“… in April of 87 as my wife was pregnant with Kyle… our third child 😉”
… we won the Space Station Contract on December 1, 1987. I was on the team to help build the lab and get us the approach that would ultimately win. The writing of our portion of the proposal for McDonnell Douglas was scheduled when there was no way for me to do it…
…the trip everyone else is taking…
Every big proposal has a trip like that. The final review, the war room, the week everyone flies out to put the pieces together and nobody sleeps. You are supposed to be there. And sometimes the most important date of the year is at home.
Tech leaders know the pull. The launch, the cutover, the audit… each one feels like the only one. Families keep a different calendar, and the dates on it do not move. The leaders who last are the ones who learned early which calendar wins.
…the painter who made the Paris show glow…
In 2011 and 2012, Coldplay toured Mylo Xyloto with an artist in residence, a street painter who goes by Paris. “I did Will’s drumkits … one for the States and one for the UK,” he said in 2012, and soon “We were getting pianos and guitars and all sorts,” then stages and drapes, all of it in “the fluorescent paint.” On September 2, 2012, the tour played the Stade de France, just outside Paris, and most of the concert film Live 2012 comes from that night. It was on Streaming somewhere… all of their instruments are covered with random paint. Guitars, drums, piano, etc. And it was amazing music.
The proposal comes back around. The date at home does not. Plan to execute around it.
…to execute is to know what will not move…
To execute is to deliver what you committed to, on the date you committed to it. The trick is knowing which commitments are fixed. A proposal deadline is fixed for the company. A due date is fixed for everyone, and it does not care about your travel plans.
The roadblock is putting the work on the calendar first and the family in whatever Space is left. Big Rocks go in first. The rest of the week finds its way around them. Miss the review and a colleague covers it, with a phone call to you that evening. Miss the birth and nobody can cover it, ever. The leaders who execute best are not the ones who never miss anything. They are the ones who decided ahead of time what they would miss.
…a lead single built from borrowed chords…
Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall was the lead single from Mylo Xyloto, out on June 3, 2011. Chris Martin wrote it after hearing some chords in a nightclub scene in the film Biutiful, and it borrows from a 1976 song, I Go to Rio. It went to No. 6 in the UK and No. 14 in the US, and it was nominated for 2 Grammys. Its B-side was called Moving to Mars.
It is also the song that closes Live 2012, under all that paint, with the whole stadium lit up. A tour like that fixes every show date months ahead. The question for any leader who has to execute at that pace is which dates get fixed first.
…what we executed, and what I stayed home for…
Oh – and my Dad decided to retire from IBM after 30 years of service. Yes we worked there at the same time which was interesting… but for this date, also in May, I had figured out how to drive 5 hours up to Tyler with the 2 younger kids (4 and 3), be there for his celebration, drive back to Houston to be there for Kyle’s birth. Things you can pull off in your 20’s that you won’t even try now… but now are stories you can smile about…
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: Put the 1 family date you cannot miss in the next 90 days on your calendar first, then plan the deadline around it.
If the deadline and the date at home are on a collision course, let’s work out how to execute both. Schedule time with me here.
Put the family date in first, and let the rest fall like… Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall
