The power of the mind to delude itself into thinking that one’s actions are morally and ethically correct has always amazed me. I’ve never claimed to be a perfect individual, far from it, nor a perfect manager, but I’ve always been able to admit mistakes, learn, heal, and move on with my life a better person and coach in an efficient way, and I rarely care who knows about those mistakes.

I saw good people poisoned by negativity and allow their personal and professional growth to be stunted and corrupted in 2010. It will probably be one of the lasting impacts of the recession, an entire generation embittered by a few rough years. I found a few of those people and helped pull them out, but just as many I know I could have done more for. Maybe it was one more positive email, one more meeting for lunch on me, one more unexpected phone call just to see how things were going.

Ultimately it’s all up to the individual to see their life for what it really is, to recognize and admit to bad decisions and bad attitudes. People have a choice to see the positives in the world around them or to focus on what’s negative, or perhaps just different than what they’re used to. We can explain away bad choices in a way that avoids having to grow indefinitely, but it’s just a convenient form of self-deception.

Perhaps the worst part about managing people is that you can’t let everyone in and experience what the inner workings of a company are really like, even if you trust you them, enjoy their company, even see management potential in them. When something great happens it’s generally a simple matter to communicate it to your team, and transparency is always a positive- “This amazing event happened because of A, B, and C”. But when it’s negative, even poisonous, it gets infinitely more complex. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about human resources laws, privacy laws, and finances in the last few years, for which I am immensely thankful for- but all of which cloud any attempt to lay out lessons learned, to divine some sort of wisdom from an event, or series of events you’d wished never happened. Knowing the truth and not being able to say anything is bad enough, but seeing the truth misrepresented and not being able to say anything is worse.

To tie this ramble all together, it’s always easier to point the finger at something you don’t understand, especially when it’s to save face, and not doing so would mean you’d have to change and accept things about yourself that make you uncomfortable.

Clearly I’ve found it difficult to keep up a personal blog in 2010. At least one I’m comfortable with my business colleagues reading.

It’s not that what I do isn’t interesting- something wacky comes up almost every day, good bad or indifferent. Maybe it’s that the last two years have humbled me a great deal, and it’s hard to justify writing something I know only a handful of people would find stimulating and entertaining. I’ve also found that, perhaps as a self defense mechanism, my own personal interest in the world of technology wanes when I don’t have the disposable income to actually buy the things I would typically be so enthralled with. Student loans, a tough economy, and the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink random expenses that get thrown at you when you’re just about to come out ahead have made 2010 a frustrating year, to put it lightly.

I’ve had to force myself to find new ways to cope with changing reality, and I’m learning things about myself all the time as a result. I’ve found that just by losing weight, it doesn’t automatically give you motivation to keep it off. It’s my biggest vice, and I’m accepting that not going hogwild with the food and the beer and the etcetcetc is going to be a lifetime struggle. That’s ok. There are worse things out there other people are battling. Instead of going to the gym, I’m trying to get involved in sports. Instead of dieting, I’m going to (when I lose some of the weight I gained back last month!) just commit to cooking at home more. Instead of Whole Foods, Costco. You get the idea. I’ve also developed a bit of an obsession with my balcony garden and growing my own chili peppers. I have a feeling it’s not going to end well for my stomach.

Resisting the temptation to be reactive instead of proactive is the most difficult part of my career thus far. When I’m in a tough meeting with someone that works for me, or in the zone training, or deep into writing a new policy manual or training webinar, I can’t be stopped. I know that when I’m on my feet and running with something, there is nobody better at this job than me. The dangerous part is when your machine is well oiled, it’s sometimes hard to imagine it better than it already is. Or to reach down and find the fortitude necessary to rock the boat that is sailing along respectably without your meddling. What I’ve found in the last two months is that this process snowballs- when I get one thing going that I just pulled out of nowhere and it works, it motivates me to mess with something else, then something else, until I sit back and say, “Everything about this is wrong!”

Then, of course, I have to get a cup of coffee, because I know I’m going to be up all night anyway.

Here is a picture from the vacation I took this year in Trinidad, CA. If you ever drive through Northern California, you owe it to yourself to stop in.

2009 sucked.

While it wasn’t the most exciting year to do business, I can’t really complain about work, my income, or anything like that, when so many people lost jobs, benefits, and the like. In 2009 I did fine, gained benefits, and kept a job that I love even in the roughest waters.

