50 Things I have Learned

1 TeamWork

To achieve really great things, it needs a team. In sport you need a coach, attacking players, defensive players and someone to organise it all. In business you need a visionary, an administrator and a technician. On the stage you need the producer, director, leads and chorus. A band does not function without a team. Even Ed Sheeran needs a manager and roadies. 

For the team to be successful, each of the elements needs to be in equal abundance.

If the defence, the administrator or the artist rules then the others lose interest and the synergy is lost. Great achievements, and great achievers, require a team.

2. Vision.

The old adage of the rudderless ship is so true. If you want to go somewhere you need to know where you are going and map out the route. You also need to know when you want to get there. Pretty simple, I need to be at school at 8.30am. I need to finish my report by Thursday afternoon. The bigger the project the harder it is to define and measure. My children need to be able to support themselves by the time they are 21? My business needs to turn over $3m in the 2020–21 financial year? I want to be able to retire with an income of $200,000 when I am 60?

To publish four articles in a professional magazine by Christmas 2020. The vision needs to have two elements. The first is a quantity. The second element is a time frame. Organisations went through a stage of “motherhood statements”. Our vision is to be the best service provider in our class. 

What does that mean?

If you want to go somewhere you need to quantify it and then put a timeframe on. That is sometimes the hardest part of the project.

3. Measurement

If you want something to get better, measure it. Human nature is a funny thing. Even with slothful individuals, it is in our nature to want to achieve more and therefore if you measure something people will automatically try to make it better. Runners in the morning naturally want to measure their performance and better their times.

The difficult part is getting the right measure.

4. Authority

People generally, and children in particular, love authority.

There has been much discussion about the new generations not being tolerant of authority. I believe the issue today is that there is no authority. Teachers are not allowed to discipline children; the rules do not allow it. Employers cannot sack employees; Fair Work will not let them. Even the prime minister cannot carry out his plan; the senate will not let him. And of course, parents are not consistent in their message. Therefore, children do not know how to recognise authority.

Once upon a time, there was the authority in a title, not today. However, my experience is that given real authority children respond very well. The problem is how to exert authority. It is not that the receivers are not hearing the message.

5. Learn to embrace hunger

We humans can never get enough of a good thing, whether it is physical, emotional or spiritual, we always want more. History shows that those that get it together learn to embrace the feeling of hunger. Meditation and fasting reset your needs. Without a reset you just eat more and more.

I had not eaten tomato sauce for years, but when the kids came 18 months ago I bought some tomato sauce for them. When putting some on my snags, I thought it tasted sweet. On reviewing

the label, I found the tomato sauce was 30% sugar, and the BBQ sauce was 50% sugar. I was then told the reason McDonald’s put the pickles in the Big Mac was that without it the Big Mac would be classified as confectionery and not a snack food.

We like the taste of sugar and fat, and the purveyors of food have slowly built up the percentage of fat and sugar in all foods.

Unless you go back to basics, your taste buds will continually crave more.

Once upon a time going to the movies once a month was a treat. Then it became once a week, now we have the new trend of people watching a whole season of a TV show in one sitting.

They used to televise one football match a week with highlights from the others. Now we get all matches live and then replays two and three times. Married couples used to start in a single-room apartment and work their way up to a three-bedroom house. Now they start with the three-bedroom house and work their way up to… One car used to be enough, now we need two or three.

Whether it be religion, sex, food, movies, toys or exercise. We all get a hit out of each of them and then become evangelists, sex maniacs, gluttons, collectors or gym junkies.

The only way to break the cycle is to embrace hunger. Recognise, unlike the frog, that the water is heating up and back off. Go without and reset the baseline. If you do not, the baseline will increase until you reach the absurd.

6. H=R/E: Happiness equals reality divided by expectations

If you have high expectations, your happiness level is reduced and you become a grumpy old man. If you have low expectations the reality will exceed your expectations resulting in a high happiness level. Of course, if your expectations are too low then you get a fake high. Balancing your expectations with reality is one of the most important skills to learn. It always has been and always will be a question of balance.

7. The information world has swamped the thinking world

Only 20 years ago the hardest thing about making a decision was getting enough information. Today the biggest issue is sifting through the information and weeding out the relevant facts. In schools and university, we teach facts and processes. The art of thinking is no longer taught. It is becoming harder and harder to think laterally because we are forced down the narrow tracks created through legislation and regulations. When asked, Einstein stated that he would never have created his work had he had a formal education. The narrow focus has increased dramatically since his day. When was the last time you put yourself in a vacuum and just thought through an issue?

