The Joy in Business

2AFA All the Way!

Always Flexible and Adaptable

• Q. Do you ever feel stressed out? Burnt out? Sick? I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Ran out of sick days, so tomorrow I’m calling in dead.” Another one said, “I feel so much better now that I’ve given up hope.” You can’t do that! What can you do?

  A. You can be flexible and adaptable.

AFA All the Way! According to Fortune magazine, you need to possess two characteristics in order to be successful in this millennium—flexibility and adaptability. If you’re rigid, you break, your relationships break, and what good is it to be broken?

Now more than ever, it is key to be flexible and adaptable, like BOB. His name is BOB, but he spells it backwards. (A little palindrome humor.) BOB is the little yellow stretchy stress guy that audience members receive wherever I speak (see Figure 2.1). When pulled, he can stretch far. What’s more important is how quickly he bounces back from being stretched to the max. Because he is rubbery he can snap back as fast as a rubber band does. How fast can you bounce back from adversity?

• Flexibility means to bend without breaking.
• Adaptability means to adjust to circumstance.

Figure 2.1 BOB sticks around (on the young woman's forehead).

At Baldridge Seminars International, a learning and development ...