Advice is a strange thing. All of us will look at someone else, see that they might be messing up in some fashion, and immediately want to tell them what we believe they should be doing. Sometimes, they might not be doing anything wrong, just not doing it the way you’d do it, and you feel compelled to give them advice anyway.

I’m not one of those people. Well, I am the type that wants to say something, but I’m also the type that keeps those things to myself most of the time because I haven’t been asked. Unless I’m asked, it will take an act of someone’s god or the act of saving someone’s life for me to say anything. Why?

I’m someone who doesn’t ask for advice all that often. It’s not that I’m perfect at everything, because I’m far from that. However, I’ve found that whenever I ask for advice, I rarely get advice on what I’m asking about unless I’m really specific with it. And even then, people feel like, since you’ve asked them about one thing, they have the right to tell you about things you didn’t ask them about.

Frankly, I find that irritating. For instance, I might ask someone if they liked a concept of something I did, and instead they want to talk about the font I used, or the colors of the background. Unless they couldn’t read what I’d written because the background color overwhelms the words, that’s a personal choice, and not germane to the conversation.

There are times when advice isn’t advice, as I highlighted in the linked post. Years ago I had a consultant come into my place of employment, tell me 61 problems my department had of which I knew 60 of them, and every single recommendation was to put more people on it. If I’d had all those people I wouldn’t have needed him to tell me that; bad and useless advice.

I don’t even give advice to people who have major problems in their life, unless their life is in jeopardy, and even then I’m very cautious. I’ve known some women who have suffered abuse at the hands of a spouse, and after having to learn a hard lesson the first time out (the woman wouldn’t leave, and I had to just wash my hands of it eventually and move on) I realized that sometimes a person isn’t ready to change and therefore anything I tell them is a wasted effort. But occasionally I have been able to make a difference in some fashion when I knew someone was out there on their own, kind of floundering, and really needing a friend to help them take charge of their life. When I was single I saw that all the time; nowadays that’s a very rare occurrence.

However, when you’re in a position of leadership, especially in the workplace, the rules change. Now if you don’t give advice or recommendations it’s your career that’s on the line. There’s nothing wrong with giving people freedom to do the job as long as there are no problems, but at the same time it behooves managers to make sure everyone is following at least the basics of what they’re supposed to be doing correctly. That, plus how they interact with customers and each other is always very important.

And finally, if they’re bringing certain personal problems to work, once again this is one of those times when you have to be willing to step up to the task of having a talk with them, although that talk has to be worded properly. I have had to have that “being abused” talk with an employee, and the initial advice was that I would not allow it to impact the department, and that if asked I would find ways to get that employee help through official means if needed, but that the last thing I was going to allow was someone to come in who didn’t belong and disrupt the department. I would always let the employee know I was there and willing to talk, but that if it was the same thing over and over it wouldn’t continue because I wouldn’t waste my time with it at a certain point.

Is that harsh? To some it might seem so, but I always recall the words of Mr. Spock from Wrath of Khan: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” Yes, every individual is important, but as a manager, you can’t always allow yourself to get caught up in someone’s spiraling personal life.

How and when do you give advice?

For those people keeping score, on Monday I posted something saying I was going a week without news, but I had started it last Friday. That means that in a couple of hours my self imposed ban will be over.

It’s been an interesting week, I must say. I haven’t watched the news nor visited an online news site to scan any news headlines. I did do what I said I would, that being to follow some links to stories that caught my eye while on Twitter, and of course a couple that hit my email from news alerts. I wasn’t totally out of the loop, but I know I missed a bunch of things.

What I caught was interesting. I caught some of the Oscar winners. I caught that there was another large earthquake in Chile, and a smaller one somewhere else; not sure where. I caught that some little NY representative had resigned, but I haven’t fully figured out why yet. I caught that Corey Haim passed away, and that Lindsey Lohan was suing E-trade for something moronic. And I caught that President Obama is still favored by 51% of the populace, while Congress is only favored by 21%; that’s a shame.