There is so much information you have to figure out which is real and which information is linguistically constructed.

8. There are two things to which people completely close down: Retirement and aged care. 

Retirement. People under the age of 55 just do not want to know about retirement. Having said that, retirement is an old-fashioned word, it is really now a change of career path.

They think their youth energy levels and their earning capacity will go on forever. As soon as you mention Superannuation or investment skills they run a mile. I have friends, especially those in professions that will have to work until they are 75 just to pay off the school fees, the mortgage and the personal loans. Start to discuss investment plans and lifestyle changes and they change the subject immediately.

Aged Care. As with retirement even highly intelligent people turn off as soon as you mention residential aged care. I have friends with parents in their 90s that will not even discuss the subject.

9. We have become risk-averse.

I was speaking with a teacher recently. She was telling me that the greatest change in her environment was the lack of band aids. In primary school 40 years ago, nearly every kid had grazes, bruises and scratches. At any one time, there was a kid in the class with a plaster cast helping heal a broken bone. Now the band aid is the exception. In the last decade, the number of new business applications has dropped by over 30%. As a society, we are told that everything out there is dangerous and we should be afraid. Regulations have driven risk underground to the point that people are just not trying. 

The corporate structure is such that small players do not even get a chance to quote. The economy used to be driven by enthusiastic young entrepreneurs, now we are driven by government and corporate bureaucrats that would not understand “having a go” if they fell over it. We have changed from “she’ll be right mate” to “It’s all too hard.” And the scary thing is that the vast majority thinks that is a good thing.

10. The 80–20 principle, teams.

I have called this “The 80–20 principle, teams” because the 80–20 is so true in many parts of life, but today I wanted to focus on teams.

In any team, there will be 20% overachievers, 70% workhorses and 10% that just will not cut it. There have been a number of managers that fire 10% of their workforce every year just to obey this law. I found it hard to believe that 80% of people simply did not want to achieve. In 1920, 20% of people over the age of 65 were on the pension. Today 80% of people over 65 are on the pension.

Only 20% of retirees are self-funded. The rule applies. So the aim is to inspire the 20%, nurture the 70%, and bring the 10% under control. Fact—10% of the population is at one level or another, a social psychopath.

11. The 2, 2½ rule is now the 4, 4¼ rule.

I was first told of the 2, 2½ rule when I was 19. He was a fine Jewish gent. He was still loading the dye drums at 70 when his foreman was not at work. Very hands on. Very Jewish. Personalised number plates came to Victoria in about 1970. He signed up and got JEW 000 immediately. We were talking about a project and he told me never forget the 2, 2½ rule. I said what’s that, Don? He said whatever it is you are going to do it will take twice as long, cost twice as much and be half as effective as you first thought.

At 19, I had no idea what he was talking about. Now I think it has moved onto the 4, 4¼ rule. The extra costs of regulation today have been superimposed on the natural blow out of wishful thinking. And the fact that nobody can make a decision has meant that time frames are blown out of all perspective.

12. Gold nuggets take patience to find.

When I was traveling before the days of iPads I used to buy books and read them on planes and in hotel rooms. A lot of these books were business and self-help books. Some were classics such as The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People and The Psychology of Winning. Others just made a point. Often that point was a single sentence or a paragraph. You had to read the whole book to find the one little sentence of worth. The same applied to seminars and courses. It is worth wasting the time and going through the boredom to find that one little nugget.

13. 10% of the population are classified as social psychopaths.

I have run into numerous people in my life that appear to act without any thought for others. In some recent experiences, someone classified a person to me as being a social psychopath.

So I looked it up and started doing some research. It appears a social psychopath has no conscience, is narcissistic, and plays the game of self-gratification at another person’s expense. They have no feelings but study others and learn to show the feelings they wish to, making them chameleon-like. They are charming and cut a wide swathe through society, leaving a wake of ruined lives behind them.

The scary thing is that in this research I found that 10% of the population could be affected in one way or another by this affliction. What you have to remember with these people is that you cannot reach them because they have no emotions and therefore no guilt. It explains the level of bullying that we find in schools and in the workplace.

Prof Robert Hare has spent over 25 years researching psychopaths yet he stated recently that he had a lab manager with the affliction. Because he had not spent enough time with her he missed all the signals. In some ways, it makes it easier to understand some people’s behaviour.

