Hastings Fair Plaza, Friday, July 31

Book Signing
Friday, July 31
5:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Hastings Fair Plaza
6001-R Lomas Boulevard NE
(Lomas and San Pedro)
Albuquerque, NM 87110
505-266-1363

Local Authors!

David Corwell
Cloaked in Shadow
Dark Tales of Elves

Marianne Powers
Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time

Lela Belle Wolfert
Wishes in the Wind



Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Then Just Teach Them and Help Them

These are the things that I do for myself when I contemplate a course of action. I have always done them for people I know and like before I ask them to do something. What I learned was that I also have to do these things even if I don’t know the person very well. And I have to do them even if I don’t like the person. I have to be completely on their side if I want someone to do something, whoever they are. If I am not on their side, I should not be asking anything of them. If I am on their side, they can safely listen to me and decide if they want to do it. And once someone had decided that they wanted to do something, I never had to threaten them (which was good, since I couldn’t), watch them, or nag them. All I had to do was teach them and help them.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

You Have to Care About them

So I learned that if I want someone to do something, I have to first get completely on their side. It isn’t enough that I am their boss or their boss has agreed to it. I have to think about them, what they are doing, what they say they want. I have to try to foresee where the actions I ask of them will lead and how it will affect them. I have to tell them what I see. I have to care about them and look out for them.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

You Can't Make Me

I don’t do what my enemies tell me to do either, no matter how much power they have. I have never found one that could “make me” do anything. The same is true even for a boss that I normally want to do things for, if I know that my enemy is passing a request through him. It seems a lot of people are like me in this regard.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Be On Their Side

But the most important thing in getting people to want to do something was to be on their side.

If I wasn’t on their side, they would not listen to me or do what I thought they should do. They knew it was possible that I was trying to get them to do something that wasn’t in their best interest. I would never tell anyone, not even an enemy, to do something that I thought would set them up to be hurt. But I’m the only one that knows that for sure. And if I don’t care about someone, maybe I don’t give quite enough thought to what might hurt them, so they are right not to listen to me if I don’t care about them, even though I am an honorable person.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Give Up the Illusion That You Can Make Them Do It

There came a time when I had to get people to do things and I couldn’t make them do it because they didn’t work for me. Actually, I just had to give up the illusion that I could make anyone do anything. So, what I did was try to get people to want to do things. Sometimes, all I had to do was remember what made me want to do things – it was fun, it made my job easier, it was more efficient, it was good for the company. Sometimes, especially if they were anxious about doing something new, I might call upon some enlightened self-interest.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

I Can't If I Don't Want To

Sometimes, I had other people telling me I had to make someone else do something they didn’t want to do. But I never could convince myself to go through the agony of it, unless I also believed it needed to be done. I procrastinated. I didn’t do it well. Unless I wanted to.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

It Is Your Job

When I needed someone to do something and they didn’t want to do it, I was always quick to point out that it was their job, that they had to do it, and I expected that to be an end to it. But it never was. I would have to threaten their jobs or they wouldn’t do it at all. I would have to watch them the whole time or they would do it badly. I had to remind them when they had to do it again, even if it was every day, or they would “forget”. It was always more trouble than it was worth.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Sometimes You Want to Make the Coffee

I don’t know where I got it, but I have always believed that my job was “whatever needed to be done”. I’m afraid it might have something to do with being a busybody, but I am sure that it also has to do with knowing that my part is just that, part of a larger goal that is more important than my part, and that my part has no value if the larger goal is not achieved. But I have also refused to do things, like make coffee (hey, I don’t drink it). I did make coffee at one job, though, because nobody else seemed to be able to function until they had a cup and I was the first one there. They were very grateful and went right to work. At that job, I wanted to make the coffee.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

It's Not My Job

There were times in the past when I needed someone to do something that wasn’t part of their job description (except for that item that says “other tasks as assigned”, of course). Unless it was something they wanted to do, I would often hear, “it’s not my job” or its equivalent. I have never worked in a union shop or anywhere that people were supposed to be able to refuse to do things that were not in their job description. But I have never worked anywhere that people didn’t try to use their job description as a reason to refuse to do something they didn’t want to do.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

We Have to Like Some Part of It

There are almost always things that you don’t like about a job. Very few jobs consist of exactly and only what you want to do. But most jobs are part of a larger mission and you can do some things for no other reason than that they help to accomplish that mission. I don’t think you can do a job well that you don’t like any part of, though, not even for the best cause.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

We Have to Want It

Sometimes we are fooled by the fact that people do what is asked of them. There was a time when I was. I thought people did what I asked of them because they had to. I was wrong. They did what I asked of them because they wanted to.

