Jesse Freese
First I have to apologize to Brett Favre and everyone else for misspelling his name in the last newsletter. No excuses, just poor spelling and poor quality review.
It’s easy to get caught up in the “new year” this year. We have the normal beginning of a new year with the usual resolutions – did you make any this year? Are you still following them? It’s not something I usually do, except to lose the extra pounds I always manage to put on over the Holiday season. I’m not sure what the lack of New Year’s resolutions says about me, I guess I’ll have to let those of you who know me tell me what it means.
Another aspect of the “new year” this year is the beginning of a new decade. I have seen a few of these (OK, more than a few) through the years and the biggest difference I find is that now when I write the year part of the date 1/2/10, I have to catch myself immediately. Going from “08” to “09” I could start with the “0” and still catch myself before writing the “8” by habit, or at least it was easy to change an “8” to a “9”. It’s pretty hard to change “09” to “10”. Beyond my own challenge with remembering to write the new date, associated with each new decade is the challenge to find a description of the previous decade. The phrase I have heard most often for the last ten years lately is the “lost” decade. I’m thinking I don’t have all that many decades in my life span and I’d hate to think I lost one. The “Naughty Aughties” and “Uh-Ohs” can also be found on the web as potential names. I’m not too crazy about thinking the decade was naughty or a mistake either. As an optimist, and I think leaders especially need to be realistically optimistic, I would like to see a more positive name for the decade. If you have one, send it to me and I’ll share them in the next newsletter.
Obviously a big reason for the negative view of the past decade is the severe economic downturn we suffered the last 18 months or so. The loss of income, jobs, homes and savings has left a pretty bad taste in our mouths. It will probably be there for quite some time and may take a prolonged period of economic growth for us to start feeling confident again. Is there anything else we can do to start feeling more confident? As we closed the Fissure books on 2009 I easily fell into a negative view of the year (and decade). It was easy to do as revenue was down, we struggled and we had to let a valued employee go. When people would ask how I was doing, lately I would usually end up describing the negative impact the economy was having on Fissure and me personally.
With the New Year and the new decade I have decided to make one serious New Year’s resolution this year and that will be to stay focused on the good things that happened in 2009 and to be positive about 2010. As I’m writing this article I can identify several good business things that happened in 2009:
• We added a good number of new clients
• Our new Business Analysis classes have been a huge hit
• We started a new development project that we are extremely excited about (more to come in later newsletters)
• We celebrated twenty years as a company at the end of 2009
I encourage everyone to take a few minutes to list some positives (professional and personal) about 2009 and then make a resolution to be just a little more positive about the potential of 2010 because at this time next year, there will be positives for 2010 too.
Speaking of positives, many positives can come from volunteering, consider the volunteer need Tim Firnstahl shares in “Fissure News”.
Make sure you checkout our new feature continuing in this issue. For the next several issues one of our instructors (guides) will give you a firsthand look at their work, teaching and life experiences, and how they came to be Fissure guides. I think you will enjoy their stories and getting to know how they came to be so passionate about helping others learn and develop. This month is John Kaman.
We’re replacing Geof Lory’s usual article with a timely article from Brian Toren, our resident futurist. Brian has collected some future predictions in technology, population, jobs, and education. Project managers appreciate the ability to understand and predict the future. We all know the relationship between knowledge and certainty. If only there was certainty in my golf swing
Our upcoming public workshops can be found on our website (http://www.fissure.com) – our computer simulation powered workshops the most effective and fun way to learn AND EARN PDUs. Make sure you also check out what’s happening at Fissure (Fissure News).
Thanks for reading and let’s make this decade a positive one,
