Blogs

Who Will Win in November?
Jeff Greenfield has the Answer.
Is it Going to be Bugs or Daffy?

Jeff Greenfield, a nationally known political correspondent and analyst for four major television networks, has a fool-proof methodology for predicting who will be elected president. He forecasts, “To know who will win, keep in mind one clear consistent irrefutable rule: Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck.” Greenfield goes on to explain with many examples, “The candidate who exudes the cool, savvy confidence of Bugs beats the one who projects Daffy’s tightly wound anger.”

Greenfield calls it the, “Having a beer after work factor.” Greenfield reminds us that, despite the hundreds, even thousands of polls and election models when you’re in that voting booth, you will look for the candidate who exhibits the Bugs Bunny factors and the winner of the election, even if you don’t drink beer.  

For the whole story see The Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2024 print edition, “Who Will Win in November? Think Bugs vs. Daffy”.

Editors Comment: This may be the only truly funny, but serious idea in this entire 8-month election process. Read it, laugh, and get ready to tough your way to the polling booth on November 5th. Good luck.  

Jeff Greenfield’s quotes are taken from:
©2024 Dow Jones and Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Appeared in the March 23, 2024 Print Edition of the Wall Street Journal as, “Who Will Win in November? Think Bugs vs. Daffy.” 

Helping Hands, Holding Hands

One of the smallest, but truly powerful decencies is holding hands or offering a helping hand.

This gesture is so small we probably hardly ever think of it. But quite often at 82 as I approach a doorway, a curb, or a staircase someone will reach out and offer me a hand even though I have a cane. One of our granddaughters is going to school here in Minnesota. She grew up in New York state. Emily. We have made it a point to have a hamburger or a brief get together almost weekly when she’s here during the school year and this past summer when she was an internship at the Minnesota Zoo. I’ve know her and her twin brother since the day after they were born and lived very close to them for the first eight years of their lives. Then we moved from New York back to Minnesota. So for the majority of their lives we have not been that physically close. But we’ve always been I think emotionally close.

            Emily is finishing her junior year in college and thinking about where she is ultimately be working. Also, looking for an internship this summer. She has opportunities for her last summer internship in Chicago, Boston, New York, and I learned just this week that a position for her may be opening up in Minnesota. I mention this because I’ve noticed during this particular school year when we’ve been together, she’s been extra attentive. I am 82 and a bit unstable and need a cane. So I get to hold her hand briefly, but often when we’re together.

Looking back, holding hands was an extraordinary part of my relationship with my wife Barbara. I do recall in high school on the few dates that I had, for some reason I tried to hold hands and it was not exactly welcomed, it wasn’t shunned, but it wasn’t welcomed. I met Barbara in the summer after my graduation from high school and from our first meeting we were holding hands. In those early years, I would increasingly hold her hand because she was this incredibly beautiful person going around with me, I’m laughing. It must have looked like, “What is she doing with this oaf.” But as it turned out we kept seeing each other, got closer, and ultimately got married four years after we met. During our initial early years together in courtship we held hands everywhere in fact people commented on it and, “Are you always holding hands?” and we would raise our hands, kind of shrug, and son of a gun, we were holding hands.

            During our married life, we tended to do absolutely everything together whether it was grocery shopping or taking the car in to get the oil changed, just driving around. We were always holding hands. There are many pictures of us front and back, holding hands and it was always a subject of conversation. Barbara died of Alzheimer’s in 2019.

            It’s become kind of a point of analysis whenever I meet couples are they holding hands or not. If they are, I comment on it and if they’re not, I sort of just mentally remember that.

            The larger point is that like almost every small decency it’s free, it’s freely given, there is nothing expected in return, but it is among the most affirming thing humans can do with each other.

            If you haven’t done it for a while or at all, it might seem a little uncomfortable to suggest it, but why not give it a try?

            The worst that can happen is that you do it briefly and then you separate, but then even in the same encounter, you do it again, and separate. Eventually, it will work or it won’t.

            In Barbara’s case, it was just a part of our being together and it was just reflective of our lives together. Barbara did things for me constantly, helped me, looked out for me, and literally ran a business we had so I didn’t have to. But always even the 10-minute round trip to pick up a gallon of milk, we went together, and we held hands.

