Tag: 2026

Teach hope…

At work?

Yes.

The bar doesn’t lower when you show up at work.

End of story.

Ps. Happy present moment.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

Harvesting a lifetime of work.

Then you get to retire from a lifetime of work.

What’s the harvest?

Whatever you sowed.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

Compounded hope at work.

In 1999, i transferred from 15 years in Disney Resort Hotel operations to professional speaker at Disney Institute (DI). It was their request that i join their team.

My first leader, Guy Smith, called me a competent incompetent.

Guy, sensing from my face i was too unsophisticated to understand that, said, “You know how much you don’t know. It’s a rare trait. It’s a compliment.”

In the ensuing years i made more quantifiable mistakes speaking than many professional speakers have given speeches.

One of my key hopes was i would never make a mistake big enough for any audience to recognize.

Note: Beginner’s luck runs in my family and i never made a perceptible mistake. This ‘invisibility’ fueled my fire for continuously taking small risks that compounded my experience and repertoire durning the 15 years i spoke full-time at DI.

Second note: This risk-taking trait (quality) continues to this day, as i currently prepare for my next Disney Customer Service Keynote speech.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

Note: This post has been one of the most challenging to write in a long, long time. Why? Trying to layer in an explanation of the subtle difference between a characteristic and a trait. Decided to let it ride. Here it is for posterity…

Disney’s Organizational Vibrancy comes from two simple concepts:

1. Focus.
2. Discipline.

Focus on the basics.

Discipline yourself to never take your eye off the ball.

Therefore…

Hope, to me, is common, a basic human characteristic.

Hope, to me, is also an uncommon, under-utilized human trait.

1. Common characteristic: typical, usual, normal.
2. Uncommon trait: attribute, feature, quality.

Therefore…

Most people, from my experience, (commonly) typically, usually, normally know what hope is and generally have plentiful experience with it.

But many do not necessarily have plentiful success that stems from the uncommon human trait, hope.

In conclusion, hope is both a basic characteristic and a basic trait. Basic is common knowledge, but not a commonly applied tactical, daily practice.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.

Habitual hope.

Hope that you carry with you.

Automatically.

Without thinking.

Hope, habitually.

When i retired from Disney 10 years earlier than planned, i obviously hoped i could figure out how to build a small business to make a bigger impact on everything and everybody.

Hope didn’t build my business.

But hope was the compass that led me to a “burn the ships” imperative.

Hope’s compass led to the habitual reps every startup founder must do.

So while doing the common-sense startup reps, i also, habitually, did all the things that most startups never do – go against conventional wisdom.

Being unconventional without even thinking about being unconventional.

Culture is what people think and do, without thinking.

Grateful to not only know this, but to intentionally, by design, feed the reps that create great habits.

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This website is about our WORK. To ponder today’s post about our HOME, click here.