The Perfectionist and the Jack of All Trades

I've been called a perfectionist, and until recently, I've always accepted that description as a compliment. However as a leader, one of my primary responsibilities is to help prioritize the work of the departments that report to me, and in doing so, it is very important to understand that most nonprofits are under resourced. In a world where there is never enough, either in terms of money or human time, where and how nonprofits commit their limited resources becomes very important. Perfectionists struggle in these environments because by nature, when we start something, it's hard to walk away with even the slightest flaw remaining. On the other hand, marketers routinely leave projects behind when a greater return on one's resources can be found in other places, bowing to the law of diminishing returns. To be both a marketer and a perfectionist has caused a few schizophrenic debates for me over the years, but I've come to learn to focus on core competencies, and to strive for excellence, rather than perfection, in those areas.

I've chosen to write about this today because I've recently worked with two very well respected marketers that I observed struggling with the same issue. The first was a technology specialist who was known for making even the most complicated systems work. He was part of a team that over time found their marketing costs rising while their returns fell (not a good place for anyone). I was brought in to conduct a marketing audit. In my first week with them, I observed this marketer spending 25 hours working on a fix for a technology enhancement that this organization was hoping to roll out to their members. After inquiring, I learned that he had been working on this fix for over a month, and had put in well over 100 hours on it. When I asked him if this particular technology enhancement was worth so much effort, he replied that it was to him because he had never failed to deliver before. From an outsider's perspective, it was easy for me to see that he was chasing perfection to the detriment of the organization. After looking at the demographics of their members, and the usage statistics from the previous technology enhancements the organization had launched, it was easy to project that less than one half of one percent of their membership base would likely use this new feature. So why focus so many resources on it?

At almost the same time, I was advising an organization who had hired a strategic planning and market research firm to audit marketing and membership operations. The organization had selected one of the best firms in the business, but was experiencing cost overruns on projected labor expenses in the early stages of the project. The organization in question was large and complex, and one of the first things the firm did was request financial information in a variety of formats. Once delivered, a new junior member of the firm started analyzing the data sent, but in doing so, she couldn't get the financials to match perfectly between the various formats. She continued to work on the financials in an effort to get them to match to the penny, and in doing so, soared past the projected work hours set aside for the initial phase of the project. When I discovered the issue, I asked her how far off the financials were, and the gap was less than $1,000 on a $40 million operating budget. Even if she had found a way to reconcile the remaining funds, the conclusions from her analysis wouldn't have changed in the slightest. Her fear was that if this data was shown to the board of the directors, she would be held at fault because they didn't balance perfectly.

Perfectionists sometimes lose their way in an attempt to achieve something that might not be achievable, or if achievable, probably isn't worth the cost of the achievement. Perfectionists struggle with concentrating too much on one task, while others (I'll call them Jack of All Trades) struggle with just the opposite - not being able to decide where to focus their attention. During times of strife, marketers can find themselves getting friendly advice from a wide-range of well meaning others - board members, executive directors, senior staff members, artists and even spouses. People love to brainstorm, and send all their ideas to the marketing department. This isn't to say that ideas should be ignored. Great ideas can come from anyone, but the same can be said of poor ideas.

A couple of years ago, I spent some time with a new managing director of a mid-size regional theater. It was his first time leading a company, and he wanted to get it right. The company was known to have serious challenges, and when he started, everyone started sending him helpful hints on how to solve the issues. When I visited, he confided he didn't know where to start, and most important to him was pleasing the board that just recently hired him. So he vigorously pursued each idea that was sent to him from board members, and hadn't achieved much except exhausting himself. Over lunch one day, I asked him what the theater's most important challenge was; the one that if left unaddressed, would result in catastrophy. His answer was quick and clear - the theater's debt. I asked him what would happen if he focused all his energies on eliminating the theater's debt. He was afraid the general operations of the company would falter. He feared that the board would be upset because he wouldn't have time to focus on each issue they brought to his attention. And he was afraid of failure, so he tried to be a jack of all trades in an attempt to be everything to everyone. In the end, he decided to concentrate on dealing with the debt issue, and six months later, had identified a foundation that was willing not only to eliminate the theater's debt, but also wanted to establish a working capital fund for future operations.