My youngest son Jim and my sister Wendy, and a couple other friends were with Barbara when she passed away in August of 2019. I was holding her hand at the time she died. And as always, she was smiling.

There is a picture of Barbara just moments after she died that Jim took and I’m combing her hair. Barbara was always perfectly dressed, every hair precisely in place. She always enjoyed having her hair combed and always reacted positively, even after she was no longer able to speak. In this photo, she had just passed away moments before, and I was holding her hand at the time. Then I combed her hair for the last time. 

Your Integrity Manifesto
The Ingredients of Integrity and Trust

Credibility and Trust are built on the fundamentally acceptable behavior of an organization and its leaders. The approach advocated here comes from observing hundreds of leaders and managers over 40 years and how they achieved a reputation for trustable behavior.

In general, these managers believed in or had a mantra similar to; “Credibility is conferred on us based on our past behavior.”

Seven Trust and Credibility Beliefs and Behaviors;
The Ingredients of Integrity

These Seven actionable tasks or assignments, when executed by leadership example and emulated by everyone in the organization fosters a reputation for trust and credibility and demonstrates extraordinary integrity.

I call this a manifesto because it contains language publicly professed to motivate, activate, energize, and inspire constructive action. It’s a public commitment to do what you say you’ll do,  proof of your integrity, and a powerful proof of leadership. Employees love to talk about concepts like these.

  1. “When problems occur, we’ll be prepared to talk openly about them and act quickly to respond to them operationally.”
  2. “If the public should know about an issue or problem which could affect them, we will voluntarily talk about it as quickly and as completely as we can.”
  3. “When problems or changes occur, we will keep the community posted on a schedule they set until the problem or changes have been thoroughly explained or resolved.”
  4. “We will answer every question the community may have and suggest and volunteer additional information on matters the community has yet asked questions about, but will.”
  5. “We will answer every question, as long as questions are being asked, no matter how many times a question is asked and answered. When people stop asking questions, we will continue to publicize questions and answers to assure that all those affected by decisions and actions have a chance to recognize the information we’re providing.”
  6. “We will be cooperative with the various news platforms and organizations, but our primary responsibility is to communicate directly with those most directly affected by our actions as soon as possible.”
  7. “We will respect and seek to work with those who oppose us.”

Authenticity
Tough to Achieve,
but Enormously Liberating and Powerful

Authenticity is a self-directed process of continuous analysis, validation, and verification of personal beliefs, practices, guiding principles, aspirations, and operational purposes that drive, direct, focus, and fulfill your life.

The higher you go in operations, and as a trusted strategic advisor, the more your authenticity and that of other senior decision-makers comes into play. The concepts come to the fore when:

  • The truth matters.
  • Tough questions need to be answered.
  • Ideas from beyond the pale need suggesting or defeating.
  • Corrective action and behavior change, especially among leaders, needs to be surfaced.
  • Meaningful discussion of personal beliefs and reasoning are on the table.
  • Serious decisions or important input is required.
  • Trust is at risk.
  • A reservoir of sensible, simple, positive, constructive, and useful options is needed to move forward or begin resolution of serious issues.
  • When you need the boss to really listen.
  • When you are a boss who needs others to really listen.
  • When you are the boss and really need to listen and pay attention to others.

Here is my current authenticity analysis template. Perhaps you might find it useful for yourself.

  1. Please let me know what you think.
  2. Please send this to anyone you might think it could help.
  3. Questions to jel@e911.com, subject: Authenticity Template

This is Jim Lukaszewski:
A Personal Profile

Powerful Speaker, Important Author, Inspiring Teacher, Trusted Advisor

Purpose: Through helping resolve the significant troubles of others, find and do what will be the most important things I will ever do in my career and life.

Vision/Aspiration: To be an authentic trusted Communicator, Coach, Counselor and Strategic Thinker; to be the first call when leaders and managers face their toughest, touchiest, most sensitive and devastating situations and questions.

Mission: To be the table, truly strategic; promptly finding those exceptionally achievable, ethical, honorable, powerful, and sensible ingredients for solutions to the most challenging leadership, management and organizational problems.

