Browse by Band, Artist, or Leadership Theme
Each week we feature a different band or artist, sometimes a few. Read articles covering the bands or topics below.
Bands & Artists
Your brain wants what it knows… and craves to learn things it doesn’t. Music is the perfect vehicle for both of those. We select a combination of proven artists with cuts from deeper on the albums or playlists that you may not know. We also challenge us all to try new genres of music that we are not familiar with, to see what we can learn that is both familiar and different. If we get the balance right, it will give you a pleasant dose of dopamine, and just enough tension to encourage your brain to start your day with learning in mind.
Leadership Topics
Topics for each week are selected from challenges that have been experienced by leaders at all levels of various organizations. They come from actual life experiences, and are often highlighted with personal stories that are “anonymous” for everyone but the author 😉 They are built around best practices and approaches that have been proven to work, mostly because the opposite is what was tried. Each article can stand alone, and also fits into a framework of 7 articles that stick together on a topic and group to illustrate it from those different perspectives.
For a deeper dive into the empower framework, visit this page.
Additional Topics:
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A renewing Outcome
The summer of 1976 was full of global events. Bur for me, I had 2 remaining Outcomes to close before heading off to college. First, ironically, I had gotten good enough at Student Congress – an actual NFL event – to qualify for the National Debate Tournament in Colorado Springs. Second, I had been selected as an exchange student for the Lions Club to spend 6 weeks in Sweden. The bad news is that those events overlapped.
execution Outcomes
High School’s end was rapidly approaching, an Outcome we had all been working towards for 12ish years. Our class was graduating in a momentous year – 1976 – the Bicentennial, so additional press coverage by the newspaper and local TV station was invited. Over 3000 were gathered in the local Junior College auditorium for the event, including my own grandparents from both sides. I was not… I was sitting across the street at a donut shop with a legal pad and a pen….
Outcomes to make you wonder
Wandering through my High School years, I played a bit in politics. It was an interesting use of my ability to speak and think on my feet. I was on the Student Congress as a Sophomore and a Junior. I was not a very active member, but I loved wondering how we could get 30 people to agree to any Outcome. I am never sure who or why, but someone nominated me for a very prestigious event, particularly in Texas: Boys State.
observing Outcomes
By my Junior year in High School, I had found at least the beginnings of who I was becoming. Now officially on the Debate Team, I spent the summer at a camp for Debaters at TCU. Yes… I am a real nerd who actually spent two weeks preparing, studying, and practicing the debate topic for all of the NFL that season…
Seeing partners Outcomes..
Texas is not friendly to mass transportation. A mix of the frontier mentality, setting out to control your destiny, and then floating in oil, everywhere you go is in a car. Particularly as you came of age, you would get your license and head out on the town… which I couldn’t until I was a senior in high school – an Outcome assured when my parents put me ahead a grade way back in Kindergarten.
managing Outcomes
Coming of age in Tyler – deep East Texas – many things managed my trajectory through this season… and into the better part of my life. My parents didn’t let me “work” so I could focus on my “job” … to get good grades, the doorway to what would be coming. Work hard, study hard, and that will pay off with Outcomes… which, to be honest, were pretty unspecific.
engaging Outcomes
We hear a lot about Outcomes these days, and one of the reasons I wanted to write about Cat is that his career has a lot of ups and downs. As you saw in Decisions last week, he was once again on the upswing. By the end of this week, the Outcomes take a very different tack in his life. The soundtrack of the music and my life rarely sync up so completely, and I remember these albums coming out, and hearing some deep meanings that were obvious… at least to me…
… and the renewal of Virtue…
Declaring that you have a faith stance opens you up for a lot of attacks, some deserved, and some that are not, but all are worth considering. Can you actually be ready to make an account for what you believe? And as someone said once, if you were in a court of law, could the actually convict you of your Faith using evidence?
executing Virtue…
“It is 10 to the hour, and based on our agreement, this meeting is over. Thank you for coming, we will schedule a follow-up soon. And now you may all go to your next engagement”. Stunned is probably the best description of the people in the room, including me…
Virtue wonders….
To this day, I am known for connecting people and seeking out relationships to work through challenges and opportunities. I stalked a person for a year, who is now a good friend, and more importantly, a master Organist… and knew some Bach works that I should feature this week…
How are Virtues observed?
As I leaped out of IBM just before they laid off 40,000 people, I was fortunate to land a job at Fannie Mae. Their Vice-Chairman saw a Business Week article (remember that magazine…) about Software Reuse, and directed the CIO to pursue it. It makes sense – write software well once, and Reuse it over and over,
Virtue partners…
… some leaders who are stunning in their clarity and focus on what matters most – living out their values authentically for their team and themselves. I was honored to partner with one at VeriSign who went through many busy seasons with me, including learning to leverage RAPID for our team’s best…
Do you manage with Virtue?
