Famous Cards for Everyone

LEARNING ACTIVITY (allow about 20 minutes)

Purpose:
To help the participants focus on their vision, their mission, and their key measures. It's also an opportunity to practice drawing.

Materials:
At least one sample baseball card for everyone in the group (you could use cards from another sport but I'm partial to baseball cards).

Blank index cards for each person as well. More than one is recommended in case they need to do-over an early attempt.

Process:

Review the sample baseball card. Identify what makes it so useful. What does it report? Note the picture - what does it say about the person on the card?
Write your vision and/or mission at the top of the back of your card. Do your best to keep it to ten words or less. If you don't currently have a mission, now's the time to write one!
Think about what is important about what you do for a living and how those things are measured. Identify 3 to 5 key measures that you are held accountable for.
Write a place on the back of the card to record your key measures for several periods of time. For baseball cards it's seasons (years) and that may be true for you as well. Or, it could be months or fiscal periods. You decide.
If you know you know your key measures results, record those on your card. If you don't know them, how could you find them out? Do that.
The fun part! Draw your picture on the front of the card. You might want to practice on scrap paper first. Do your best to express something about WHO you are, professionally, in your picture. It could be a serious drawing, a characature, or even a very elementary stick figure. Do your very best.

As always, be creative!

Debrief:

What did you learn?

What does your picture say about you?

What do your key measures say about you?

Could you have picked different key measures?

If your key measures were completely up to you, would they be the same as they are now?

-- doug smith

doug smith training: developing creativity

You are welcome to use this learning activity in any context that you like. When you do, please cite it as:

Famous Cards for Everyone, Learning Activity by Doug Smith of Doug Smith Training.
(c) 2015 douglas brent smith

Comments

Bright Spots

We need to know how to improve, so as leaders part of our job is to provide the feedback-for-improvement that our teams need. Specifically, timely, kindly. It's easy to remember that if not so easy to do. We should also remember to call attention to what is working. Let people know what is great. Share our stories of how the team is excelling. Sharing the bright spots lights the way. The more we see what works, the better we can make it work. What positive bright spot can you share with your team today? -- doug smith

Service Appreciation

Delivering excellent service is tough enough and sometimes it's not enough, according to our customers. With some customer wanting a miracle, or a policy change, it mean that even when we do our best it may not be perceived as enough. We could have always done more. We should have somehow changed the world in order to change their outcome. Other times, customers are generous in their thanks. Our extra steps are appreciated, our efforts are more than enough, and our customers are happy to do business with us. We should work as if the second group of customers -- the real appreciators, the happy ones, are the norm and hold onto the joy they share. There are no guarantees that our service will be appreciated, but that's not why we do it. We serve because that's where the joy lives, in helping others. -- doug smith

Goals with Bonus Benefits

Goals are important, but if you haven't achieved a goal does that mean that you've failed? Not always and certainly not completely. It's possible that a better goal opened up while you were working om the one that you left behind. Maybe you simply prioritized something more valuable. We shouldn't expect to achieve every goal because if we do either our goals are too small or our priorities are too rigid. A goal can be successful without being achieved. We learn. We grow. We adjust. We connect -- many ways that we are enriched by working toward something whether or not we achieve it. Of course we do want to achieve our goals. Even when we don't, though, we learn. What has your most recent unachieved goal taught you? -- doug smith

Too Much Advice?

What happens with unsolicited advice? Probably nothing. If you didn't ask for a piece of advice, why would you take it? Well, then what happens to advice that you do ask for? Isn't that a whole different matter? Different, yes, and yet often the outcome is the same: advice given and then ignored. It's easy to give advice because we all have opinions on everything, even stuff we don't know anything about. Taking advice is harder because A) the advice we get is often wrong, B) the advice we get is usually hard, and C) the advice we get often doesn't work. As someone who is sometimes paid to give advice I've had to learn the primary consultant's rule of advice giving: first ask the questions and then let the client determine the best advice. It takes longer. It can take much longer. It's not immediately satisfying, but it works much better. I'm working on slowing down my approach to giving advice and yet I still go too fast sometimes. How about you? He...

Joy at Work

Identify your source of joy, apply it to your work, and your work becomes a source of joy. -- doug smith

A Key to Happiness

We all like to be happy. Many people devote their entire lives to being happy, trying a series of things until they find something that seems to work. I don't pretend to have the key to happiness but I've lived and worked long enough to learn one wonderful way to get there. If you want the secret to happiness, find out what you can do that makes other people happy. Then...do that. What are your keys to happiness? -- doug smith

Agenda Reveals Character

You can tell much about someone by what they plan to do. You might learn all you need to know about someone by their plan, their strategy, their approach to communicating (or not communicating). Agenda is revealing. Agenda reveals character. Read the signals. No amount of accommodation will change a person's character. Maybe start with the agenda, and if you can't get that to an acceptable plan, read the signals. -- doug smith

Courage Continuum

Small acts of courage lead to big acts of courage. It starts out tough and stays tough yet one courageous act leads to an even more courageous act, just like building a muscle. What courageous thing will you do this week? -- doug smith

Tried That?

Ever work on a problem so long that you've got a half of a dozen solutions buzzing around like bees near a flower? What if those bees are really wasps? What if the value of your solutions is less than the lessons of the problem? Yikes! We can't solve a problem until we let go of the solutions that don't work. To get started, let go. -- doug smith

What's Your Cause

What's your cause? No matter what level of leadership we choose to lead in, our chances of gaining support depend on why we are leading. What's the cause? What's the purpose? What's the intended result? People look for leaders of causes they believe in. What's your cause? -- doug smith

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