Deciding what to focus on and more importantly what not to focus on takes courage of conviction. Perfectionists get lost in single projects, and Jacks of All Trades try to address everything at the same time. I've been both in my career, and over time, have become better at prioritizing. Below is a basic matrix that may help:

In priority, concentrate on solutions that provide the following:
High Impact on Critical Issues/High Revenue Line Items - these should be few in number but receive the most amount of your attention.
Low Impact on Critical Issues/High Revenue Line Items - even a small improvement on a critical issue can result in an excellent return on investment.
High Impact on Minor Issues/Low Revenue Line Items - only spend time on these projects if all critical issues and high revenue areas are performing well.

If you are in a nonprofit, and have the time to concentrate on solutions that will provide a low impact on a minor issue/low revenue line item, then perhaps you are overstaffed (or have reached the holy grail of the nonprofit sector).

The Alkalizing Health Benefits of Celery

1)  Anti Cancer: Celery is known to contain at least eight families of Anti-Cancer or Anti-Acid compounds. Among them are the acetylenics that have been shown to stop the growth of tumor cells. Phenolic  which blocks the action of prostaglandins that encourage the growth of tumor or cancerous cells. And coumarins which help prevent metabolic and dietary acids from damaging cells.  One of the active alkalizing compounds in celery is the phytochemical coumarin, which has been proven effective in cancer prevention and capable of enhancing the activity of certain white blood cells that help remove cancerous cells. The phytochemical coumarins prevent the formation and development of cancerous cells of the colon and stomach.

2 ) Pneumonia - Celery is a well known vegetable for supporting the immune system to help reduce metabolic and dietary acid. Celery is packed with antioxidants or alkalizing compounds that transforms bacteria, yeast and acids that cause inflammation.

3 ) Hay Fever: Celery comes on top of the list for foods that alleviates the acidic allergy symptoms. Also on that list are ginger, peppermint, parsley, turmeric, chamomile and cabbage.

4 ) Lower blood pressure: Drinking celery juice every day for a week significantly helps to lower blood pressure by reducing acidic plaque. An alkalzing compound called phtalides helps to relax the muscle around arteries, dilating the vessels and allowing blood to flow normally. To be effective, drink the juice for one week, stop for three weeks, and start over.

5 ) Cholesterol: This humble pale juice has been shown to effectively and significantly lower total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol by simply lowering dietary and metabolic acids.

6 ) Inflammation: The alkalizing compound polyacetylene in celery is an amazing relief for all acids that cause inflammation causing the acidic symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis, Osteoarthritis, Gout, Asthma and Bronchitis.

7 ) Kidney function: Celery promotes healthy and normal kidney function by aiding elimination of acidic toxins from the body. While eliminating acidic toxins, it also prevents formation of kidney stones.

8 ) Diuretic: The alkalizing elements of potassium and sodium in celery juice helps to regulate body fluid and stimulate urine production, making it an important help to rid the body of excess fluid.

9 ) Nervous system: The organic alkaline minerals in celery juice has a calming effect on the nervous system, making it a wonderful drink for insomniacs.

10 ) Menopausal Symptoms : Celery, along with dill, fennel, anise and all tasty herbs of the celery family, are amongst the list of mildly oestrogenic herbs, due to the gently oestrogenic phtyochemical anethole. They all have 40 to 50 alkalzing phytochemicals and are a mix of anethole, apigenin, kaempferol, luteolin and quercitin. All these alkalizing compounds are very good at alliviating all acidic symptoms of menopausal symptoms, such as hot flashes, and contributes to the preventio of heart disease and osteoporosis but without the side-effects of HRT treatment.

