Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Blog

Are You Like A Fly On A Window?

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We construct our lives as best we can, yet it is hard to see the boundaries and borders we’ve created around us. Certainly, some enclosures provide protection and support. Yet, some barriers are self-inflicting and limit our life with an unhealthy—even an unnatural—manner and lessening result that leaves us being off-purpose.

It sucks to be stuck in life.

Heart WorkOn July 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan challenged then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev with the words, “Tear down this wall,” and the world soon changed. Look at your own life and ask, If President Reagan were to speak to me, what walls would he challenge me to tear down in my life?

Are you ready to stop banging your head against the window pane of life? Do you see the life you imagine, but an invisible barrier prevents you from getting to the other side? Now is the time to do the hard work of your heart work.

Are you ready to do your heart work but you don’t know how?

Here are some ideas:

Visit our online bookstore for more ideas.

Is Your Career In The Midst of A Tough Shift? (part 2)

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Career Advice?

Early in my career a well-intended business person told me, “Keep your personal life and your business life separated.” At the time, I remember questioning that advice. Perhaps if I had pursued a career in Corporate America that Industrial Age advice might have served me well.

I ignored that advice and followed my heart with the guidance of my head.

Today, I wholeheartedly believe just the opposite is not only true but the healthiest approach to living life and having well-being in your person, work, and relationships.

I’ve been a business owner for over 50 years.

It started with selling candy on the school bus. I tended to eat my profits. My older brother did collections and my parents’ dental plan covered the cavities. Heading down and staying on a path of independent business ownership eventually led me to be in the business of helping clients integrate their work and life to be on-purpose. For over 25 years, I’ve been sharing that message with anyone who would listen. Today, the world is ready and hearing this message.

But what if your life feels compartmentalized, scattered, and struggling with a Tough Shift? Now what? The disintegration of life and work may be an effective (and necessary) survival tool for working ill-fitted jobs, but is dying better than thriving?

Integration of life and work is where it’s at.

On-Purpose can help you to live into your greater calling and find your happiness.

Put on-purpose business principles and planning to use in your personal and work life. As a business advisor my focus is principally on company growth through improving the business acumen and leadership capacity of the people within a well-defined business strategy. We help our clients create On-Purpose Business Plans. You can do the same for your career by creating a life and career plan, especially leveraging ONPURPOSE.me, the online 2-word purpose statement discovery tool.

Over the years, many a client has come to me seeking life and career advice.

Usually, the call comes when they’re in the midst of a tough shift—job loss or job dissatisfaction. Most of us struggle with time management, but that isn’t the underlying issue. We’re fighting financial worries, but that isn’t the true problem either. We’re trying to steady a shaken confidence, but that isn’t the problem.

The real problem is we haven’t identified what’s most important … really important–willing-to-pay-the-price-important.

  • We take on too much.
  • We spread ourselves thin.
  • We never develop our true strengths, passion, and purpose.

The idea of spreading our risks actually compounds it. Try excelling at something you’re not called to do. No amount of extra time, energy, and effort can produce a truly satisfying result. We’re simply off-purpose. What a waste!

If you find yourself in the midst of a tough shift, such as out of work, underemployed, on-the-fence about your future, or downright unhappy in your present job, then On-Purpose® is a fun, workable process designed to free you to be true to who you are.

Here are some suggested resources:

  1. Read The On-Purpose Person.
  2. Run Want Lists and Tournaments to get very clear about what’s most immediately important. Use The Discovery Guide free preview.

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    Mary Tomlinson rocks as an On-Purpose Personal Leadership Coach
  3. Hire a coach to help you. There are plenty of talented, capable “life coaches” available. Mary Tomlinson is delightfully exceptional at walking clients through the entire On-Purpose personal planning process using On-Purpose Peace. We also have other recommendations to On-Purpose Pros as life and career coaches.
  4. Make appointments for your dream! If you don’t, no one else will. You’ll always be subject to fulfilling the dreams of others while your dream dissipates through the days spent instead of invested.

Go into this planning process with a focus on your life and you’ll come out with a life and career plan that informs your vocational aspirations.

Smooth out the tough shift and step your life into a higher gear—on-purpose!

Make Appointments for Your Dream

Are You Making Half-Hearted Attempts?

