Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. The Super Bowl is over, Valentine’s Day is done, no one really cares about President’s Day (we don’t even get the day off), and it is way too early to get excited about March Madness… so what should we talk about? I guess we could venture into the presidential politics… but not so sure that is a good thing. Many folks take a side… whether it be Republican or Democrat… and they are like concrete in that stance. They live as if their party has all the answers, all the time, and regardless of the situation. Not sure why that is… accept maybe, this is the easy way to make a decision, no real need to get down into the dirty details? This can be kind of limiting since a lot of people have good ideas, however, when many of us just want to go to our own little corner with others like ourselves, progress can be very slow if at all. At work we learned a number of techniques on how to run effective meetings, which is important because we spend a lot of time in meetings. We present our problem and give everyone a post-it pad and have them write down their ideas and post them on the wall. There are no “bad” ideas, all are shared and then those ideas are organized, grouped, and condensed. After a roundtable discussion over the merits of the ideas that are listed on the wall, each person gets to rank each grouping and in the end the top vote getters becomes the primary focus of the team. The mantra is that many minds working together are going to come up with a better idea than a single mind working alone. Don’t know if that would work in the political arena, but we really should try something different. They say, keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting change is the sure definition of insanity. Anyway…the debates have been rather amusing to say the least but it appears at times the moderators are more apt to try and incite a fight than help the audience understand more about the person behind the podium. So it becomes part show, part entertainment, and part educational, plus part of that equation is shame on us. Our country deserves better and we…we the people…deserve better, and until which time we stand up and demand that respect, we will continue to see a lot of unnecessary theater-antics.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
“A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.” – Nelson Mandela
THAT’S MINE
I was playing tooth fairy when my daughter suddenly woke up. Seeing the money in my hand, she cried out, “I caught you!” I froze and tried to think of an explanation for why I, instead of the tooth fairy, was putting the money under her pillow -– but her next words let me off the hook. “You put that money back!” she said indignantly. “The tooth fairy left that for me!”
That is all I have today…got to go check the television log for the next debates. As always be good, do good, play safe, and remember despite our feeling toward politics we need to do our part when the time comes.
JR
