I’ve been running a successful business for fifty years.

My partner and I began our law practice in 1967 with one employee.

Eleanor was our receptionist/legal secretary/accountant.  She worked hard every single day and knew a lot more about how to run a law office than we did.  All of us worked twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week.

In 1968 I formed a real estate company which today owns and manages shopping centers throughout the United States.  We have offices in Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, and Kansas City.  We have more than forty employees.

Over the years I’ve hired hundreds of employees.  And, like our President-elect, I’ve also fired a few.  My business will only thrive when my employees do their job.  I am careful about who I hire.  I am even more careful in making sure that both my employees and I do what we were hired to do.

Every single day.

My receptionist answers the phone each day to keep communication open.  My tech expert maintains our computers every day.  My accounting staff produces the information our managers need.  Everyone contributes to our success.

But it’s not enough just to hire good people.

One week ago the American people hired Donald J. Trump to do a job.  His election was a surprise to many, but not to those who elected him, many of whom felt that previous politicians had failed to deliver on two promises – to provide stable jobs and affordable health care.  The movie Network captured this frustration in the memorable line, “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

But the point is not just to get mad.  The point is to get results – good jobs and affordable health care.

You get what you inspect, not what you expect, and it is now up to us to insist on performance.

Let’s not repeat the mistake of the past.  We have hired one president after another, one Congressman after another, one Senator after another, but have failed to hold them accountable on a daily basis.

Many of our elected representatives have been more concerned with protecting their own jobs than in providing jobs for us.  Many have spent more time fighting with each other than fighting for us.  Many have paid more attention to politics than they have to progress.

It’s not enough to hire a new cast of characters.  We need to take another step.  We need to ask President-elect Trump, and every other elected official in the land, the following question.  “What action, specifically, have you taken to help us today?”

We have to ask this question over and over from morning to night:

“What action, specifically, have you taken to help us today?”

“Do I have a job?  Do I have affordable health care?”  Those are your concerns every day of your life.  You have to insist that your concerns also be the concerns of every officeholder who represents you.

They won’t make it happen by magic.  You must insist on performance.  No more excuses.  No more political blah blah.  No more protecting their jobs at the expense of our own.

Donald, you’re hired and we’re watching you.

It’s time for you to go to work.

Alan

Every day I am besieged with requests.

“Dad, can I borrow your SUV to move some furniture?”

“Would you please donate $5.00 to (fill in the blank)?”

“Would you and your fiancé like to join us for dinner on Saturday evening?”

In order to simplify my life I have learned to classify each request into specific categories, and I’ve developed a logical process for each category based on my patterns and preferences.  Here are four examples.

1. Requests from family. My bias is always to say “yes” to a request from a family member, so that is where I start.  If my daughter asks for money for a new dress I’ll say “yes” (unless I have a good reason not to).  If my fiancé asks me to pick up half-and-half at the grocery store on my way home, my first thought is always “yes.”  After that, of course, I might remember that she drove me into work in the morning and I don’t have my car at the office.
2. Requests for a political or charitable donation. My bias is to say, “Maybe.”  Then I think about the specific recipient and often say “no.” If my answer is “yes,” I’ll determine the amount I’m comfortable donating.  If my answer is still a “maybe” then I’ll ask for additional time to consider the request, or for additional information. But when I remember that my “maybe” is a temporary “no” unless it becomes a “yes,” I’m tempted to change my “maybe” into a quick “no,” because then I won’t have to spend more time thinking about it.
3. Requests for a social or business appointment. My bias is “no,” since I would rather spend evenings at home and days at my desk dealing with emails or questions from coworkers.  Once I get past my initial “no,” however, I often end up at “yes, I’d be happy to.”
4. Requests to make an investment. First I look for reasons to say “yes.”  If I can’t find enough reasons for “yes” then my answer is “no.”  If my preliminary answer remains a “yes,” then I look for reasons to say “no.”  This process not only helps me find good investments with my “yes” test, it also helps me weed out losing investments with my “no” filter.  Of course, my investment system is not perfect.  Just look at my dismal record of stock investments.  (My process has worked far more successfully in real estate.)

When you think about all of the requests you receive each day – from your children, your life partner, or at work — you might find, as I have, that they fall into a few major categories.  Like me, you can save both time and brain power when you simplify your reply process based on your own personal patterns and preferences.

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

Alan

I arrived at the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in the early afternoon of a pleasant Sunday in June. I was sixteen years old.  After my adventure of flying alone, and riding a subway/elevated train in an unknown city all by myself, I found my dorm and checked into the room where I would spend the next five weeks.  I was participating in a national five-week summer speech program for high school juniors.

A few of the guys had arrived before me and were throwing a football around on the grass between the dorm and Lake Michigan.  I was large.  By that I mean fat — five feet seven inches tall and over two hundred pounds heavy.

“I’ll bet you play on your high school football team,” one of them said. My priority at that moment was to fit in rather than be honest.

“Sure.  I’m a lineman,” I heard myself say.  “Third string, all city.”

Before I could retreat to the relative safety of my room he said, “Great!  Now we have enough players for a touch game.  You’re on my team.”

“Oh, shit!” I thought. “Sure!”  My traitor mouth said.

But I was on the debate team, not the football team.  Even so, my first fib had led to another, then to a whopper, and there I was pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

On the first play of our “touch” game I lined up to the right of the center.  As soon as he snapped the ball I was knocked flat on my back by the player lined up opposite me.   He was smaller than me, but at the time I had no idea he was an all-state guard on his high school team in Tennessee.

I smiled apologetically, lined up again, and for the second time landed on my butt, looking up at a fuzzy sun.

The third play was different from the first two in one significant respect.  I didn’t get up.  My right thigh was burning, and my leg had disconnected from my mind.  The leg refused to work.  I couldn’t move it.

My memory of what followed is foggy.  I somehow ended up in the campus infirmary, and after a painful examination by someone in a white jacket I learned that I had torn a ligament. I was given a few pills and told to stay off my feet for a few weeks, “maybe longer.”

The next five weeks were a torment.  Classes were at the other end of campus.  Fortunately, someone loaned me a bicycle.  It would take me a few minutes to painfully place myself on the seat, then close to half an hour to propel myself, with only my left leg, to the other end of campus.  Using the pedals was out of the question.

Obviously, I survived.  I even won an award in discussion, which many of my classmates regarded as a wimpy event.  I had a girl-friend, Becky from Indiana, but only for two weeks, because she got tired of my limping along behind her and she stopped talking to me.

Did I learn my lesson?  Am I now willing to risk rejection by speaking my mind?

I’m still working on it.

But as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel Prize winner in Literature, wrote, “When I was a boy they called me a liar.  Now they call me a writer.”

Actually, my football career didn’t really last a full five minutes.  It was more like three and a half.

Alan