I missed a lot, but since I don’t know all that I missed I guess it doesn’t matter. But I have to say that part of what I expected to occur didn’t work out quite as I thought it would. I thought that I’d be better prepared to catch up on all my email. I thought that I’d get more of my projects done. I really thought that without trying to catch the news that I’d concentrate more on other things.

None of that happened. Turns out that I really do spend an inordinate amount of time researching news items. I found it difficult to write my finance blog without knowing what was going on in the financial world; that’s not good. I found that I don’t really have all that many other websites that I like to visit that are in my bookmarks, since I’m used to chasing news. I found that I was bored sometimes, and I’d just leave the computer and go into the other room to watch the big screen TV. Yeah, I also worked out a few more times this week, which is always a good thing.

However, one other thing I realized is that I didn’t have certain things in my mind to bother me and get me upset. I don’t know if some morons molested some kids, or if some moron decided to kill his family and possibly himself. I don’t know what’s going on with the health care bill, or anything else Congress might be dealing with. I do know that Glenn Beck said something stupid, and that Rush Limbaugh said he’d leave the country if the health care bill was passed, but I have no idea what prompted either thing. I don’t even know what’s really going on locally, except there’s a building that’s still waiting to fall or be pulled down, and no one is doing anything because there’s a debate as to who should be pulling it down; that was all before I stopped reading the news.

It was an interesting experiment; I might do it again some day. But I can’t wait until midnight so I can find out what’s going on in this world; I’m hoping that maybe I won’t care as much, but I doubt it.

Though I’m not reading regular news this week, I did read a sports story about the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team. They just won their 71st game in a row, breaking their own record from about 8 years ago, and it doesn’t look like anyone is stopping them any time soon. They’ve won every game by double digits, and the closest any opponent as gotten to them in this streak is 12 points. They’ve beaten up on everyone, including other teams in the top 10.

What invariably happens whenever a team or individual looks like they’re vastly superior to their competition is commentary that it might not be good for “whatever” having that kind of superiority. It’s a strange commentary on the world, Americans in general, whenever this kind of thing is said.

Let’s face the fact that most of us love to see someone who’s really good at something. Our reasons are vastly different, however. Some people love to hate those winners; I hate the New York Yankees, probably because my Boston Red Sox suffered for so many years. Yet other people hate my Dallas Cowboys because they were the epitome of success and style for a long time.

There’s always a love-hate relationship when it comes to looking at the best of things. I have my own story about being the best. Back in 9th grade, I was put in a math class that was a grade level behind most people in my class; I have no idea why. What it resulted in was my getting a 100 on every test for the first two quarters. Initially some of the people in class resented it because that meant there was no curve that the teacher could give the class. Eventually, what happened is that some of the students began to step up, to the point where even though there was still no curve, many of them started getting at least into the low 80’s. The day I didn’t get a 100, when I got a 97, they all cheered, but it wasn’t malicious at all because they’d joined me in the mission to see how long I could continue being perfect in class.

Of course, we can look to a bigger scale and use as an example the U.S. Men’s basketball team from 1992, known as the Dream Team. Remember the hall of famer’s who were on that team? Remember that team averaged more than 50 points a game per win against teams that obviously were inferior to the best the United States had to offer. All you then had to do was to go forward 4 years to the next Olympics, which we still won, but by a much closer margin. By 2000 the rest of the world had caught up to us, even though we were still sending top quality NBA athletes.

Tiger Woods is still the best golfer in the world. Remember when we all talked about the Tiger Slam? He won one major tournament by 18 strokes; that was just phenomenal. And yet, within 3 years, many pro golfers had caught up to him. Well, that’s not quite true, since he’s still number one, but suddenly he wasn’t winning every single tournament. And it wasn’t that he was suddenly playing badly; it was that some players stepped up their game, realizing that if Tiger Woods is in the tournament, they have to bring their top game to life.