11 ) Memory Loss : Celery contains an alkalizing compound called luteolin, which has shown promise for lowering levels of plaque-forming proteins in the brain.This, in turn, can counteract risk factors for Alzheimer's, including the acid caused symptoms of atherosclerosis, inflammation and oxidative damage. Another source of luteolin is flaxseed.

12 ) Urinary stones, breaking down of: The diuretic effect of celery juice also aids the breaking and elimination of acid created urinary and gall bladder stones. With loads of analgesic, anti-inflammatory or anti-acidic and diuretic compounds, as well as some calcium blockers, celery seed extracts seem appropriate for buffering the acids that cause bladder İnfections. Celery seeds are said to improve the quantity and quality of urine and are a useful diuretic for acidic urinary tract outfections
13 ) Bursitis: Two of the best natural sources of COX-2 inhibitors are celery and celery seeds, which contain high amounts of pain killing  or acid killing apigenin.   This helps to reduce the acids that cause bursitis and many other inflammatory conditions.   The benefits from including celery in your diet or making a tea from freshly crushed celery seeds will reduce dietary and metabolic acids that cause inflammation or the symptom bursitis.

14 ) Constipation: The natural laxative effect of celery helps to relieve constipation. It also helps relax nerves that have been overworked by man-made laxatives.

15 ) Acidity: The important minerals in this magical juice effectively balance the body's blood and tissue pH, neutralizing dietary and metabolic acids.  It also helps neutralize the acids in the mouth, stomach and bowels and thus prevents inigestion, ulcers and stomach cancer.
16 ) Weight Lloss: Drink celery juice frequently throughout the day. It helps curb your cravings for acidic sweets and acidic rich food.

The balance of water, salt and chlorophyll makes celery a
perfect alkalizing food in the prevention of sickness and disease.

A Message To My Critics - Read, Study, Ponder, Listen and Learn!

(Dr Robert O. Young is pictured with Professor Lawrence Carter, Dean of the Martin Luther King Chapel at More House College, Atlanta, Georgia and Shelley Redford Young.  Dr. Carter stated, "Dr. Robert O. Young is the Martin Luther King of the 21st Century.")

After almost 30 plus years of studying and learning about acid – base balancing in vertebrates, and the same number of years attempting to share what I have observed and learned, I am enormously gratified to see the larger scientific community beginning to recognize and validate my work. It has been a long journey out of darkness. Almost every day now some new scientific paper is published that validates my work. Recently at a scientific conference I heard a noted scientist say, “In certain conditions, we believe it is better to have the tissues properly alkalized.” He did not give me credit, but his knowledge came from my work. You have no idea how far the journey has been from where I started to hearing those words from a distinguished member of the scientific community.

I have lived with doubt and criticism for so long that I have come to understand it as actually encouraging and exciting.  No one takes the time to write to a newspaper about something that does not interest them. When people take the time to read, investigate and try to understand and then to sit down and write to an editor to complain, what they are really doing is asking questions; asking the author to explain his or her self; to defend their work. It is wonderfully energetic and encouraging to see people interested and asking questions. Asking questions is the first step towards knowledge. It is a sign of courage and intellectual bravery to ask questions and seek knowledge.

We, as humans, live in such profound darkness.  Not knowing what is in the dark is a very scary thing.  We, like children, need to know there are no boogey men under the bed.  The truth is adults are afraid too. We tell our children there are no boogey men, but we still look under the bed ourselves just to be sure.  The truth is we don’t know so much more than we do know. 

We live in a Universe of what Donald Rumsfeld, the former American Secretary of Defense, called “Unknown Unknowns”.  The more we learn, the more we realize how much we still don’t know.  Albert Einstein once quipped, “Intelligence is a very humbling thing. It makes us realize that what the greatest of us knows, pales in comparison to that which none of us knows”.  Knowledge is always being accumulated.  Much of it disturbs our serenity.  We want to believe we know at least most of what is to be known. But, alas, we know so very little.