But besides my career, 2009 just awful. My health was terrible, my personal life topsy-turvey, and my overall state of mind- my happiness, was at a low point in my life. I didn’t have anyone to blame but myself, and that’s probably a good thing, as I’ve seen so many people over the years project their issues on to others and never make any real progress.

If I can look back on 2009 as the worst year of my life, I think I’ll be OK.

So what’s new so far this year? Well, I’ve lost 25 pounds, for one thing. Yes, I’m posting this on 1/29/2010, so I’ve lost 25 pounds in 29 days. We got a dog, Joey. He’s a miniature pinscher who brings us a lot of happiness. Life at Make It Work rolls forward, with our new radio show in San Fransisco on KSFO two weeks in, I’m looking forward to a really exciting and interesting year. Finally, I’ve gotten my health in order, having several surgeries done to increase the airflow in my nose and getting on some medication to help my allergies, among other things. My wallet isn’t stoked on it, but I feel a lot better overall.

Making these changes and pulling myself out of this rut gave me a bit of a new perspective about the lengths people go to in order to deny themselves what they really want. Make It Work is an amazing company to work for, but it’s not for everyone. It can be stressful, the hours are long, and it’s a haul to the finish line. I’ve helped employees who don’t belong here over the years find employment elsewhere, and this year I plan to make absolutely sure that everyone that works for me loves this job, and if they don’t, I’ll personally do whatever I can to help them find a job where they are as excited to go to work every day as I am. I’ve already done it once in January!

There is plenty of work ahead this year, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. Here’s to 2010!

This made my day, thought I would share it with you.

Good Morning Mr. Wilding,

First off Happy New Year!!! … for a change, I’m trying something new. This year I will be taking time out in the beginning of the year to say thank you to all the people that gave me wisdom in the recent years. I feel this is important for me to do in order to move forward in my life and career. I realize that not a lot of people get this from time to time, and sometimes it feels like your taking for granted. Well Ben … Thank you, I know we didn’t end on such a good note, but I’ve been hearing about some of the choices you’ve made since I’ve left Make It Work! and I must say that I can respect you as a growing leader.

I’m sure you guys still do the whole “Delight Survey” so here is mines for you, 4.0… Looking back, I can remember that even though we’ve had hard times and disagreements… I do remember you took time to understand me, in order to work with me. You were one of the ones to knew my passion and understood it, in order to fight for me and have the company keep me on board. I also remember that you consider me to grow as a leader in the company. I can go on and on about all the good things that I can remember, but my point is, and I hope that you’re reading this… I want to just say THANK YOU for helping me along the way. I’ve learned a lot. With that God Bless you, and I pray that your family is doing well and career grows far beyond what you thought it would be.

It is absolutely unexplainable to me, but listening to weird electronic/trance music increases my productivity @makeitworkinc drastically when I’m sitting at my desk. I suppose silence tends to lull me into surfing the web aimlessly (well not totally aimlessly- I’m always reading tech stuff, which helps me do my job better), where-as having a consistent beat pounding away through my speakers keeps me focused. If you’re interested in what I listen to all day in my fancy new office, you can check out my Pandora station “workspiration” below, which has resulted in hundreds of dollars being spent on iTunes.

Over the last week when not busying myself with my varied duties at Make It Work, I’ve been remodeling my office to become more productive. I’ve found myself so disgusted by our office here in our Tarzana condo that I often would retreat to starbucks to get work done. You can check out how it all played out, before and after pictures, etc on flickr here.
Preview Images:
BEFORE:

AFTER:

There’s been a lot of talk about big, slow, and dumb at Make It Work lately. Specifically, how no matter how far our company’s reach grows and how successful we are, we can’t ever let ourselves “feel” like one of those Big, Slow, and Dumb companies. Our business has to move at the speed of technology, which naturally builds in a pace of innovation, fresh thinking, and new ideas that most companies will never achieve.

I have an example of a big, slow, and dumb company to illustrate my point. I’ve been a very, very loyal subscriber to DISH network for almost five years. Until recently, I’ve had 99%+ uptime, excellent quality signal, and was really pleased with the customer service experiences I had had to that point- they have moved with me four times and each time came out and moved my dish to my new apartment, sometimes at great peril- for free.