There’s no such thing as too good. You might think most people would quit, and that still might be true. But there are some hardy souls who won’t stay down without a fight, and as they work harder, they get better. They might not always overcome, but they’ll get closer, and as they improve, everything else improves at the same time.

Give me “too good” every time; I love reaching standards that no one expects of me. What about you?

A few days ago I wrote a post here titled Bring Peace Back Into Your Life. The two comments I got both suggested that I not watch the news anymore. Well, being kind of a news junkie, there’s no way I was going to agree to that. However, what I am going to do is not actively seek out news for a week.

Notice the wording there. What that means is that I’m not going to turn on any news programs unless there’s something really big, which I hope against hope won’t happen. I also won’t actively seek out any news online, which is a biggie for me.

Now, here’s what it won’t mean. It won’t mean if I see an intriguing headline pop across my Twitter stream that I won’t check it out. It won’t mean I might not do some research to write articles for my finance blog, some of which is dependent upon keeping up with some of the recent financial news. It won’t mean I might not check out a link or two here and there from my blog reader, which tracks some news sources. And I’m certainly not giving up following sports, unless Syracuse University loses its first game Thursday afternoon; then I won’t care until Sunday, which my week will already be over.

That’s because I started this last Friday, which means I’m already into day number three, with only 4 days to go. So far it’s been interesting; my wife has asked me what’s going on in the world and the only thing I could tell her was about the earthquake in Turkey. I don’t even know what’s going on locally, which means I’ll have to hear from someone else when, or if, they bring down that building that’s ended up making the city block off Route 81 and thus created driving problems in the middle of the city and highway.

So far I’m not sure if it’s liberating or not, but it’s certainly different. Let’s see how I feel come Friday.

There’s a funny commercial on TV these days. It’s a Miller Lite commercial, where a guy and his girlfriend are sitting in a bar. He’s got an arm around her and his other hand is wrapped around his beer.

She asks him if she and his dog were about to go over a cliff, who would he save; he says her. She asks the same about his mother and he gives the same answer. She then asks about his beer; he pauses, then asks how high the cliff is.

Certainly not the answer she was expecting, but the commercial points out two things that happen in life that people don’t prepare themselves for. One is asking questions where there’s only one correct answer because a different answer, which might be truthful, might also cause a lot of disruption in someone’s life. Two, the possibility that things aren’t going as well as you thought, and now you have to do something about it.

On the first, I told my wife while we were dating to never ask me a question where there might only be one correct answer because I was never going to answer it. I’ve stuck to that all these years, never falling into the trap, and, though she’s very cool about things in general, I think I’ve avoided trouble here and there along the way.

On the second, I can only think of once ever, when I was in management, when I expected an answer that I didn’t get, and wasn’t sure what to do with the answer. That’s not a bad record, I’d dare to say. I’d like to think it was because I had trained people well and thus never had any issues to wrry about but that’s not the case.

Instead, I’d have to say that it’s my propensity to think of both the good and bad things that could happen as a result of things I’d put into practice, and usually if the bad thing happened, I had already reasoned out why it might happen and thus would have an idea of how to fix or alter it. I think most of us want everything to go perfectly, but also most of us don’t look at the problems that could occur and plan on how to correct them if things go that route.

I also think most managers have a sense of when things aren’t going right, and therefore won’t ask the question because they don’t want to have to deal with the problem. Of course, that usually only makes the problems worse, and harder to correct later on. History repeats itself so often that you’d think people would learn from these mistakes, but they don’t. I guess if they did I’d have nothing to write about.

Never be afraid to discover potential problems, and always be prepared for an answer you’re not hoping to hear. When it comes to business, you can’t afford to “not” ask those questions you need to know the answers for.

When it comes to your personal life… sometimes it’s better to leave it alone.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come to an interesting conclusion, one that I probably should have come to grips with a lot earlier than now; I don’t like getting upset.

