Dec 17

I’m Not the Least Bit Interested in Resolutions. Show Me Your Plans!

Holiday habits have us all geared up to toast to our New Year’s resolutions in a week or so. Humbug! Balderdash! Phooey, I say!

I am not the least bit interested in resolutions. I want to see your plans and evidence of what FDR called, direct, vigorous action. Show me your calendar with your goals broken down into daily tasks. Show me your budgets with allocations by month for those tasks that require money to be spent. Show me your hour blocks that dedicate your time to working on those tasks. Show me the calendars, budgets, and time blocks of key colleagues/partners/teammates who are working with you on accomplishing your important goals. Those are the things I want to see!

Show me your education plans, complete with budget, so I can see your commitment to your ongoing learning. Show me your wish-list of knowledge you will buy at Amazon.com. Better yet, show me the order receipts for the ones you already bought. (Might as well take the right off this year, so buy the books, DVDs, CDs now.) Show me your seminar registration and the plane reservation to get there. Show me your new Blackberry or iPhone if you bought an upgrade to be more productive. Show me the subscription receipts for the academic journals you subscribed to, or the weekly/monthly magazines you bought for the coming year. Show me the airline reservations for that visit to far-off lands, great friends, and loved family you say you “will” take. Those things will prove that you are intent. Your intention statements (sorry Wayne Dyer) are as substantive as the clouds outside and as fleeting as Mrs. Tuttle’s cookies (Thanks, Ma Tutt!).

Harsh? Maybe? But, aren’t you tired of the same old silly thinking about annual intentions? I am. I’m bored with my own blabber about intentions. Every year I have a few juicy, cleverly worded intentions, and every year just like most of you (send me a note proving I’m wrong about your 2008 intentions and I will send you a personal apology and a big ol’ Congratulations!) could hardly say in March what I intended in December.

This year my money and time are where my heart really is. So far I have:

A) Bought three books and research on leadership:

Stogdill & Bass’s updated Encyclopedia of Leadership
J.M. Burns’ Transformational Leadership book (different than the 1978 book, Leadership)
Sorrentino & Yamaguchi’s Handbook of Motivation and Cognition Across Cultures
McClelland’s Human Motivation (Thanks, Michele!) and,

B) Paid for a 3-credit intersession class on Group Dynamics at USD.

Total investment: Approximately $3700.

Am I bragging? I don’t mean to. What I mean is to show that I am putting my resources where my mouth is. So, when I sit with Drea Zigarmi and Susan Fowler (love you both!) soon and we create our vision boards for the 2009, I can truthfully report not only what I want, but what I am doing to create it.

No doubt, some of what will happen in 2009 will be a mystery. As well it should be. But, what I can contribute I will. And(!) this year it will be before I spout off about it.

So, from the depths of my heart to the depths of yours, please do the work now, before your annual New Year’s resolution turns out to be just another clever toast with a fine drink amidst dear friends sent up with a flurry of revelry and chatter into the ether never to be heard from again.

Life is short and can be grand. Act now so when you intend ahead, you actually already have a plan in action.

Happy New Year! May all your plans come true.