Everything You Need To Know

Before we get started today I want to ask a question that you must answer honestly. This should be pretty easy since you are more than likely reading this all by your self in front of your computer. If you are not sure of this then just look around you right now and you can confirm that it is true. OK. Now that we have that taken care of, the question is, did you spend the 10 minutes writing I asked you to do? If you did not then there really is very little reason to read further today. However, if you did not please stop and take 10 minutes to Please Do It Now.

Sorry to begin today by seeming to rant a bit but this is really important. The exercise from yesterday is the basis of what will become your personal mission statement. While this will change over the years to come, we will be building together a document that you will use to provide overall direction for your life. If I were teaching this in a seminar setting we would spend the better part of four hours on just this concept alone. So once again I urge you to take the ten minutes to write. And now we move on.

In August of 1999 the United States Army published their Field Manual for leadership. The manual is called in classic army speak “FM 22-100”. Unless you like military history as I do or study the issues of leadership you may not be aware of the existence of this public document. I first became acquainted with the Field Manual back in 2002 while reading an article from the Drucker Institute called Leader to Leader. FM 22-100 describes the principles of army leadership built around the foundation of Be, Know, Do. Your personal plan of written objectives should be created with these same principles in mind. Going back to Stephen Covey, when teaching the Seven Habits he uses a model called the Have, Do, Be model. The concept is that what we do flows out of who we are (be). What we have flows out of what we do. Dr. Covey calls this the “Inside-Out process. Explaining this simply, everything flows from who we are. Field manual 22-100 clarifies this further. Be is about our values, attributes and character. Know describes our knowledge, skills, and abilities or competence. Do sets forth our actions, results, and influence which translates into our personal leadership.

Reading the document you prepared yesterday (or today for those that are getting the point) you must look for statements that begin to point to who you are. You should also look for things that lead you to understand what you want, and what you do. Again, this is important and difficult introspective work. Also know that it is perfectly alright to describe what you want to become even if you aren’t getting it right yet. Begin to note the statements that respond to each of these attributes. If you are not seeing the Be, Know, Do, statements in your writing you might want to repeat the exercise once again so that they may reveal themselves to you.

Nearly twenty years ago Robert Fulghum wrote a wonderful book based on his thoughts and insights about the common things in life. Fulghum has gone on to become a noted thinker of uncommon thoughts communicated in a common manner. I highly recommend his book “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten”. But, I encourage you if nothing else to read the beginning of the book which in the paperback version starts on page 3. I found this writing to be very inspirational for each of us as we begin this process of discovering our personal mission as a part of finding our V.O.I.C.E.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. – Robert Fulghum