Serving Those Who Served And Making The World A Better Place-Luciano The Key Santini

Good morning everyone and how are we doing this beautiful day? Well where do I start of yes of course LOL I would like to say thank you to all my followers and readers who continue to endorse me and refer me to other businesses. I have to say to all who have been part of my life thank you and thank you and thank you and many many more thank you's. I have to say that without your trust we would never have created the great relationships we have today.

To show how important it is to create relationships in your community and what it means to the community and all the people that live in it.

The Great Veterans Academy Created by Luciano The Key Santini and Jean Nicolas

This academy was created with the community in mind and the people that live in it but it would not have been a success without the the support of our upper management in the Employment Development Department who allowed us to pilot it in the local area and all the Partners who came together for the community and the people who live in it especially the veteran community.

 The Santa Maria Chamber of Commerce,Hancock College just to name a few and so many more and so many peers who came together as well. This was a way to show that yes one idea can change a community and give back to as many who have given so much for us to live in a free country thank you to all our veterans around  this beautiful country.

I believe that we can all change the world we live in if we but choose to do so;

Gandhi’s Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World

by Henrik Edberg

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.”

“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”

Mahatma Gandhi needs no long introduction. Everyone knows about the man who lead the Indian people to independence from British rule in 1947.

So let’s just move on to some of my favourite tips from Mahatma Gandhi.

1. Change yourself.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.”

If you change yourself you will change your world. If you change how you think then you will change how you feel and what actions you take. And so the world around you will change. Not only because you are now viewing your environment through new lenses of thoughts and emotions but also because the change within can allow you to take action in ways you wouldn’t have – or maybe even have thought about – while stuck in your old thought patterns.

And the problem with changing your outer world without changing yourself is that you will still be you when you reach that change you have strived for. You will still have your flaws, anger, negativity, self-sabotaging tendencies etc. intact.

And so in this new situation you will still not find what you hoped for since your mind is still seeping with that negative stuff. And if you get more without having some insight into and distance from your ego it may grow more powerful. Since your ego loves to divide things, to find enemies and to create separation it may start to try to create even more problems and conflicts in your life and world.

2. You are in control.

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

What you feel and how you react to something is always up to you. There may be a “normal” or a common way to react to different things. But that’s mostly just all it is.

You can choose your own thoughts, reactions and emotions to pretty much everything. You don’t have to freak out, overreact of even react in a negative way. Perhaps not every time or instantly. Sometimes a knee-jerk reaction just goes off. Or an old thought habit kicks in.

And as you realize that no-one outside of yourself can actually control how you feel you can start to incorporate this thinking into your daily life and develop it as a thought habit. A habit that you can grow stronger and stronger over time. Doing this makes life a whole lot easier and more pleasurable.

3. Forgive and let it go.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Fighting evil with evil won’t help anyone. And as said in the previous tip, you always choose how to react to something. When you can incorporate such a thought habit more and more into your life then you can react in a way that is more useful to you and others.

You realize that forgiving and letting go of the past will do you and the people in your world a great service. And spending your time in some negative memory won’t help you after you have learned the lessons you can learn from that experience. You’ll probably just cause yourself more suffering and paralyze yourself from taking action in this present moment.

If you don’t forgive then you let the past and another person to control how you feel. By forgiving you release yourself from those bonds. And then you can focus totally on, for instance, the next point.

4. Without action you aren’t going anywhere.

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”

Without taking action very little will be done. However, taking action can be hard and difficult. There can be much inner resistance.

And so you may resort to preaching, as Gandhi says. Or reading and studying endlessly. And feeling like you are moving forward. But getting little or no practical results in real life.

So, to really get where you want to go and to really understand yourself and your world you need to practice. Books can mostly just bring you knowledge. You have to take action and translate that knowledge into results and understanding.

5. Take care of this moment.

“I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.”

The best way that I have found to overcome the inner resistance that often stops us from taking action is to stay in the present as much as possible and to be accepting.

Why? Well, when you are in the present moment you don’t worry about the next moment that you can’t control anyway. And the resistance to action that comes from you imagining negative future consequences – or reflecting on past failures – of your actions loses its power. And so it becomes easier to both take action and to keep your focus on this moment and perform better.

