Beware of Advice From the Accidentally Successful

Larry Walker is a Realtor who writes a blog about the market in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral Florida.  Every post ends with a quote from someone. In one post, he quoted himself.

"Beware of advice from the accidentally successful."

Think about it.  It makes sense.  Following their advice could lead you far astray.

Addendum to all men (and women) can rise above common

Every one of us has an obligation to help provide conditions and opportunities for others to rise above common.

Employers (or those with leadership positions in an organization) need to provide opportunities in the workplace.  Teachers have a similar obligation to provide an opportunity and to offer encouragement.  Parents  have multiple obligations.  Not only must we provide opportunities , but we must also help children our children to develop the desire to rise above common.   This does not mean that as parents we should "drive" our children to achieve...... quite the contrary.  We should only provide the environment and genuine encouragement.  Too often parents seem to push their chikdren into attempting to excel in many things, with the end result being that the children are probably doing "it" to please their parents ....not themselves

Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common.

If you carefully read the recent "My friend Dave / Satchel Paige" post, you will remember that quote.

Everybody has an opportunity, but many do not take it.  It is hard work to rise beyond being common and certainly easier to just be average, but the opportunity is there.  At various times in this blog,  I have chronicled some who have risen beyond "common."

Opinion:

Borrowing from Mike Huckabee, the current "minority party" needs to present itself as the party that believes in giving people opportunities to improve, rather than the majority party whose ideology is that of passing out enough money that everyone can be average without having to work too hard for it, or even work at all.  

And to those who have worked hard, the current majority party says, "we are going to penalize you for working hard by taking your money and giving it to those who prefer not to work hard."  (All the bureaucrats who help administer this robbery and redistribution get a slice of the pie in the form of wages and benefits beyond the level of the non-public employees.)

Fact:

At Richway, as I have noted before (January 8, 2013), part of our philosophy was that people were given "a lot of rope" in their job.  They could "hang" themselves or use the opportunity to excel, have fun doing it, learn new skills, try some of their ideas (generally without fear of retribution for failure), and generally rise beyond being "common."    This "rope and opportunity" was available to everyone we hired. 

Some handled it well and eventually moved to other opportunities outside Richway.  I have stayed in touch with a lot of them.  Some handled it well and remained at Richway.  I am in touch with them.  For others, it was as if it was too much work to do well, so they failed to one degree or another --- some very miserably and visibly  --- others quietly.

Looking back, I should have been more clear at the time of hiring that they were going to be responsible for their own success or failure.  Then I/we should have provided more coaching and support for those who truly wanted to succeed, but needed some help in implementation.   Coaching and support, Yes.      Tight management, No


Quoting from my post of January 8:
 "Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great  and numerous other books, once said: "The right people don't need to be managed.  If you need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake."  In the same vein, if someone needs to be taught everything, you have the wrong person." 

As a nation we need to be sure we are creating the conditions for the opportunity and incentive to rise above being common. 

 

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My disability. Yes it is real.

Disabilities    deficiencies     challenges    weaknesses     "We all have them      We all got 'em"  to quote a Jimmy Buffett song line (he was speaking about "relationships"), and we all do our best to overcome them.    I do not recognize/remember faces very well.  It is embarrassing and very frustrating.  My mother had the same difficulty and so do my brother and sister.  Our father, until an accident when he was 60 caused brain damage, had excellent facial recognition.  You might think an engineer, who often thinks visually, would have no trouble thinking visually and remembering faces.   

I often thought it was just that I did not try hard enough, but remembering faces has always eluded me no matter how hard I try. 

Recently I came across a story about "face blindness" and started digging further.  The "official" name is prosopagnosia.  There has been a lot of research done in the past decade or two. It is real and from 2 to 2.5% of our population has it.   There are varying degrees and for some it is hereditary, while for others is acquired, such as through injury.   Many times there are other difficulties, symptoms, or other cognitive problems.  The cause is unknown, but there is a specific area in the brain which is used for facial recognition and which causes prosopagnosia. Compensation for most of us takes several forms, including recognizing non-facial features, even including teeth, scars, glasses, gait, hair, body shape, voice, etc, etc.

At trade shows, I read name tags, rather than look at faces. Some of those around me would help by mentioning a name or some other piece of information. There have been others who would just let me flounder, sometimes even seeming to relish my difficulty.


Click for Lesly Stahl CBS News, August 2012


Read this Wired magazine article from 2006

Link here to "faceblind.org"

 
I took the "test" at faceblind.org and correctly identified only 6 of the 16 faces I tried to identify.  There were others of the total of 30 faces presented that I knew the name of the person, but had no idea of the face, so I passed on them.  All faces were presented without hair or ears --- just the face.   I "got" Elvis, but missed George W. Bush and Bill Clinton!  At the end of the test, it said that scoring less than 50% would be an indication of faceblindness.


My wife came home the other day and told me how terribly embarrassed she had been because she did not recognize our neighbor in a different setting than usual.  My wife is normally very good with faces and this had upset her quite a bit.  For me it sounded like an everyday occurrence.....because it is, so I had little comment.  I have thought about it more and it is a "welcome to my world" where such things can and do happen every day of my life.   

There are degrees of severity of prosopagnosia, some do recognize faces of people whom they have seen a number of times.  

All of us who are face blind have lots of coping mechanisms. We learn to live with it....starting at an early age.  So do those who are color blind or have a physical disability or have any other impairment from birth.  And remember "We all have them,  we all got 'em".  We just might not recognize our disability or have a name for it for a long time.


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