by Today, Home News Now, introduces the first in a series of columns by Eric Easter on striving to be your best at work and in every aspect of life. Here’s our brief interview with the CEO of Indianapolis-based Kittle’s:
Q: Your interest in this topic, on “being your best,” has been developing for quite awhile. What can you tell us about that and your desire to share your thoughts now?
Eric Easter: “The purpose for these writings is to help even a few — more would be wonderful, but a few is enough — spend more of their life Being Their Best, being who they really are, and less time in the Noise. This makes their life a little better and does the same for me, knowing I helped — a Win-Win. Win-Wins are what I look for in life. The most selfless acts have selfishness built into them, in a good way, for they nourish the giver as much or more as the beneficiary.
Your first piece for us broadly tackles the importance of stopping “The Noise.” Tell me why you started here? And these distractions you refer to — do you think they have increased in recent years?
Easter: The Noise is really about the distractions that we create ourselves that clutter our mind, that take us from this moment, that try to make what is happening something it is not, that try to make us someone we are not, away from Being Our Best, from who we really are. I think it is difficult for most to see through their personal Noise. I believe it can also be a big challenge to separate the Noise from oneself. It takes understanding who one really is, what is natural, not what is just normal, what is real for you and what is not. It begins by being honest with oneself about whether one is at peace, happy, content or whether the Noise of distrust, fear, anxiety and worry are determining choices.
Today, everything in our industry and the business world in general seems to be about continuous improvement, KPIs and metrics and comparing to past performance or, perhaps, the competition. The path you’re starting to lay out here seems different, not necessarily the opposite, just different. Agree? Disagree?
Easter: Metrics are crazy important. We look at them daily. I am continually evaluating our KPIs. I do a better job of this when I am Being My Best, free of the Noise. This is really not about what you do, just doing what you do better than you otherwise would.
Who have been some of your mentors or influencers as you’ve moved down this path? Is there anyone in the industry you can point to who has a similar approach?
Easter: This is really the result of self-analysis, my observation of myself and others and readings. Max Depree’s “Leadership is an Art” has similar beliefs. Eric Berne’s books on Transactional Analysis and Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching” were the biggest influencers.
If you had to sum it up, what would you say you’re hoping to accomplish with these writings?
Easter: The more time we spend Being Our Best, being who we really are, and the less time we spend in the Noise, the better we are as leaders, as managers, as co-workers, as wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, acquaintances, as a person. The better we become at Being Our Best, the better we are as a person, as a human being and so at everything we do. We are better for it as are those we interact with and our world. One person, Being Their Best, can make a difference in so many ways.
At the end of the day, if these writings help improve a few people’s lives, help make the world even a tiny bit better than it would otherwise be, that is enough, and all that I need and could hope to achieve.
“Some might wonder: What does all of this have to do with the furniture industry and the challenges we face today? It is about being better than one otherwise would be at whatever one does, so that each challenge, each change yields a better result.”