 And remember that reconnecting with and staying in the now is a mental habit – a sort of muscle – that you grow. Over time it becomes more powerful and makes it easier to slip into the present moment.

6. Everyone is human.

“I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.”

“It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

When you start to make myths out of people – even though they may have produced extraordinary results – you run the risk of becoming disconnected from them. You can start to feel like you could never achieve similar things that they did because they are so very different. So it’s important to keep in mind that everyone is just a human being no matter who they are.

And I think it’s important to remember that we are all human and prone to make mistakes. Holding people to unreasonable standards will only create more unnecessary conflicts in your world and negativity within you.

It’s also important to remember this to avoid falling into the pretty useless habit of beating yourself up over mistakes that you have made. And instead be able to see with clarity where you went wrong and what you can learn from your mistake. And then try again.

7. Persist.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Be persistent. In time the opposition around you will fade and fall away. And your inner resistance and self-sabotaging tendencies that want to hold you back and keep you like you have always been will grow weaker.

Find what you really like to do. Then you’ll find the inner motivation to keep going, going and going. You can also find a lot of useful tips on how keep your motivation up in 

One reason Gandhi was so successful with his method of non-violence was because he and his followers were so persistent. They just didn’t give up.

Success or victory will seldom come as quickly as you would have liked it to. I think one of the reasons people don’t get what they want is simply because they give up too soon. The time they think an achievement will require isn’t the same amount of time it usually takes to achieve that goal. This faulty belief partly comes from the world we live in. A world full of magic pill solutions where advertising continually promises us that we can lose a lot of weight or earn a ton of money in just 30 days.

Finally, one useful tip to keep your persistence going is to listen to Gandhi’s third quote in this article and keep a sense of humor. It can lighten things up at the toughest of times.

8. See the good in people and help them.

“I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.”

“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.”

“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”

There is pretty much always something good in people. And things that may not be so good. But you can choose what things to focus on. And if you want improvement then focusing on the good in people is a useful choice. It also makes life easier for you as your world and relationships become more pleasant and positive.

And when you see the good in people it becomes easier to motivate yourself to be of service to them. By being of service to other people, by giving them value you not only make their lives better. Over time you tend to get what you give. And the people you help may feel more inclined to help other people. And so you, together, create an upward spiral of positive change that grows and becomes stronger.

By strengthening your social skills you can become a more influential person and make this upward spiral even stronger. A few articles that may provide you with useful advice in that department are  Or you can just move on to the next tip.

9. Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

“Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”

I think that one of the best tips for improving your social skills is to behave in a congruent manner and communicate in an authentic way. People seem to really like authentic communication. And there is much inner enjoyment to be found when your thoughts, words and actions are aligned.

When words and thoughts are aligned then that shows through in your communication. Because now you have your voice tonality and body language – some say they are over 90 percent of communication – in alignment with your words.

With these channels in alignment people tend to really listen to what you’re saying. You are communicating without in congruency, mixed messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness.

Also, if your actions aren’t in alignment with what you’re communicating then you start to hurt your own belief in what you can do. And other people’s belief in you too.

10. Continue to grow and evolve.

”Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.”

You can pretty much always improve your skills, habits or re-evaluate your evaluations. You can gain deeper understanding of yourself and the world.

Sure, you may look inconsistent or like you don’t know what you are doing from time to time. You may have trouble to act congruently or to communicate authentically. But if you don’t then you will, as Gandhi says, drive yourself into a false position. A place where you try to uphold or cling to your old views to appear consistent while you realize within that something is wrong. It’s not a fun place to be. To choose to grow and evolve is a happier and more useful path to take.

The Hard Reality Of Execution In Business-Luciano the Key Santini

Good morning to all who read my blog and take the time to send me feedback which is very important to me because I get to see what my audience needs and wants to read about. Thank you for giving me the many opportunities to write for you.

Let us talk about something that is so important to use but many business owners do not utilize correctly in both private and nonprofit organizations. the SWOT analysis. So what is a SWOT huh? I get that so many times. people have heard of and perhaps knows what it is which is awesome but do they know how to use it and then how to implement what they discover!! like the gaps in their business!

