Herman School of Business
Flexibility...get yourself some!
When I wake up in the morning my almost sixty year old body takes a few minutes to get the blood flowing throughout my joints so I often walk down the steps one at a time, like an eighty year old person might do. If I sit for a long period of time then when I stand up to walk I notice my joints ache a bit until the circulation catches up. I would love to have the flexibility I had ten, fifteen or thirty years ago but I have to learn to cope with getting older.
This is not the kind of flexibility I want to talk about today.
Flexibility in your thinking is what this is about. We face opportunities to avoid problems every day if we just let our thinking be more flexible. The snow falling outside gives me the perfect example to illustrate this to you. It is snowing those tiny flakes here in Baltimore this morning, the kind of flakes that just seem to keep falling for hours non-stop. The kind of snowfall that no weatherman ever predicts. They call for “flurries” but never anticipate any accumulation. It looks like frozen rain drops more than snowflakes. And the sky looks gray and thick and full of more of this stuff than you can imagine.
Now for the reason it illustrates the need for flexibility of thinking. Tomorrow I have a 6:40AM flight to Dallas, arriving about noon. I will then drive one hour West to Ft Worth where I am scheduled to give two speeches in the late afternoon and early evening. Books have been shipped ahead and the people at Texas Christian University will be waiting for me. My flight tomorrow is not direct, I must switch planes in Houston, Texas. If my flight from Baltimore leaves late due to weather…I could miss the connection…and be late for my speech. Houston has plenty of shuttle flights to Dallas so that seems to be OK. But what if the airplane taking me to Houston is coming in tonight from Chicago where it may be held overnight, coming in late tomorrow morning to Baltimore and then being grounded because these tiny frozen rain drops accumulate to about eight to ten inches?
I can worry about this or be flexible in my thinking. If this were a business deal for me, where mucho bucks could be at stake this would be a “no brainer.” I would catch a flight today to Dallas and stay overnight, waking up where I need to be. This is a “free speech” I am giving, so there is no money pressure involved, but I do honor my agreements.
Stay home tonight where I love being or head out to Dallas where I would spend about my 4,000th night at a Holiday Inn and be on time for the speech? My plans are always to be at home as much as possible and rely on Southwest to get me there on time tomorrow. Conditions dictate a change of thinking. It looks like I will be flying out later today and put the event tomorrow ahead of my personal desire to stay home. I am willing to be flexible in my thinking for the good of all. In fact, to be honest, staying home tonight and worrying about the conditions of tomorrow and whether or not I will make it in time means I wouldn’t enjoy being home anyway. You might say going today is selfish on my part…just to avoid the worry.
My flexibility thinking means I will avoid the worry of tomorrow. Now my big concern is that by being in a hotel tonight in Dallas I hope I haven’t already seen all the movies on pay-per-view. At least I won’t have to take the steps tomorrow morning one at a time…I will probably be riding an elevator.
- Posted: 27 January 2009
- Comments: 0
- Category: Business success
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