Dwelling on Shortcomings
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009Earl B.  IT Customer Services Manager at the University of Kentucky shares this wonderful T4D message with us…inviting us to look at others as we do ourselves.
“Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people’s characters.”  ~ - Margaret Halsey
Make it a Great Day… and if you are not already a FaceBook Fan of my 2 Books I invite you to become one! ~ Kirk
 Scoopers In the News!!
Just a note to say thank you for the quick delivery. I got the book just in time for our meeting. I read the book to a group of 6-7 year old boys. They absolutely loved the story. It is the first time I’ve seen them sitting still in a circle so quietly…even the parents loved it! They all want to get the book and read it to their staff. It was a hit!  Once again, thanks so very much for sharing your story with us.
A TX scooper…Eva Stephen Stoddard told me he was going to use The Dog Poop book to introduce lean manufacturing and 6 Sigma concepts to his supervisory staff. I asked him how it went…here is his reply.
“It went well. Your message parallels the Lean manufacturing theory of eliminating waste (poop). I related the dog and his owner to the waste that we don’t know where it came from or why it is there but that person/process or our customer has moved on, but we keep the waste. I related the kids arriving to play with showing up to work. Some of the waste is obvious almost glaring to some employees. For what ever reason, time, effort, management difficulties we let the waste remain. I really like the illustration of avoiding the pile. I associate the second coach/group and ref to supervisors and upper management. When an employee brings an issue or a solution to their manager or supervisors attention but they lack the initiative to investigate or even follow up. As in your book they may go out of their way to avoid the waste. They may implement policies to protect us from the waste or change processes to work around the waste.
I had my group relate to the Father. Listen to the pointers and realize that they can empower their employees (pointers) to remove the waste or resolve the issue. Remove the waste and move on. As the employees see their supervisors example they will in turn take the initiative. It will help the cream rise to the top.
~I will be using a refined version as a presentation to our employees at the department level. Thanks for the great tool.” ~Stephen Stoddard, Lean Six Sigma Project Manager
New York Times Best Smeller
A wonderfully illustrated true story to help inspire greater ownership, more initiative and more scooping on your work team or your home team!! Order your copy today from www.morebetterbooks.com
To find the other fan page just login into your facebook account and search for “cookie thief book” THANKS
Recommended Read!! == Ender’s Game
An excerpt from The Strangest Secret ~ by Earl Nightingale
 Now, let’s say that the farmer has two seeds in his hand- one is a seed of corn, the other is nightshade, a deadly poison. He digs two little holes in the earth and he plants both seeds-one corn, the other nightshade. He covers up the holes, waters and takes care of the land…and what will happen? Invariably, the land will return what was planted.


 When Thomas Edison was working on improving his first electric light bulb, the story goes, he handed the finished bulb to a young helper, who nervously carried it upstairs, step by step.  At the last possible moment, the boy dropped it, requiring the whole team to work another 24 hours to make a second bulb.
At my friend
  “And I shall shed my light over dark evil… for, the dark things cannot stand the light… the light of the Green Lantern”
  Still, you don’t have to follow baseball to know who Cal Ripken is, so I was excited to read more about him, meet him and to have the honor to introduce him. What follows are a few statements from Mr. Ripken
 “So many good things have happened to me in the game of baseball. When I do allow myself a chance to think about it, it’s almost like a storybook career. You feel so blessed to have been able to compete this long.”
I read The Cookie Thief book on my flight back home and the story line hit close to home. This is a true story that happened to me a few years ago. I called the helpdesk to submit a work order for my computer problems and they indicated someone would stop by in a few minutes (after all, I am their supervisor). I stepped out of my office for a few minutes and left behind my Butterfinger candy bar. When I got back, there was technician Matt munching on a Butterfinger bar. I asked him if he was enjoying the candy and he replied “yes” and kept right on snacking on what I thought was my candy bar. He soon fixed my PC problem and as he got up to leave, lifted his work order from my desk and underneath it was in fact my candy bar. I was speechless as he winked at me saying bet you thought that was your candy I ate didn’t you?To this day, we both laugh about this. Ben Arroyo City of Peoria Information Technology Department –Rob & Ben
Hi Kirk, I love your version of Cookie Thief Book/Story - it’s just so true! I have 3 stories for you! First, my story: The Eyeglass Thief. My wife, kids and I tore into The Cookie Thief when it arrived in the mail yesterday. We read it together, then leafed back through the pages and enjoyed the hidden messages and pictures. I asked my son William (nine years old), what he got from the story. He said, ; I liked where it said Weisler Hits a Home Run on the newspaper.
desk apart looking for them. Age 39 might be a youngish age for ’senior moments’, though I’m not ruling it out altogether. But after a call home to my wife, and a thorough search of my car, I’m pretty sure they’ve been taken. So as I walked back from the parking lot just a few minutes ago, it hit me how so-like ;The Cookie Thief; my saga is. It made me reflect on which Cookie Thief I wanted to be * all angry and indignant, or bemused and selfless. Thanks for reminding me I have a choice: I own only one piece of this whole little drama * my reaction, which I get to choose. So here it is: If someone took my glasses, they must really need them, maybe they can’t afford a pair themselves. I do hope they get good use out of them; I’m blessed that I can afford another pair. If, on the other hand, I took them out of that drawer myself, read something with them, laid them down somewhere, and somehow can’t remember a stitch of any of that, then I’m also blessed. Blessed because I can afford another pair, and because God-willing I’m young enough to take advantage of the great advances that medicine will make in memory-loss prevention over the next few decades! And now, number B: Karen, the beautiful brunette middle-school science-teaching mother of my children who has graciously (some say miraculously) agreed to share her life and love with me, relayed to me yesterday that she uses ; The Dog-Poop Initiative Book; to discuss taking responsibility with her seventh- and eighth-grade students. (That explains where my copy of the book went to….) She reads the book aloud, and credits your story with a marked improvement in classroom responsibility! Thirdly, but not least: The quote you shared today is quite literally the most powerful definition of true friendship that I have ever read. I am sharing it with each of the people in my life that I can say, by that definition, is a true friend. It’s not a small list * I am truly blessed!! Thanks for giving of yourself * you are a terrific role-model!