Interviewing for my last “real” corporate gig, my peer was venting about his team – and how they were not “leading” like he wanted them to. I wasn’t a coach – officially yet – but asked what seemed obvious … “Well, have you told them what you expected?”
What Virtue engages?
It will not surprise you that I was a big fan of the early Woody Allen. His wry ability to engage the world around him by turning everything on its head has guided my life…
Can we engage The Middle?
Later this week will be the Spring Equinox – the day that we officially move from Winter to Spring (at least in Astronomy). The sun will be right over the equator at 5:01 am Thursday EDT, and thus within some tolerance, everyone on the planet has exactly the same amount of light and dark. So at least for one day, we all have about the same – The Middle…
The renewal of Surfing…
Where I was raised in Texas, we didn’t do a lot Surfing…. but we did do a lot of water skiing. As I was graduating from High School, my parents bought a small “fishing shack” on a local lake – including a “ski boat”. It BARELY qualified, and probably by a factor of 10 to 1, I spent more time working ON the boat than USING the boat… but no matter. Like Surfing, the basic principles are the same – a wing gliding on top of the water, and unlike snow skiing, you lean back…
How do you execute Surfing?
As I started this series on Surf music, today’s song is probably what came to mind first. The song—this version as well as cover versions—has been featured in over 20 films and television series since 1964, appearing at least once a decade since. You may not know the name of it, but the opening and ongoing drums instantly identify it as one of the most well-known songs of that era….
Surfing Wonder
An exercise we did this week was to find a picture of ourselves before 10 – hopefully, around 6 or 8 – before many of the “worlds” voices have had a chance to change the “music” in your life. Pictures were posted of “little kids” invariably smiling, many of them twirling, dancing, playing… enjoying life. The concept is that is your natural self …
When do you observe Surfing?
As I hope you have noticed, the “talent” that gave us Surf music came from all over. By the early 60’s, globally the availability of relatively inexpensive amps and guitars, along with the popularity of radio and TV created a tidal wave of kids trying to figure out how to put that all together into something that would Surf them into fame.
Who is your Surf partner?
For this workshop, we needed at least 3 others who would contract to partner with us. “The Pod” had to commit to meet weekly for at least half an hour… and also to check in daily on our progress. At first, this seemed a bit over the top,
What manages to Surf?
We were recently out at a pond with our daughter/granddaughters… and of course, we started skipping rocks. The delicate approach of first finding a smooth, flat rock, and then throwing it sidearm so it would land nearly parallel with the surface of the water came back to me….. after a few misses 😉 Watching the rock bounce 2, 3… 5… 15 times…
Can you engage with Surfing?
One of my favorite “memes” is Captain Piccard with his head down, captioned, “Damage Report Number 1”. Every day, a new wave crashes over us. I have at least stopped consuming ‘news’ ….as there isn’t much that is, and that that is… is mostly beyond my control… and reminded me of one of my favorite types of music and the perfect soundtrack for our times… so… Let’s Go Surfing!!!
engaging The Fall…
I rarely run across a song and a group that I have never heard. And not bragging… just when you make it your business to notice and know music, it is a shock. Recently people have given me the tagline “… and his encyclopedic knowledge of music” It is why I love listening to Sirius XM Deep tracks… and Wikipedia 😉 Between them, I can still occasionally reward my brain with something that it has to process for the first time… and, wonder is something that only gets better when you use it… often…
renewing and ReLaunching leadingWithMusic
The days of summer are waning, and I hope you have had a chance to renew a bit. We have had the great fortune to gather with our extended family a number of times, which helped me reflect a bit on what the last few years have taught us.
renewing Powerfully
As we were standing in the small conference room off of the Vice-Chairman’s office, we were surveying some of the memorabilia that he had collected over his Powerful career. One of the few engineers to actually ascend to this stratospheric level, he had been my idol when I started. If he could make it as an engineer, I had a chance also. Our President was playing with a ball-bearing race, with the silver rolling balls exposed that he was gently nudging around the circle. He turned to my boss and said, “… at least one of these is mine”
Power execution
Our dinner out that night in Manhattan was lovely and relaxed. Mostly because we were killing time… until an overnight flight would deliver a replacement card for a demo scheduled the next morning. In setting up our demo at THE seat of Power of IBM at that point, 590 Madison Avenue, in the boardroom no less, I had discovered the hardware was dead. And, there was something called DeltaDash that at that point was slightly more common than FedEx, and would bring us a new one at 3 am. No problem, we would drive back and have a few hours before our 10 am demo.