Disciplines: Gettable, doable approaches; Intuition-Pattern Sensitivity; lifelong learning; Management Perspective/sensitivity; Teach, Coach, Counsel to educate, motivate, and expand  Management and leadership influence and success; Thoughtful, Incremental Achievable Advice; Tomorrow Focused; Trustability; Verbal Clarity.

Values: Compassion; Constructive approaches; Curiosity; Honesty; Inconsistency (strategy); Positivity; Pragmatism; Promptness; Truthfulness, Intentional Inconsistency (the key to novel ideas)

Principles: Candor; Prompt Intentional Communication; Destiny Management; Empathy/Compassion/Apology; Engagement; Openness; Responsiveness; Transparency; Truthfulness.

Acknowledgements:

Bill George, Senior Fellow, Harvard Business School, Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Medtronic

  • Author of True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership with Peter Simms, Jossey-Bass, 2007.
  • He created the Authenticity industry
David Grossman, ABC, APR Fellow PRSA, Founder & CEO of The Grossman Group

Jim Lukaszewski has more than 2,000 recommendations on LinkedIn, is listed in more than 35 editions of who’s who, and is the author of 13 books since 1992 (14th coming out in 2025), hundreds of articles, many book chapters, and dozens and dozens of webinars.

© Copyright 2024, James E. Lukaszewski. America’s Crisis Guru®

Please get permission to reproduce or quote. Contact the copyright holder, jel@e911.com. Subject line: Permissions

Reputation vs. Trust

I’ve always thought that the whole notion of reputation was more a Public Relations construct than a management concern. Leaders learn quickly to care about trust from stakeholders and victims.

During my nearly 40 years in reputation, leadership, and organizational recovery, I can’t recall a serious discussion of reputation in a management circumstance by those running the business until just before they were about to lose or see their reputation seriously damaged. In many cases, the reputation issues were raised earlier and forcefully by public affairs, internal communications, and may be later by business operations.

Trust is a powerful management term. I define trust as the absence of fear. I interpret fear to mean the absence of trust. Trust is a management word; trust is a powerful cultural word. Trust is a word that has its counterparts in virtually every culture on the planet, and trust is understood clearly and immediately by just about everybody. Generally, it’s mom who taught us about trust, so we remember.

Trust = Absences of Fear    Fear = Absence of Trust

Chief Executives of troubled organizations don’t lose their jobs because there’s a reputation problem. They lose their jobs because there is a trust problem, a failure to provide the assurance that prevents the fear of serious adverse circumstances. If we’re talking seriously about our relationship with constituents, stakeholders, employees, the public, and anyone who has a stake in our organization for whatever reason, we’re talking about trust.

Trust defines itself. Reputation? We’ll need to call the PR department for the latest definition.

Your mom is watching.

“What Makes a Fellow, a Fellow?”

An Extraordinary Footprint.

The Most Important Personal Honor in American Public Relations

Spring is the time of year when many of our PRSA senior colleagues are nominated or nominate themselves for election to the PRSA College of Fellows. As I begin my 31st  year as a Fellow ‘93, it’s interesting to reflect on the experiences of all those I have coached or mentored over the years. Just about everyone comes to the process with few clues about what a being a Fellow actually is.

Becoming a Fellow is all about the footprint the candidate has left on the profession, culture, colleagues, and society. There are Fellows who have worked their entire careers in a single market and left a powerful footprint. There are Fellows who have worked in a single state and leave a significant footprint. There are Fellows who work regionally or nationally and, in the process, leave a meaningful footprint.

A footprint is about the quality of practice and the level of influence and relevance to the entire practice rather than how many projects completed, or awards won. This is the hardest part and biggest test of becoming a Fellow. It is a profound mindset shift from counting projects, clicks and likes to really understanding the power of the candidate’s intentional, personal impact, ideas, behavior and ethics that help others to become better and improve as practitioners, citizens, public officials, leaders, more honorable advisors, and people of professional substance; people who have then become more successful and influential among the people they impact, influence and change throughout their professional lives.