Yes, I know, neither does anyone else. However, what I came to realize is that I allow myself more opportunities for getting upset than I need to. Once again, everyone else probably does as well.

I’m kind of a news junkie. I like to know what’s going on in the world because, in my mind, much of this stuff has the potential to touch my life in some fashion. But the news is never the bastion of positive things; if it were, it would be Reader’s Digest.

I recognize there are some news stories we just have to deal with. A natural disaster that affects a lot of people immediately is major news. Something our government is doing that will affect a majority of people is major news. Something that happens to a major celebrity, while not necessarily always major news, is news just the same.

About a month ago or so I printed out an expose of the relationship between John and Elizabeth Edwards, just a day or two before she filed for divorce. It ended up being 17 pages; I read the first page then decided I wasn’t up to reading the rest of it. Around that same time, I started listening to a book on tape (I guess they’re now supposed to be called “recorded books”, since it was on CD), a Tim Green book called Exact Revenge, and early on I pretty much knew where the book was going to go, and it was the kind of ugliness that makes me want to go out and try to protect the world by beating people up. I’ve never gone out to beat people up, it’s just the feeling one gets.

I’ve decided that it’s time to start weaning myself away from much of the ugliness that pervades our lives. I’m certainly not going to be able to keep away from all of it, but I’m going to diminish it. I threw away the printed out news report. I decided not to continue listening to that book, though I love Tim Green books. I’ve decided that I’m going to try not to read any of the hateful stuff people say about President Obama, although if it shows up in a news story there’s no getting around that.

I’m going to try not to read any more stories about child molesters or parents who’ve done bad things to their children. I’m going to try not to read any more comments on news sites that have decided letting “regular” people comment on new stories is a good thing because I see more hate coming from those comments than I ever thought was possible.

I’m not going to succeed, however. There’s no way to succeed in today’s world, with all the information that’s available and all the places it can come from. But I’m going to try. We all need some peace in our lives, probably more than we get. How will you decide to bring peace into your life today? Are we worthy? At least Nick thinks we are; what say you?

A few months ago I was reading a blog where the writer was asking the question if we were ready for success. I’ve always said that I was mentally ready for success, and I really believe that.

I also believe that sometimes it feels like when it rains, it pours, and it’s not necessarily always bad. Most of us do equate the phrase with bad things, and I will admit that sometimes it seems like that’s just how things are going. But at other times, you’ll find that not only will you have a lot of good things going on, but it may be too many good things at once, and suddenly you’re faced with making some tough choices.

I have that happen to me from time to time. I’m on kind of a good streak of luck, and I’m thinking it’s about time. However, some of the things coming my way are putting an interesting type of pressure on me. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had conversations with people who have asked me for advice asking what happens if one gets so much work that they can’t keep up with it. I told both of them that if it happens that’s always a good thing, especially for an independent, because it not only doesn’t happen as often as one might hope it does, but it gives you an opportunity to make choices, to see what you’re really about.

Of course, that’s what’s happening to me right now. I’m having to make some serious choices as I have four different things that have just come my way, that I need to make decisions on over the next few days. Some of the decisions might end up killing other potential options I have, because there’s no way I can do everything at the same time. These won’t be easy decisions, but I still think it’s better to have the opportunity to make decisions than not being able to make any decisions at all.

Translate this to both employees and peers of yours. Sometimes we try to lead everything, and thus have everything go our way. There are times when that’s appropriate, but there are other times when it’s appropriate to give someone else the opportunity to make a decision. How you gauge that depends on you and your comfort level, but know that the more you allow other people to make decisions on some things, the more diverse, and thus better, overall production tends to be.

Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury, working for myself, so consider yourself lucky.

I never go so far as to say that the customer is always right. I will go so far as saying that the customer is the customer.

As you know, I have a few ads on this blog. I have more ads on other blogs and websites of mine. This is known as affiliate marketing; if someone buys something from any of those ads, or clicks on some of those ads, I get paid. Or at least I’m supposed to get paid.

