Mentoring Questions > > Getting to the Essence
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Getting to the Essence
I once had an employer with a disturbing sign on his wall: “results is the only excuse for activity.” Whenever I had no particularly outstanding results I always tried to puff up the activity. Once when I was doing this, with what I thought was apparent success, he stopped me and said, “Fred, please, show me the baby and don’t tell me about the labor pains.” That was a life lesson. How often do we hear about the pains and see very few babies?
I developed a phrase of my own that brings me to the essence: “ the object of the exercise…” One of the most helpful things I can do is write down exactly what I’m trying to do. By that I mean the aim and not the method. It is so easy to get caught up in the program that we forget the purpose. Often if we would restate the purpose and forget what we have put in place to accomplish it we find that our programs have become cumbersome and antiquated.
I have been in some homes that were so immaculate that I felt the purpose was housekeeping, not homemaking. Occasionally the thought would strike me that if the family died the house could be kept so much more perfectly….. a clear example of the method’s being totally out of touch with the purpose.