The wonder of Power
As we deplaned in Atlanta, we were looking for directions to the private jets section of the Airport. Catching a taxi across the tarmac, we arrived where the Powerful people fly, and waited for our Division President to arrive. We were due for an important update on the project he was the Executive Sponsor for, and the only time we could find was to fly back with him from Atlanta to DC… So if you are wondering, we flew down from DC to fly back with him … to DC.
observe the Power of Power
“Who the ___ are you anyway?” was the exasperated shout from the senior Engineer and IBM Fellow from our Austin facility. With the precision of my national debating days, I had just reduced his arguments against what our small (but growing team) was doing into shreds and now I had him calling me names. Perfect. Victory. The facility manager who had brought all of his Power to this meeting had to step in and calm the waters. “I will take your ideas back for consideration and we will be back in touch.” And with that, we observed his team gather their things and leave…
Power partners
As I finished talking about our project, there was a pause in the conversation while the Senior VPs were considering what I had shared. My boss, now my partner, was leaning back as he always did, even though he knew most of these very Powerful men well. By now he had confidence in my ability to communicate difficult concepts quickly and convincingly, which freed him up to study and read what was really happening and not being said…
managing Power
With the prospect of working for a person I did not respect, it also became clear to me that people who win proposals are often not the right people to perform the work. In fact, the Power had quickly shifted from those who were Clever to those who were… well… more predictable to manage. The combination had resulted in my friend, the AA, setting me up with a new opportunity to work on another important division project that “needed some help”…
Power engagement
A warm handshake and “Thank You” from my exec was worth the long hours it took to win the Space Station contract. What he said next, was not “… and I would like you to work for ____ now to help integrate the teams.” A few of my peers had had the “opportunity” to work for him already, and we had heard about his use of Power in not complimentary terms over weekend beers. Luckily, my own network had offered me a path forward that would give me a front-row seat to what Power really is … and isn’t…
renewing Clever
Having poured a good portion of my life into the “Circus” project over the last 6 years, I was not going to simply sit back. It may or may not have been renewing, but I stayed up all night polishing our “appeal” of the Division edict demanding the use of older hardware, and turned it into a Clever and compelling approach. The net was that we had a very cost-competitive bid because of the savings on ground systems, the easy access to commercial off-the-shelf tools, and the general market appeal of the PC. I walked our exec through it, but I couldn’t go with him. Imagine what that must have felt like to him – once again taking a Clever and risky approach into a President’s office…
Clever execution
The code name for the series of PC’s that were the centerpiece of our Space Station Demonstration Lab was appropriately: “Circus”. All the Clever code names were things having to do with “circus” – like the network was “Ringmaster”, which is what I had now become. Our proposal would incorporate all of the elements simulating execution of the whole computing infrastructure. We had Fiber Optic Networks, Color Displays, real-time test equipment, all coordinated with a simulation environment that leveraged IBM’s PC’s in every element. Sadly, we had just been told, our proposal was mandated to bid the Division Standard 1750 chipset – or don’t bid…
The wonder of Clever
One of my constant refrains was “how can we compete with our cost structure so out of line??” As we had finished our prototype to great accolades, we were now in the process of putting together a real proposal to get this system sold and installed into the Shuttle. I priced out an “empty” box – that is NOTHING in it, and NO actual design work. In 1983, that was $250,000 for each piece of equipment, and a Non-recurring cost of over $4 million. Finally, someone pointed out what I was missing… and no wonder. “This is a cost-plus based business – your profit was 6% of your costs… “
Clever observation
August 18, 1981 would change the world – the day the IBM PC was announced. Built by a small, Clever team at their Lab in Boca Raton where Dad had worked when I was in junior high, the impact on all of us is still profound. For me specifically, I had grown up around microcomputers, having built one around the previous version of the Intel processor, and had been observing since then what would be coming. As I came home excited and talked about the new computer that we would get at home, my wife observed, “Does this mean we are getting a raised floor?”
partners in Clever
They had been in a conference room for nearly 2 days now, reviewing problems with our Division’s largest program. These partners had been collected to recommend changes to get it back on track. It was to be a state-of-the-art new approach to computing on a new state-of-the-art submarine. All eyes had turned to the senior architect of the systems that were used on the Space Shuttle who had been flown in. He paused … and after a very uncomfortable silence said “It’s a Bar problem”. Unclear someone asked… and he clarified. “We can’t fix this …we might as well go drink.”
