Some Important Reminders

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Some Important Reminders

Each year prior to the beginning of a new season in a particular sport, there is a period of training, or, for some, retraining. This training period consists of exercises and activities that remind the players of the important, even vital, techniques that they must incorporate into their skillset for regular use. Without having this skillset well established into their makeup, the players would be at a serious disadvantage against their opponents.  What is true in sports is equally true in business and education; training is vital for success in any endeavor. Witness the extensive training and retraining that an airline pilot must incorporate into his regimen. Training and review of the fundamentals of an activity are mandatory in nearly all professions and activities of life. Would a professional athlete or a leading executive of a successful organization remain competitive and successful in his profession if he practiced his craft or studied important trends only once a week?  Of course not! Such an individual would rapidly tumble to the bottom of his profession.

What is true for a person’s daily secular life is equally true for one’s spiritual life. Listed below are just a few reminders of the “fundamentals” of the Catholic faith that a person needs to regularly review and contemplate.

  • The world was created; it had a starting point and….eventually will have an end point. Every created thing has a creator; God is the creator of all things.
  • God is a personal, loving, omnipotent being who loves mankind and wishes man to be united with Him in heaven. Man by his own actions chooses whether he will join God in heaven or not.
  • Jesus Christ, the Son of God, entered the world to save man from his sins, providing man a way to salvation. Jesus also taught man about God’s nature (Trinitarian – The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) and God‘s love for man.
  • All three persons in the Trinity continue to provide man with assistance in man’s journey to eternity.
  • The Ten Commandments were given to man for his benefit and guidance. They must be reviewed regularly and applied to one’s daily life.
  • The Catholic Church is the only Church founded and preserved in its teachings on faith and morals by Jesus Christ – God.
  • God is man’s best friend; cultivate His friendship through frequent prayer.

If man ignores God, He will ignore man. Practice and train daily with God.

 

CEOs and Mothers

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CEOs and MOTHERS

Many CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) and senior executives of both large and small companies, as well as government organizations often attend prestigious colleges and graduate schools in preparation for their careers in business and government. Additionally, they frequently spend years in positions within their organizations that provide training, experience, and insight. Many of these executives also insist on continuing their education through seminars and the reading of business journals. All of this education costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and an equally exacting commitment of time and energy.

The purpose of all of this education is to prepare the executive to lead an organization in the following areas.

  • Creating Strategy and Tactics
  • Managing, Motivating, and Caring for employees
  • Taking risks (calculated) required to keep the organization viable
  • Handling difficult, even disgruntled, though valuable personnel
  • Carefully managing finances and financial expenditures (Managing a budget)
  • Growing the company

All of this education is indeed valuable and necessary for CEOs to be successful in operating their organizations. Yet it can be suggested that there is one more step necessary to fully complete the education of a senior executive. That is to spend some time observing one or more of the most successful and committed executives in the world.

  • An executive who, day in and day out, faces most of the management issues and decisions that are experienced by any senior executive.
  • An executive that manages valuable personnel, some of whom possess challenging and difficult personalities at times, yet who are extremely valuable and indispensable to the organization.
  • One who manages a budget which contains more restrictions than one that is developed for a company in distress.
  • One who takes calculated risks in delegating authority to inexperienced personal to monitor new employees
  • One who has a plan and willingness to add employees to the organization.
  • An executive who handles with care the individual who thinks he is the Chairman of Board and has all the answers and thus must be managed with “kid” gloves.

Who is this epitome of executive leadership and craftsmanship? Many of the full time mothers of this world!!!   (This is not to contend that working mothers do not have the same skill set as full time moms.) It is seriously recommended that, part of any executive training; the executive should spend a week monitoring the actions of a mother, one who preferably has three or more small children. It will not take long for the trainee to witness and learn from the mother the qualities of leadership, patience, planning, budgeting, managing difficult personalities that include the personality of the husband, and, most of all, a caring for the “employees.”

Executive leadership forums, graduate schools, seminars, etc. are all valuable tools for increasing the leadership skills of executives. Real life observations of effective mothers would provide even greater insight and educational value.

I would readily volunteer my wife as a mentor for this training exercise, but our children are now grown and my wife has taken on a new responsibility – helping God organize and manage heaven.

The Fourth Commandment – Honor your father and Mother…..but especially your mother.