14. Real power is hidden.

When dealing with the Chinese you sit at a table with 8–10 people. You are never told who holds the real power. In Australia, the average super fund run by the unions or the finance sector has returned 7.4% over the last ten years. The actual return of the funds is 11.4% before fees and charges. There is now about $2.5 trillion in super funds. The union controlled funds, or industry funds, control about $1 trillion. That means they have an income of $40 billion per year. Once they take out costs and salaries to old union hacks they are left with over $15 billion in income. That income was used to put Labor governments in power in Victoria and Queensland. It is only because they went too far in NSW that Baird managed to survive. 

Mick Kelty took Paul Keating’s gift and developed an income stream which means the unions do not need members. Andrews immediately put the CFMEU back on worksites, and now Palaszczuk is using state funds to take a “positive, supportive role” in the recruitment by unions.

Eighty percent of Australians over 65 are on a pension, 60% of Australian families pay no net tax, and 20% of Australian youth are unemployed. Forty-two percent of Labor (ALP) lowerhouse MPs and 71% of ALP upper-house MPs are ex-union.

The national executive of the ALP has 73% of its members from unions.

The end result: the unions have members that represent 12% of the voting age. Well over 50% of the voting age are reliant on the government for their income. The unions have a $15 billion a year fighting fund.

Where is the power?

15. The tortoise and the hare.

In all areas, the tortoise normally wins in the long run. Those kids at school for which it came easy. Where are they today? But more importantly why? It all came too easily and then suddenly

they were confronted by others that had spent years of hard work getting it right. Malcolm Gladwell defined the concept of 10,000 hours. Do something for 10,000 hours and you get good at it.

The same theory applies to things you buy. A machine that goes straight to work is a dream. But when it goes wrong, how do you handle it. Those machines that are hard to commission often turn out to be the best because you know how to operate them.

I guess the same applies to people. Some relationships just seem to hit it off, but then things go wrong and you do not know how to handle it. Those that are prickly at the start often end up the best, because you know how to deal with the complications of the human psyche.

16. Our moral structure has moved from church to courtroom.

As Church attendance slows the moral framework of our culture has moved to the Courtroom. Instead of relying on the Church to define what is right and what is wrong we have allowed the government to write our moral compass into legislation and regulations. In 2012, we wrote more legislation in a 12-month period than was written in the first 50 years of Federation, eclipsing the mass of legislation created each year before and after. 

The result has been the eruption of judicial differences resulting for the first time in public brawling not unlike what occurred in churches over a period. It will be interesting to see if the disruption to the Queensland Supreme Court and the Human Rights Commission continues in other judicial arenas.

17. The four seasons

Every project has four seasons just as the weather has four seasons.

Winter. The ground is frozen and the nights are long. This is the time for dreaming and planning. During the long nights, you can let your imagination run riot and truly think laterally. It is also a time to plan.

Spring. This is the season of hard work. The plans need to be put into place. There is a need for hard work on a daily basis.

Summer. Lets you look at the growth while feeding and cultivating.

Autumn. The time to reap the harvest. The ideal in life is to have four projects going at any one time. One project in each of the phases. This allows you to share between your creative side and hard work. It also lets you witness the joy of harvest while doing the hard work on the next project.

18. Solutions to problems and good feelings

Fifteen years ago, I read a book that said that you only sold two things. Solutions to problems and good feelings. I have been trying to find a business for which that is not true. So far, no go.

Solve someone’s problem and leave them feeling good about it. Of course, that is the opposite of what happens in most businesses today. How many times do you contact a business and are greeted with this smiling voice that asks all these wonderful questions. They go through the process but have no way to solve your problem or remove the frustration. We have become a procedure driven society that goes through the process but who cares about the outcome?

19. Perceptions are real

People develop very strong perceptions at an early age, and they stick to those perceptions.

The first time I confronted this was university. I had been in a study group for 3 years with about 20 people. We went on a geological excursion and ended up staying in some shearers’ quarters. One night we were sitting around talking about all sorts of things and the subject of schools came up. It got a bit heated. I was standing against a wall when someone announced I had gone to a private school. This one guy came at me and threw me through the fibro wall, before I had the faintest idea of what was happening. I had worked with him for 3 years and we had no problem, but when he found out I went to a private school he lost it and never talked to me again. Perceptions are real.

20. Money does weird things to people

I don’t care who you are or where you come from, money screws the mind. I have seen it with friendships. We lost a few when we moved into a more affluent suburb. I have seen it in business, employees wanting to sue us for giving them heaps but not enough. I have seen it in sports stars and others. Over 90% of lotto winners throughout the world end up worse off in ten years.

Money does weird things to people.