But then, things started to unravel and I started to realize how slow this company had gotten. I started have massive DVR problems about four months ago- it would reset itself automatically and was boot-looping like crazy. Confident it would be a simple replacement, I called DISH tech support and had one of the worst customer service experiences of my life. I don’t need to explain it in detail because everyone reading this has had the same thing happen to them- disconnects, busy signals, language barriers, unnecessary troubleshooting (“I hear that you are saying that your lightbulb is dead. Can you please try to turn it on for me sir.”) and then they tried to charge me for shipping of the new DVR, which by the way, I’ve been paying $10 a month for 5 years for (Do I own it yet or something?).

Anyway, the new DVR arrives and, of course, it’s clearly a refurbished device. A week later it starts doing the same thing. Rinse and repeat terrible tech support experience, and I have yet another one. Two months later, same thing. I’m not bothering this time- I, like many of my coworkers, am switching to DirecTV.

But bad service and an insistence on cheap, old equipment isn’t even the biggest reason I’m switching. I’ve had the DVR I’ve had since 2004. When I called to get my second replacement, I asked if there was a new model available, and low and behold there was one available- only one in five years. It boasted literally only one new feature at the price of $200 to upgrade (plus still pay the $10 a month)- I could watch two HD shows at the same time. Neat. I realized then that this technology company had basically sat around doing nothing with their products the entire time I’ve been with them, offer essentially no on-demand programming, and charge the same as a company that, while certainly not perfect (I so wish I was in a FiOS territory…), at least *tries* to keep up.

After my experience at MIW, I could never work for a big, slow, dumb company. I’d feel stifled, unimportant, and frustrated unless I could affect a massive change in company culture. At MIW, I don’t have to affect that change, because from the ground up we’ve built a company that is moving faster than the speed of “cool”.

In January of 2005 I created a new identity.
Joining a small company (at the time) like Make It Work is like joining a new family, except there aren’t usually gifts and you can’t avoid seeing each other whenever possible. So it was just my luck I was joining a family of around 20 employees and there was already another Kyle working there. Only 0.16% of American males are named Kyle, just under “Francis” and above “Bradly” (ugh….) I don’t remember enough math to find what the odds of 2 out of 20 people being Kyle is but suffice to say it’s LOW.

If you have a small family, and your son’s name is Brian, your brother hopefully wouldn’t be so inconsiderate to name his kid Brian. It wouldn’t work. Therefore, on some level I understand why I was asked to use my middle name.

Five years later, I’m still Ben. I’ve learned to accept it- it’s a pretty good joke amongst my personal friends. In a way, it helps me keep my personal and professional life separate- there are many people that work for MIW that probably don’t even know my real first name, and that’s fine with me. Like everyone else on facebook, I get tagged in… unfortunate pictures from time to time.

But now I’m faced with a dilemma. After five years of rejecting every MIW employee on facebook (even our CEO… eeep!), I made a profile for my alter-ego- and I remembered quickly why I put this off for so long. I don’t want to know what the people that work for me do at night any more than I want them to know what I do at night (watch 30 Rock, drink beer, drool, and pass out). Plus, it’s just another way for all the people I’ve “severed corporate ties” with over my years as Senior Assistant Coach to contact me and ask for their job back.

But it comes with the territory I guess. The world is changing- blogs aren’t just for emo ranting, facebook isn’t just for playing farmville, and twitter… well twitter is still just for nonsensical blathering. It’s time to take Ben to prime time. I just hope when I’m CEO of my own company I can be Kyle again

“You fine. But you can lose the weight OK. No more of the frekkin’ bread. No carbs for you no more.” So said my new russian doctor this morning. And guess what? I went right to the market and had a meat and cheese shopping spree bonanza.

I trust him, even though I’ve only known him for five minutes. He listened to what I had to say, and then he inspected my… well.

Our customers and our technicians from Make It Work develop similar bonds every day, sans “inspections”. It goes to show that someone with perceived authority (I didn’t request a copy of his diploma, so do I don’t REALLY know) telling you to do something is a powerful thing. Would I have gone on a diet if an authority figure didn’t tell me to in broken english? Probably not- I love pasta and beer way too much.

Our customers trust us with their livelihoods hundreds of times a day because we have confidence in what we do. If I hire a technician who knows what he’s doing but lacks confidence, all bets are off.