It’s also more than the activities within the Public Relations profession. It is about the candidates’ intentions, impact, influence, access, and acceptance in their vicinity, marketplace or practice specialties; it’s about how the candidate uses their influence, experience, insights and presence to make important change happen – perhaps bringing reality and sensibility, as well as reducing contention and bringing peace to important contentious circumstances.

Earning their access, intentions, influence, impact, acceptance, and inclusion in what matters.

Sometimes it’s easy to misread this impact, or mistake proficiency or expertise for leadership, personal impact on others. Those who wish to analyze their careers, to assess their footprint, ultimately go through an interesting and introspective analysis of their lives and work. These are the steps I recommend:

  1. Examine one’s life for the lessons that were shared with others and what others learned from their own perspective. And what the candidate learned from being helpful.
  2. Reach back and make contact with those whose lives the candidate truly affected, seek short real examples of the value to them from knowing the candidate.
  3. Ask those whohave known, worked, and benefited from the candidate’s efforts, presence, and insights the answers to five basic questions:
  1. What is/are/were the most important things, ideas or concepts that these individuals learned from the candidate?
  2. What is/are/were the most interesting things, ideas or concepts learned or remembered?
  3. What is/are/were those things these individuals feel they might never have learned had the candidate been absent from their lives . . . What do they know now that they didn’t know before that mattered because they met the candidate, whatever the circumstance?
  4. What meaningful questions did the candidate help others to confront, consider or explore that might not have happened had the candidate not been present?
  5. How has knowing the candidate changed people’s lives, in the beneficiary’s own words?
4. There are crucial personal questions the candidate must ask themselves.

  1. How have you stepped outside the realm of PR for some purpose larger than yourself? What, when and why?
  2. Can you explain your motivation or your intentions for achieving election to The PRSA College of Fellows?
  3. Can you provide a sense of the purpose of your life, larger than yourself?
  4. What evidence can you share that, rather than on yourself, you put the spotlight or gave the spotlight to others?  Or, how you helped someone else find the spotlight for their work and accomplishments?
  5. How do your accomplishments fit together so we can know your plan or how your career was driven, by personal spontaneous actions, self-motivated activities, or other forces?
  6. Have you systematically shared your insights and learnings based on what you were accomplishing and learning in your practice?
  7. How do you share the principles that drive your practice in  hopes that those you help will retain and apply them in their own practices? In other words, are you already acting like a Fellow?
  8. What are some of the lessons, morals, and self-evident truths about what and why you do what you do or believe what you believe?
5. Can and do you explicitly share the principles and higher purposes, if any, and intentions that guide and influence your thinking and judgment and in turn constructively and memorably influence others.

  1. In simple single words and short phrases, how would you describe who you are?
  2. Should you be elected to The College of Fellows how do you plan to remain relevant to those who will seek your assistance and counsel?
6.  What were some of the surprises the candidate experienced as their access, influence, impact, and professional success expanded?

  1. True success in life is intentional. It may start by accident and often does.
  2. What were the Candidate’s intentions as success and visibility increased?
  3. What can the candidate pass on to PRSA’s leaders of tomorrow?
7. How would the Candidate characterize their career purpose(s) and goals?

These questions matter because once a practitioner becomes a Fellow; all these impacts on others continue and intensify. It is more than an honor to be elected a Fellow. This election turns out to be a public recommitment by the candidate to helping our profession and our professional colleagues find ways to improve their skills, yes, but also to begin to look at their practices and their practice circumstances from larger, more powerful social and cultural perspectives.

Becoming a Fellow is about reinterpreting our professional metrics from a new, higher, and entirely different and more impactful perspective: Helping others become more substantive, influential and insightful practitioners. It’s about understanding what matters, what is helpful, what is sensible and often what is powerfully simple and true. It is about professional integrity, honesty, and having a truly meaningful personal and professional life.

It’s a life dedicated to the recognition of the needs and accomplishments of others and working on issues and questions larger than the candidate that creates the extraordinary footprint, election to the College of Fellows represents.

It’s that Extraordinary Footprint that makes a Fellow, a Fellow.

How extraordinary is the footprint the candidate presents in their application and in their life?