21. Failure is not only building, it is good

What do successful people do more than everybody else, they fail. They fail more simply because they do more. During the 2016 US presidential elections the worst thing that some people could say about Donald Trump was that he had been a bankrupt. Look through the biographies of truly successful people and you will find them full of failures. In many cases the entrepreneurs don’t survive, but those that do take on board the lessons and then have another go. There are numerous phoenix stories and I suggest you read some.

Failure is not only good because it allows you to build from a loss but it is also good in that it opens your eyes to the risks around you. I have noted in the political section that most politicians today are either lawyers or political staffers. They have had no experience in putting all they have at risk. Once you have done that a few times you tend to look at the world through different glasses. You start to know when to cut your losses and when to hang in there.

Do not be afraid of failure, learn from it and let it strengthen you. When I first went to a serious water skiing training session someone came out of the water and said, “I haven’t fallen off today”, and a champion walking past just said “well, you haven’t been trying”.

22. Balance

It always has been and always will be a question of balance. The problem is that there are so many things to balance. So how do we balance all of them together? (The process for doing this will be defined later in problem-solving.) After going through the problem-solving process, I came up with five major elements that need to be balanced one against the other. You may disagree, and if you do I would love to change my group. Life is a balance of: lifestyle, career satisfaction, finances, kudos and morals/ethics.

These will be discussed separately later. So hold judgment until you have read them all and see how they mix and match with each other and your world.

23. Lifestyle varies from the old hippies to those totally obsessed with the fast lane.

It is a function of where you live, what you do, and your relationship with your family, friends and colleagues. It also varies from narcissism and egocentric behaviour through to altruism and

unselfish behaviour. Within lifestyle, there is a balance between being a carefree personality through to an obsessive personality. Lifestyle is a function of where you live, how you live and with whom you live. A few friends or many friends? Lifestyle is about the way you live your style, attitudes and possessions. 

Charles Handy stated that the three stages of life in the early 20th century will turn into five stages in the 21st century. Those five stages are education, career, teaching, mentoring, retirement. Each stage needs a different lifestyle. We have not been trained to think about our lifestyle let alone plan it and control it. It tends to just happen.

24. Career satisfaction is something needed and in fact demanded by many.

However, to others a job is a source of income that supplies their financial needs for their lifestyle. For a job to be satisfying it needs to challenge, it needs to excite and it needs to satisfy the emotional needs. Never forget every job is the same after 6 months.

Every job is repetitive, so you had better like the repetition.

25. Finance

If you earn a dollar more than you spend there is no pressure. If you earn a dollar less than you spend the pressure builds. Therefore, finance is a function of your needs versus your earnings.

This is related to lifestyle, morals and kudos, however overall the amount you need to earn is a function of your financial needs and your ability to budget. During your life, your income will change

from unearned as a child, to earned as an adult to unearned in retirement. These changes need to be managed. There will be three major expenses in your life that will need time, skill and planning to achieve. The first is the building or buying of your home, the second is the education of your family and the third is the funding of your retirement. 

Success will come from maximising the amount you save, the time over which you save and the return you get on your savings. The amount you save requires will power and discipline. The timeframe requires the development of goals and planning, and the return you get on your portfolio requires skill, patience and discipline. I define wealth as having a dollar more in unearned income each year than your lifestyle requires. If you can achieve that the balancing act becomes that much easier.

26. Kudos is sometimes the most difficult parameter to understand.

There are some that are totally obsessed with what others think; others could not care less. Peer pressure can be uplifting; it can also be totally destructive.

Kudos is the praise or honour we seek for an achievement. How much are we doing what we do for ourselves, how much for praise from parents, peers, children or the public in general? We seek kudos in our families, our careers and our general life. Are we doing something to make ourselves or others feel good? If we do something for others are we doing it for them or for us? Where is the balance? If we do it for ourselves we are being selfish, if we are doing it for others, is it for the kudos or for them, asking nothing in return.

This subject is so closely linked to the moral or ethical principles by which we operate, it is hard to distinguish them. The kudos element is more a function of ethics as it relates to how we interact with our families and our communities. The desire to be loved, praised and honoured can drive many people to do some really dumb things. It drives the decisions on where we live, what car we drive, what clothes we wear and how we do our hair.

To understand our link with others we need to understand ourselves. A 1996 survey of employees by Harvard University put positive customer feedback as the major reward required for motivation. Today it is hard to get through a meal without hearing “great work or good job”, and it is well known that Gen Y need constant stroking to perform. People need praise and honour, not enough is harmful and too much is harmful. You need to balance your need for kudos with the needs of others.

