Leadership topic - Rock

wonder how to Celebrate?

wonder how to Celebrate?

Parental Advisory – Explicit Content.  ;-)… so I have wanted to write this post since I started writing these – literally.  It is one of the greatest musicians, with the greatest names, and bundled into one of the best live bands ever… and there will be a lot of double and triple entendres and allusions that you will get, and some will probably miss… but whatever.  Here we go, and I am indebted to my friend for suggesting we talk about J Geils – as I now have an excuse… as with newspapers, those of you reading this on LinkedIn and FaceBook will have to wonder what happens under the fold… 

Celebrate or observe?

Celebrate or observe?

Explaining my empower framework to people, they will often ask me ‘Which one is the most critical?’  And like picking your favorite child, it is a fool’s errand as it mostly depends on the situation you are in.  Pressed hard, it is a toss-up between today’s observe and tomorrow’s wonder.  The interesting paradox to Celebrate this week is that the songs were literally released on the same single in 1971 – this is the A-side, and tomorrow’s is the B-side.  Both were huge hits, but this was their first top 40 hit – cracking it at 39.  And both were on the album titled, The Morning After… which makes the story today even more poignant… 

partners to Celebrate

partners to Celebrate

Yes, that picture is Faye Dunaway, and no that is not Frank Zappa.  I always enjoy finding odd things to Celebrate about the artists, and try to tease just enough that if you really want to know more, you can.  And with today’s theme being “partner”, this seemed like a perfect place to slot in a story about one of the other major players in the band, and also a short story about partners that I still Celebrate from those days at SMU in the ’70s…

managing Celebrating

managing Celebrating

Realizing that no one was actually listening made me question why I was giving my nights and weekends to being a college radio DJ.  So after a few weeks, I stepped down, but what to do with my time?  A few guys on the floor were starting to play guitar in the evenings, and I managed to bring mine back after a weekend at home.  Politely, one of them that I was tutoring through Physics pulled me aside and suggested that I might want to switch over to Bass …. as I was actually never going to be good on guitar… honest feedback that many years later I still Celebrate… 

Celebrating by engaging

Celebrating by engaging

As I headed west from Tyler, my destination was Dallas where I engaged in the fall of 1976 on my path to become an Electrical Engineer.  One thing about engineering was once you picked which type (EE, ME, IE, etc), your class schedule was mostly set.  To get through it all in 4 years, you had to take 18 hours a semester, and the classes were sequenced so your “planning” was mostly just filling in a few “electives” that were like ‘free spaces’ on the Bingo card.  And being a good student, I ripped into the classes, including an 8 am MWF Statics class – a tough ME class required for all engineering majors…