© Copyright 2024, James E. Lukaszewski. America’s Crisis Guru®

Get permission to reproduce or quote. Contact the copyright holder, jel@e911.com. Subject line: Permissions

Action Required This Day -2024 New Year’s Resolution #3

How to Have a Happier Life
Use Barbara’s 5 Daily Happiness Habits Plus
The Platinum Rule

This essay attempts to answer what is probably the most frequently asked question for Barbara and I through much of our married life: “How did you work together and yet maintain and project such devotion, love, and happiness for so many years?” Hope Barbara’s ideas help you change your life. We met in high school and were married for 56 magical years. We worked the last 32 years of her life together.   Jim (Jim for Barbara)

  1. Always find and say nice things about and to each other in private and publicly every day, everywhere. Insist on a continuously positive tone. Just start doing it and keep doing it.
  2. Avoid saying those two or three tired, corrosive, divisive things we might love to mention some days. Suck it up, swallow it, and let it go.
  3. Always be positive or blah rather than negative or inflammatory.
  4. Ditch the downers. Keep negative, irritating, needlessly, and intentionally abrasive individuals and organizations out of our lives. Over the years we did lose a number of friends. Their irritating and argumentative behaviors didn’t fit our lives. We could not change them, so we simply dumped them. Happiness broke out immediately.
  5. Happiness is intentional. Get in the habit of subjecting everything you do or plan to do to these happiness-building tests, is it simple, sensible, satisfying, positive, helpful, useful, and truthful every hour of every day? Skip anything that fails even one of these tests. Give yourself the gift of happiness. No’s are always remembered, and are permanent.

Corollaries to Barbara’s 5 Habits

  1. Find things to verbally compliment each other daily, especially in front of family and other people.
  2. Happiness habits practiced every day become easier. Continued, they strengthen your relationship, your love, and your trust in each other.
  3. When in doubt, say yes. Say yes, a lot! Start with yes, end with yes.

This document, initially published on August 23, 2020, the first anniversary of Barbara’s death, was a way for us to answer the happiness questions which are still asked quite frequently. It is shared here because it seems to have had such a positive impact on so many lives. I, we, hope these thoughts are meaningful and helpful to you.

The Platinum Rule*
Help Others Who Want And Need Assistance
Helping Others Achieve Their Goals And Aspirations
Many Of Those You Help Will Thank You.

  1. This rule is 10 times more powerful than the Golden Rule which only says, “ do unto others. . .
  2. The Platinum Rule says help those who need help to help yet others do what the others want or need by providing the necessary assistance to help others who can’t, by themselves, complete what they seek to achieve.
  3. The Ethical and Practical principles I follow support both rules. Share your own version of these approaches with others who work with you, people you’d like to work with, and people you will seek to work with.
  4. Find ways to discuss these ideas, explain them, and ask and answer questions about them.
  5. Everyone you care about or those who care about you should be aware of ideas like The Platinum Rule. Help them live and learn to form their own principles.
  6. Practice The Platinum Rule helping those you help to help others. All will remember and thank you.
  • PLEASE NOTE: This idea has many advocates. When I first began mentioning it I was directed to Amazon which lists more than a dozen currently available books by prominent authors with absolutely the same idea.

Good luck.

We Will Get The Democracy We Deserve

One clear fact at the moment is that there will be one national election on November 5, 2024. Whatever the outcome we will get and live with what we deserve.

Another fact is that the outcome is likely to be one of only two possibilities. Each of these possibilities can be recognized by the language and behaviors of the candidates.

  1. The Candidate who defines democracy by the language of bullying, shaming, anger, retribution, score-settling, humiliation, shoulda, coulda, woulda’s done yesterday, with desperation, evil, and baseless attacks on Government institutions and officials.
    Or
  2. The Candidate who defines democracy using the language of greatness, building on past achievements, striving to continue, succeeding, optimism, and tomorrow.

