When does a luxury stop being something special and become part of the expected? Well, sooner than you think. Only  a few months ago Wi-Fi was not available in airplanes.  It was one of the last places on earth, 30,000 feet above the earth, where one could truly unplug. But then someone figured out how to connect a moving plane to the web and suddenly such luxury became available on selected flights. I just boarded a plane that does not have Wi-Fi. I was disappointed, even a bit upset because I now expect to get my email and text messages wherever I am, and fast. I call this phenomenon the law of expectation. Globalization has accelerated the way new technologies and products reach us. Unwittingly it has accelerated the expectation of consumers as well. That is a tough proposition for those of us in the service industry, including churches and…

In business, as in life, things don’t always go the way we plan. Some days are disappointing: the account you have worked so long and hard to land decides at the last minute to go with your competitor;  the relationship you have worked so diligently to preserve goes south anyway; the promotion you know you deserve falls to someone else; someone you thought was a friend turns out to be a foe. You get the picture. In those moments, it’s easy for us to “lose it,” to fall apart. In these times, more than ever, we need a radical change of perspective or else negative thoughts and disappointment find a way to cloud our thinking and drag us into a dark place. Decades ago IBM sales executives were trained in what the company used to call “gratitude course.” These were the brightest and most tenacious recruits selling multimillion dollar systems…