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For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:21

Most of us think we decide with our head, our rational logic. What if that is only half of the equation—and not even the better half? We trust our decisions with our hearts, so being half-hearted or uncommitted messes with our minds. Consider the costs of a lifetime of flawed decision-making on our well-being, income, opportunities, and relationships. Scary, huh?

Before making a big decision, have you ever been told to “Sleep on it overnight”?

This wise counsel was intended to provide time for your heart to catch up with your racing-ahead mind. It’s a way to go from being half-hearted to being wholehearted.

In time, feelings and thoughts will emerge beyond your initial thinking. Sleeping on a decision often provides the ample space and time needed to gain the fuller perspective that leads to a more peaceful and wisely reached decision.

Instead, the heart needs to precede the mind in key, conscious decisions.

Few of us, however, are trained or experienced to know how to first take a decision to our heart.

Here is where your 2-word personal purpose statement can serve you well. On the front end of a decision, ask yourself if what you’re about to decide is on-purpose. Use your purpose as a way to be heart-centered. This gives some assurance that you’re likely to be bringing expression to your purpose in your decision.

Discover your 2-word Personal Purpose Statement at ONPURPOSE.me. This online app will guide you through a process of selecting a purpose statement, plus you’ll receive a 10-email course that’s practical to being on-purpose. On-Purpose.me logoThe limited-time reduced launch price is currently available.

In life and work experiences, I’ll estimate that the vast majority of our decisions are made in the mind, and the heart is left in exile.

We disadvantage ourselves when our heart is sidelined when making decisions.

I’ve often struggled to get in touch with my feelings when making a decision. I tend to rattle thoughts about in my brain in attempts to discover the best answer. Later on, I’ll be pondering the same matter and realize I’m not comfortable with my decision. Is that doubt, fear, lack of confidence, or what?

It is that I forgot to go to my heart to make the decision. Therefore, I’m not peaceful so I’m inclined to go into something vital half-heartedly. That’s a big mistake.

Learn to listen to your spirit speaking—that small, still voice caught in the wilderness of our brains. Matthew 6:21 attempts to inform and transform our way of thinking. It links the act of treasuring and our hearts. You can’t treasure everything, so discern with your heart and make your decisions with your whole heart.

P.S. Here is a really interesting article from the Institute of HeartMath about making decisions with our heart. Solution for Effective Decision Making

 

Is Your Career In The Midst of A Tough Shift™?

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Job loss, underemployment, a part-time job instead of a full-time job, less pay for less rewarding work. Or perhaps you just don’t like the job you have. You are in the midst of or contemplating a Tough Shift™.

Don’t go through it alone! And, you’re not alone.

Stock market volatility, technology changes, and the gig economy might have you considering other career options.

When the U.S. economy catches a cold, the whole world sneezes! This unfortunate effect has many people spinning and caught in a round of chaos and confusion. Couple this with technology changes and the personal fallout from job loss and underemployment—it all amounts to a serious worldwide tough shift.

Change is never easy, but change under duress is even tougher.

Fear, worry, doubt, and anxiety creep into us. This affects us at some profound subconscious level and begins to be communicated. Our nervous vibe causes others to view us as desperate and risky. This perpetuates our greatest fears from the tough shift.

Is now the time to explore starting a business?

It can be an intimidating undertaking but there are many options to explore out there. For decades I’ve worked with business start-ups to design, advise, and guide the growth and development of the business plan and leader.

Don’t go it alone.

Find a business advisor or mentor who can see clearly into your blind spots. Yes, you’ll invest a few dollars, but you’ll gain time to market and create a more profitable and better working operation. There are no short-cuts to business creation, but why add unnecessary delays and detours out of your own inexperience?

So while you’re looking for a job you can be creating one, too … for yourself. Who knows, you may never have to go to work for someone else again!

This On-Purpose Business Minute offers some simple and calming insights.

Are you ready to tackle the underlying issues, so you’re tough shift proofed?

Are You An Explorer?

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Age doesn’t matter when it comes to developing the attitude of being an explorer.

Adventure is most often associated with youth. Let’s not, however, confuse inexperience with adventure. To be an explorer of life is to see life as an adventure versus a chore or time served on the planet. I know adventurers who are 9 and those who are in their 90s. The choice is yours.


Cultivating a spirit of curiosity about the world is a noble endeavor, but don’t forget yourself.