27. Morals/ethics

This whole subject has been redefined over the last century. Certainly, until the beginning of the 20th century both morals and ethics were defined for us by the Church. But the Church has lost its influence and therefore the definition of morals has come down to teachers and parents.

In relation to ethics, as with morals, the Church used to define the rules of behaviour, however their place has been taken by the judiciary. There are two problems for children these days. The first is defining the moral standards for themselves and the second is to redefine their ethical behaviour.

The judiciary has made ethical standards that are in complete contradiction to personal moral standards. Morals have been based on our duties and responsibilities as a Christian. Ethical standards are being judged on rights and not responsibilities. There is no benchmark anymore. One could argue that the judiciary took over from the Church because the Church was too slow to move with the times. Or you could argue that the judiciary has moved too quickly in transferring responsibility for actions from moral responsibilities to legal rights.

Whichever way you look at the situation it has become increasingly difficult for people to understand their moral obligations, and sometimes impossible to understand their legal responsibilities. The latest one I have been looking at is Dallas Buyers Club. There is no doubt that thousands of people stole the movie with the help of their internet service providers (ISPs). They got caught. But the ISPs argue that it is legally or ethically wrong for them to have to give up the names of the people who stole the movie.

In the old days that would be harbouring a fugitive, today it is the ethical right of the thief to hide behind their “right to privacy”. Therefore, the judiciary is saying it is ethical to hide information that would lead to a conviction. That used to be the province of lawyers and spouses, then it went to other professionals and now to ISPs. As the judiciary makes the new ethical rules, they become less like our moral rules. We all have to make up our minds whether we want to act morally or ethically. 

Sounds a bit like the old Godfather mentality. One set of rules for the family (morals), and another for business (ethics.) Nothing personal!

28. The growth curve.

I was introduced to the hockey stick graph many years ago. It shows the rate at which people grow. It can be used for learning, for fitness, weight loss and many other things.

The outstanding feature is that the vast majority of people, after setting themselves goals, give up just before the high growth period starts. 50% of new businesses do not make it through the first year, 50% of the successful ones fail before the end of the second year, and so on. 30% of tertiary students crash out before finishing. I read today 50% of new dental graduates will struggle to get a job. And of course, 80% of those aged 65+have resorted to the pension. So I have learned. Firstly, people give up too early.

Secondly, our society is now accepting of those that give up.

29. Survival attained, the drive to achieve disappears.

Once survival has been attained, the drive to achieve disappears for most people, or it is simply that the direction is undefined. It used to annoy me and then frustrate me that the vast majority of the population have very little idea of their objectives. It was only a hundred years ago that the vast majority of people lived to survive. Now that the government has assured survival, what is the purpose of living? Some would say to procreate, well what next.

Many philosophers have struggled with the meaning of life, but that was the luxury of a few, now it is the duty of all. Humans used to get one shot. Now you get three or four.

30. You always need a Plan B

In every biography or book about success there is normally a lot of words but a few gems to take home. The gem I took from The Art of The Deal, was do not just have Plan A, but also Plan B and Plan C. 

An Uncle bought a cliff top block on the cliff overlooking the sea. There was only about ten metres of land at the road level and then the land dropped off over a cliff. There was about 40 metres of land at the base of the cliff going down to the water’s edge. The Uncle employed an architect to draw up a counter levered house that sat on the top of the cliff. When he was showing me the plans he also had plans for another house built into the cliff below the first house. He said that was in case he ran out of money with the first house, he could sell it and build the second one below.

The restaurant business has been huge in the last decade or more in Australia, yet it costs a small fortune to design and build a kitchen. If you pour all that capital into infrastructure you need a plan B to get the capital back. Most restaurant owners have no plan B and therefore the capital is lost.

31. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

In his autobiography, Lee Iacocca tells the story about the Henry Ford hamburger. Henry Ford II always said that the best hamburger in the word could be found in the Ford dining room. When he travelled around the world, many chefs tried to take the title of best hamburger, but none did. After he died Iacocca went to the head chef in the Ford dining room and asked the secret.

The answer came back. “Well you go to the cool room and pull out the best piece of scotch filet steak…” Great ingredients are always needed for great dishes. When you try to upgrade poor raw material you very quickly come to the point of a diminishing return.

Having said that, my business partner and I made a huge success of making an average product out of very low-grade raw material. We solved a problem and left them feeling good.

