I’m going nuts trying to track down a video on YouTube, or anywhere for that matter. It’s an MTV commercial from the early 90s; in it, there are two punk rockers, a boy and a girl, sitting on a curb.
The boy complains, “Nobody likes me.”
The girl replies, “I like you Oliver.”
After a long pause, the boy responds, “Nobody good likes me.”
“Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel, was just a freight train comin’ your way.” – Metallica, No Leaf Clover
Wile E. Coyote, the poster-child for persistence
Do you ever feel like you’ve been channeling Wile E. Coyote in your business or career?
Just a warning: this is going to be one of those posts where I bare my soul. Well, maybe flash would be a better description. Either way, a little piece of me is going to be left on the page…or screen, as the case may be.
For years, now, I’ve been struggling with a demon called impostor syndrome. You may be familiar with it; hell, you may even battle it yourself. You know, that little voice inside your head that keeps reminding you that you don’t deserve any of the success you experience, that eventually the truth will come out and you’ll be revealed for the fraud that you are. It chalks all your victories up to luck or timing and says, “Just wait…they’ll all find out soon.”
Of course your rational mind knows better, but when was the last time your rational mind did you any good with an emotional issue? Yeah; me either. The part of your mind that suffers from impostor syndrome is far from rational. It’s the part of you that got stuck somewhere along the way and is acting out old drama. Until you realize that, you’re doomed to repeat the cycle.
An example? You got it: me. You see, I’ve had brushes with greatness, times when I knew I was *this close* to breaking through, and I’ve always pulled back at the last minute. I usually convince myself that it’s really for the best, that if I’d actually made it I would have exposed myself to the scrutiny of the world, a thought that scares the bejeezus out of me.
It’s true: humans can’t multitask. As Jerry may have said (and if not, I’m saying it), it’s a fact, not an opinion; accept it and get over it.
You can’t multitask. But you can still do more than one thing at a time.
Remember the guy on Ed Sullivan who, um, right; you have no clue who Ed Sullivan was. Anyway, there was this thing called a ‘variety show’ on something called ‘television’ with ‘entertainers’ who, y’know, did stuff.
There was always some guy who’d come out with a bunch of six foot tall sticks on stands. Skinny sticks, maybe half an inch thick. He’d set a china plate on top of one, start it spinning, then keep it spinning with the stick. It’s a cool trick, and not as hard as it looks. Do not discuss this subject with my mother; it seems to upset her.
Wow…what an incredible day. I’m still in Nashville attending the Robin Robins IT Marketing Bootcamp, and I have to say that today was a game changer for me. Mostly, the presenters just made a lot of sense: everything they said was stuff I know and talk about, but it really sunk in on a deeper level for me.
Me and Dave Crenshaw, author of The Myth of Multitasking
The day kicked off with Dave Crenshaw, author of “The Myth of Multitasking”. Dave talked about the negative impact the myth of multitasking has had on our society, a familiar subject to regular readers of this blog (see the blog post “The M-Myth” and the podcast “The Myth of Multitasking”). Dave’s insights into the workings of the human brain were fascinating, and it was great to learn that there is hope even for a mess like me.
Dave divides people into three categories: the Zen Master (you know the ones: always on time and organized to a sickening degree), the Prodigal (those who were organized at one time but have fallen into a pattern of disorder) and the Pig-Pens (people like me and Dave who are inherently chaotic and disorganized). Each deals with the chaos of life in their own way, but all of us have the same problem: only 24 hours in the day.
Me with Patrick Thean at Robin's Big Seminar
Today was like the Star Wars (or any good) trilogy: it had an optimistic start, got a little dark and depressing in the middle, then finished with a triumphant bang! I’ll get to the picture in a minute, (that’s part of the triumphant bang), but first a story.
I’m in Nashville for Robin Robins’ Big Seminar, a marketing boot camp for IT professionals. As I left Sacramento this morning, I was looking forward to an info-packed 3-1/2 days of solid training…Robin doesn’t call it her “boot camp” for nothing!
The flight from Sacramento to Nashville (with a short stop in Denver to change planes) was uneventful, exactly the way a flight should be. Or at least the way I prefer them. When we landed in Nashville, I was ready to learn.
This started out as a reply to a comment left by my buddy Jim Kennan on yesterday’s post about rising up against bad customer service, but somehow it turned into another post. I want to thank Jim for chiming in and for bringing the other side of the discussion up. Here, in part, is what Jim had to say:
“Jerry, I’m behind you on poor customer service. BUT- I don’t believe the customer is always right. I don’t believe we need to just fall to our knees to the customer is KING, my lord and master.
There are customers I don’t want. Customers are not all the same. They don’t all have the same value. They are not all worth the same.
Every customer deserves to be treated with respect. NO QUESTION about that. But, we don’t owe customers anything more than respect.
I’m increasingly disturbed…OK, appalled would be a better word…by an attitude I’m seeing crop up more and more frequently. As you know from reading this blog, I’m kind of a fanatic about customer service. As a result, when I encounter what I percieve to be bad customer service, I’m vocal about it.
What concerns me is the growing number of people who react negatively when I point out bad customer service. Many of them say things that basically amount to “that’s what the stupid customers get for being so stupid and stupidly calling with their stupid complaints!”
More and more, people in general (and customer service reps in particular) are defending the right of businesses to provide bad service. The icing on the cake was an article I came across via Dan Waldschmidt’s blog about Dell charging a monthly fee for customer service. Have a look at the article here, and pay special attention to the first dozen or so comments. You’ll read things like this:
“I whole-heartedly agree that most calls to tech support should be charged a service fee. Especially if the caller is someone whom is too stupid to actually read the instruction book or has absolutely no common sense. I mean, we are here on the phone trying to help them fix a problem that is usually created by the customer in the first place. Should we really have to waste our time fixing your mistakes for minimum wage with you complaining in our ear and saying how crappy support is while we can still hear you?”
Man is born with an innate spiritual need, a hunger that longs to be fulfilled. Since the beginning, we’ve sought to fill that need by discovering the nature of God and the meaning of life. Everyone has, at one point or another, asked “Why am I here?” To deny the reality of that impulse is to deny our nature.
No matter what your belief system, I’m sure you’ll agree that we all want something more than to spend our days just providing for our necessities; we want to know that what we’re doing has a purpose, a meaning greater than ourselves. This scroll speaks to that part of you.
Mandino makes it clear that he’s not preaching religion; he’s simply speaking as a man conscious of his spiritual need. He points out that we all possess the impulse to cry out for help in times of need and, he reasons, we wouldn’t have that impulse if there weren’t some superior power able to answer. And when you stop to ponder the vast complexity of the universe, you probably agree; it seems reasonable to believe that there’s something greater than us. For now, let’s not get hung up on exactly what that something is or what it should be called; call it what you will, we sense it instictively.
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