We are much better off today than most humans were when they died in their 30′s, of things like infected teeth, which dentists today deal with so easily, and from minor wounds, that surgeons today routinely stitch up in minor medical clinics.  Our knowledge is greater than it was for even our parents.  We continue to learn, in spite of our very human desire to believe we already know most of what we need to know.  Today it is said that all of human knowledge is compounding about every 3 years.  In other words, we will learn more in the next 3 years than we have learned in our entire previous recorded history.  My work is in that record.  Today the medical professions, and healers around the world are just beginning to understand what I have been teaching for over 3 decades.

The very thing that people complain about, is actually a result of the broader acceptance of my work in the scientific community.  When someone writes,  "I…was shocked to discover a number of UK companies promoting practices and diets based on his theories.”  It both excites and encourages me that people are finally beginning to “get it.”  I can understand why “getting it” is so unnerving.  It recognizes that all along there has been a boogey man under the bed that we did not know was there!  The good news is, now that we know that living an acidic lifestyle will make us sick, and accelerate aging and hastens death, we can do something about it!  Just like now we can treat infected teeth and stitch up wounds, that once killed us at a very early age.

I still laugh every now and then about a joke I heard on the old American Hee Haw TV show years ago, “Junior” said, “A man told me he broke his leg in two places. I told him the thing to do was to stay out of those places!”  It’s the same with an acidic lifestyle.  If the things you are doing are making you sick, then stop doing them!

I have had people object to my saying that an HIV Virus does not cause AIDS.  A great percentage of the larger scientific community does not believe that either. I am in good company.  The way to shut us all up, is for someone to prove that HIV actually does cause AIDS.  That hasn’t been done, because it can’t be done.

Some people object to my theory of multiforms and origins of what are called bacteria and viruses.  But, you don’t have to know or understand the origins of these biological forms to understand that if your body is properly alkalized none of them can reproduce and none of them can cause any of the ill effects thought to be associated with them.  How these biological forms arise is, and has been for centuries, a great debate.  The proof of my work is in the results.  For at least a century, it has been known that cancers form and thrive only in overly acidic tissue.” I did not develop that knowledge, I only explained it.  Don’t blame the messenger for the message.

Diabetes is another condition that has been largely misunderstood.  For decades the way the medical community dealt with diabetes was only to treat the symptoms.  The symptoms were targeted, because it was not known what caused diabetes. I like to say, we have always known what caused diabetes, we just did not like the answer.  The answer has always been, change your Lifestyle, and change your diet!  But, we humans like our cures to fit our lifestyles not to adjust our lifestyles to prevent the conditions.  You want to turn diabetes around over night?  Get all of the animal proteins out of your diet, along with all of the simple carbohydrates and sugars, stop drinking acidic beverages, and eating highly acid foods, add back in the alkaline green plants and simply watch what happens.  Learn!

Here is something fun for your family members to do. Go on the Internet and Google “Eggs cause Diabetes.”  I have been saying that for years to howls of criticism.  Now the larger scientific community is beginning to understand what I have been saying, and my critics are stunned… What!?

 ALL animal proteins are acidic and cause degenerative conditions we like to call diseases.  Sorry.. it’s the message that is not liked.  I’m just the messenger.

One last thing, I get criticized frequently because I did not get my Ph.D. from Harvard or Johns Hopkins, or some other favored institution.  I wish I could have afforded those institutions, but the schools I attended were and are fine institutions.  Snob appeal does not make a good institution. We just love to establish ranks of exclusions.  In the U. S. to have attended a fine engineering school you need to have attended MIT, or Stanford… most recently California Institute of Technology has taken the lead, but the truth is Indian Institute of Technology in India is widely recognized as the finest engineering school in the world.  

Institutions do not make the quality of their students. The students make the quality of the Institutions.  In fact, institutions do not “teach” creativity or innovation.  All institutions do is teach what is presently known, not what is yet to be discovered.  More often than not, throughout time, our greatest discoveries have come from individuals with very little formal education, Steve Jobs from Apple,  Mark Zuckerberg, the guy that started Facebook and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.  Unfettered by dogma and entrenched lore, visionaries look at the world with new eyes and see things others could not.

