get a job when no one seems to be hiring.
6. Networking is not as important as you think it is
It is more important!! Put time aside every week for active networking to maintain established relationships and develop new ones - both inside and outside the company where you work.
You should always be positioned to leverage your professional and personal contacts when the need arises. So, adopt the discipline of blocking-out time on your calendar specifically for networking activities - every week, every month, and every year, for the duration of your career!
I'll never forget a story I heard when I was facilitating a "job search team" several years ago. We had about 15 people in the conference room. After I conducted a brief presentation about professional networking, one of the participants asked if she could share a personal story.
She said that she had just been laid-off from her employer of almost 25 years! She had started at the company as an entry-level Customer Support Representative. On that same day, another individual started at the company in the same job. They discovered that they were just about the same age, and that their backgrounds were very similar, in terms of education, interests, family history, and so on. My client and this man worked well together for about two years, when he was suddenly transferred to another department, and at a higher level, within the company.
She didn't see him much after that, but she did occasionally hear about how well he was doing with the firm. Years passed, until eventually she was laid-off and wound-up at my office in need of career help. "By the way," she said, "that man who started at the company with me became, and is still, the President of that company!"
At the time of her layoff, on the other hand, my client had held the same position for which she was hired nearly 25 years ago. When I asked her to tell the group why she thought she had remained at the same level, while her colleague had moved up to claim the Presidency of their company, she said, without hesitation, "Oh that's an easy one. He was always a master networker. Me? I was just doing my job."
This story proves, without any doubt, how important it is to keep networking in both good economic times and bad - and to continually update your success file so that you can "promote yourself" to greater levels of responsibility!
Adopt the discipline of blocking-out time on your calendar specifically for networking activities - every week, every month, and every year, for the duration of your career.
7. If YOU'RE not managing your career, nobody is!
When I speak to audiences about career management strategies, I show a slide that has the following quiz on it:
QUIZ: Who is responsible for managing your career?
Human Resources Executive Search Firm
My Manager Career Consultant
Recruiter None of the above
At different times and under different circumstances, perhaps any combination of these would have been the correct answer. But in today's economy, the answer is clearly "None of the above."
It doesn't matter what your Human Resources department says about "succession planning" or "leadership development" or "career pathing." It doesn't matter that you have great relationships with recruiting firms - perhaps even the one that connected you with your current position (remember: recruiters work for employers, not for candidates). It doesn't matter if you're working with the world's best Career Coach. It doesn't even matter if your boss loves everything you're doing, has big plans for you, and has nothing but glowing praise for you at every performance review.
The bottom line is that YOU, and only you, hold the keys to your career, your future, and your own brand of "career security" - even if there is no longer such a thing as "job security" (and there isn't).
This may seem like a lot of responsibility "on your shoulders," but this is also liberating in the sense that you have a lot more control over your career success than you might have thought!
Copyright © 2012, Career Potential, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to Reprint: This article may be reprinted, provided it appears in its entirety with the following attribution: Copyright © 2011, Career Potential, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Ford R. Myers, a nationally-known Career Expert and author of "Get The Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring." Download your free career success gifts now at http://www.careerbookbonuses.com.
The Seven Truths of Career Success
1. The most qualified candidate does not necessarily get the job offer
Many times, candidates with lesser qualifications get job offers simply because they've prepared and presented themselves in a more compelling way. In other words, they're better self-marketers than the other candidates!
In a tight job market, being qualified is never enough. You must DEMONSTRATE to the employer that you're the best candidate for the job. Depending on your age and how your parents raised you, you may be operating under a "wishful thinking" mindset regarding the concept of meritocracy. This would include the following cultural messages and ingrained assumptions that many of us had "drilled into our heads" by well-meaning parents and teachers:
* Getting good grades guarantees success in college and in life
* Being smart means that you'll do better than people who are not smart (or at least not as smart as you)
* Hard work is its own reward - and is also the best path to other rewards
* Achievement and recognition go hand-in-hand. In other words, just do well and other people (teachers, professors, employers, bosses, the CEO) will recognize and reward you for it
In a difficult employment landscape, strong qualifications and accomplishments are necessary, but not sufficient, to find a job you love and earn what you deserve.
Let's say that you're competing against another candidate whose qualifications are just as strong as yours. What is the hiring manager supposed to do? Well, the answer is obvious - they will be influenced by how good a job you do in MARKETING, SELLING and POSITIONING those strong qualifications.