32. Work towards getting paid for what you can do, not what you do.

When you are young and energetic you feel invincible and that you will be able to go forever. So longevity is not an issue. You also think that you love what you do and that love will go on forever. I hate to burst the bubble. Many friends who are professionals have not been able to get away because they are not earning if they are not there doing whatever it is that they do. A doctor, lawyer, dentist, architect doesn’t get paid if they do not work. But those who build a business structure get paid whether they are there or not.

I have already told the story of the maintenance guys at the APM mill in Melbourne. They got paid only when there was a breakdown. So they were paid because they could fix it, not because they were fixing it. The other way of getting paid for what you can do is to get on a retainer in your field of expertise.

Carpet layers all burn out early with bad knees. Air traffic controllers burn out from stress. Many professions have a use-by date. You need to get yourself in a position where people will pay you for your expertise even when you are not actually doing it.

33. Problem-solving

1. Define the problem
2. Quantify it.
3. List all the causes.
4. Categorise.
5. Prioritise. 
6. Define the vision of where you need to change to.
7. Measure where you are.
8. Create a plan to achieve your goals.
9. Implement the plan.
10. Measure where you have gone.

The vast majority of people skip to step 9 before even defining the problem. This leads to solving the wrong problem. Or they conclude the cause of the problem without clearly defining it and therefore fix a symptom instead of a cause.

34. When delegating, make sure the responsibility lies with one person.

If there is shared responsibility the project will not get done and the information tends to be deposited all over the place. If two people have responsibility for the same key performance indicator (KPI), then they will both demand praise in times of good performance and they will both run a mile when it all goes pear-shaped.

35. Government and 1st tier business capital projects are costing.

three times what they need to. The swing to socialism had brought with it a huge increase in the cost of doing things. In the 1970s larger companies bought up a whole lot of small companies run by families or sole entrepreneurs.

They looked at the smaller companies and thought we can do this so much better, well they couldn’t. The reality was that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are far more productive than bigger companies. The big companies found this out as the years went by and had to close or offload many of the purchases.

This trait has continued on its merry way. Large corporations are like governments, they have so many rules and procedures it makes every task more difficult and more costly than it should be. These large corporations have done deals with the unions and government so that they end up paying a lot more than they should. On top of that theft and fraud is a major problem. When Parliament House was being built, I was flying from Sydney to Brisbane seated next to an engineer on the building team. He asked me how many toilet cisterns were delivered to the work site,

I said I had no idea. He answers was “About twice as many as were installed.” 

In government projects, by the time there is the planning to plan, the plans and the specifications and drawings and licenses and legals, the cost is often greater before the first shovel hits the dirt than it would cost for a small business to do the whole job. Of course, today you cannot get a government contract if you are not a preferred supplier and that costs big time.

(At the time of editing the Royal Commission into the Banks and Financial Institutions is starting to lift the lid and the extra costs that we have been paying.)

36. The 6 Ps. Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

It doesn’t matter if you are going down to the store to get groceries or building a ten-story building, if you do not plan it properly it is almost guaranteed to fail. But today there does appear to be back up  after back up, but not always. The Japanese flew ahead of the rest of the world in the 1980s through the principles of zero defects. W. Edwards Deming was an American engineer and management consultant that had to go to Japan because the Americans did not believe in his principles. As a result, the Japanese far surpassed the Americans in manufacturing technology. 

One of his quotes was “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing.” That has proved to be true and needs to be understood. Whatever you do must be planned and documented so that you know exactly what it is you are going to do.

You need a study diary or you have no structure. You need to make sure all your devices are charged when you need them.

37. Ways of thinking.

In number one the need for teamwork was recognised. Within that team there is a need for balance in the participants. There is also a necessity for the way of thinking.

Entrepreneurs think about the goal. They have complete belief in the fact that they are going to get there, and nothing will get in their way.

The technicians think about how it works. Their minds go to what makes it work and what is necessary to keep it working.

The administrator thinks about process and what happened. The administrator has two roles. The first is to document what is about to happen and what is happening, the other is the role of the historian, what has happened.

What has occurred in our society over the last few decades is that all these functions have had the legal mind superimposed over them. The legal mind thinks of two things: precedent and apportionment of blame. What has happened in the past and who is to blame for it. This way of thinking results in further regulations to clarify the apportionment of blame in the future.

If the entrepreneur rules the process gets too risky and often fails. If the administrator gets too strong the process is slowed and the efficiency reduced. If the technician is in control it is all about the making, or the service provision and the focus on the customer disappears.

The problem, then, is how does this fit with the rule that says there must be one person in charge. The answer to that is the person in charge must be astute enough to manage all the different ways of thinking and to mould them into the best fit.