Clever management
Our design danced to life “right on schedule”, a Clever way of saying we made it just in time. After struggling for weeks, our 2nd Line manager had “offered” that if we didn’t have it running soon, they would fly in some “real” engineers from our main site to “help” us. As you might expect, it was not music to our ears … and that type of management triggered exactly the response he wanted. Maybe not the TONE he expected, but it had gotten our system running, and mostly on schedule. A good thing, as I was now the Project Manager…
engaging Clever
It was another late night in the lab, and by now we had been slugging away at our project for over 18 months. It was just me and my office mate/partner, everyone else had long gone home. We KNEW our design would work but it just was not coming to life. Each reset, it would make it a bit further than before… then, nothing. Finally, I looked at the pattern coming up, and realized that 6 of the signals never changed. “I think those memory chips are bad”. Replacing them, we hit the reset button… and up came the greatest 7 characters I have ever seen: MACSBUG.
Effecting Right renewal
We were wrapping up one of our last tests at Berkeley, up the hill further, into the Bevatron – a device that is a football field in diameter – such that it can generate Billions of electron Volts per particle. As such, you don’t need a vacuum, and simply set up your target in an open room. Surrounded by thick concrete, we were just taking down our computer when an ambulance arrived. A young 14-year-old was wheeled into the same spot, and a large metal mask put over most of his head – a small hole where the beam would go into his brain…
Effectively executing Right
Sitting in the conference room waiting, I was nervous about what was about to happen. The experiment had been a success, and we should be celebrating as a group, an Effective use of all of the talents of the team. Sadly, I had jumped the gun and helped get attention through my friends in communications, and now they wanted to feature the team in an upcoming publication. Sadly, it was not the Right thing to do, and the rest of the team was furious with me, particularly the group that was supposed to be “in charge”. And, my boss had accompanied me up to be confronted and what I thought would be an execution by the other members of the team…
The wonder of Effectively Right
The sun wasn’t up as we rose for the 3 am bus ride. We were up early because the time of the launch was 7 am, and with traffic near the Cape, we didn’t want to be late. I had been invited to come down for the launch of our experiment which, through no small set of wonders, we had Effectively completed on time and within the Right budget. It was now stowed in the back of the Space Shuttle and was about to blast off with STS Mission 41-G, the 17th flight.
observing Right Effectively
As we were chatting before dinner in the large ballroom, I was surrounded by the “royalty” of the Radiation Effect community. Admittedly a little off the main road of the IEEE, it was nonetheless THE place to meet, greet, and talk with everyone who knew anything about Radiation effects. The decor had some eggs on the buffet bar as a garnish – and you would assume they would be hard-boiled. Our Principal Investigator, a jokester, picked one up and cracked it on the man standing next to me… where it exploded all over his bald head…
Effectively partnering Right
As I watched the fog roll across the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge was the first to disappear. Then San Francisco became just a soft glow. Now the fog was over Berkeley and coming up the hills where it was 3 am. Completely covered now, the moon was just a glow, and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I stepped back inside just in time to help my partners change out the current device for the next one in our testing. I was standing inside of one of the world’s most powerful devices – yes – inside…
managing Right Effectively
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have just invested $15 Million dollars in your development. Now get back to work”. With that, the young executive exited the CEO’s office with his letter of resignation torn in half and handed to him. He had gone from one of the top executives in the company to losing the current equivalent of $200 Million dollars. Thankfully not me, but that investment Rightly paid off as he was our Executive… and an outstanding and Effective manager 25 years later when I joined his team in Houston.
Do you engage Right or Effective?
While we didn’t realize it, we were all engaged in an over 10-year plan to keep IBM as the provider for the onboard computers and software for the Space Station. The Shuttle was designed and built in the ’70s as a “Space Truck” – you could fit a School Bus in the Payload Bay. Its mission was to build the Space Station – the next element in a chain that started with the first space experiment Explorer in the 1950s. My work would be pulling those pieces together – using the truck to put up a basic science experiment that could allow modern computers to be used. Would I be Right, or Effective, or neither??
