The commonest problem facing businesses (and individuals) today is too much emphasis on efficiency and not enough on effectiveness. Efficiency is all about doing what you already do — only faster and cheaper. Effectiveness is about doing whatever you need to do to be a success — typically something new and different. If you can’t see the difference, you’re in deep trouble. Survival is about being more effective in changing circumstances. I guess the dinosaurs were efficient at what they did — and look at what happened to them.

Continual busyness and overwork amongst well-paid professionals today is more likely to be for purely social reasons than because it is essential. Many people work harder than they need to build up social standing and display their importance. In terms of becoming an “alpha” individual in the herd, is the equivalent of the dance of the Lyre Bird or the bellowing of the stag. That’s why, while there are plenty of folk who must work excessive hours, just to survive (if you think about it, a disgrace in a modern society), what we are seeing is the odd phenomenon of the rich working just as hard, purely to display their status — followed by the “wannabe” rich doing the same in imitation.

Management learning, or learning that can enhance your career and success in almost any aspect of your working life, doesn’t have to be “heavy” or serious. Using the example of his own interest in birding, and how that has helped him in organizational life, Carmine Coyote explains that you never know where some technique learned elsewhere will pay off big-time in your career.

Today’s constant mantra of cutting costs, saving time, and avoiding the unknown and untested is making those who practice it less and less creative. Soon, they’ll be so stuck in their chosen rut that they won’t even by able to see anything outside it — only back where they’ve been and forward to where they’re going, whether they like it or not. Efficiency, systems, cost cutting, “management by numbers” — all of them are deadly to creative thinking. That’s true in your personal way of working as well.

The US government is giving away millions of dollars in handouts in an attempt to stimulate economic activity. While everyone likes to get money from Uncle Sam, this kind of financial boost can only be short-lived. There’s a better way to boost your career and future: a bigger, better stimulus package, designed precisely to fit your needs — and one that will assist you for the rest of your life, if you put it in place right away. Best of all, this package is a boost you can give to yourself. Here’s how to start.

Once you accept that doing the best you can is all that is required, you are freed from most of the sense of guilt and anxiety that goes with expecting a “right answer” to be available. Nor are you tempted into the self-righteousness that people show as they try to force their answer on everyone else. It’s hard to be a bully or an over-demanding boss, let alone any kind of management fundamentalist, if you accept that people cannot rationally be expected to do more than their best — whatever that may be.

Ambition has all too many down-sides: the temptation to take excessive risks, a sharp increase in stress, a tendency to wreck relationships, and a gentle slope down into cheating and dishonesty when all else fails. What you need is an approach that isn’t so one-dimensional or prone to causing delusions. That approach is to challenge yourself and make yourself justify every goal, perspective, belief, and assumption.