Margin  =  Your Limit  –  Your Load Do you have any margin? Or are you in a deficit mode? If like most people, your load exceeds your limit. Dr. Richard Swenson, author of Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, defines margin as “having breath left at the top of the staircase, money...

When teachers want students to grow, they don’t give them answers —- they give them problems! One of my favorite segments on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show was Karnack the Magnificent. Dressed as a fortuneteller, Karnack would first read an answer and then guess the question. For example: Answer: Love notes on a 13-column pad. Question:...

One night, a group of thieves broke into a jewelry store. Instead of stealing anything, they simply switched all the price tags. The next day no one could tell what was valuable and what was cheap. When the thieves returned the following day posing as customers, the expensive jewels had suddenly become cheap, and the...

Your processes are perfectly designed to produce the results you’re experiencing today. If you manufacture automobiles and every third car rolls off the production line missing a right front fender, your system is perfectly designed to produce that result. Or if you’re a distributor and every other delivery is missing an item from the packing...

Can one person make a difference to the productivity of an organization? To answer that question, consider the case of Jean Whitcomb, a zealot for Activity Based Management (ABM). Jean’s boss, the hospital administrator, promoted her to Manager of Radiology. She told him, “I’ve never worked in that area before.” His response was, “That’s okay. I’m sure that...

Assume for the moment that you walk into a beauty or barber shop that has only two hair stylists. One has messy hair. The other’s hair is well groomed. Which stylist would you choose to cut your hair? Your instinct is to select the stylist with the good-looking hair. But looks can be deceiving …...

“Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” was the most successful advertising campaign ever waged in the war against drunk driving. Some people suggest it worked because it appealed not to the drunk but to his or her sober friends. The message worked because it appealed to the power of friendship. Implementing Activity Based Management (ABM)...

If you had my wife as your boss, you would have improved your cost management system years ago. You see, Sue’s not one for accepting excuses or procrastinating. She could have been Nike’s inspiration for “Just Do It.” When it comes to improvement, most of us “delay” instead of “do”. “Today we have a generation...

“Define the activities you enjoy. Then look for a job that will provide you the opportunity to do those activities. When your job is fun, you’ll never think of it as work.” This advice was one of “Uncle Tom’s Top Ten Tips”, a list that I prepared for my nephew at graduation this year. You probably...

Church attendance of American men is steadily declining. According to Barna Research Group, the 43% who went to church at least once a month in 1992 dropped to 28% by the end of the 20th century. Barna’s study revealed that most unchurched men believe church involvement does not offer any value. When asked to define what...