Of all that is truly upside-down and turned inside-out in this world, that we discourage and punish failure is a travesty of egregious proportions.

As long as failure is a bad thing involving shame, punishment, and other negative responses, we will become increasingly cautious, politically correct, and refuse to make bold decisions.

Failure needs to be reframed as learning. If we learned something from every mistake, we would be making needed adjustments sooner and more often. 

If failure were not where a particular line of action ended, but merely where it changed course, we would be achieving far more of what we planned and doing so far sooner.

Not only that, but the learning and adjustments involved would be taking us down roads toward discoveries and accomplishments that we previously had never dreamed of.

The journey that welcomes failure and transforms it into learning may be an uncomfortable one, but it is one we avoid only to our own detriment.

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Albert Camus

Suffocating policy manual found in trash.

Karl Edwards

One has to wonder.

That was a devastating and frightening near-miss with total disaster that our economy experienced a few years ago. And we don’t seem to have recovered yet.

We are sitting on our wallets, postponing investments, and not hiring.

We need to find ways, though, to take the initiative and create opportunities where none may yet exist.

Easier said than done.

Hence Claudia and my discussion this week suggesting that we need to make the creating of our own opportunities a New Year’s resolution.

We cannot afford to wait around for someone else to jump start the economy.

Can you?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

We are going to discuss work and faith from the perspective of the workplace. Job performance, career development, and team dynamics to mention just a few vital topics.

Don’t miss out!

Tomorrow, Tuesday (1/31/12), is the deadline for registering for Saturday’s Bridging the Work-Faith Divide Workshop. (Not that we’ll be turning anyone away at the door, but it would sure help for planning!)

We would love to have you there. It promises to be an engaging and interactive day.

Click here for the details.

Orison Swett Marden

Hiring real people, not slick resumés.

Karl Edwards

Thousands of talented, appropriate and possibly “best fit” candidates are never met, because their resumes were thrown in the trash based on missing “key words”, arbitrary experience requirements, and other impersonal and unhuman criteria.

In this week’s show, Claudia discuss the need to build teams rather than fill job openings.

The annual “All-Star” games in many team sports made up of the best players from all the teams, do not result in the two best teams.

The order is important. We need thriving teams in order to function at the level necessary to create a way out of our economic doldrums.

A job opening is merely the existing set of tasks that the former employee did. It does not consider what might be possible given what the new hire brings to the table.

The question is, will you ever know? You may have just thrown the most promising resume in the trash because it showed six years of experience instead of seven.

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

It is the race to offer the most insubstantial napkin.

Only a few months ago it seemed the napkin dispenser norm was a semi-absorbent sheet of paper folded once in half in one direction and then again in thirds in the other.

The first feature to get left behind was absorbency. In fact, absorbency is but a distant memory, isn’t it?! But that loss was easy to cover up under the guise of protecting the environment. That it now takes five napkins to wipe up what one used to suffice for is conveniently not mentioned.

Next to go was the full sheet folded in half. Clearly we had been over-cleaning ourselves after our burger and fries. Some executive most certainly gave themself a big salary increase for finding such a clever way to cut their paper costs in half.

More recently it seems the tri-fold is increasingly being ditched in favor of a single fold. (And a fold that isn’t even a full half fold at that.)

It’s amazing how little paper these executives feel is more than adequate to deal with grease, coffee, ketchup, or whatever else one might want to wipe off one’s hands.

Who do you feel is winning the race to offer the most insubstantial napkin? Leave a comment with your example. Let’s compare notes. 

More significantly, where are your cost-cutting efforts inadvertently resulting in something like the need to use five insubstantial napkins instead of just one nice absorbent one?

Marva Collins