I will be hosting a webinar soon on the above three topics …. and what exactly do they have in common? It’s nearly mid-year and usually at this point in time, people will look at their goals to assess their year. What is your reaction … joy or frustration and excuses?

Think about your natural behavioral manner ….. do you methodically write out each step of achieving your goals? Or do you know what you want to achieve at a higher level, and “will get to the details later”? Or are you so detailed that your action steps number into the pages in length?

When you procrastinate, or when you think someone else is procrastinating, do you know why they are doing it? Could it be they don’t have enough information to make a decision and they need to research it more before they can make a decision? Or they need to talk with others, get a consensus, before they take action? These are only two reasons why procrastination is not as it appears to be.

And finally, time bandits …. why do we waste time? Did you know that our natural behaviors lend themselves to specific ways we waste time? And there are ways to counter it.

It’s all part of who we are … our uniqueness.

It’s not what they did, it’s what you thought they did.

…lessons would be a waste of money.”

In an episode of F Troop, Sgt. O’Rourke said this to the bugler H. Dobbs. You would then think that Dobbs played the bugle beautifully, thus not needing lessons.

In reality, Dobbs was an awful bugler. His ‘Reveille’, ‘Assembly’ and ‘Retreat’ sounded like off-key notes strung together, and he only occasionally played them well enough to be recognized.

It isn’t what he said, it’s what we think we heard.

Emailing from your company email account is not as innocent as it once was. From the Pacific Business Journal:

It’s not just the potential for litigation when someone sends an offensive e-mail. Every angry customer, frustrated competitor and spurned employee now knows that e-mail provides a retrievable trail of evidence…

In federal bankruptcy court in Honolulu last fall, the former chief financial officer of Mesa Air Group was tripped up by an e-mail he wrote that said Mesa didn’t want to wait for Aloha Airlines “to die, rather we should be the ones who give them the last push.”… The e-mail was part of the evidence that helped the judge rule against Mesa, which ultimately led it to settle its lawsuit with Hawaiian Airlines for $52.5 million.

The most expensive case involving so-called “electronic discovery” was the …case of Laura Zubulake against …UBS Warburg in 2003…Zubulake, who was an executive with the bank’s Asian equities sales desk, sued the bank … for sex discrimination when a male manager told her she was “old and ugly and she can’t do the job.” A jury awarded Zubulake $29 million when it was learned the supervisor covered up the incident by deleting e-mails…

In each of these instances, the person in authority displayed an attitude of “Captainitis”, where they thought since they had more power, that nothing would come of their insensitive statements. They may have thought that they had the undying loyalty of those that reported to them. It may have been inconceivable to them that they would be punished, much less get caught.

I don’t think there is a question about what they said or what we thought we heard. The courts proved that.

Recently Stephen King said this:

I don’t want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got, the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that. It’s, it’s not as bright. So, that’s my little commercial for that.

When asked about this statement by the Bangor Daily News, Mr. King ended his response with “…of course we all support the troops.”

Nearly 100% of our courageous soldiers have a high school education, and many are trained specifically for high tech duties and responsibilities.

Mr. King, I say to you: it isn’t what you said, it’s what we think we heard.

Here’s another set of words from a classic TV show, Mash:

Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan: Colonel…
Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan: Major Burns is ready to assist.
Army Capt. “Trapper John” McIntyre: What do you think I’m doing? Stalling ’til my room is ready?
Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan: I think it only fitting that a Captain be assisted by a Major when working on the son of a General, Colonel.
Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce: I think you just conjugated the Pentagon!

How often do your thoughts sound clear to you, yet are confusing to others?

It isn’t what you said, it’s what they think they hear!

I was scanning the cable news networks’ websites and came across this on CNN:

Cruise: ‘Things have been misunderstood’

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, he said that his episode of jumping on her couch was “an authentic way of expressing his feelings for Katie Holmes.” When asked about his comments about anti-depressant drugs he “said he regretted that his views came out wrong.” His comments about Scientology are “when he [Cruise] refuses to answer questions about Scientology, people question why he’s avoiding the topic. When he does answer questions, he’s accused of preaching.”

Does your opinion change after reading his explanations, or is your initial opinion intact?

Is it what he said, or what he meant to say?