At the end of the day, it's the best self-marketer who gets the job. Don't be fooled into believing that the business world is a meritocracy - it's not. This can, obviously, be either good news or bad news, depending on how you've positioned yourself up to this point in your career. You need to boost your self-marketing skills to the point where you can land a great job regardless of the economic "weather," unemployment news, or latest Wall Street implosion!
2. The best time to work on your career is when your job is secure
Even if you're very happily employed today, you never know what may happen tomorrow! To avoid a career disaster, you should incorporate the concept of "Perpetual Career Management" into your professional life.
Vital tasks like keeping your success stories up to date, or networking regularly with professionals in your industry, should be incorporated into your routine whether the economy is good or bad - and whether you feel you need to or not.
Here's a real-life example. A few years ago, I had a client who was in a senior-level sales and marketing position at a large manufacturing company. He had everything going for him with the employer - he was a member of the senior management team, he had been with the firm for 13 years, and he was consistently praised for his hard work and professionalism. Needless to say, he felt very comfortable and secure in his position. He never saw what was about to happen.
Due to an economic downturn and an eventual acquisition of the company, my client was suddenly let go on a crisp November morning. An hour later, he found himself sitting in his car in the parking lot - asking himself over and over, "How could this have happened? I did such a good job for them!" And worst of all, my client was totally unprepared! He had none of the tools necessary to find another appropriate position within a reasonable period of time. Naturally, he felt concerned and scared. He later told me that toughest part was feeling completely helpless.
What does this mean for you? It means that you should consider adopting a different approach, the "Perpetual Career Management" approach - not only to avoid feeling helpless, but to truly take charge of your career once and for all.
As we said earlier, instead of focusing completely on your job, you should focus on managing your career - at all times, regardless of where the economy or job market happens to be!
That's the key that will help you to chop months off your next job search, significantly boost your salary, get promoted faster, and never worry again about job security or layoffs.
Instead of focusing completely on your job, you should focus on managing your career - at all times, regardless of where the economy or job market happens to be!
3. Graduating from school is the beginning of your education, not the end
In good economic times or bad, you should always look for ways to advance your industry knowledge and professional qualifications. Attending seminars, reading trade journals, pursuing certifications, etc. - these activities should be a part of your ongoing professional development process. It's imperative that every professional remain current in his or her field. No company wants to hire a candidate whose base of knowledge is out of date. Moreover, why would your current organization and current boss want to work with someone like that? NOT upgrading your knowledge and skills on a continual basis is a risk you can't afford to take.
As a professional, you should continually build your credentials, which will make you more attractive and marketable as a candidate - both inside your company and in "the outside world."
NOT upgrading your knowledge and skills on a continual basis is a risk you can't afford to take.
Plus, in a down economy, the greatest asset you have to sell is your knowledge and intellectual resources. When business gets tough, the demand for people who can think strategically and deliver results goes UP, not down!
4. An employer's first offer is NEVER their best offer
Employers expect that you've done salary research, and they anticipate having dynamic negotiations with you. In fact, they'll often be disappointed and question your candidacy if you DON'T negotiate - even when no one's hiring. You might be tempted to think ANY job offer is great in a tough economy or that this is the WORST time to negotiate - but you'd be dead wrong.
Employers usually start with a low salary offer merely as a "trial balloon," to see how you'll react - and there's almost always room to improve on the initial compensation offer, even in a tight job market. In a way, compensation negotiation is a game, with its own set of rules and guidelines. Be aware that the first offer is merely a starting point. If you don't negotiate further, I guarantee that you'll be leaving money - and possibly a whole lot more - on the table.
5. Always research and be "plugged in" to the competition
Research and be aware of the competition - whether it be information about other companies or other professionals in your industry. Always know who they are and what they're doing. Endeavor to "know the competition better than they know themselves." This will greatly enhance your competitiveness when jobs are hard to come by, and it will allow you to jump on opportunities that others might not yet be aware of!
If you don't negotiate, I guarantee that you'll be leaving money - and possibly a whole lot more - on the table.
Here's an example of how important it is to be "plugged into" your competitors. One of my clients is the President of a small advertising agency. Her client base is solid, her creative work is excellent, and she makes a very good living in this role. But the thing that my client is most proud of is the fact that her firm is the envy of every small-to-medium sized agency in town.
Not because of the creative awards my client has won, and not because of how impressive her offices are - although these are certainly noteworthy achievements. The reason my client is so envied is that she always seems to get the most prestigious accounts and the most interesting assignments. My client also has a real knack for getting the best designers in the region to work for her. The other agency owners in the region just stand around, shaking their heads in disbelief and frustration. "How does she do it?" they ask themselves, repeatedly.