renewing Diversely
My real job for this season was to design a memory card for the Display System of the Space Shuttle. Our funding was to prototype what a newer computer and color display could do to help automate the very manual ways the Space Shuttle actually worked. If you have ever used an HP calculator, their Reverse Polish Notation approach to math was very similar to what the astronauts did to command the vehicle to fly. It was very labor-intensive, and our mission was to renew that technology from a mid 60’s torpedo computer into the 80’s…
Diverse execution
So, no problem. I had to get the facility that thought they were the center of ALL radiation knowledge in our division to work with the other facility that manufactured ALL the equipment we could build. And both thought they were the pre-eminent facility in our Division… And did I mention by this point, I had executed repeated railings about how behind the times both organizations were? And not in small ways – in a couple of cases taking on older and wiser leaders with both memos and in-person indictments of the lackluster execution from both…
wonderful Diversity
The lack of cooperation and coordination in business shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Today it was very clear as I was talking with the lead investigator of an experiment that had already flown in space. Sponsored by the part of NASA that was dedicated to non-manned flight, they literally hated those of us working on Manned Space. They had, in fact, put the first United States satellite in space, but since the Astronaut crew was announced, their budgets and centrality to the NASA mission was dwarfed. It was no wonder that he was very hesitant to even talk with me…
Diverse observation
From my days in Debate, I observed that you could follow links between documents. Remember this is LONG before hypertext and the web, but at the end of papers are the references. You start to see the same papers referenced many times, and you find there are typically only 10 real papers you need to understand. Here I found a couple on a model of what happens in space, a couple about measuring devices in a cyclotron, and a couple about an experiment that actually flew in space. And I observed that none of them had worked together…
partnering Diversely
“You have learned how to learn. It is not about the topics or the subject matter. With these tools, anything can be understood”. This framing of Diversity is one that my parents had enforced with all of the IBM swag around the house. I thought it was sorta corny, and also sorta redundant – why do you need a sign that says “THINK”. Isn’t that the thing that differentiates us from the animals – another phrase that rang out often. As I started to work with new partners, it was clear this may actually be needed…
managing Diversely
As I was standing in the shower, where most of my clearest thinking comes from, suddenly it hit me. I yelled out to no one in particular – “DPAT – Data Processing Aptitude Test!!!” I had driven down to Clear Lake, Texas for an interview with IBM’s group that was working on the Space Shuttle. A lovely dinner with a person my age had managed to calm my nerves, but now, I realized the very first thing this morning was a test…
Diversity engaged
This evening, as I was working my way through the records, I stumbled across a double album of Jazz. It was my daily visit to Peaches – a huge grocery store remodeled to house huge stacks of records, including those that had been sentenced to the trash heap of music. “Cutouts” were just that – albums that had the corner clipped, along with their price. To keep me engaged in my major goal of graduating in only 12 weeks, I would buy 5 records, come home, listen for 3 hours until they were finished, and hopefully, I had finished enough homework to repeat it the next day…
Knowing how and who to renew
As we were cleaning out the apartment, moving apart for our first “real jobs”, my best friend and roommate came into the living room with a handful of ties. “Can you tie these for me?” He was one of the smartest people I have ever known, and yet, had no Knowledge of some of the simpler things that are important. I understood – as I had been through this exact experience when I was 13 and someone showed me how to tie a tie before a big event in Junior High. Now I was able to repay and renew that favor…
executing with and without Knowledge
Sitting with 6 Seniors as a sophomore was not that different for me. I had always been younger than my classmates having started school at barely 5. The instructor was my adviser in the Physics program… who suggested I take the class as he only taught it every other year. When he started writing Maxwell’s equations on the board, I asked an obvious question to me: “What is the upside-down triangle?” He suggested I come see him after class…
wonder about Knowledge
The beautiful spring evening was interrupted with a “fire alarm” that had all the students from the largest set of dorms on campus outside. As we were milling around wondering, a young man climbed out on the balcony with his guitar, an amp and microphone, and started serenading the crowd. It was a great distraction and everyone loved it. A few minutes later, he announced his name, and that he was running for student body president and wanted everyone’s vote. It would have been great, but we had our own candidate in the election…
Knowledge that observing is not enough
Working full time, and carrying a full load, I still had some energy left for other things. My interest in politics had burned out by the end of high school, but this evening, I was sitting in a meeting of the Leadership Council for the Engineering School observing the President. Being a lifelong student of great salespeople, this guy was amazing. And so full of himself at the same time. But for some reason, he came over after the meeting, and we started talking, and the next thing I know, I was the Parliamentarian for the group (given my Debate experience) … and next in line to be President…
partnerships in Knowledge
As I rolled into her apartment, I was trying to make some idle chatter as it was clear we were both nervous. It was our first official “date” although we had gone out with our Church group a number of times, and this was the next logical step. The Student Government Group for the Engineering School was hosting a banquet which I had asked her to. I mentioned, “… and we have a really great band for the dance after”. Frozen does not begin to capture the mood that instantly appeared…
managing Knowledge
Charlie’s Angels was one of the top shows when I was a freshman, and everyone had “THE” poster of Farrah Fawcett in the mostly not swimsuit on their walls. And there was a girl in our sister dorm that was her spitting image. To get people to know each other, there were “mixers” between the floors, and this night it was the typical loud music and beer, and not really my scene, so I went downstairs… and there she was sitting on the steps. I didn’t really Know what to do, but I sat down and asked her if she was not enjoying the mixer? “Not really my scene – I would rather be out dancing.” I said I knew how to dance (those lessons came in handy…), and once she learned I had a car, we were off.
