Of the things we think, say or do:
Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

– The Four-Way Test of Rotary International

Yesterday we quoted Plato. Today we mention a more detailed filter that might be useful for any of the hyperverbal or impulsive among us. The Four-Way Test was created in 1932 by Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor, who was in the midst of turning around a bankrupt company. See the whole story here.

Last year I asked my friend Barry about what lessons he learned from his highly-respected father, who lived several decades in a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident:

Bob wasn’t big on lectures or life lessons, but he taught me a couple of hugely important things by example:

(1) Persistence and focus will beat the living shit out of undisciplined genius 99 times out of 100 (not that Bob wasn’t plenty smart, understand, but he was one of the most determined people I ever met.) Even after a grievous injury, he bounced back and went about all the things that were important to him, hammer and tongs, like some kind of demented blacksmith – and God help you if you got between him and his anvil.

(2) A sense of humor, especially about yourself, is one of the most important survival skills in life. Humor will get you through bad times when nothing else will.

Do you have (or endorse) things like ping pong and foosball tables at the office?

Of course we all know the benefit of exercise, the need for an occasional break from the desk, the usefulness of fun bonding with colleagues at every level above or below our own, and even (especially?) the joy of finding in-the-moment focus and flow during sport.

But do you or your staff really need one more thing to distract you from, um, “work”?

Ping pong and foosball tables mushroomed into the workplace in the late-90s tech boom. ( In fact, I lost my subleased office when the primary leaseholder decided they needed my office for their ping pong table.)  I understand that companies needed every possible lure to get people to come draw a salary off their VC funds.

But I also remember what my friend Tom Pincince (then CEO of Brix Networks) once said about work at a startup: “When someone’s spouse calls the office looking for a husband or wife who has been working 80 hours a week and is never home for dinner or around for the kids’ soccer game, I don’t want to tell them, ‘Just a moment — I think he’s playing ping pong.’”

“When Richard Pryor hosted, NBC wanted a five-second delay because Richard might say something filthy. We ended up with a three-second delay, I think. But it was a new negotiation every week.”

–Bernie Brillstein, quoted in Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales, James Andrew Miller

I can’t imagine how much stress I could have prevented or how much time I could have saved if I had a three-second delay on my mouth. How many times did I say “yes” to something — a colleague’s request for help I didn’t have time to give, an invitation to a meeting I didn’t need to attend, or even the urge to offer an unnecessary and perhaps incorrect or inappropriate comment — that didn’t deserve it, but that cost me time, money, or something else? Or how many times did I ask or tell someone to do something for me that was later proven a waste of time?

Impulsivity. The hyper speed to speak or decide or do. A hallmark of people with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Where is NBC when I need it?!

The problem of resolving fear has two aspects. We shall have to try for all the freedom from fear that is possible for us to attain. Then we shall need to find both the courage and grace to deal constructively with whatever fears remain.

– Bill Wilson in As Bill Sees It: The A. A. Way of Life …Selected Writings of the A. A.’s Co-Founder

You don’t need to be in a 12-Step program for this quote to look familiar.  It’s essence is derived from (or at least parallel) to the Serenity Prayer: “Lord, let me have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Relevance to executives with attention deficit disorder?  Executives and business owners strive for excellence, and seek to eliminate mistakes in work, and in the way we manage our own lives.  Of course we want to manage our ADD and of course we want to get rid of as many of its problems as we can.

What we need to stay wise about is that we’re not going to make all of our ADD nature go away.  We have to learn how to live with the parts that we’re going to have to live with.  We can’t obsess about it.   It would really stink to have our attention deficit disorder be more of a problem because we paid too much attention to it.

This month’s issue of Entrepreneur Magazine talks about the costs of depression in the workplace:

“Entrepreneurs who run bars, restaurants and child-care or elder-care businesses have a new worry: depression. Their employees are more likely than those in other fields to get depressed enough to hurt productivity, boost absenteeism and deflate morale, according to a 2007 government study. And we’re not talking about a bluesy afternoon: A major depressive episode, as the 2007 “National Survey on Drug Use and Health” defines it, lasts two weeks or longer and involves a depressed mood, a general lack of interest and possible problems with sleep, eating, concentration and productivity. The annual cost to U.S. companies is $30 billion to $44 billion, according to the study.”

– Mark Henricks in The Moody Blues– Depressed workers bring the whole company down, so get them the help they need, Entrepreneur Magazine, April 2008

While Henricks  doesn’t mention attention deficit disorder, the points are clearly transferable: mental health problems affect everyone, and they affect the bottom line. For any business with more than a few employees, there’s a decent chance that some executives may have ADHD (or other mental health concerns) that are affecting the whole company.