Well, just between you and me - it's not because my client's work is so much better than the work of the other agencies. No, the way she keeps winning, over and over, is that her investigative research is superior to that of any of her competitors. She makes it her business to know what's going on in her market - what company is doing what; which accounts are going where, who's working for whom, what challenges or trends are affecting local companies - and all the rest. The bottom line is simply that my client is far more "plugged in" - and she has used this knowledge to beat out the competition, year after year after year!
So what does this mean to you? It means you should start to "research your way to success." Read industry publications, trade magazines, your local Business Journal, your daily newspaper's business section, Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and so on. Pay attention to other local, regional, and national sources of "business intelligence," such as web sites, newsletters, blogs, and radio or TV shows. Learn to frame your expertise, your ideas, and your value in terms that are relevant to the current business and economic landscape.
Learn to frame your expertise, your ideas, and your value
in terms that are relevant to the current business and
economic landscape.
Connect with people, companies, and groups that you read about. If you can move and shake with the movers and shakers, so much the better. If you can't - you should at least know what they're thinking, what they're concerned about, and what opportunities they see ahead. The more you know about the competition, the easier it will be to get a job when no one seems to be hiring.
6. Networking is not as important as you think it is
It is more important!! Put time aside every week for active networking to maintain established relationships and develop new ones - both inside and outside the company where you work.
You should always be positioned to leverage your professional and personal contacts when the need arises. So, adopt the discipline of blocking-out time on your calendar specifically for networking activities - every week, every month, and every year, for the duration of your career!
I'll never forget a story I heard when I was facilitating a "job search team" several years ago. We had about 15 people in the conference room. After I conducted a brief presentation about professional networking, one of the participants asked if she could share a personal story.
She said that she had just been laid-off from her employer of almost 25 years! She had started at the company as an entry-level Customer Support Representative. On that same day, another individual started at the company in the same job. They discovered that they were just about the same age, and that their backgrounds were very similar, in terms of education, interests, family history, and so on. My client and this man worked well together for about two years, when he was suddenly transferred to another department, and at a higher level, within the company.
She didn't see him much after that, but she did occasionally hear about how well he was doing with the firm. Years passed, until eventually she was laid-off and wound-up at my office in need of career help. "By the way," she said, "that man who started at the company with me became, and is still, the President of that company!"
At the time of her layoff, on the other hand, my client had held the same position for which she was hired nearly 25 years ago. When I asked her to tell the group why she thought she had remained at the same level, while her colleague had moved up to claim the Presidency of their company, she said, without hesitation, "Oh that's an easy one. He was always a master networker. Me? I was just doing my job."
This story proves, without any doubt, how important it is to keep networking in both good economic times and bad - and to continually update your success file so that you can "promote yourself" to greater levels of responsibility!
Adopt the discipline of blocking-out time on your calendar specifically for networking activities - every week, every month, and every year, for the duration of your career.
7. If YOU'RE not managing your career, nobody is!
When I speak to audiences about career management strategies, I show a slide that has the following quiz on it:
QUIZ: Who is responsible for managing your career?
Human Resources Executive Search Firm
My Manager Career Consultant
Recruiter None of the above
At different times and under different circumstances, perhaps any combination of these would have been the correct answer. But in today's economy, the answer is clearly "None of the above."
It doesn't matter what your Human Resources department says about "succession planning" or "leadership development" or "career pathing." It doesn't matter that you have great relationships with recruiting firms - perhaps even the one that connected you with your current position (remember: recruiters work for employers, not for candidates). It doesn't matter if you're working with the world's best Career Coach. It doesn't even matter if your boss loves everything you're doing, has big plans for you, and has nothing but glowing praise for you at every performance review.
The bottom line is that YOU, and only you, hold the keys to your career, your future, and your own brand of "career security" - even if there is no longer such a thing as "job security" (and there isn't).
This may seem like a lot of responsibility "on your shoulders," but this is also liberating in the sense that you have a lot more control over your career success than you might have thought!
Copyright © 2012, Career Potential, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to Reprint: This article may be reprinted, provided it appears in its entirety with the following attribution: Copyright © 2011, Career Potential, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Ford R. Myers, a nationally-known Career Expert and author of "Get The Job You Want, Even When No One's Hiring." Download your free career success gifts now at http://www.careerbookbonuses.com.
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