Almost two weeks ago there was a purchase on one of my websites. I know that because I was informed that someone bought something directly from me. However, I never got credit for the sale. That happens here and there, and usually all you have to do is contact the affiliate, give them the receipt number, and they’ll take care of it.

In this case, I haven’t been able to get a response back from them. Also, it took me awhile to get a response back from the affiliate company that acts as the go-between for me and my affiliates. It took a couple of messages before I heard back from them, and when I heard from them, I didn’t like the response I got. From my perspective, I didn’t take the time to write an informative letter telling them my issue only to get a one line response back.

So, what have I done? Since it’s an online company, I outed them; the name is 101Phones.com. Now, here’s the deal. When I wrote about the issue on one of my other blogs, my posts automatically go on Twitter, which means everyone who follows me on Twiitter saw that post, since the business name was in the title and what they did to me was also in the title. A few of those people did what’s known as a retweet, which means they passed on what I posted to people who follow them. I’m not sure if it went any further officially.

However, the die is cast. At this point at least 3,000 people have seen my original post, and I can only imagine how many others have seen it after that. And I’ve had a few people who’ve visited my blog and read and commented on that post as well. The company still hasn’t contacted me, and I figure after 3 emails they’re not going to. There is no phone number to call for satisfaction either, so I guess I’m out of my commission. My hope is that no one else gets caught up in the deceptive practices of this company.

These days, the word can spread really quickly against a company who does you wrong. A couple of weeks ago I know someone who was having a bad experience at a hotel, and she posted it on Twitter while she was still there. Someone from the corporate office immediately saw it, contacted her through Twitter, and arranged for her to go to a better hotel in the same town and to stay there for free. That’s the power one has to deal with in today’s world. It doesn’t do anyone any good to treat customers badly, because the word can get out, and at that point your business might be in trouble. If you didn’t do wrong, you can always fight back, but the damage might be done.

Good customer service doesn’t take all that much work. If you think it does, try more bad customer service practices and ssee how well your business fares long term.

Two years ago I wrote a post called Check The Ceiling For Spiders, after a spider dropped in front of my wife’s face one evening while she was sitting in my office talking to me. At the time I talked about making sure you check things to protect your business and workplace against those little things that suddenly pop up and cause havoc whenever you can.

Last night, sitting at my desk in the proverbial dark, I had it happen to me. Suddenly something was dangling in front of my face, and I knew it wasn’t something that flew. I blew at it and it swayed, and I knew it was a spider. I jumped up and went to quickly turn on the light, but by that time the spider was gone; freaked me out, as I hate all bugs, and spiders are near the top of the list.

It reminded me of my previous post, and also reminded me of a couple other things. One, after the first incident with my wife, I’ve become a regular ceiling checker no matter where I go. I already always check walls and corners, especially in bathrooms because, for some reason, spiders like damp places. I’m usually pretty vigilant at it, and I’m almost never surprised.

However, last night proved that what I also needed to do was remind myself that I need to put things into place to assist my trying to eliminate spiders from shocking me. For instance, I usually have a little bit of light on so that when I look up at the ceiling, I can see everything I need to see. It’s not all that bright, but I can tell if something is up there. Last night I’d turned the light off; bad move on my part, and you can bet it won’t happen again.

That’s the next part about checking for spiders in your business. It’s not good enough to try to check every once in awhile for those spiders; you also need to put something into practice to help you look for them, or keep them at bay. For instance, if you’re running a business or department where information is constantly changing, you need to set up a process where you know that people are getting fed that information on a very consistent basis, as well as a way to verify that your employees actually know the information.

As for me, you can bet that with the second spider invasion (actually, twice in 10 years of being in the house sounds a lot better than twice in 18 months) I’ll be checking the ceilings way more often. There’s something out there that questions if all of us end up swallowing spiders in our sleep throughout our lifetime; I don’t know if it’s an old wives tale or not, but in business, one can’t afford to pull the covers over one’s head like I do when I head to bed.