Let us define it first:

SWOT analysis

SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis) is a framework for identifying and analyzing the internal and external factors that can have an impact on the viability of a project, product, place or person.

The really funny part of this along with so many other tools that can be used to assist small and large businesses figure our or discover for the first time their inefficiencies within their company or themselves is that when they do discover their issues they have no idea how to fix them.

As you know when we have issues or problems that we know we need to fix but we do not know how to take care of them we seek out help!! However most so called leaders or business owners or individuals are ashamed of their situation or simply do not seek help and thus FAIL!!!. They have no idea how to implement or my favorite word of all time EXECUTE!!!

So what does implement mean:

Implementation is defined as a specified set of activities designed to put into practice an activity or program of known dimensions.  According to this definition, implementation processes are purposeful and are described in sufficient detail such that independent observers can detect the presence and strength of the "specific set of activities" related to implementation.  In addition, the activity or program being implemented is described in sufficient detail so that independent observers can detect its presence and strength. 

It is common to read about "implementation" of a program or practice as if it were an accomplished fact when the context of the statement makes it clear that some process (more or less clearly described) had been put in place to attempt the implementation of that program or practice.  When faced with the realities of human services, implementation outcomes should not be assumed any more than intervention outcomes are assumed.

When thinking about implementation the observer must be aware of two sets of activities (intervention-level activity and implementation-level activity) and two sets of outcomes (intervention outcomes and implementation outcomes). 

I have gone to so many meetings and seminars where it is supposed to be a leadership role to be able to manage implementation and execution,however through out the entire seminar they never mention ways to execute but only speak of the issues which I find hilarious that no one questions what they should be learning but go along with what the speakers are saying but none have to do with execution of a process.

On another note my friends today I have the honor and the privilege to watch two of my sons have their baseball games. The little one is in the playoffs and the other fighting to get back in first place they should both be great and exciting.

 

If you are really great, you will let others discover this fact from your actions.

In the final analysis, all that really matters are your actions. You may talk a good story, but no matter how good you are at selling others on your capabilities, eventually you have to perform. It is true that people are generally forgiving and will overlook an occasional failure to deliver upon your promises. Ultimately, though, you must live up to your promises to others if you ever expect to make a lasting impression on them.

 

 Make it a habit to demonstrate your abilities before talking about them. Seldom is anything worthwhile achieved without the help of others, and nothing is ever achieved without some form of action. The road to failure and despair is littered with the dreams of those who failed to act upon them.

When We Assume In Life And Business OOOPS!-- ASS-U-ME ---Luciano The Key Santini

Good morning to all my continued readers and supporters of this great journey to assist people reach their potential as individuals and also business owners reach their goals in life and business. We all want to accomplish what is best for both the mind and body. We should understand exactly what that means.

Sometimes we will try to accomplish things because they sound good at the time while not getting the correct mind set in place and thus we find ourselves failing. The other thing for today is to have a clear understanding regarding leadership and as we all know countless books have been written over the last hundred years on this subject.

Don’t overlook small details. Remember that the universe and all that is in it are made from tiny atoms.

There is an old expression that says, “If you take care of the little things, the big things will take care of themselves.” It’s another way of saying that every job is composed of many small details, any one of which, if overlooked, can create big problems later. If you have trouble dealing with details — paperwork, expense accounts, and other annoying details — set aside a time during your work cycle (daily, weekly, or monthly) to deal with such unpleasant tasks. 

 

Prepare yourself mentally to deal with those tasks, and you may find that you dispense with them quickly and efficiently. You may even find that the job wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as you expected it to be. 

 

What is leadership?

I can tell you that most leaders today are called leaders but they have no idea what leadership is. I can also tell you from the countless people that I have coached both at a supervisor level or an executive level that most manage or lead through fear or simply put they lead by power of position in other words what I say goes or go look or find another job. 

I can tell you that this work for a while but most will eventually fail. My friend and one of my many mentors and friends has stated what it means to be a leader and of course I agree but have disagreed with him in the past and guess what that just makes me human with a different way of looking at things. Here what I wrote to an executive leader regarding a letter he had sent me. 