If you want evidence have a look at all the successful organisations you know, I will bet there is a mixture of skills, thought patterns and there will be a distribution of power.

 38. A leader that has no followers is just someone taking a walk.

I have often thought while writing this manual that I am just taking a walk. The vast majority of the population think the whole concept of planning your life and making a lifetime plan to finance your house, education and retirement is stark raving mad.

Because this is a lifetime project it is even harder to get people to understand and follow the rules. It is important to question your direction whether you have followers or not. That is why it is important to understand your values and principles because then you can walk alone if need be.

39. Do the hardest things first.

Now this can been seen as a direct contradiction of the John Gray adage. In Venus and Mars, John Gray talks about points and that fact that women keep count. He goes on to say that in a woman’s mind a man gets one point for every job. Therefore, if there are ten things we need to do starting with painting the house and working down to putting out the rubbish, you get the same point for each task. Painting the house takes days, doing the minor jobs takes minutes. 

Men always want to do the big tasks first and as a result leave all the little ones undone. This works against men in the scoring system.

What we are talking about here is at the other end of the spectrum. There will be times in your life when you feel as though the walls are coming down on you. You will have a myriad of tasks on your plate and they are dragging you down to the point where you are frozen. It is at those times that you need to make a list of all the issues from hardest at the top to lowest at the bottom. You then need to attack the hardest issue. 

In most cases, once the top two issues are dealt with the rest seem to just fade away, but if you spend your time dealing with the lightweight issues the hard ones never get dealt with and you continue to feel all that pressure.

40. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.

You need to eat in the morning to feed the engine for the day. If you eat a heavy meal at night then you go to bed with your stomach working overtime, not good. And finally, if you go to bed on an empty stomach then your body burns fat all night, and you do not feel hungry.

41. The gut buster.

Gary Egger suggests in his book Gut Buster that if you increase your heart rate to 120–130 bpm for 20 mins that will increase your metabolism for the next 8 hours. That means 20 mins working and you benefit from more burnt calories for the next 8 hours.

Over the years, I have heard so many stories of this being true.

42. Routine

Every parent knows how important routines are to kids, even our dogs know to the nearest 5 minutes when it is dinner time and they don’t have a watch/phone and they can’t read. Yet we seem to think that routine can go out the door as soon as we become adults.

Recent studies show that even the sleep hours are important. Go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time. There are many reasons for routine being so important.

• We can only get the most out of our day if we plan it, and routine makes planning easier. Ask anyone who has to do rosters. You start with the old one and make as few changes as you can.
• Automation. If we have a routine we can do many tasks on automatic, less thinking more productivity.
• Getting over the grind. This is the one I like most. We all have tasks we do not like doing. Whether it’s putting the rubbish out, marking assessments or wading through correspondence, we need a special push to get us through the task we do not want to do, yet we have to do them week after week after week. A routine makes the decision easy. If you procrastinate then it is likely to get left out. But if you allocate a certain time for that activity you will find you can achieve it quickly and with the minimum of pain.

Different people have different routines, it depends on your personality. Do not try to copy another person’s routine. I had one friend who planned his next day in bullet points before going to bed. 

Another that did that task over breakfast. The morning person said they would have been up all night worrying if they had done the task the night before.

43. One of the most important lessons in life.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.

—Reinhold Niebuhr

In other words, pick your fights. When you are young and have boundless energy, you can fight on many fronts at once. However, as you grow your energy levels will drop and you have to learn to pick the fights worth having.

I have been with my wife for 35 years now. It was not the first marriage for either of us. A few years into the marriage someone said that they had never seen us fight and how is that possible. We both thought about it for a while and both answered. ”When the going gets tough, we figure out who has the most vested in that particular fight, and the other one backs off.” That is a really important lesson. Do not waste energy on fights you do not have to put energy into.

44. What goes around comes around.

This is tied to the second law of motion. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. The saying means that if you start something it is likely to come back to you at some stage.

45. The pendulum does swing.

In my last years of school, branding hit the market place. By the late 1960s clothes started to have labels on the outside. This had never been heard of before. Many people refused to wear such clothing as they were advertising the brand by wearing it. Shock Horror. 30 years later I put two shirts up to a bunch of 30-year olds and asked them which one they would wear. They nearly all said the one with the logo even though it was three times the price. Today I read that attitude to shopping are changing in the states and people will no longer pay for branded clothes. The wheel goes around.

Another good example is when a family member had a child and was told that if the child was not breastfed that it would not achieve its full potential. The mother was terrified of the “lactose Nazi” nurse to the point that she had to be sent home before her milk would come down. On the birthing of her next child she had the same nurse. But this time feeding was at the discretion of the mother.

