Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Category: Working Matters

  • Loving Monday: Today is Your Life

    loving_mondayToday is your life. Sometimes with all our plans for the future and our baggage from the past, we forget that today is our life too.

    As we return to work today, our lives intersect with that work. Our lives include that work, become a part of that work and/or that work becomes a part of our lives.

    The question becomes, can we discern when we have suspended our lives in order to go to work? Do we consider everything we do part of our lives except our work?

    When we get off of work we can go back to living.

    The problem here is that we spend too much time at work to survive holding such a frame of reference for very long. Putting our lives on hold eight to ten plus hours a day in order to make someone else rich gets old real quickly. More than merely getting old, such a practice eats away at our dignity, confidence and ability to value ourselves appropriately.

    The key is finding ways to make a meaningful contribution at work. Even in the most distasteful, boring, or demeaning work you can choose to make some aspect of your efforts a meaningful contribution.

    The contribution can be an increase in quality, attention to details, going the extra mile for a customer, consistent follow-through, clear communication, heading off problems before they arise, or an extra level of coordination on a project.

    The point being that you are choosing to make your work a meaningful part of your life, and you are doing something to make it happen.

    Today is your life. Now go out and live it! Even at work… Especially at work!

    On  your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Karl Shares Six Words… 3


    Grateful heart stirs leftovers absent-mindedly.


    Karl Edwards

  • Loving Monday: Holiday Distraction Coming

    loving_mondayAs much as we love our jobs we seldom begrudge a long holiday weekend.

    A shortened work week opens up a couple of possible scenarios for the week ahead.

    One is that we are absent in mind and spirit even while our bodies are present. We’re not off until Thursday, but the anticipation and the preparations fill our minds until we have to admit we have very little space left for the work-related tasks.

    The other scenario is that we are trying to squeeze a full week’s worth of effort into three days. The output requirements haven’t changed but the time frame within which to work has.

    In one case we are finding ourselves quite unproductive. In the other case, we are attempting to be hyper-productive. In both cases, we are distracted by the coming holiday weekend.

    Instead of continuing on as if this were a normal three days like any other, we become distracted by the schedule change. Both are forms of distraction. Neither are lethal, but you aren’t functioning at your best either.

    In one case the distraction removes all pressure. You’ve simply begun your holiday weekend already here on Monday. In the other case the distraction imposes enormous pressure. You somehow need to do everything in practically half the time. In both cases you are underperforming as a result.

    What would probably serve you better is a happy medium of looking forward to the coming long weekend with the awareness that certain adjustments will be required given the loss of two days.

    You can’t think clearly or get much done when you’re either daydreaming about turkey and stuffing or stressed out by the volume of work ahead. Ironically, if you can calm down and focus on what adjustments need to be made this week, you’ll be able to identify your priorities and make the decisions necessary to make good use of the three days available without spoiling the welcome break of the holiday ahead.

    Hoping this Thanksgiving is a good distraction for you in every way possible.

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Quote to Consider: Permission to Fail… Granted

    quote-to-consider“The sheer rebelliousness in giving ourselves permission to fail frees a childlike awareness and clarity. … When we give ourselves permission to fail, we at the same time give ourselves permission to excel.”

    Eloise Ristad

  • Karl Shares Six Words… 2


    Glancing back hesitantly for direction forward.


    Karl Edwards

  • Sustainable Excellence at Milken Institute Forum

    The Milken Institute Forum last night was excellent. Aron Cramer and Zachary Karabell were there discussing their new book, Sustainable Excellence: The Future of Business in a Fast-Changing World.

    Theirs was not a morality play. That is, they did not discuss sustainability as a moral precept on behalf the planet’s survival, humanity’s future and the kumbaya warmth of being good and doing better. So many activists rely on a liberal pseudo-religious elitism that manipulates conformity to one’s agenda based on threatening to label people something they would find horrible like, “ignorant,” “narrow-minded,” or “greedy.”