The Vocabulary and Behaviors
of Desperation and Evil
Are Easily Felt and Recognized

AgitatingDespicable
AngerHorrible
Blame ShiftingSmall
Baseless AttacksStupid
BullyingTerrible
DemeaningUseless
DenunciationWeak
DisparagingLying
EvilMaliciousness
Hate FilledMeanness
HumiliatingThreats
LabelingVilification
AwfulWhining
CoruptWitch Hunting

Or,
The Vocabulary and Behaviors of Greatness
Are Equally and Easily Recognized

CompetenceInformative
CreativityInspiration
DignityKindness
DistinctionLeadership
DistinctiveMagnanimity
EnthusiasmMemorable
EthicalMotivation
FlashPerceptive
GenerosityRenown
GeniusRevelation
HumilitySpark
IdealismStateliness
IllustriousVirtue
ImaginationVision
InclusivenessWhismy
InfluentialWisdom
WorthWorthiness

Your Choice Will Be Very Clear

Code of Conduct For
Evil’s Troops and Followers

Their Creed:
Be Evil, Every Day, In Every Way

Required Daily Actions

a. Deeds, words or actions that vilify.

b. Deeds, words or actions that use sarcasm to ridicule, damage, demean, dismiss, diminish or humiliate.

c. Deeds, words, or actions that are arrogant, causing needless, intentional pain and suffering.

d. Deeds, words, or actions that intentionally, harmfully, and overbearingly express anger and irritation.

e. Deeds, words, or actions that are overly demanding and bullying.

f. Deeds, words, or actions that are just plain mean.

g. Deeds, words, or actions that insult, intentionally demean, minimize, and marginalize.

h. Deeds, words, or actions that become emotionally corrosive, disrespectful, and disparaging.

i. Deeds, words, or actions that are intentionally and maliciously tone-deaf.

j. Deeds, words, or actions that are mindlessly callous (without empathy).

k. Deeds, words, or actions that mindlessly injure.

l. Deeds, words, or actions that intentionally injure.

m. Deeds, words, or actions that spread baseless or contrived accusations and suspicion.

n. Deeds, words, or actions that exhibit overbearing and overzealousness.

What Kind of Country Do You Want?

Happiness is Quite Contagious

The most frequent question I get asked when I talk about Civility and Happiness is, “How do you get this started? What’s the first step?”

My answer is simple, direct, and prompt:

  1. Be a happy person every day in every way.
  2. Happiness is a habit others will notice. Insist on dealing happily on whatever comes along. When you run into someone who is intentionally negative, because being negative is always intentional, abandon them. Just walk away and do your thing somewhere else. If they follow you, ask them politely, but firmly to step back and walk away.
  3. BE THE ONE ready to suggest a happier, more constructive way to do or say whatever life presents.

Get Your Tissues Out
A Very Special Christmas

One of my favorite stories about happiness came to me from someone in an audience who said she really wanted to thank me for helping her reconnect with her younger sister who had become estranged over the years. She said, “I heard you talk about being positive, it seemed so wonderful, but so impossible. Nevertheless, I took your advice and just did them. It happened last Christmas, which is the one time a year when our families get together. It’s usually pretty tense among the adults. We tell ourselves we get together for the kids. But of course, “it’s a bit of a nightmare for them.”

“This year was going to be different. I decided that I would find ways to discuss and talk about things and tell stories in completely positive fashion avoiding all negative words, criticism, and negative thinking. My sister was her usual self, anticipating that we would have these negative clashes and would walk away wondering why we were doing this for yet another year. But I really wanted to see something change.”

“I talked to my kids about it and they promised to really work hard to do and say positive things the entire time.” When they were confronted with negative things simply absorb it and take a positive approach.

“I have to say that I believed that the meeting with my sister’s family was just a bit more positive than in the past. But still it was really hard because the old habits kept creeping back and my sister was her usual kind of negative self.”

“We had occasion to talk on Valentine’s Day. She called me. This surprised me.

I was always the one who called her. And her first comment was, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about what happened over the holiday.” With some trepidation, I asked her what happened over the holiday? She said, “Well I’m not sure, except that I really had a good time and many of the old squabbles and things we talk about routinely just never happened.” I’m trying to figure out why was that. So we talked and I told her about you and about your ideas about taking responsibility for everybody’s happiness beginning with yourself. “She actually started to cry.” Then told a story. Then I told one and we were both in tears, tears of reconciliation, apology, even joy.”