Please be aware that all this is under the assumption that your leaders know and have a clear understanding regarding implementation and execution of the strategic plan and what each mean such as:

What is and how to execute successfully transformational change to be able to create a high performance culture which in turn becomes integration between both companies.

 

Communication skills: What is the process of not only transmission of words but to create the thought that  will or should follow making sure it was clearly understood.

 

Relationship building skills: What is the process of repairing a damaged relationship between partners? Or Staff members?

 

Building and getting the buy in of employers.

 

Leadership: January 2015 | byClaudio Feser, Fernanda Mayol, and Ramesh Srinivasan

 

• Solving problems effectively. The process that precedes decision making is problem solving, when information is gathered, analyzed, and considered. This is deceptively difficult to get right, yet it is a key input into decision making for major issues  as well as daily ones (such as how to handle a team dispute).
• Operating with a strong results orientation. Leadership is about not only developing and communicating a vision and setting objectives but also following through to achieve results. Leaders with a strong results orientation tend to emphasize the importance of efficiency and productivity and to prioritize the highest-value work.
• Seeking different perspectives. This trait is conspicuous in managers who monitor trends affecting organizations, grasp changes in the environment, encourage employees to contribute ideas that could improve performance, accurately differentiate between important and unimportant issues, and give the appropriate weight to stakeholder concerns. Leaders who do well on this dimension typically base their decisions on sound analysis and avoid the many biases to which decisions are prone.
• Supporting others. Leaders who are supportive understand and sense how other people feel. By showing authenticity and a sincere interest in those around them, they build trust and inspire and help colleagues to overcome challenges. They intervene in group work to promote organizational efficiency, allaying unwarranted fears about external threats and preventing the energy of employees from dissipating into internal conflict.

He believed that leadership was simply making and changing policies and sending out to supervisors to implement.Remember that sometimes we think we know it all simply because we are sitting in a position of power and sometimes that is where we will fail as leaders because we assume and we all know what that means right and if not please allow me to remind ourselves.

When we do not make sure whether something is right or wrong or we simply do not know or understand and we push and push by assuming the other person has a clear understanding what we mean. 

When we 

assume the consequence can make us look like an ASS-U-ME

This is what a client drew and gave to me and I was very flattered and thankful. WOW!!

Never Be Caught Inside The Box Continuously Think Outside The Box

Hello friends and well today I want to thank everyone who follows my blog. It so good to read comments regarding my writing. I really appreciate the great comments and the suggestions. I write to reach many people around the globe and to realize where they are now and where you want to be and how to get there by thinking in a way that is different from the norm. I believe so many people try to hard to stay with the status quo that we create our own issues in life as individuals and huge problems within our business.

Have you ever dealt with a person who starts to talk about you without the facts just words in the hopes some people will believe them?

The funny thing is, when you present the other person with nothing but the facts and they can't win they STILL hold onto their belief stubbornly.  Why is that? I await your comments on this question.

 Me and Santa Barbabra Mayor

Authority.By Christian Knutson We’re most familiar with authority influence – this is positional influence.  The sense of duty or obligation we feel to people in positions of authority. Why do you think advertisers of toothpaste or medicinal products use doctors to front their campaigns?  Or why do you do what your team leader asks?

Job titles, uniforms, and even accessories like cars or gadgets can lend an air of authority, persuading us accept or do what the other person says.  

As a leader, be aware that what you say others will do.  Or at least take to heart.  They’ll also watch you like you’re a fish in a fishbowl.  The leader is never alone, regardless how lonely he/she might feel.  For there are always eyes watching.

Clear Expectations with 10 Day Plan

 

Remember, the new person has really no idea what you expect from them unless you tell them. For the first 2 weeks or so, the partners or management should be setting up lunches and meetings with various clients, staff, etc. so the new partner can get to know both the business/projects and people that they will be working with.

Here is the where the role of the manager becomes very important. On the first day on the job, the manager should sit down with the new partner and spend time with them going over what they see their role as being within the team, what are their deliverables/measurements, and then work with them to create a 3 week plan. This plan should include description of roles and responsibilities as well as deliverables.