I am very proud of the knowledge I was given by the institutions I attended, but I am most proud of the work I have done that has expanded that knowledge and built on what was known when I was in University… work that after 30 plus years is finally being recognized and validated… work that is finally reaching the victims of ignorance, and making a difference in their lives.

What I encourage everyone to do, especially my critics, is to continue to read, study, ponder, listen and learn; take charge of their own health, do what works! That is how I have come to all of my conclusions… watching and studying what works, and building on that evidence.  Scholars can argue about WHY an apple falls from the tree, but the important thing is to note is that it does!

- Dr. Robert O. Young

Portal Vein Thrombosis (PVT)

Portal vein obstruction results from thrombosis (blood clot) or narrowing of the portal vein, which brings blood to the liver from the intestines. 

Because the portal vein is narrowed or blocked, pressure in the portal vein increases. This increased pressure (called portal hypertension) causes the spleen to enlarge (splenomegaly). It also results in dilated, twisted (varicose) veins in the esophagus (esophageal varices) and often in the stomach (portal hypertensive gastropathy).

Doppler Ultrasonography usually confirms the diagnosis. It shows that blood flow through the portal vein is reduced or absent.

www.phmiracle.com
www.universalmedicalimaging.com.
.
.

 — with Ben Johnson, Shelley Young, Robert Young, Robert O Young and Ph Miracle.

pH-Antastic - pH Miracle - The Alkaline Revolution - Part III

PH-ANTASTIC

PH MIRACLE: THE ALKALINE REVOLUTION WITH SHELLEY YOUNG

by KIEL POLLITT

PAGE 3 of 3

TCM: Can you recommend any beauty products?SY: “First and foremost, beauty, in my opinion, comes from WITHIN, both spiritually and physically.

The most important beauty product (or practice, rather) you can apply to your physical appearance is your diet and the way you hydrate your skin with what you eat and drink.Our program is anti-aging because it works in harmony with the body’s pH and doesn’t rob the body of precious alkalizing mineral salts, calcium and magnesium. Drinking pH water continually assures that your skin will have less eruptions, wrinkling and spotting caused by dehydration and exposure to too much sun. Foods like avocados and Omega 3-6-9 oils are internal moisturizers and keep the skin subtle and glowing. Also, skin pH doesn’t have to be acid… it can be alkaline too, including your sweat and urine. Regular exercise is also a beauty-enhancing practice because it increases oxygen and blood flow to every organ and system in the body. All of this makes for a more youthful, beautiful and fit appearance.

Beauty products in our pH Miracle product line include a wonderful pH balanced shampoo and conditioner, which has mint in it for a refreshing, clean feel. We also have a pH balanced facial cleanser called repHresh with a spray repHresh toner and an repHresh avocado moisturizer. I use all of these products and love them because there are no harmful ingredients in them. Doc Young even concludes that you could eat them and not be harmed.”

TCM Do you have any new exciting projects you’re working on?SY: “Yes! Our trilogy of pH Miracle books are being published all over the world now, just recently in Spanish, Russian and even Arabic! The word is getting out that alkalizing really works. It’s the greatest preventative measure one can take to achieve true homeostasis or balance in the blood and tissues.

We have two new foreign pH Miracle retreats scheduled in the coming months. We will be at the Te Sana Resort and Health Spa near Como Italy in September. Then we will be offering our pH Miracle Retreat in Goa, India for the very first time at the Taj Exotica 5-star resort on September and October.”

The pH Miracle Book Giveaway

One reader will win the Young’s classic book The pH Miracle! Simply leave your best tips on how you keep your own diet healthy and alkaline in the comments below and we will select the lucky winner! Good luck readers!

pH Miracle’s Fun Food Show: Sweet Almond Shake

Watch Shelley as she shares this simple recipe for a delicious and alkalizing shake on pH Miracle’s practical and down-to-earth Fun Food Show!

KIEL POLLITT
view all posts from Kiel

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