She touched my arm and walked away.

Our Mother Died Badly

The second story involves a woman I saw after a powerful presentation. She said, “I had the most amazing experience because of you and because of the surprising generosity of others. And I just wanted to tell you about it.” So she began saying, “My mother became ill later in her life and spent a lot of her time in hospitals. In the last hospital she was in, where she did pass away, there were accidents and things that went wrong continuously during her care. On the day she died, our family decided to hire an attorney and approach the hospital about some kind of apology, correction, something that forcefully brought to their attention the problems that my mother suffered as her life ended.

To make our point even more boldly, we asked to meet with the top hospital officials in my mother’s former sick room. To our surprise, they readily agreed and when we arrived at my mother’s room it became a totally amazing experience.”

“There were six or seven people in the room, including the hospital administrator, their legal counsel, and a number of other personnel in their professional medical uniforms which they didn’t generally wear. The hospital administrator took a breath and said, “These people, all cared for your mother every day. They will all say they are terribly sorry about what happened to her but, all have some things and stories about your mother that you might not know, but would like to hear.” The nurses introduced themselves they were the day, midday, and swing shift main supervisors. There was a young man, a hospital orderly and a couple others. The hospital orderly went first. He said, “I don’t think you know that your mother was a competitive pinochle player.” We were stunned. My daughter said, “I never saw her ever play a card game.” The young man said, “Well, she played for a time every single day. One of my jobs became finding other patients and employees in the hospital who could play. She got really good.”  Each person had a personal story about her and even about the incidents which so concerned us.”

“They all apologized for mom’s suffering then said their goodbyes. The Administrator suggested that when we were ready to talk to him we could meet in his more comfortable conference room.”

“We sent our attorney home.”

Happiness Can Teach A Lot

The principal lesson has always been, if you give happiness a chance it’s pretty powerful. But the most important lesson for you is that happiness starts with you, and gives you the most satisfaction.

Getting started is easier than you think.

Send a simple thank you to someone who has helped you, who you’ve never really seriously acknowledged. Practice unconditional happiness relentlessly, look for the happy things. You’ll be happily surprised how often people you thanked, respond. I’d love to hear your stories about giving happiness a chance in your life and the lives of those you care about. Good luck! 

The Ethical and Practical Principles That Guide Jim’s Practice – 2024 Version

  1. Wake up each day thinking “Today I may do the most important thing I will ever do.”
  2. Act ethically, strive to find ideal behaviors, promptly, and urgently.
  3. Be 15 minutes early, first in line, quicker than fast, smarter, sharper. Get the best choices.
  4. Consistently challenge the standard assumptions and practices of our profession, build its importance, and enhance the ability of all practitioners to better serve others from the other’s perspective. Raise your hand. Your most powerful change tool: be Inconsistent.
  5. Do the doable; know the knowable; get the getable; arrange the arrangeable.
  6. Expect to be helpful and useful. Teach Pattern recognition the source of most successes.
  7. Focus on what truly matters. Always through an ethical lens.
  8. Go beyond what those you work with believe or already think they know.
  9. Intend to make a constructive ethical difference every day. Ask better questions.
  10. Intentionally look at every situation and circumstance from different perspectives.
  11. Look out for the real victims. Act to protect them and prevent more.
  12. Remember, it’s your boss’s “bus.” They get to drive it wherever they want. If you don’t like it, or can’t deal with it, hop off and go to somebody else’s bus, or drive your own.
  13. Every issue, question, concern, or problem is a management issue, leadership question, concern, or problem before it is any other kind of issue, question, concern, or problem.
  14. Start where leadership or management is or you will arrive at different destinations.
  15. Recommend doable, sensible options. Help the boss build solutions. That’s what they do.
  16. Preserve being heard: If the boss won’t agree to or do your suggestion in 10 days, they never will. Give it up and suggest something else. New ideas get old fast.
  17. Do the Platinum Rule: help others help others achieve what matters to them from their perspective. You will reap the thanks and gratitude you almost never get acting alone. Greet enthusiastically, respond faster, suggest the ground rules, almost always win.