The Invisible Mentor

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Do you get upset whenever you face a challenging situation? Or do you face them head on? Do you view challenges as nuisances? Or do you view them as an opportunities?

There is no running away from challenges, they are a fact of life. So the next time when you encounter a challenging situation that may rock your world, instead of balking at the situation, think on these words:

“This discipline and rough treatment are a furnace to extract the silver from the dross. The testing purifies the gold by boiling the scum away.” Jalal al-Din Rumi

These words are by Rumi, the great Persian, Muslim poet from the 13th Century. Challenges make us stronger, smooth away our rough edges, and help us to evolve and grow into our best selves.

Rumi Poet of the Heart

If you cannot view the YouTube video Rumi Poet of the Heart, please click here.

What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

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YouTube Video Credit: MagnoliaZoom via Apture

You’ve finally made it, you’re are the Chairman and CEO of a Fortune 500 firm. You’re at the top of your game, you’re at the apex of your career, why would you need a mentor?

A mentor is a trusted adviser, a champion, someone who holds you accountable. Though you may not need someone to open doors for you, you need people in your life who support and encourage you, and who you can discuss pressing issues with to get perspective. Reporting to a Board of Directors simply isn’t enough. Who is one person in a business capacity who you can call on? It doesn’t have to be lonely at the top.

What are your thoughts? What would you like to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

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One of the questions that I ask when I interview people for this blog is, tell me about your biggest failure and how did it translate into a great success? Like most people in life, I like it when things work out in the end. In life, things do not always work out, but that should not stop us from being hopeful. Though there are many times when what seemed like a sure failure, mistake or whatever you’d like to call it, turned out to be a major coup. Here are seven accidental discoveries:

1. Champagne: A popular story about how champagne was first created suggests that a monk named Dom Perignon was trying to make white wine and instead created a wine with lots of bubbles of carbon dioxide. Wikipedia disputes this popular belief and clarifies that it was the first sparkling champagne that was accidentally discovered by Dom Perignon.  
2. Saccharin: This artificial sweetener was discovered in 1879 by Ira Remsen and Constantine Fahlberg. They were working with coal tar derivatives, and they discovered the sweetness of saccharin because they didn’t wash their hands properly.
3. Viagra: Pharmaceutical juggernaut Pfizer originally developed sildenafil citrate as a heart medication to help men who were suffering from chest pains. The results were not promising so they stopped the studies. But when they looked at the published data, they realized it would be an appropriate treatment for erectile dysfunction. The medication was re-evaluated and the rest they say is history.
4. Band-aid: In 1921, Earle Dickson discovered band-aid at Johnson and Johnson. His wife was always cutting herself in the kitchen while cooking, and he was simply trying to find a solution to keeping the cut germ free while allowing her to continue to do what she was doing.
5. Penicillin: This antibiotic was accidentally discovered in 1928 when Alexander Fleming, a Scottish bacteriologist left bacteria cultures uncovered for several days.
6. Frisbee: Walter Fredrick Morrison and his wife used to toss a cake pan on the beach in California, and he wanted to find a way to make the pan “fly better”  and the modern day frisbee was born.
7. The sandwich: The creator of today’s sandwich is unfairly credited to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. There are conflicting stories on the internet about the origin of the sandwich, but the most interesting one is that John was very fond of playing cards and would do so for an entire day. He did not want food to interfere with his game so he asked his cook to prepare him a meal that would be easy to eat. She presented him with today’s version of a sandwich.

Think back to when you were a child, were there games you played that you invented? Are there projects that you abandoned because you didn’t get the results that you sought? Can they be used in different ways? What would you like to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

Further Reading

The Accidental Innovator, Sarah Jane Gilbert, July 5, 2006, Harvard Business School

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The act of writing things down helps to keep you focused, and on track in your life. Most times when you think of writing things down, you think of goals to keep them front, centered and solidified, or you jot down things that pop into your mind to keep you from forgetting them. But there are other reasons why you should write things down.

1. The great innovators and thinkers who changed the world documented their work, which others were able to build on
2. Documenting your life story is a great way for your family, your descendants to learn and understand who your are/were
3. Documenting and explaining the processes and models you develop to do your work more effectively and efficiently will encourage others to do the same. This is also a way for you to get deserved recognition for your contributions to cost cutting within the company
4. When an idea comes to you, if you write it down, you are less likely to forget it, and more likely to act on it
5. When you are trying to figure things out, writing it on paper makes it easier and helps you to make connections that you otherwise wouldn’t make
6. When reading, other than for entertainment, taking notes helps you to build your reservoir of knowledge, which will prove useful when brainstorming or looking for innovative solutions
7. Writing things down shows that you are accountable, and signals that you are serious

What do you have to add to the conversation? Why do you write things down? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed.

“What Ants Can Teach You” was inspired by Jim Rohn‘s Ant Philosophy, which he sums up at the end of the article, “Never give up, look ahead, stay positive and do all you can,” but I would like to add to the conversation and deepen it somewhat. Ants are from the Formicidae family, and with wasps and bees belong to the Hymenoptera order.