    Cramer and Karabell discussed sustainability from a business perspective.

    It makes business sense to integrate issues of sustainability into the heart of one’s business strategy. Good stewardship of one’s business goes hand in hand with good stewardship of our resources.

    While both authors were morally committed to sustainability, they did a good job of describing their research into a phenomenon of the last several years wherein leadership, creativity, and innovation in sustainability is coming from the business world, not the non-profit activist organizations or governments. They also described how they believe business is best positioned to both design and act upon meaningful change in an effective and timely manner.

    I look forward to this read. I have long believed that only the business context has the necessary combination of systemic financial motivations, human and capital resources, and decision-making flexibility to provide the sort of creative leadership necessary to give shape and form to the emerging future.

    Where and to whom do you look for meaningful change?

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

  • Loving Monday: Too Cheesy?

    loving_mondayLoving Monday has been the title of this column for several years now. Today it sounds a little cheesy to me.

    Sometimes when work is particularly difficult, diminishing or distressing, words of encouragement can ring hollow. So much rah rah cheerleading for the team suffering a lop-sided and humiliating loss. The sentiment is nice, but it’s not going to affect the outcome of the game.

    Go ahead and get it off your chest: “It’s easy for you to say, ‘Choose a can-do attitude!’ (Can you hear the exclamation point in the inspirational speaker’s voice?!), but I am the one having to live with the boss from hell who just cut my budget for the third time this year.”

    I hear you. I have long been an advocate for a constitutional amendment banning cheese in consultant speeches and supervisor pep talks. Offering nice sentiments that won’t affect the outcome are worse than useless.

    On the other hand… (You didn’t really think I was going to leave it there, did you?)

    On the other hand, the by-line at the bottom of this column reads, “Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves.”

    In this column we are talking about intention and choices. I am encouraging us to intend good for our work efforts and to be specific about that intention. I am encouraging us to match that clear intention with choices that will turn that intention into action.

    Far from being cheesy, we are reminding each other that how we show up at work affects our work just as much as (if not more than) the crazy things that are happening around us. We are checking in with how authentically we show up and how fully we engage.

    Whether we are going into well-ordered and effective workplaces or crazy-making and soul-crushing ones, we can love Mondays because we becoming people who know how to connect our intention with our choices and bring our full selves to the task at hand.

    Now that’s something to cheer about!

    On your side,

    – Karl Edwards

    If you would like to discuss your situation with Karl, click here for a free 30-minute consultation.
    Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves. Explore past columns here.

  • Quote to Consider: The Loaded Compliment

    quote-to-consider“Some fellows pay a compliment like they expected a receipt.”

    Kin Hubbard

  • Clippings from Don: Hamster-Brained Bosses

    One of the reasons Scott Adams is so funny is because the situations underlying his humor are so real.

    His article in the weekend Wall Street Journal, “The Perfect Stimulus: Bad Management” is the perfect example.

    If you want a good laugh as you absorb some entrepreneurial insights, then click on over to his article on why bad management is the cornerstone of the entrepreneurial spirit in this country.

    You’ll enjoy great one-liners like, “The primary purpose of management is to kill any hope that staying in your current job will work out for you… Remember, only quitters can be winners, because you can’t do something great until first you quit doing something that isn’t.”

    And my favorite, “I think we all understood that working in a cubicle and being managed by Satan’s learning-challenged little brother was not a recipe for happiness.”

    Sometimes the only way to keep from crying about work is to laugh about it.

    You know I’m here if you want to talk about your situation at work. If we haven’t met yet, sign up for a free 30-minute consultation about your hamster-brained boss.

    Voracious reader friend Don Silver always has an eye out for what interests me. Clippings from Don is a column where I pass on some of these articles, stories and resources to you.

  • Karl Shares Six Words… 1


    Competent sky blue eyes narrowly escape.


    Karl Edwards