The better you know who you are the richer that journey beyond you will be and become. The ultimate exploration is to know oneself because in the process of that journey you’ll face some very challenging ordeals (Hey, it’s an adventure!) that will clarify your thinking and provoke your beliefs. To understand your design, you’ll look into the mind and heart of the Designer. Wow!

“We must develop a compelling vision of later life: one that does not assume a trajectory of decline after fifty, but one that recognizes it as a time of change, growth, and new learning, a time when our courage gives us hope.”

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
Author: The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure

 

“We are here to be excited from youth to old age, to have an insatiable curiosity about the world. Aldous Huxley once said that to carry the spirit of the child into old age is the secret of genius. And I buy that.

“We are also here to genuinely, humbly, and sincerely help others by practicing a friendly attitude. And every person is born for a purpose. Everyone has a God-given potential, in essence, built into them. And if we are to realize life to its fullest, we must realize that potential.”

Norman Vincent Peale
Protestant pastor, Author, The Power of Positive ThinkingCrazy_grandpa

This photo to the right is not Norman Vincent Peale. It is Mr. Six of Six Flags. I want to meet him! Dig the shoes! Watch him in action! (He’s actually an actor, not a real old guy but you get the point about the attitude.)

The aging process is inevitable.

How we age, however, is significantly within our control. Just because you might be part of an “aging population,” such as the Baby Boomers, it doesn’t mean that you are

  • over the hill
  • washed up
  • kaput
  • done for

Heck, you’re finally better equipped than ever.

Keith Lawrence is the co-author of Your Retirement Quest. Keith has been researching and advising those approaching and in retirement. Why wait to get started until you are retired or in assisted living to begin your Retirement Quest? Discover your Retirement Quest today regardless of what decade of life you are in.

Just about every day, I visit my Mom who is in her early 90s. This affords me the honor to meet her friends, many of whom are well into their 90s. One woman just turned 105 and looks like she is 75. I learn a lot from being with this Greatest Generation in this independent living facility. They’re an interested lot who read, discuss, debate, and embrace life. One observation I’ve had about this vital group—they aren’t the grumpy old people so often portrayed. They’re vibrant, interested, and interesting. As Peale recommends, they’ve carried a youthful curiosity into their advanced years.

Begin by discovering who you really are. Retirement age is not mandated by an employer or the government; it comes when we decide to stop discovering who we really are and what we are capable of achieving even to our death bed.

Those who never tire of learning, never retire.

Are You Line or Staff?

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Think Inc! is Pillar 2 in The On-Purpose Business Person: The Mindset.

 

Being a line manager or staff person defines the role of one’s job, but it need not define your attitude and approach to your job.

In this On-Purpose® Business Minute, let’s explore a structural reality that affects on-the-job performance, often negatively. It need not be so if one is simply willing to see the job differently and Think Inc!—the mindset of being a line leader even if you have a staff job.

The absence of leadership is often cited.

When you’ve had a lousy customer service experience it is most often because someone wasn’t willing to make a decision or someone else away from the situation had created a broad, inflexible policy. There’s little worse than having a customer service person (staff person) cite you the limitations of their job and why they can’t help you.

When the overarching cloud of their superior’s policies outweighs the frontline person’s inherent common sense and desire to do right for their customer, everyone suffers.

Here’s an example from a few years ago. Judith and I were flying from Washington, DC, back to Orlando on a 6:00 PM flight. I discovered there was an earlier flight to Orlando at 3:00. We showed up at the airport at 1:30 to see if we could catch a ride on the early flight with US Airways. Good news—they had plenty of seats and would be happy to change our seats for $75 each. Being a travel veteran over the decades, I said, “What if we fly standby and take open seats on an as-available basis?” It seemed like a straight-forward logical win-win request.

Stupid me! I was told that we couldn’t get on the earlier flight because “US Airways needed to generate revenue on those seats.” Pardon me, I thought I had paid for two seats and they were already generating revenue from our business. Under the logic of airline seats being a “perishable product” my practical argument was, “Hey, if the empty seats haven’t filled within 90 minutes of flight time, don’t you have a higher probability of selling seats on the later flight that is almost full?”

What was I thinking? “Why should US Airways want to take care of the passengers standing at the gate while increasing their own odds with getting some yet-to-show-up new passenger to pay for the later flight?” But that’s the way my mind works.

