Advance and be recognized

ABC News Special screen
The enemy is somewhere between hard to see and entirely invisible. #GodPleaseHaveMercyOnUkraine

My father-in-law, John Zubek, fought in World War II.

He only ever shared two things:

  1. Shoot or be shot at.
  2. Advance and be recognized.

The first thing he shared was because i pried for some sort of wisdom from him before he died and it would be lost forever.

The second thing he shared, can’t recall the context on why it was shared, other than there were scary times when you didn’t know who was nearby. And the only way to verify it was to ask the person you couldn’t see to, “Advance and be recognized.“

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.

02.22.22

tree trimming truck on road
This pair is trimming all the tree limbs from electrical wires. There are no wires on our side. This is their lunch break.

02.22.22

Such a first world luxury that a service, paid with tax dollars, travels from neighborhood to neighborhood, trimming tree limbs that could potentially cripple the electrical grid.

Otherwise, every lot owner would either do it themselves or ignore it altogether.

Put systems in place to do the right things for the right reasons. Be proactive to eliminate or alleviate future challenges. Proactive is common sense, but not common practice.

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.

Olympics Page

What does Jeff recommend as the best place to start?

For bottomline-folks, these three points are for you. Detail-oriented folks, everything after that is for you.

  1. Start with 60-minute Disney Customer Service Keynote for everyone.
  2. Followup (same day option) with the Disney Chain of Business Excellence Private Keynote for your top 5-10 C-Suite Executives.
  3. Finish with two-day Disney Chain of Business Excellence session for your top 20 leaders. Individual retail is $128k. Bundle and pay for all 3 at signing for $67k.

Context is everything…17 considerations so you know and understand what league you and your Company are playing in…

By the way, if you are the CEO, Owner, Founder, or all three, or you are in the CEO’s inner Executive circle (top 4-12 depending on company size) you are the perfect audience for this message.

To be clear, using an athletics analogy, Jeff’s audience is for Executives aiming for the Olympic finals, preferably the podium, preferably Olympic Gold.

It’s kinda fun to do the impossible.

Walt Disney
  1. Growth dilutes culture
  2. So does average leadership behaviors
  3. Good and very good aren’t good enough
  4. Everything matters
  5. Nothing is optional
  6. Every leader is telling a story about what he or she values
  7. We judge ourselves on our intentions, others judge us on our behaviors
  8. Your culture is either by design or by default
  9. What grade for culture last year?
  10. Culture = Habits
  11. Habits = Results
  12. Culture = Results
  13. How bad do you want it?
  14. Why?
  15. What’s missing or needs to level up?
  16. Remember why you got into what you’re leading now?
  17. Still on fire for it?

So what?

There’s nothing wrong with not being on fire, but it has no place in Jeff’s world.

Jeff has been in Customer Service for 45 years, 30 at Walt Disney World, including 15 teaching at the world-renowned Disney Institute. He is the preeminent expert. He learned it. He did it. He teaches it. Plus he’s been inside 2,000 different global businesses to various degrees of depth: from a discovery call or two for a keynote, to multi-year engagements for cultural resetting.

We told you that to tell you this, here is Jeff’s “Disney-Standard” three-step process for resetting any culture.

  1. Disney Customer Service Keynote for every employee (no size limit)
  2. Disney’s Leadership Chain of Business Excellence Private C-Suite Keynote (top 5-10 inner circle Executives)
  3. Two-Day Disney Leadership Chain of Business Excellence session (top 20 Company leaders)

Rational…

  • Step 1 rallies the organization around a clear, concise, and compelling world-class, time-tested Customer Service framework. After the keynote, none of your employees need to wait for Leadership, HR, or Finance approval to transform the way they serve others. If this is all you need to jump start things, awesome. If you think you might need or want more…
  • Step 2 unwraps the gift of Organizational Vibrancy’s five industry-neutral pillars and Jeff’s cumulative research on the 19 architectural blueprints to set all five pillars to the highest, world-class standard. Learn why everything matters and nothing is optional. Learn also how to be intentional where you used to be less internal or even ignored seemingly unimportant details. This keynote is the big picture interconnectedness message. Improve one pillar, the other four benefit. Neglect one pillar the other four suffer. Improve two, bigger positive ripple. Neglect two, deeper hole to climb out of. Maybe too deep. Deep breath. Exhale…Bonus: Jeff credits $10k of this keynote fee to future sessions if you continue your journey together. If this makes perfect sense – and it will – then you move to pro-level cultural commitment…
  • Step 3 rallies your top 20 leaders. This two-day session drills down to the next level of understand the remarkable power in simple, powerful common sense business insights. Jeff will essentially do five consecutive activity-based keynotes. He’ll unpack all 19 Organizational Vibrancy blueprints and use his home run activities for your team to feel the message, far surpassing a lecture’s impact. The second half of day two, Jeff stays by your side and passes the baton to you to spend the afternoon crafting your initial call-to-action “cultural resetting” blueprints. When you do this well, you walk out with your marching orders…a chief cultural reset owner with five direct reports – the individual pillar owners – who now possess clear accountability, and clear next steps with calendar targets.

Return to Home Page here (link intentionally disabled).

February 09, 2022 715AM

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.

Smoking is a priority

Dan Fogelberg Souvenirs album
Worth a second look. Played it until the wheels fell off.

Dan Fogelberg was a smoker?

Who knew?

Same with me (a smoker).

Our Son doesn’t believe it.

Remember, dad only smoked when he drank, and he only drank twice a week. Weekdays and weekends.

Haven’t had a drink, or a smoke, since December 30, 2001.

Ps. Smoking is a priority if you do it. What? Yes, if it wasn’t a priority, you wouldn’t be a smoker. Get your priorities prioritized. You’re welcome.

Pss. Here’s a bonus Led Zeppelin video, roughly 32 years after Bonham’s 1980 death. Led Zeppelin never recorded music again.

Thus concludes a few days of teens and 20’s flashbacks. Over-focused to the highest level. At this point the only music i “own” are the 100 CDs that will be donated to Goodwill this weekend. Downloading all Zeppelin, Fogelberg, and Buffett CDs in case i ever find myself without an Apple Music subscription. Gasp!

Honestly, picture yourself in an assisted living facility, but still wielding an iPhone. Will die listening to my three favorite music artists.

This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.

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Houses of the Holy

Led Zeppelin CD back cover
Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy, 1973.

Houses of the Holy may be the most underrated Led Zeppelin album.

Maybe hearing it at 14, the same year a Glacier National Park visit blew my mind, makes this a special album.

Maybe it’s the theme of a Holy House and HQ.

What did you do today to make your home a little better (holier?) than yesterday?

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This website is about our HOME. This is the fifth of five daily, differently-themed blog posts about: (1) mind, (2) body, (3) spirit, (4) work, (5) home. To return to Mid Life Celebration, the site about MIND, click here.