If a person has picked a job to do, they probably have at least a general idea of what tasks will be involved in doing it and want to do those things. If they didn’t know and don’t want to do the job when they find out what it is, they won’t be any good at it. It is not enough to need a job, you have to want it. You can’t just “do anything”, at least not well.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

We Are Best at Doing What We Love to Do

People who are very good usually love what they do, or maybe they love what they do because they are very good at it. Either way, the best workers are the ones who most want to do the work. When what a manager wants from a person is the exact thing that person wants to do, management is effortless. When what a manager wants from a person is detested by that person, unless it makes some really significant contribution to something else they want to do, management is impossible.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

We Make Agreements

We also make contracts with the people who employ us so that we can accomplish our mutual goals. We go to work and work on the tasks that are assigned to us. Our employers or managers don’t make us work. We work because we want to work, for a lot of different reasons. We work for money. But because almost every job pays money, there is almost always some other reason why we picked that job. We work in order to accomplish our employer’s goals, which we share. We work for the satisfaction of doing something that makes a difference. We work to express ourselves. We work for recognition or fame or power or because we need to be useful or because we want to get out of the house and see other people. Even people who “don’t have to work” for money, work for other reasons.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

We Do What We Want to Do

It seems like we can’t always do exactly what we want to do when we want to do it. Because we coexist with other people, we have had to come to agreements on some things that we do and how and when we do them. But we make those agreements because we want to. We make laws to document our agreements with other citizens and the consequences of not sticking to our agreements. Most of us obey those laws. We obey them because we want to. We act in accordance with the law because we want to get along with other people and live without conflicts with our neighbors, not just because the police make us. That would take a police man or woman for every citizen who had to be forced to obey the law for as long as they were being forced to do it. Making us do something we don’t want to do is very difficult and takes a lot of time and effort. If the force that makes us do it lets up for a second, we return to doing what we want to do.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

If You Want Someone to Do Something for You, You Have to Be Completely on Their Side

We usually do things because we want to do them. Usually, what we do helps us achieve a goal – have fun, be happy, make a living, be part of something bigger than ourselves.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

If You Are Good, You Cannot Use Evil

It is especially dangerous for a good person to do an evil thing, whether it is intentional or not. If you are good, you cannot use evil for any purpose because it will destroy you. If you have achieved any power or prominence because of the good things you have done, the consequences will be that much swifter. Power is not something you can get for yourself. Power is given to you by other people, for a reason. If people have been attracted to you and support you because of the good you do, it is those good people who will be right there to confront you and expose you for any evil you might contemplate. At the very least, people who care about doing good will leave you. Then the only people around you will be the ones who are attracted to you because of the evil that you do.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Evil is Easy to Identify

Evil words and actions are easy to identify. They are targeted at a person. Saying that someone is evil (or stupid or lazy or whatever), is evil. Saying that someone has said or done something evil (or made a mistake or did not complete an assignment on time), is not. Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to get rid of an enemy is to make him a friend.” If you attack only the things that come between you and the other person, you allow them to be your friend. If you attack the other person, you make it impossible for them to be anything but your enemy.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Don't Stay Together When Your Goals Are Far Apart

Sometimes people in a business or a relationship stay together even when their goals are so far apart that there is no way that it can work. At the time, breaking up seems unthinkable. There aren’t enough assets to put everyone in a comfortable position if they split. It would be so costly. It would be so messy. But that is what must be done. Because what happens if they don’t is so much more terrible than that.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Your Goals Must Not Require Someone's Destruction

It is evil to try to achieve a goal by attacking someone, no matter how much they seem to be obstructing the goal, no matter how noble the goal is. It is wrong to save yourself (or your goals) by destroying someone. Your goals must not require someone’s destruction. I don’t mean that you should give up a goal if someone opposes it. You should fight for your goals. But, a good fight has a way out for both opponents and, if they get in trouble, a way for them to redeem themselves and be forgiven.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

You Can Criticize or Disagree

It is all right to criticize or disagree with what someone says or does. What they say or do can even be “unacceptable”, as in, I can’t live with that or I can’t work with that. It may seem like it is the same as attacking the person, if you believe that they “can’t help it”, but it is not. Everyone is accountable for what they say and do, no matter what their limitations are. And everyone deserves to know what is required in any given situation and to have the opportunity to meet the requirements, if they want to, if they can.


Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

You Do Good When You Attack a Problem

You do good when you attack a problem. When the thing that you criticize is something a person has said or done, they can listen to you and agree that they should not have said it or done it, or not. When the thing that you criticize is something they can change, they can listen to you and decide to change it. When you fight that way, there is a possibility that they can agree with you. You can talk until one of you convinces the other or until you know that neither of you will convince the other and adapt your plans accordingly. No one has to be destroyed.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

You Do Evil When You Attack a Person

You do evil when you attack another person. When the thing that you criticize is an integral part of a person – their race, their religion, their background, their personality, their intelligence, their sanity -- you are attacking the person. When the thing that you criticize is something they can’t change, you are attacking the person. When you fight that way, there is no way that they can ever agree with you. It is a fight to the death. One of you must be destroyed. That is evil, no matter who is doing it, no matter why.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com

Targeting Problems is Good, Targeting People is Evil

I have said and done evil things, although I didn’t think they were at the time. I did intend to do harm to others, but that was justified, I thought, because they were bad people who had to be forced out, or at least neutralized. I have also been the target of evil intentions and been forced out and been neutralized. A few times, I have spoken with or tried to recruit onlookers, who said they couldn’t tell who was in the right and who was in the wrong because both groups acted the same way and used the same weapons against each other. They were cowards, I thought, afraid to take a stand. I was wrong.

Doing the Right Thing
and Achieving All Your Goals at the Same Time
www.mariannepowers.com