Ants Facts

• There are about 10,000 species of ants
• Ants can lift up to 50 times their weight
• There are three classes of ants: queen ants, worker ants and male ants
  • Queen ants lay eggs and live five to 30 years
  • Worker ants are female, do most of the work, rarely become queens, or reproduce and live one to three years. They may keep the same job all their lives or job hop a few times. The colony cannot survive without worker ants
  • Male ants do not work. They mate with young queens and die shortly after. They live a few weeks to months.
• Ant nests can reach 20 feet below the ground
• Ants suppress pest population and aerate the soil

What Ants Can Teach You

1. Social insects: They live and work in communities, and members rely on each other. They feed and protect each other
2. Successful survivors: Able to survive and adapt to many different habitats
3. Robust: Can recover from setbacks. When one or more ants fail, the group can still perform all the tasks
4. Self-organized: Activities are decentralized and they get the job done without supervision. Members have specific functions to perform such as lay eggs, gather food, protect the colony and so on, depending on their size
5. Well developed senses, especially smell. They use scent trails to find their way back home after traveling great distances, up to 700 feet from their nests, and they communicate with each other using pheromones

In summary, ants: understand the importance of community building, able to pick themselves up when adversity comes knocking, resilient and can work in many environments, does what needs to be done without supervision, and use their senses to spot opportunities. Aren’t these great lessons to learn?

YouTube video of Ants!

If you cannot view the YouTube video of Ants! compliments of the Science Channel, click here.

Ants create a lifeboat in the Amazon jungle – BBC wildlife

If you cannot view the YouTube video of Ants create a lifeboat in the Amazon jungle – BBC wildlife, click here.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Further Reading

The Ant Philosophy by Jim Rohn

Sources Referenced

AskNature.org

How Stuff Works

Wikipedia

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There are three critical elements when analyzing information, and in fact are useful when working on consulting projects. It’s important to ensure that the stakeholders are aware of the distinction.

1. What you know
2. What you don’t know
3. What you assume

When you work on projects, it’s impossible to gather all the information on the topic, and it would be very expensive to do so. Based on your  return on investment (ROI), you have to decide when enough information is enough. In your client report,, clearly state what you know to be a fact, what you don’t know, and your assumptions based on your experiences. So when decisions are being made based on your deliverables, your clients will know how to proceed. Please also read How to Analyze Information.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

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Genghis Khan, Founder and Emperor of the Mongol Empire, in his sixty five years (1162 – 1227) on earth committed a lot of atrocities. It’s believed that at the time of his death in 1227, “he had been responsible for the death of around 20 million people, around one-tenth of the population of the known world at the time.” In a life filled with savagery and brutality, there is much to learn from Khan, even if it is what not to do.

I hesitated before I purchased 100 Tyrants: History’s Most Evil Despots & Dictators (citations in this post are from this book) by Nigel Cawthorne because I didn’t want to pollute my mind. That was a bit arrogant on my part because life isn’t always rosy, and tyrants will always be around us. Books like this one gives us insights into the way tyrants think and behave, and if we stop to look, there are always lessons around us, even from a thirteenth century tyrant. Genghis Khan started his tyranny at an early age, killing his brother in a dispute over a fish at the age of 12. His tyranny continued throughout his life in his quest to expand his wealth and territory. His major goal was to conquer imperial China. Later in his life, he wanted to share his conquests with his people and he did so. He also had great foresight and kept a written record of his legacy.

Seven Lessons From Genghis Khan

1. Honor your words: In more than one instance after giving his word that a city would be spared and the inhabitants unmolested if they surrendered, Khan reneged on his promise and slaughtered the inhabitants.
2. Take the road less traveled: Khan often won the wars he waged because he didn’t do the expected.
3. Don’t be scared to take on the giants in your field, but be very strategic about it: Khan often defeated armies much larger than his because he was strategic and tactical.
4. Be compassionate when dealing with others: People begged for mercy, begged for their lives, but Khan seldom showed mercy
5. How you play the game is more important than winning: If cities opposed Khan, “As well as massacring the inhabitants, he would destroy the irrigation systems that had taken centuries to construct.”
6. Being weighed down by the tools of the trade can give your competitors and adversaries an unfair advantage: “The Russian knights wore steel armour and had shields, axes, swords and lances, but were heavy and slow compared to the Mongol.”
7. In what ways can you be innovative in the way you conduct your work? Back in the thirteenth century, people in Samarkand “Sent melons as far as Baghdad, packed with snow to keep them fresh.” Today this is nothing because we take refrigeration for granted, back then, that was a hugely innovative act. Also when Khan didn’t have any boulders for the catapults, he improvised and used the cut up trunks of the mulberry tree.

Who are some of the most notable tyrants who have walked this earth? What are five lessons that we can learn from?

Action Steps

Read about some of the most known tyrants and see what you can learn from them.

No one is inherently all bad or all good. Each of us possess both darkness and light. According to Wikipedia, “Beyond his great military accomplishments, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways. He decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empire’s writing system. He also promoted religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire, and created a unified empire from the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia.”

