It’s tempting to make promises, but can you fulfill them all?

– a recent fortune cookie

Such a strange feeling: to not say “yes”. Or to say nothing at all when there’s a call for volunteers — not even an “I’m sorry, but my schedule is full.” Just nothing at all in response to, “Would anyone be willing to help with _____?”

And then the strange surprise, nearly always: to hear nothing in response. No recrimination. No anger. No surprise. Just the sound of silence as your asker moves on to figure out some other solution.

“If you want to know what is happening in the rest of the forest (and be in business fora long time), perch in different trees from time to time. Force yourself to travel to places you’ve never been before, shop in stores you never frequented before, eat in restaurants that you’ve never patronized, read books and magazines that are outside your specific industry, and attend trade shows of other industries.”

– Guy Kawasaki in Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services (1997).

How is this relevant to executives with attention deficit disorder? We can’t help but perch in different trees from time to time — sometimes from minute to minute!

Kawasaki’s point is this: our flitting about, our wandering, and our “aimless” explorations of new things are useful business traits. More importantly, Kawasaki is pointing out that many other business people should push themselves to do more of what we do naturally. In this, we have a competitive advantage.

“Of course, [Warren] Buffett isn’t the only person to have realized the power of building his life around his strengths. Whenever you interview people who are truly successful at their chosen profession–from teaching to telemarketing, acting to accounting–you discover that the secret to their success lies in their ability to discover their strengths and to organize their life so that these strengths can be applied.”

–Now, Discover Your Strengths, Buckingham & Clifton (2001), recently updated as StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths (2007).

ADDexec relevance: the authors identify 34 types of strengths in their system of “StrengthsFinder themes”, of which four seem to be typical of many ADDexecs:

“Activator: people strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.”

Adaptability: People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to “go with the flow.” They tend to be “now” people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.

“Empathy: People strong in the Empathy theme can sense the feelings of other people by imagining themselves in others’ lives or others’ situations.

“Ideation: People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.”

One nice feature of this book is its section on how to manage people who have these different strengths. For each strength, the authors give a page of tips, such as these:

“How to Manage a Person Strong in Adaptability

• “This person lives to react and respond. Position him so that his success depends on his ability to accommodate the unforeseen and then run with it.

• “With his instinctively flexible nature he is a valuable addition to almost every team. When balls are dropped or plans go awry, he will adjust to the new circumstances and try to make progress. He will not sit on the sidelines and sulk.

• “Be ready to excuse this person from meetings about the future, such as goal-setting meetings or career-counseling sessions. He is a “here-and-now” person and so will find these meetings rather irrelevant.”

Whether or not you agree with the authors’ recommendations, you may find them useful perspectives as you consider managing individuals with their different strengths, or as you consider telling others (or yourself) how to manage your own ADDexec self.

It is a damn poor mind indeed which can’t think of at least two ways to spell any word.

– Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States (1829-1837)

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.

The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Apple Computer advertisement, 1997. Watch the video at Wikipedia links here.

You can’t have a lot of balls in the air unless you’ve got a lot of balls.

– an anonymous friend of the ADDexecutive

From A messy desk undermines your career, by Penelope Trunk

When it comes to projecting a positive image through your personal space, some areas are more easily managed than others. A messy desk is tough. If you keep a messy desk, it’s probably inadvertent, and you will have to change behavior in order to clean up your act. It’s worth the effort, though. “There is a cultural bias toward orderliness,” says Eric Abrahamson, professor at Columbia University Business School, “Messiness is considered bad.” Kelly Crescenti, an Illinois-based career coach, concurs: “When people have a clean desk it looks like they get things done and they are productive.”

You cannot really know how productive someone is by looking at their desk, says Julie Morgenstern organizing guru and author of Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work. But she concedes that “the image issue is giant.” So even if you can find everything you need on your pile-laden desk, clean it if you want to look good. Start with a filing system, and Crescenti advises that at minimum, you take the last fifteen minutes of every day to actually use the system and clean things up a little before you go home.

But as with all image management advice, don’t go overboard: Everything in moderation. Abrahamson provides a postmodern defense of the messy desk: “Messiness is related to creativity because it tends to juxtapose things that don’t normally go together.”

Penelope Trunk is a columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo! Finance, with a witty and often wise blog at Brazen Careerist — Advice at the Intersection of Work and Life.

For a few ADDexec relevant posts at the Brazen Careerist, check out:

• Make life more stable with more frequent job changes,
• Good news for job hoppers: Frequent change maintains passion, and
• 10 tips for time management in a multitasking world

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Image: ADDexecutive.com

Even in casual conversation, the point guard’s eyes dart enigmatically around the gym, rarely focused on the person in front of him. Jason Kidd can’t seem to stop himself from seeking the better opportunity, the next best play.

Be it personality affectation or genius at work, who wouldn’t want to appear night after night Kidd’s enabling field of vision and enduring championship dream?

- Harvey Araton, in the New York Times, 15 May 2007

Jason Kidd, point guard and captain for the New Jersey Nets, is one of the best ball handlers in NBA history. Against the strongest defenses in basketball, he has an almost precognitive sense of which teammates are about to be in position to score, and then he whips and threads passes through space that any other player* would consider impenetrable.

What’s the relevance for attention deficit disorder? He doesn’t do this by “focusing on one thing at a time.”

——–

*except Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns. Kidd and Nash are widely regarded as the best  ball passers currently playing in the NBA. Both of them can score and defend, too. Kidd recently eclipsed the legendary Larry Bird to become the NBA’s all-time No. 2 in triple doubles” (with Kidd earning his in points, rebounds, and assists.)

Image credit: SportsResourceZone.net, vendor of autographed photos, apparel, and other pro-sports collectibles.

Adult ADHD? You’re not alone, and you’re not without hope. According to Harvard Health Publications:

Probably the most important recent change in the understanding of ADHD is the growing recognition that people don’t always grow out of it. The number of adults receiving drug treatment for ADHD more than doubled from 2001 to 2005 alone. The symptoms may even interfere with daily life more in adults than in children because adults have to exercise more self-control and do more planning.

In 2003, adult ADHD was included in a national survey for the first time; 4.4% of adults age 18–44 received the diagnosis…

It’s been said that identifying ADHD in adults can be like finding a missing jigsaw piece that solves the puzzle of behavior that looked like laziness, a character flaw, or a learning disability. Medications, group social skills training, individual psychotherapy, vocational counseling, and coaching may be helpful for adults with ADHD. The first controlled study of cognitive behavioral therapy for adult ADHD, published in 2005, found improvements in anxiety, depression, and attention.

from Attention deficit disorder: Old questions, New answers by Harvard Health Publications, February 2006, posted at MSN Health & Fitness.

“I am inspired.
You are inconsistent.
He is flighty.”

How do you label yourself and your ADD?

And how do you label attention deficit disorder in others? Is your method fair? Is it useful?

Names and labels have power. Fortunately, we have the power to decide what we call things.

For naming and labeling our ADD actions, I think it’s more important to be constructive than it is to be consistent. Use the name or label that’s helpful at the moment — whether that label is praiseworthy or critical.

And take a tip from parenting books and relationship books — label the action and not the person (if you need to label, at all).