Sometimes you just have to stay in the same place and wait for the pendulum to swing back to you.

46. Do today’s work today.

Sounds simple, but for so many it is so hard. Some people write lists of what they are going to do tomorrow every night. They normally get it done. We have talked about written goals are normally achieved, well this is a good example of that.

I’ll finish it tomorrow means that there is something else tomorrow that will not get done and you will live in a world where you are constantly getting behind.

If you plan to do something today, do it today, do not put it off until tomorrow.

47. There is no recovery.

After Cyclone Yasi, we spent many years cleaning up the mess and working with others that had been through disasters. Society and the media talk about recovery. Let me tell you there is no recovery from disaster. Recovery is defined as returning to a normal state of health, mind or strength. The reason there is no recovery after a disaster is that you never return to where you were. You either grow and become much stronger and develop a new norm or you weaken and never reattain that normal state of health or mind.

I feel saddened when I hear that a town or a company or a country has recovered because I know it is not true. There are many like the Twin Towers, Chernobyl and Fukushima that obviously will never recover. But then there are the ones that nobody knows about. Cardwell did a lot of work with the rebuilders of Marysville.

I think they were about 18 months ahead of us but we were going down the same path. Marysville was a town that had its heyday many years before the fire. The traditional businesses in town were losing their gloss and it was fast becoming a retirement town. When 80% of the town was burnt and we hear that it has recovered there is a mental picture of new houses and vibrant families and businesses, all not true. What happened in Marysville is the same that happens in most places where there is a disaster and no great driving force to rebuild. At a personal level, the devastation is immense.

The same happened in Cardwell. The population went from 1500 to 800 in a month, and there is nothing to grow it. The industries that built the town have been shut down and a new industry is yet to grow.

On a personal level, what happens is that you have a family living in a $350,000 home. It is destroyed or burnt to the ground. The insurance pays up, no problem. So there you are without a home, without a job and $350,000. It is going to take at least a year to rebuild, so you have to support yourself during that time, so you do not have $350,000 to spend, you only have $300,000.

You go to a builder and ask for the house to be rebuilt. Of course, since your house was built the building standards have changed and now for the same amount of money you get half the house you used to live in. You are then confronted with the decision to rebuild half the house you had, get a loan and rebuild your house or move to another area.

All three options are not very palatable. You do not want to live in a house half of what you are used to, in middle age the last thing you want to do is put a new mortgage around your neck, and moving away from home is not a great option. Nevertheless, the vast majority of people move, and hence the town never recovers.

48. You can teach an old dog new tricks.

As you grow older change becomes more difficult, not impossible. Children learn quickly whether it is a new language or a new skill. For adults the process is more difficult but not impossible. If there is something about you that you feel needs to change, get yourself a goal and put a plan in place and it can happen.

49. You cannot regulate or legislate against bad behaviour.

First religions and then governments have tried to regulate against bad behaviour. The Christian faith brought out the ten commandments backed up by the Bible in an attempt to reinforce the laws with values. Other religions have tried in their own way to enforce behavioural standards through punishment.

When governance changed from the church to government, lawyers got involved and delivered a myriad of legislation that has had little or no effect on bad behaviour. In fact, I think it is fair to say that the sharper the definition of bad behaviour, the easier it is to get around the legislation.

Society needs to find a better way of controlling behaviour. In the meantime, all we can do is sit and watch as the lawyers write more and more legislation with little or no effect.

Tell a child not to do something and they will have an uncontrollable desire to do it. Explain why they should not do something and you have a chance.

50. Values are at the heart of our lives.

As our knowledge as a society grows and technology moves on, it is becoming easier to be hoodwinked, conned or just plain manipulated. When others are trying to persuade you, it is important to relate the information to your value base. Without a clear set of values, either groupthink or linguistic constructivism can lead you to the dark side before you know what has happened.

51. True happiness always comes from outside your comfort zone. 

Sitting around bingeing on TV programs, movies, video games, alcohol, drugs, music or exercise does not get you true happiness. That only comes from when you step outside your comfort zone and push yourself into zones you thought you would never achieve.

52. Everybody wants to be useful. 

It has been built into our DNA over 600,000 years to survive. However in the world today only 8.4% are considered to live in poverty so that means 91.6% of the world does not need to use its basic reason for life. What we do need is to be useful. A life without use is a life without meaning. The greatest use you can have in society is to be self-reliant and not be a burden on society.