BBC Genghis Khan YouTube Video Part One of Five

If you cannot view the BBC Genghis Khan YouTube Video Part One of Five, click here

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Further Reading

Genghis Khan (from Wikipedia)

BBC Genghis Khan Video Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

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In what novel ways have you used information that you came across? What’s one concept that you discovered that has served you well? For me, it’s the creativity model presented in the Art of Thought by Graham Wallas. While conducting research on biomimicry, I came across information about a three-phase, 14-step process designed by Peter Floyd and Stephen R. Grossman that presents animal adaptations as models for problem solving. What got me excited was I had already decided that I was going to look at the idea of Evolution on this blog, which is one of the 50 ideas presented in 50 Big Ideas You Really Need to Know About by Ben Dupré, and here were two guys who are using Darwin’s three-step process for evolutionary change: extinction, mutation and selection. Floyd and Grossman have taken the three-steps and broken them down into a problem solving model. I thought that was simply brilliant, but I know that you can create a model that’s equally brilliant.

As presented by Ben Dupré, the idea of Evolution is a short read and only four pages in length. He talks about the origin of species, natural selection and the fifth ape.

“In the Origin, Charles Darwin succinctly summarizes natural selection as follows: ‘As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it very however slightly in any manner profitable, to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected . From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.’”

From the information presented in Dupré’s idea of evolution, I have extracted three great ideas that are very useful in a personal context:

1. In nature, resources such as food and mates are limited, so there will always be competition for access to them
2. Some people will be better equipped than others to prevail life’s struggles, and it is these individuals  that will live longer and produce more offspring
3. By minute and gradual changes over innumerable generations, animals and plants become better adapted to their surroundings; some species or kinds disappear, to be replaced  by others that have proved more successful for existence.

Possible Interpretation of These Ideas

• In flattened organizational structures, there are limited opportunities for promotions, therefore those expecting to excel must differentiate themselves and become more valuable to their clients, both internal and external
• The more skilled you become at problem solving, the better equipped you become at overcoming everyday challenges
• The more change resilient you are, and the more more receptive you are to ambiguity, the more longevity you’ll enjoy in the workplace
• Small and incremental changes lead to big changes in your life
• The more adaptable you are to change, the more success you’ll enjoy

As a professional, how can you use the idea of evolution to succeed in work and life? What changes can you make in your life to give you an edge?

Why evolution is one of the 50 ideas you really need to know about

Today you have to change or become extinct, so you have to mutate to be selected, in what ways can you change? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

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There are several ways that we can learn from invisible mentors, one of which is through speeches. Here is a brief look at one of the rare speeches given by Marie Curie. Born in Poland nearly 150 years ago, in her lifetime, Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes for her research in radiation and for discovering radium. The first Nobel Prize she shared with her husband Pierre Curie and French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel.

On The Discovery of Radium

The speech chronicles her work, and highlights the importance of her discoveries. “On The Discovery of Radium” is one of the 48 speeches included in Speeches That Changed The World. The content of the speech is unlikely to be dinnertime conversation, but I liked her openness in sharing her scientific discoveries. She outlined step-by-step what she did, and that is something that we could copy in terms of writing up procedures. She also gave credit where credit was due. This is an important reminder that no one ever succeeds alone, and that we should remember where we came from, and who helped us along the way.

She emphasized that scientific work must be done for itself, “…Scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always a chance that a scientific discovery  may become like the radium a benefit for humanity. In her speech, Curie also made an appeal to others to carry on with the work.

Why would Marie Curie make a good invisible mentor? She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. She had many accomplishments in her 67 years and there are many things that we can learn from her. And most importantly, Marie Curie understood that life was not just about her, she had a good grasp of the concept of social responsibility.

Great Ideas

1. You can break down barriers – Marie Curie’s parent’s valued education but Russian-dominated Poland denied women the right in those days so Curie went to Paris
2. Build on the work of others if possible instead of reinventing the wheel – Curie did work on uranium rays which was discovered by Antoine Henri Becquerel
3. You achieve more when you work in partnerships – Curie worked with her husband Pierre on radioactive substances
4. Keep records of your work, it may be instrumental and the foundation for innovation that change the world
5. Tasks always take longer than you think, so be prepared to spend more time

I recommend that you read “On The Discovery of Radium“. At the very least it will expand your knowledge and will definitely build your general knowledge which is a requirement for generating great ideas. Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here. (Book link is an affiliate link)

Today’s environment demands that you learn continuously. And if you’d like to be proactive and take charge of your own mentoring, you have to find and research your invisible mentors if you want to get the most from them. Are you up for the challenge? Are you a continuous learner? To help you clearly understand your learning readiness, try the Continuous Learner Scorecard™. Rate your reactions to each pair of phrases. Decide where you lie on the scale from 1 to 10.

Continuous Learner Scorecard

If you scored 80 or above, learning to you is an absolute treat and you’re on the right track. If you scored between 50 and 80, you are above average and can hold your own. If you scored under 50, it’s time to take action if you.

This Scorecard was taken from Journey to Getting It. Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.