US Airways, however, has a scarcity mindset … the customer wants something we have, we already have their money, so let’s gouge them for some extra revenue instead of accommodating their request. Even the ticket agents and customer service person were visibly unhappy about having to enforce a logical customer request that was thwarted by policies called, “We need to earn revenue on that seat.” I was given that as an excuse by multiple people over numerous times. Wow, how degrading and transactional to quote policy like that to the customer.

By the way, we decided to hang on to our $150 and took our scheduled flight.

US Airways gets my nomination for being off-purpose with this matter. Not surprisingly, a Google search for their corporate purpose, vision, mission, or values reveals none.

To the credit of US Airways, their front line counter agent and supervisor tried to be helpful within their limitations. We traveled home safely and for that, I’m thankful to US Airways.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin

 

Are You Happily Distracted?

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We live in the entertainment economy.

We’re so immersed in it that we’re like fish who don’t realize they’re swimming in water.

We’re in the midst of the entertainment awards season. And some people are highly interested in the outcome of a particular Big Game this upcoming Sunday. Admittedly, I am usually one of those taking in the game, commercials, and halftime show. Pro football is my sports distraction of choice.

I invite you to breathe the fresh air of a life lived more thoughtfully and fully alive. Think of this message as CPR for the soul.

Be sure to invest yourself in the matters of life that matter the most.

Go more deeply into the discovery of knowing who you are, how you were designed, and the difference your life can make in the world of the “happily distracted” who are filled but unfulfilled.

Distractions abound in an ADHD-paced schedule and life. Distractions prevent us from getting to clarity and building lives of maturity, depth, and greater contribution.

When distractions become our way of life, the way of our life is passing us by.

How many times have you said, “I just want to be happy”? Perhaps you’ve said it about your children, too.

To be happy is certainly a worthy emotional state.

A smiley by Pumbaa, drawn using a text editor.Image via Wikipedia

Dare I ask …

  • Is happiness the true gold standard for the ideal emotional state?
  • Can we always be happy?
  • Are we entitled to happiness?

Yes, I believe in the book title from the Minirth Meier New Life Clinic, Happiness is a Choice. I’m happy to be happy!

Perhaps my age is showing with my questions (and answer). Hopefully, I’m not a cynic, but a keen observer of the human condition. The “pursuit of happiness” as we understand and apply it in the 21st Century may actually not be in our long-term best interest.

Too often the pursuit of happiness is the unhealthy avoidance of reality.

Denial and distraction are a dangerous one-two combination that takes us down an unhealthy path of avoidance.

Happiness, for all its good as it is in use today, is a fleeting, temporary, or surface emotion. Happiness is circumstantial and has the effect of drug tolerance. What it takes to makes us happy tends to get ramped up over time. We need more and bigger to satisfy our happiness quotient.

The more enduring emotions are love, joy, and peace because they are attitudes of choice—not circumstances. The matter becomes not what can I do to be happy, but can I be at peace regardless of my circumstances.

Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search For Meaning profoundly observed that those who survived in Nazi prison camps had a compelling reason and will to live. In essence, they made peace with their circumstances and captors. They lived until another day because they had a purpose, a reason for being.

Pursuing your purpose (instead of happiness) opens the back door to the prosperous and joyful life of being more at peace. Get off the “happy drug” of distractions.

Stop paying the high price of avoiding being the true you.

On-Purpose Logo tag w color 500Frankly, we need you to be more of you. You’re the only one who can be you.

Are You Doing Business By Design?

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Most start-up businesses begin with great intentions but are at risk of being haphazardly led with little to no regard for the founder’s spiritWalt Disney Creating Happiness or original intent—even when the founder is still running the business! It is a costly loss of strategic advantage, employee and customer engagement, and business profits!

Some companies get it right and thrive. The Walt Disney Company’s 2-word purpose can be stated as Creating Happiness. They do a great job of living into that purpose.

Susceptibility

Most susceptible to this drifting from the founder’s spirit and intent are large organizations and institutions where work is highly fragmented across divisions and/or countries. Specialization must be paired with a sustainable corporate culture that honors and innovates upon the strengths of its past.

For example, did you know that universities and colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other Ivy League colleges were started as seminaries to train and equip ministers in the Christian faith? Today, these academic bastions of intellectualism and secularization are so far from their founders’ intent that their roots are obscured, if not outright ridiculed.