The Wednesday before the Super Bowl, I was watching an episode of Man Vs. Food on the Travel Channel. It’s a show where this guy travels around the country sampling the best that different eateries have to offer, but each week he takes on an eating challenge from a specific restaurant. Sometimes it’s to see if he can eat a specified amount of food in a specified amount of time. Other times it’s to see if he can tolerate the hottest foods a particular restaurant can make. I don’t know why, but I’m fascinated by this show.

Anyway, on this particular night he was challenged to eat a 48oz porterhouse steak in 20 minutes. It was a Don Shula restaurant challenge, and it looked fabulous. It was cooked in butter and all kinds of herbs and spices, and my mouth was watering as he began the challenge. Amazingly, he not only finished, but finished in 16 minutes; just amazing.

I remember my days when I could eat like that. I was 17 years old, and my friend Dave and I would get out of school, stop at Burger King, get two double beef Whoppers, a large order of fries and chocolate milkshakes, eat that while playing cards, then I’d head home and eat dinner, and almost never got full. Those days are gone, but I keep thinking that I should be able to eat at least somewhat larger meals every once in awhile, although, for my health, I don’t usually try.

But last Thursday I was in the mood to try. I went to the store and bought a porterhouse steak. It was only 1.3 pounds, but I figured that was big enough. I also bought a large baked potato. I figured this would be an easy meal to get through because the porterhouse had a bone in it, and who can’t finish a baked potato? I cooked it slowly, but I didn’t use quite as much butter as they did on TV; after all, no one is going to pay me back for the amount of butter I used. And I baked that potato; rather, I microwaved it, and it was so big that it took me 13 minutes to cook it all the way through.

The potato should have been my first clue. The first bite of the porterhouse should have been my second clue. I rarely eat steak, though I enjoy it. The first bite reminded me why. The main difference between steak and hamburger is that hamburger has already been ground up once, so it doesn’t take any work to eat it. Steak is solid, even when tender, and it takes longer to chew. That was the first issue.

The second issue is that potato was really large. How large? When I took all the skin off, which I do whenever I have those at home, and mashed it up to mix butter in with it, it took up an entire large plate, so the steak had to be on a different plate.

I ended up barely making it through half of both the steak and the potato; that seemed embarrassing. I’m not a small guy, but that was all my body could take in that sitting. It made me appreciate just what this guy, Adam, did on TV in less than 20 minutes even more, and made me wonder when I lost the ability to eat and eat and eat.

Actually, I knew I’d lost it years earlier. Thanksgiving meals have become one serving affairs, when they used to be three. I will often find myself at restaurants bringing food home for a second meal. That just doesn’t seem right, but that’s how my life is, and I know I’m not alone.

Where am I going with all of this? Last week I was reading a blog post where the writer talked about embracing change. He was talking about it in a different way, and I wrote that I believe some changes we must embrace, but others we don’t have to, and we all get to decide when we will and won’t embrace change, and if we’re ready to deal with the consequences of it then it’s all good.

That was before I attempted the steak challenge. And yet, even though I do have to acknowledge that my body is changing, I still tend to believe that change for no sake other than to change things up is not only unnecessary, but can create problems one hasn’t foreseen. Managers sometimes do just that sort of thing on a whim. They’ll look at how things are running, and whether good or bad make a change without thinking it through fully. Sometimes it’s not just looking at the change itself, but how others will react to the change and whether or not you’ve given them the tools to know how to adapt to the change. Any manager who doesn’t help employees prepare for changes, whether they make sense or not, is looking at a catastrophe that has to happen, and won’t have anyone but themselves to blame for it.

Kind of like this steak challenge. At least my body told me when to stop. Maybe my mind should have helped me out beforehand; if so, I might have had a little bit of ice cream instead.