You might have seen this headline so I am compelled to share it with you.

The grandparents of Justin Bieber were in a car accident. Rolled the SUV in a ditch. Now resting home. Pop has some broken ribs. They were wearing seatbelts and the airbag deployed….

And this is important to our society why????

I read yesterday that the average person can really only keep about 200 relationships going at any one time. This comes from anthropologists studying the human brain.

The average Facebook user has 130 friends but regularly interacts with only 7 of them which kind of supports that theory.

OK, let’s extend this to leadership and business. I have a nice sized contact list of businesses I have done work with but it does seem to be the usual suspects (who I am very grateful for) who I interact with most. Might my business benefit more by being more intentional about personally keeping in touch? Hmm. What about your business?

Now, on the leadership side. Again, there is a small circle of people you choose to see and interact with. Others outside that circle can feel neglected and the victims of favoritism. Beyond that, at some point, for you to expand your influence and impact you need supporters who will follow you and respond to you. If you have only been interacting with seven people with any regularity you may be missing something.

Quality counts over quantity but I am suggesting we can increase the quantity while not sacrificing quality.

The day after Christmas in most parts of the United Kingdom is Boxing Day. Americans don’t recognize the date as anything special but the history is interesting.

Tradition has it that the day after Christmas was the day the servants were presented with a box (gift) of thanks for their service over the course of the year. Last week I encouraged you to say “thanks” to important people in your life. It is not too late.

Look them in the eye, shake their hand, and say thanks for their efforts during the year. (Most of you are closed today so you can do this first thing in the AM on Tuesday OR you can do it this Friday.)

And now for the announcement….I meant to do this last week for you last minute shoppers…BOTH of my books are now available in electronic format. Yes, NO YELLING: The Nine Secrets of Marine Corps Leadership and Construction Leadership From A to Z can be read on your e-reading device. Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have it in stock. (Of course it is in stock, it is digital!)

Thanks….

Just came from a Carolina Hurricanes hockey game. They lost. They have done alot of that this year. To make matters worse, in this game – like many others this year – they had the lead but could not hold on to it. They started well but finished poorly.

How about you? As you finish 2011 are you hitting the 31st in full stride or are you crawling towards 2012? I am not saying this isn’t a time to refresh. You must. But I am asking do you start with great ideas and a nice surge but that falls away. (Check out how crowded the gym will be in January and how that all goes away by March 1).

Do you start projects with a bang only to see them fizzle? My buddy David Stone, a marketing and PR expert,  talks about a kick finish. We all know about the kick start. He prefers the kick finish. They even talk about that in running when they talk about finishing with a kick.

Sustained performance and continued excellence takes more than a kick finish but you will not win if you don’t bring projects and initiatives through to successful completion. Both of my books required just such an effort. After a couple hundred pages of manuscript, research and sweat I was tired. I was over it. But I reached down for the kick. I now have two books. Construction Leadership From A to Z is starting to get some momentum and I look forward to that continuing into 2012.

What can you do to build momentum for 2012?

Just got a call from a client. He said he was driving down the road and thinking about the year and the people who made a positive impact on him and he was calling them to say thanks. That was so nice…really made my day. I like the guy and we have a great relationship but I hadn’t seen him since March. Yet, he took the time to reach out and say thanks…

that was nice…who can you call to make their day. By the way, you will feel good too.

While most publications are creating and publishing their year in review, I propose you conduct a year in preview. This is a variation on the annual planning session I encourage (and conduct  myself) to get me ready for the New Year.

Consider those big areas in your life: faith, family, finance, physical, friends, career, education, what else? The categories may differ but you get the idea. What do you want to accomplish in those areas? Last year for me one of the big ones was the new book. Check! I didn’t do as well on the weight loss thing….even tougher right now but I know the importance of that and will work at it.

Simply stated, it is important to plan. While some people make overly intricate plans that have no hope of being fully realized, others do no planning and accomplish little. The idea behind the year in preview is to write down some things you want to do. No need to get crazy detailed, unless you want to, but do give some thought to next year.

On Wednesday of this week I will meet with two of my professional speaker buddies. We will outline our goals for the year and then hold each other accountable for them during 2012. (or until the end of times as noted by the Mayans in late 2012)

Sun Tzu said “first establish your plans, then prepare your equipment. This is why the chapter on battle follows the chapter on strategic assessments.”

My colleague George Berg, one of the smartest guys I know – especially when it comes to construction productivity – sent me this quote a while back. We are not sure of the initial source but enjoy..

“…the beauty of not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by any period of anxiety.”

I must add that “the beauty of planning is success does not come as a surprise and the anxiety of failure is lessened.”

OK, most of us make it…but not these two coaches. The mistake is not holding people accountable to the rules and values of your organization. There should be no free passes on these. We need not look further than the world of sports this past weekend.