Knowledge to engage
As I was slowly awakening, I noticed that my feet were really hurting. And, that it was really cold. Both made sense when I realized I was halfway to my 8 am Statics class, running so I wouldn’t be late for the exam… with no shoes and barely a shirt on with early morning temps in the ’30s – cold for Texas. I am sure I made quite the sight running in at the last minute. I had studied, but now I realized why the 8 am MWF class was still open during registration 😉
Vision that renews
Standing in the middle of the SMU Basketball court at barely 17, I was surrounded by tables labeled “Dedman College”, “Fondren”, and “Cox” which at least had “School of Business” in the name. It was the last day for “Registration” and I had a deck of computer cards, which at least I was very familiar with – what to DO with them, I was not. I had the college catalog that showed what a “Freshman Engineer” should take… but how did I get that to happen?
executing Vision
I wasn’t Valedictorian… because of my mouth. I called a teacher Stupid – and let me plead my case… no don’t. I earned an “Unsatisfactory” in conduct, and my father got me out of being suspended, but nonetheless, I was barred from his Senior Honors Class. No worries – I had my pick of colleges, although every one of my family went to Texas Tech – including my Grandfather, who taught there. And again if you read these articles often, you know that was out of the question.
wonderful Vision
I was the last speaker in the last round of this debate tournament, at least for our team. It was the one tournament I had invited my parents to come and see me perform in my new VIsion: Debate. I had been tearing it up on the trail across Texas, winning many rounds and tournaments, with “hardware” (trophies) becoming a natural thing to bring back home to Tyler late almost every Saturday night. This was not that wonderful experience.
Visions observed are Visions…
“He will make a fine judge”. I was probably 2 years old, and old wise woman from West Texas had pronounced this after feeling the lumps on my head – and there are plenty you can see these days without hair. 😉 That simple sentence put me on the path to learning what to do with the deep bass voice I had at 14 in the body of a 4’10” pre-teen still in boy’s shirts. I stepped up to deliver my first speech…
partners in your Vision
“You could come back with me!” the young 14-year-old “Tom Hanks” exclaimed towards the end of Big. Having found that his child-like spirit was a major gift in business, he missed his friends and partners… and being able to really be a kid. The response from his ‘girlfriend’ is timeless: “No, one time being in junior high is plenty”. And I am eternally grateful that the actual movies of my era are on media that are very hard for anyone to find and post anywhere…
managing the Vision of MLK
“The bullet stopped just half-an-inch before the backbone, and if it had stopped a half-an-inch earlier, it would have lodged in a major artery. Either way, this dog is lucky to be alive”… and with that, the lights went out. I awakened a few minutes later in another room on a soft couch with a cold rag on my forehead… I had no idea how I managed to get there…
What Vision engaged MLK?
Standing in front of my 4th-grade class, I was wearing what we now would romantically call a Toga. It was more like a big white sheet wrapped around my small body which was not much to look at. And, I was stammering as I tried my best to engage in showing how a similarly clad frail man changed the world with his demonstration of non-violence in a far-off country – India. Now both are common knowledge, but in Dallas, in the 1960s it was very different than others had dressed up as their “role model”.
Time to renew your perfecT Team?
Screaming from the back of our Team was the most passionate member of the team. The bad news is that he was from Peru, spoke very little English, so we rarely understood what he was saying. HOW he was saying it was CRYSTAL clear. His energy was contagious as he lectured us on the sideline at halftime, which I delegated that Time to him, and simply observed how he renewed the Team, words not really being needed…
Count on executing perfeCT…
“Johnny try harder!!” One of the shorter members of our team was not able to keep up with the boys as they were becoming young men. His parents were hoping their voices would “help” him to be a more PERFECT player… and I could Count on it making him execute worse. He knew that there was no way to catch these bigger kids, and eventually, he left the team. Having been short my whole life, I understood, but that didn’t make it easy for me…
wonder how to make perfEct Easy?
