Consequences

I’ve come to appreciate the power of consequences as perhaps the singular, most defining element governing personal behavior. 

Recent personal experience from volunteering in a 5^th grade middle school class and from doing Junior Achievement in high school – reinforced by multiple independent sources – suggests that a lack of immediate and firm consequences is a common developmental disconnect in chronic underachievers. 

NOTE: Consequences can be either positive or negative.  Both have intrinsic value if applied appropriately.  However, without clearly delineated “rules”, incentives and consequences, life in the educational trenches can be agonizingly brutal. 

It’s tempting, in many situations, to simply throw up one’s hands in surrender,

and say “Wait until you get a job … IF you get a job!” …

leaving it up to the business community to sort them out and sober them up.

But that’s really unfair to the business community. 

In the book “Crazy Like A Fox” [New American Library, New York, pp. 287, 2009], Dr. Ben Chavis describes the effectiveness of using both incentives (including financial rewards) and strict and swift corrective action in converting a “condemned” ghetto school in Oakland, CA into a high-performing national model of excellence – the American Indian Public Charter School.  At its core, the AIPCS is governed by an explicit code of high expectations in behavior and performance, and it reserves the right to refuse admittance to any student who can’t or won’t comply, accordingly. 

The fact is: primary and secondary students are ill-equipped

to handle lax standards,

and they need both structure and supervision. 

Structure with supervision helps narrow the field of negative behavior options that might lead to negative consequences, and coaching helps expand the field of positive behavior options that might lead to positive consequences. 

However, it’s a double-edged sword: Provide too much structure and supervision, and individuals may never get the opportunity to experience and learn from the full impact of negative consequences derived from unwarranted risk-taking.  Significant numbers of military veterans, and of both active and retired professional athletes, don’t function very well outside the confines of tightly structured environments.  (Dare we conjecture how many “mature adults” in the trenches of business and industry don’t function very well without benefit of a tightly structured environment?) 

Perhaps we can be grateful for television, YouTube and social media,

which function as 21^st Century “opiates” of the masses,

else we would see even more “lost lives” and/or mayhem in the streets

when workers go “off the clock” at the end of the work day! 

The whole point of personal development is to achieve a sustainable level of SELF-SUPERVISION. 

“What you do when nobody’s looking over your shoulder

determines how far you will go in life.”

Common Business Proverb 

Self-Supervision requires enhanced Executive Function … to manage impulse control and delayed gratification; to provide astute time management, prioritization, organization and goal tending; to carry out strategic planning; to manage continuing personal and professional development; to develop and maintain mission-critical alliances; and to develop and maintain key generative and regenerative practices. 

A billboard in town posted by a plumbing enterprise says: 

“A little leak can turn into a big problem!” 

Life is a little like fragile plumbing:  It tends to leak, and inattention can lead to major negative consequences.  However, carefully directed plumbing can make life meaningful, purposeful, and enjoyable. 

The water is flowing.  Life is happening.  Consequences are accruing in the wings.  Let’s direct the flow in the most positive direction and reap the most positive consequences for the effort!  Quartermaster