 I have stated so many times that Napoleon Hill has been one of my mentors for many years and yes I know he has not been around for many years but his wisdom and choice of words have shown me so many things that I have utilized in my live and for businesses when I do coaching for staff or executive coaching.

It is a beautiful thing when an entire city celebrates you-Luciano The Key Santini

There always remains an opportunity to make a new start.

Though it may not seem so when you first encounter a serious blow, you can never lose two of the most important assets you have. These are the power of your mind and your freedom to use it. Once you have turned them to understanding what laid you low, you can begin forming new plans. You may not have the money you once had; you may lack the allies you had cultivated. But you still have the benefit of a universe that eventually rewards honest effort, as well as gaining the experience of mistakes you will never make again. Remember, no matter where you are now, whatever you can conceive and believe, you can achieve. 

Making choices: When you need to make a choice remember that you cannot make some one els's choice so why do you allow others to make yours.

Here is an article by  Don Bulmer:

1. First. It is important to understand the 'core issue' associated with the challenge that you are dealing with and gather as many facts and insights surrounding the issue as possible.   At this stage, it is important to separate ‘facts’ from ‘opinions.’  As a leader, you are often presented with 'facts' that are presented to support a specific argument or point of view - which by default make them adverse.  This is not to say that these adverse or 'position-based' facts are not valid, but they seldom represent a fully informed view of the core issue that needs to be addressed.  
2. Second.  Ask a lot of questions.  This will help you understand the options on the table as you make sense of the facts and sift through potential agendas/motives of people involved.  Asking the right questions also helps you measure the risk and impact that your decision will have on your business and with key relationships.
    

 Have you ever thought just how can a leadership influence culture ? By OYG.com
Whether a leader comes up through the organization or is brought in from the outside to change the organization, there are ways that leadership can have an impact on culture.

 Walk the Talk People observe what you do, not just what you say and the values of the leader, not just what they say, While Enron C.E.O. Kenneth Lay and his management team were stealing from shareholders, many of his traders were laughing how they were going to bankrupt little old ladies for their heating bills. This is the toughest part of leadership. Having worked with people who wrote books on the subject, I can tell you that often times their actions did not match their words and the affect was that a number of people had no respect for them. When you say you are going to do something, you need to follow through and do.

  Communicate clearly
It may sound like an obvious statement but in the absence of clear communication there is unclear and informal communication, i.e. gossip. Gossip can undermine any change and have a negative impact on the culture. People appreciate honest and straightforward communication, even when it is negative. The worst part is not knowing.

 

Research on the difficulty of debunking myths has not been specifically tested on beliefs about Sept. 11 conspiracies or the Iraq war. But because the experiments illuminate basic properties of the human mind, psychologists such as Schwarz say the same phenomenon is probably implicated in the spread and persistence of a variety of political and social myths.

The research does not absolve those who are responsible for promoting myths in the first place. What the psychological studies highlight, however, is the potential paradox in trying to fight bad information with good information.

Schwarz's study was published this year in the journal Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, but the roots of the research go back decades. As early as 1945, psychologists Floyd Allport and Milton Lepkin found that the more often people heard false wartime rumors, the more likely they were to believe them.

The research is painting a broad new understanding of how the mind works. Contrary to the conventional notion that people absorb information in a deliberate manner, the studies show that the brain uses subconscious "rules of thumb" that can bias it into thinking that false information is true. Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency.

What this Means for Talent Management

Although difficult, when combined with the studies by Dr. Schwartz on how the brain operates (specifically how our thoughts create neural pathways), we can understand the importance of creating the 'ahas' which signify a new neural pathway and change in the thinking and then providing the organizational structure to support that change. Learning, especially experiential, creates the change by building a detour around the old belief. Like a road detour, traffic (thoughts) are routed through this new pathway and if it is well built it will create the sustainable change desired. By applying a series of organizational strategies (more on that in another article), we can then ensure that the road continues to be used and the learning sticks. 

In other words, through learning and organizational development we can fight the myth and replace it with the good information that will allow us to move and stay competitive both as people and as organizations