First men’s college hoops. Cincinnati vs Xavier brawl on the court. Not sure what caused it but the reaction from the Cincy coach was loud and clear. In the post game press conference he apologized and asserted action would be taken. He went on to say playing on scholarship is a privilege that must be valued when there are kids who cannot afford to even attend school. Suspensions have been handed out. Could more have been done before the brawl and with building character to have prevented it? Very probably.

Next to pro football. The NY football Giants were in a must win game last night against division rival Dallas Cowboys. Tom Coughlin benched one of his star running backs, Ahmad Bradshaw, for missing curfew. He didn’t play the first series, nor the first quarter, nor the first half. Wow. Lose and your playoff hopes are done. Win and you are in the hunt to win the division. Big stakes here. Coughlin makes the call. Bradshaw did play in the second half but that was far later in the game than most thought he would.

Coughlin has been called ‘old school.’ He also has won a bunch of ball games and a super bowl. Not bad. I do not find anything old school about establishing a standard and holding people accountable for it. Do you think any Giants will be late for curfew for the rest of the year?

Where can you be more consistent about communicating and enforcing your standards of conduct? It all starts with you, the leader, to make it happen.

Go Giants.

Unless you follow the world of high finance and banking you probably missed this one but there are lessons for us all.

Robert Kelly is the now former CEO of The Bank of New York Mellon. He was a widely respected executive who fell from grace quite rapidly. While there are differing reasons for his departure one thing is certain. He decided to leave the bank to become the CEO of the much larger Bank of America. He communicated this to his Board. However, the HUGE compensation package he was looking for from BOA was going to get very close and negative scrutiny and BOA wavered on the offer. Kelly went back to the Mellon Board and said, “never mind, I am staying.” Hmm. How do you think that was received?

But here is the big point I want to make. Kelly thought he was doing great. He thought the Board loved him – and for a while they did. But things change and the Board really wasn’t happy with him. In February of 2011 the Board assigned five directors to meet with Kelly to discuss his poor performance. To quote a Fortune magazine article, “the board believed it was sending him a major warning signal.”

However, Kelly didn’t see it that way. He thought it was simply the annual review. An annual review where he got a $5.6 million bonus including 100% of his target based on individual performance. (Let’s review that point…the board SAID he was doing poorly but they PAID him as if he was doing great…OR OR OR they avoided the crucial and difficult conversation and never really SAID what they thought they were saying.) Have you ever thought you told someone something but it turns out they didn’t get the message? Maybe you were the problem because you didn’t communicate directly and clarify the message.

What about performance reviews? They are often merely an exercise in filling out a form and they only look at the past few weeks of performance. They often do not cover the entire year (because that would mean you took notes on performance for the entire year and who has time for that?) or they only focus on a few isolated highs or lows. In other words, they are not done well. Heck, if the Board for Bank of NY can get it wrong – and give a bonus even though they are not happy – I guess we all can.

But…that doesn’t have to describe you.

You may remember back in January I played in an alumn ice hockey game with some guys I had not seen in 25 years….it was great fun…we did another game this past weekend. The soreness is wearing off but not the good feeling of connecting with people. We played til 11:30 PM and they socialize til 3AM (bars are open later in NY!). Anybody you’d like to reconnect with?

Earlier this week I talked about the importance of data…over the course of the year and in a meeting on Monday a client expressed concern about how the year was going to turn out….on Wednesday he looked at the aggregated financials for the entire enterprise and they are up 50% from last year. (Something to be said for diversification there). While it was feeling bad because the hit rate on getting new work was low and the margins seemed low, upon further review, things are actually better.

Finally, we were able to show someone we are coaching the extreme of his behavior when we portrayed it on a bell curve and he could see where his scores fell in relation to the general population. He went from “I am not that bad,” to “wow, I didn’t realize how bad I was.” We back that up with a 360 assessment if needed and the guy gets clarity.

In other words, all this leadership stuff works!

Of course..today is December 7th….a date which will live in infamyc…..before I go further………pause…reflect….remember…honor…weep….thank….etc..

Now. What dates matter for you? Not your personal dates. I mean at work, in your organization? You may not be the boss and in a position to throw an anniversary party for the firm but what if you could? The Marines make a big deal out or their birthday. The National Speakers Assn has “Spirit of Cavett Day” to remember its founder and further the principles of the association he started. What does your firm do, if anything?

Let’s get personal. Do you make note of employee anniversaries. Whether it is one year of service or twenty-one do you mention it and show you are paying attention? What about their birthday? We have all heard the story of the CEO who sent handwritten birthday cards to all his employees. For years he did this but then he stopped. People began to wonder what was wrong. Was he sick, were they to be fired? They missed getting their card.

Dates matter. No, actually remembering the date matters. and actually doing something is what matters most…