The Entrepreneur article mentions several options that companies can consider, including mental health coverage, mental health advising, and access to free programs that may help. If you have staff who may have ADHD (yourself and/or others), look at the options for making things better. Compassion notwithstanding, the dollar math says you should.

As a “brain personality,” attention deficit disorder drives people into executive positions and business ownership via its strengths (e.g., ability to multitask) and its weakenesses (e.g., lack of patience). Research just reported in the New York Times looks into the role of dyslexia as a similar driver, particularly for its role in causing people to develop “compensatory skills”:

Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia
By BRENT BOWERS

It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought.

The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.

The article also quote the well-known Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea:

Mr. Orfalea, 60, who left Kinko’s — now FedEx Kinko’s — seven years ago, and who now dabbles in a hodgepodge of business undertakings, is almost proud of having dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

“I get bored easily, and that is a great motivator,” he said. “I think everybody should have dyslexia and A.D.D.”

Full article here: Brent Bowers, Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia. New York Times. December 7, 2007.

For a preliminary copy of the 2004 research report from Julie Logan, click here for a .pdf on dyslexia and entrepreneurship (at her research institute, Simfonec at the Cass Business School in London).  Click here for Julie Logan bio.

Some naysayers argue that attention deficit disorder isn’t a real problem, or that it’s only a problem for people who fail to take personal responsibility for their brains and behaviors.

Admittedly, many past ADD-management have relied too broadly on medication with little focus on self-management. Things are better today with greater use of additional techniques such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. But what about good old fashioned “willpower”? It looks like it’s on the comeback to an active role in personal health management. This from the New York Times:

Every day, we are tested. Whether it’s a cookie tempting us from our diets or a warm bed coaxing us to sleep late, we are forced to decide between what we want to do and what we ought to do.

The ability to resist our impulses is commonly described as self-control or willpower. The elusive forces behind a person’s willpower have been the subject of increasing scrutiny by the scientific community trying to understand why some people overeat or abuse drugs and alcohol. What researchers are finding is that willpower is essentially a mental muscle, and certain physical and mental forces can weaken or strengthen our self-control.

Studies now show that self-control is a limited resource that may be strengthened by the foods we eat. Laughter and conjuring up powerful memories may also help boost a person’s self-control. And, some research suggests, we can improve self-control through practice, testing ourselves on small tasks in order to strengthen our willpower for bigger challenges.

– Tara Parker-Pope on Health, How to Boost Your Willpower, New York Times.  December 6, 2007.  <– Click title for full article.  Registration may be required.

I learned that quality requires minute attention to every detail, that everyone in an organization wants to do a good job, that written instructions are seldom adequate, and that personal involvement needs to be frequent, friendly, unfocused, and unscheduled—but far from pointless. And since its principal aim is to seek out people’s thoughts and opinions, it requires good listening.

–Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard, in The HP Way.

For an ADDexec, “MBWA” may have as much benefit for managing their ADD/ADHD as it does for managing their staff. Executives with the “H” in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder need the movement.

So how do we get more movement into our days? Fidgeting is one obvious outlet, but do we have others? Management By Walking Around sounds like a good one, as long as it isn’t aimless or hyperactive motion. Pre-work or mid-day exercise may be another, for the deskbound among us.

But picking a walking-oriented career may be even better. A recent CareerBuilder.com listed ten fields “considered to have the best physically active job opportunities, based on information from the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Census Bureau”:

1. Registered nurse
2. Physical therapists
3. Physician assistants
4. Elementary school teachers
5. Radiologic technologists and technicians
6. Kindergarten teachers
7. Occupational therapists
8. Secondary school teachers
9. Police and sheriff’s patrol officers
10. Veterinarians.

Granted, most of those jobs aren’t considered “executive” positions. But you might find more in Laurence Shatkin’s 175 Best Jobs Not Behind a Desk. In the CareerBuilder article, Shatkin says,

“The shift to an information-based economy has meant a constant increase in the proportion of workers who manipulate data for a living, and who therefore spend most of the workday behind a a desk…. Fortunately… there are still plenty of high-activity jobs for people who prefer them… active jobs that have good earnings and are expected to have good job opportunities. They allow you to use your brains as well as muscles and involve the kinds of people and problems that can keep you interested in your work.”

– from “Out in Front”, in the News & Observer careerbuilder.com section, 4 November 2007

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Amusing related quote: “MBWA is a hyperactive, out-of-the office, interventionist top management practice.” –Vadim Kotelnikov

In the Future:

People will change clothes every six minutes but still never be quite happy with their appearance.

–George Carlin, 2006 daily calendar.

Some things ask for our attention but don’t really require it. Just because you can monkey with something doesn’t mean you should do it.  And just because you changed it doesn’t mean you’re going to be happier about it.  If people reminded me of this once a week, it wouldn’t be a bad thing.