Blog Archives from September 2006

A good friend of mine, Rick DeSoto, recently shared a small book with me (112 pages) that offers some excellent leadership principles, not only for work, but for life in general. The book, The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, is authored by Mark Sanborn, a well-known author and speaker who heads Sanborn & Associates, an idea studio for leadership development. The book has been a national bestseller on both The Wall Street Journal and Business Week. The idea behind The Fred Factor stemmed from the exceptional service Sanborn received from Fred Shea, who delivered Sanborn's mail to his residence in Highlands Ranch, a suburb of Denver. Sanborn has essentially taken Fred's excellent principles of service and written a book about them.

We learn of Sanborn's first encounter with "Fred" in Chapter One:  "I first met a 'Fred' just after purchasing what I called a 'new' old house. Built in 1928, the house was the first I'd owned and was located in a beautiful tree-lined area of Denver called Washington Park. Just days after I moved in, I heard a knock on my front door. When I…

Last week we considered the book by Mark Sanborn, The Fred Factor: How passion in your work and life can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, which has been a national bestseller on both The Wall Street Journal and Business Week lists. Sanborn, who heads Sanborn & Associates, an idea studio for leadership development, came up with the idea for this book through the exceptional service he received from his postal carrier Fred Shea, who delivered Sanborn's mail to his residence in a Denver suburb for over ten years.

In this inspiring little book, Sanborn identified four guiding principles that form the core of the book. Last week we looked at the first two of these principles. First, "Everyone Makes a Difference," in which Sanborn suggests that even despite being in an ineffective organization, an individual can still make a tremendous difference by choosing to do exceptional work - there are no unimportant jobs. As Fred Smith suggests, "most people have a passion for significance." And inspired people often do inspiring work, and people with passion often do ordinary things extraordinarily well. The second principle is this,…