I hope these Tater Thoughts will inspire your mind and encourage your heart.

Retirement Day 1: An interesting story about the first day of retirement, a taser, an unhealthy dose of curiosity and a little too much time to wonder.

The Missing Link to Empowerment
The drive for empowerment has been around for decades, but recent surveys indicate less than 15% or employees actually feel empowered.  The problem is two fold.  First we empower the wrong things and second we try and solve the right problems in the wrong way. 

A wish for you 2006

Our Unofficial Advocate
Our greatest advocates are those who do without asking, anticipate without meddling, participate without intruding and are gracious beyond understanding.

A Meeting Planners Nightmare
When your entire conference is involved in a traffic accident. The lessons suffering teach us about ourselves. And the "Credit Union Gene".

Creating a sales/service culture starts with changing your language.
One of the most counterproductive words in the English language has to be sales. It conveys almost exactly the opposite of what it is intended to both in intellect and emotion. Have you successfully established your sales culture? Is your entire team generating new leads, prospecting, cross-selling, overcoming objections, asking for the business and closing the sale? Or do many feel these are the occupational callings of lower life forms, possibly invertebrates? Does the image of selling conjure up visions of the ultimate responsibility to your member/customers, or the part of the job that many will only get to if they can't find any excuse to do something else? People are not uninspired, uneducated or ill-equipped, they are confused. Change the core belief systems and you change the outcome. But if you simply try and change the behavior you get nothing.

Begin Again
Sometimes I think it would be easier to be a plant. I don't know how you would do it, but some of the people I have worked with seem to have figured it out. Someone could water me, feed me, and sit me in the sun. Plants must be smarter than people. No one has to tell a plant to face the sun. They will grow over, under, around, through, between, behind whatever is in their way just for a glimpse of the life-giving light. How would our world be different if we, like plants, turned our attention toward the light?

Developing the Habit of Happiness?
The New Science of Happiness is the title of the January 9th 2005 issue of Time magazine. According to a Time poll 78% of people would say they are happy most or all of the time. This is exciting news but it makes me wonder what are the sources of this joy. According to surveys by The Gallup Organization and Franklin-Covey just 29% of employees feel engaged in their work and only 22% are actually enthusiastic. Is it possible being disengaged and apathetic are keys to happiness? Or is it that we have lowered our standards for what we define as attainable.

"Improve Your Meeting ROI, by democratizing the thinking process "
Morgan Systems International provides speaking and training for associations and organizations throughout the country. The second side of our business is managing a small international association. Although this association is outwardly successful, sometimes the internal process and particularly board meetings can seem incredibly dysfunctional. We have shared our frustrations with other association execs (probably many of you) we find our experiences are far from the exception. Progress one year can go down the drain with a "changing of the guard". These are not problems of unconcerned people, but of ill-defined process. We incorporated Carvers' tool for policy governance, refined job descriptions and made some progress, but still felt the "whole" was not always better than the sum of its parts.

I have been using this tool for several years now and continue to be amazed by two things. One is how effective it is at "democratizing the thinking process". I believe it is one of the missing links in most empowerment programs. We empower people to respond to individual situations, but not to change the systems that cause the problems in the first place. The second lesson for me was in experiencing how desperately we hold on to doing things the wrong way simply because they are familiar. This process is not a quick fix. If you are not serious, don't waste your time. If you are serious, get help. This is too difficult to be done internally. You need someone whose only agenda is to give everyone an equal voice.

Who do you think you are?
A comment from one of my program attendees inspired me to look at how we create our own self-limiting realities based on incomplete, inaccurate, misunderstood and misinterpreted information. The Toltecs believed that beyond childhood most of us become "domesticated" and lose who we really are.

The problem I am having with (fill in the blank) is (fill in the blank)
I've heard of people with the bedside manner of a rattlesnake but had never met one until just recently. My mom's back surgery gave me the opportunity to test (and fail) my new resolution to not take anything personally; we sometimes need to traverse.

Learn to Unlearn
The story of a unique way of swimming that might improve how you deal with the inevitable turbulence of life and business.

Asumpti-jumpin
How our 15th century physiology can take us on a very stressful imaginary-go-round.

What start and ends with T and makes ALL the difference
How the manager of the Boulder Dam Credit Union makes work (and life) a joy everyday with just two simple rules.

Connect:
What is so special about Ireland that they experienced a 30% growth in Tourism in just three years? Lessons you can apply to every business.

Best Practices, A Credit Union Example
How do you grow assets by 270%, never lose an employee to competition, and continue to have members signing loans for 12%? This Notre Dame