“Play the Simple Ball”. Standing on a field that cold March morning, it was my admonishment to the young men preparing to play the game they love and qualify for the Finals – if we could win this match. We had jelled well this season, but this last hurdle was to beat our archrival – the wonder of which were mostly our close friends, including the Coach of the other team…
Focus and observe Radical Collaboration with PERFECT
“Could you possibly finish a thought?”. If you know mathematics, you would observe my sentences involve a lot of “open parentheses” – the start of something, and then something else, and then something else. Closing parentheses, which allow thoughts to be processed and considered – those are not easy for me to do. What I look for in teams are people who observe that, and “help me” Focus … and be more PERFECT…
Reframing PERFECT partners
Walking into our Executive’s office that afternoon, we were in big trouble, summoned by our boss to join him – NOW. As we came in, we were scolded that the Safety Engineer had turned us in with a memo. A large computer Terminal was on top of our bookcase – 6 feet in the air – and weighing nearly 60 lbs, had a coax cable wrapped around it that was about to be caught in the door, which could have killed us…
Examine the management of PERFECT
I had reached the point in the day’s interviews to meet with the Senior VP who would potentially be my manager. It was a large company, growing fast, and more than likely, you are reading this from a server that is hosted in their cloud. I asked: “How do you handle mistakes?” His confident reply – “The people we hire do not make mistakes”. I did not take the job…
Pausing to engage PERFECT
“What you are reading is PERFECT!” You know that is Looney Tunes – and if I could get you to read that in my favorite character, Foghorn Leghorn, “It’s a joke son! You missed it!” it would be perfect. Early in life, I ran across many characters like this, and eventually came to be a student of them, adopting some of their best (and worst) mannerisms, including what people say about me all the time: “Often wrong, never in doubt”.
renewing Goals
“Ok. Now you know all of the people I know that can help us achieve what we need to do. And it is now up to you: to Keep them as your contacts, to grow them, renew them, and to understand how to leverage them appropriately.” It was a Simple statement that happened within the first 3 months of my professional career. Add Smiley and we have the KISS Goal that is now my brand… which renews me consistently…
executing Goals
As I was leaving, I turned to my wife and said, “Today is going to suck.” Not the most empowering stance I know, but something that I had gotten used to saying particularly of late. She inquired, “Do you have a lot of meetings?” “Actually no – I have NOTHING on my calendar – which means something is going to blow up.”
Goal wonder
“DAD!!! I am keeping the time – NOT you!!!” Ok then – so much for the Goal of playing music together 😉 It was during practice with the Church band we had both joined as we attempted to support “Contemporary Worship”. The chance to actually play with him was wonderful… and being 17, frustrating to us both. But his kickdrum was in fact better… and allowed me to relax, and simply wonder what was happening – both on stage… and with me…
observing Goals
“I write down Goals every day in this Planner. Each day I review them… move the ones I didn’t do to tomorrow… and do it again.” I was listening intently to a Darden MBA student who I had already observed was HYPER organized and focused on achieving success. By this point, my own Goal was to be better at observing the “rest signs” in the melody that is “playing out” so I waited. He slid it across the table to me and stated “….. I hate that Planner”.
partners Goals
Nature abhors a vacuum… which means many leaders believe they can set Goals by themselves, and simply state them to partners and peers as clear and unambiguous. That vacuum then becomes like the silence of deep space – as blank looks, and unengaged stares come back your way. The moniker of if you want to travel fast, travel alone also fits here, where many leaders believe that partners simply slow you down… Yes… and…
managing Goals
You are seeing a lot written about “engagement” – A LOT with the ‘Great Resignation’. So I am honored that they have chosen a piece of empower for all these “new” articles 😉 – that now you need to understand what motivates people. Simply, I would add: saying it is one thing: the important thing is managing to do it. And it starts with you – before you can start thinking “out there” in the cubes and offices. What is it that YOU Believe in, and manage towards?
Goals to engage
… and we’re off on the New Year. And if you are following the normal course, you have made some resolutions … and some Goals for this fresh start after Cleaning Up. And normally those are in the trash heap by the time we reach MLK Day, and certainly by Presidents Day. So what are Goals really… and what could sustain us as we engage… practices that are Simple? And of course, the music needs to be a gentle reminder to slow down after the starting gun…
Cleaning Up renewal
One problem I have with Cleaning Up is there is always more to do. This week is no exception – I planned to “finish” U2 off with this week, and realized by Tuesday that I was going to need many more weeks to really do the band justice. It was renewing this week to let the music do the talking and less Cleaning Up my own stories. And it was very renewing to hear again these amazing songs and albums full of the barely hidden Gospel…
executing Clean Up
Happy New Year!!! …oh wait.. Maybe fewer exclamation points – I should execute this with a quieter voice.. if I had one:-) My wife reminds me often that there is one thing I am not, that is quiet. I hope that however, your night was, whenever you are now, and whenever you are reading this, you celebrated well. There is actually a tie-in to today’s song, believe it or not, so let’s quietly jump right in…
wonder… Cleaning Up
You have today. While always true, particularly today is the day to Clean Up anything you need to put a “2021” on. For me, it is ordering supplies and other expenses that I can accelerate into the rearview mirror, and then downloading fiscal records (stop laughing – I do actually keep them – mostly). It is one of those business practices that I used as a game each year that I continued to play in this new path. The wonder is I still do that mentally – stuck thinking eventually someone will figure out that I need to get a “real job”…
Cleaning Up observation
“So – he comes in here, throws papers in the air, plays some guitar, and then does it again?” Yes – yes, of course. My nephew was visiting, and his observation was spot on – my office’s normal state is a disaster. My Daughter on seeing my Cleaned Up version one time remarked more politely, “My, there are a LOT of things to observe!”. Up comes easy – Cleaning, not so much…
partners to Clean Up
Music is the cornerstone of my work now. U2 was formed by people who were, like me, actually not great musicians. Larry played the drums “wrong” and The Edge was at best a rhythm guitar player when they started, to say nothing of Adam who only learned the Bass because they needed one. Even Bono wasn’t that sure of his own voice – both writing and singing. Can we learn something about partners and Cleaning Up – only from the music?