Candidly, most large businesses have lost a measure of their soul, and so they resort to conveying and communicating corporate values as the “fix” to the deeper loss of authenticity and congruency. When values need to be more codified and communicated than caught, then ethical business problems are predictably on the horizon.

Right behavior can be reinforced, but it can’t be legislated.

Hellegation™

Least susceptible to drift are micro-businesses or one-person entrepreneurs, freelancers, and such—provided they have clarified what matters most. Otherwise, they’re susceptible to the “chasing bright shiny objects syndrome.”

Solo owners face a different challenge, however. Founders of these SOHO (small office, home office) businesses are typically wearing far too many hats and are preoccupied with personally providing production, sales, and customer care. They’re easily caught in a vicious swirl of learning, working, and selling or overwhelmingly stuck in procrastination.

Fortunately, their passion to perform typically enables them to muscle through and deliver on a small scale basis. My term for this is Hellegation™—a condition where the solo owner has no one to delegate work to in order to be freed up to focus on more important matters to the health and well-being of the business, its customers, and society.

Years ago, I had a client who was starting an IT business. He got so lost in his software development, he soon forgot why he started a business. His intent was to help clients, employees, and his family, but he lost sight of the larger picture—becoming buried in the details. His strategic confusion produced a bewildering business design supported by a confused business infrastructure.

In my client’s case, lines of code were the means for creating value and making a contribution. He, however, got caught up in the making of money (financial profit) versus creating a profit for everyone (adding value). The true value of his business wasn’t code or cash but grounded in how his software improved the lives and productivity of his client companies and their customers.

By Design, On-Purpose

It sounds so basic, but the fundamentals of business really don’t change. Ultimately business is about people serving people. As today’s On-Purpose Business Minute encourages: do business by design. Clarity of purpose is your market advantage (or disadvantage if absent!). The difference from company to company is its business style, design, model, and infrastructure in alignment with its purpose, i.e. being on-purpose.

Any kind of plan or business plan for small businesses tends to be scarce. Who has the time to plan? or so the thinking goes. Understandably so because the plans are really not all that appropriate or useful in many businesses (see: What is the Purpose of a Business Plan?). Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean strategy and planning are useless and meaningless. They have a specific and powerful place in a company of any size.

(Special plug: A couple of years ago I met Jim Horan, creator of The One Page Business Plan. Here’s a great planning device for businesses of all sizes. It is, however, especially apropos for solo owners.) I also offer The Service Model as a similar but different way to analyze, build, and design your business. You can purchase instructions and a worksheet at The On-Purpose Shop.

Having a strategic context for building your business matters.

The On-Purpose Business Plan is a 9-minute video providing the essential steps to integrate the business design, plan, model, and infrastructure to reach and serve your customer base. This “map” of what’s needed is too often a missing perspective for those leading organizations. Admittedly, the agenda is full so connecting this many dots seems like busy work. In fact, it is vital business work to the development and growth of your team, culture, and business performance.

Regardless of whether you are an entrepreneur of a one-person show or the CEO of a billion-dollar business, as your business advisor and designer, you don’t call me until there’s a problem in the business that your team or you can’t fix yourselves. Your SWOT Analysis only takes you so far.

Stuck?

Let’s assume that you are competent at delivering your product or service, but the business isn’t growing. That means problems lie in the design of the business or the leadership or both! Conversations and conventional wisdom swirl around business infrastructure, business planning, and the business model, but it is like a fish swimming in water trying to see water—you won’t see it because you’re too close to the matter.

Times like this demand depth, not shallow manipulations of the status quo under the guise of change management. In the strategic depths of an organization, a slight adjustment in understanding, a tiny shift in strategy, or an orientation toward greater alignment ripple powerfully into positive results.

The simple articulation of a 2-word purpose statement is the tiniest of acts—but the most potent of all strategic initiatives.TOPBPerson cover

Tweaking the fundamental design of the business is not for the faint of heart. Eventually, failure to do so will be manifest in every facet of the business … and that’s costly at every line item on the budget. Strategic business design can elevate the business to the next level of performance, profits, and expression of its purpose.

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The On-Purpose Business Person provides a solid framework for any person at work to learn how to be strategic and to approach their work as a business owner. Click here or on the image to the right to purchase it for $16. It is also available on Kindle for $9.97.

Get The Service Model worksheet here!