Cleaning Up management
I didn’t even bring blank paper with me. Thinking about leaving behind the only reality I had known as a working manager for nearly 40 years, I knew I needed to get some clarity. Offsites were by now second nature, mostly done poorly, and frankly one of the things I found myself Cleaning Up for other teams. And here I was sitting in our recently purchased Mountain House, a little dizzy from the altitude, and more from what the heck was I thinking?
engage Cleaning Up
Happy Boxing Day! Sorta Christmas Lite for the poor and the working-class across the British Empire, it is now a holiday that has turned into something much more American – a huge post-Christmas Sale 😉 So In both contexts, it is bringing home “boxes” of goodies that you may not have gotten last week. One year this week between Christmas and New Year’s, our hot water heater went out, requiring us to Clean Up the whole back basement area … and sparked another way to think about Boxing…
renewing Belief
My early church experience includes another basic Belief that many find somewhat hard to believe: Fun. For example, on New Year Eve we would always have a party – at the Church. We would have dinner together late as Church family, watch a cheesy family movie (16 mm projected…), and then at Midnight, an old man would walk through the door one way, and another man+ would come back – dressed up as a baby 😉 A bad visual, but characteristic of that group of people that formed my Belief that Fun is needed to renew us…
executing with Belief
Before your day gets off to a roaring start of execution, let me say Merry Christmas!! Filled with lots of traditions that come from Beliefs modeled around you, hopefully, yours are as fun as mine are. Our home had a completely separate living room that was divided from the house with a solid sliding door. Thus access was “limited” until we had gotten completely dressed, had a full breakfast, and then Dad would go in and prepare for our entry – with his light bar of Four Thousand watts…
wonder of Beliefs
“You are really odd!”. That was the greeting from a fellow coach standing outside of the conference room at Darden Business School. You might think that was a bit harsh, but the wonder is that is a compliment to me. Literally raised to be “different” for as long as I can remember, it is ironic that now I am known as a great connector of people and friends. And the real wonder is that without the early Church’s most radical stance, you wouldn’t be reading this…
Belief in observing
Looking back, it is no wonder I have such different Beliefs. Having moved to Tyler in my teen years, we again found a Church home that had a lot of things going on. The big “downtown” church had a gym/roller rink, a large almost Cathedral building, and a very active Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF) group. Mirroring The College Kids we have been discussing, Sunday evenings were started with Vespers, and then dinner and fellowship, with some light lessons to think about. And in the mid 70’s they decided to offer Sex Education – at church…
managing Beliefs
Integral to forming and managing my Beliefs was sailing together with The College Kids. Dad’s engineering background, of course, brought him to sailing – one of the most technically challenging sports around, and yet, also the most simple. Can you as a Team organize yourselves and the boat to take advantage of the wind and events to be first across the line. Simple – not easy, as with most discussions of Beliefs. The model we use to talk about it is also from sailing – an Iceberg…
Belief management
Born only a few years after the Staple Singers started, my home was a constant hub of activity from our Church. I have never asked why, but my parents managed the College Kids group at First United Methodist Church of Richardson, Texas. So many of my basic Beliefs came from this season, it is hard to even remember where things started. Certainly, I have always thought of Church as a fun place – we had big parties both at the house and at Church, and as my Dad would always add, without the need of alcohol to have fun 😉
engage your Beliefs
“What do you Believe?” It was a very direct question, from a very direct woman. My wife’s “great aunt” asked me … just as we were leaving from her small apartment. I had been helping her write her memoirs, which turned out to be much more coaching than either of us had anticipated. As she would tell her stories, I would simply listen and try to write as fast I could to record these stories that were amazing, raw, and very engaging. And a question that you should always be ready to engage – actually, what DO you Believe?
renewing Together
Faith, fundamentally, is belief in something you can’t see, but you know is there. As the results of Project One spiraled out over the last year I was there, I knew that it was time to take a leap of faith into something that I had never really contemplated. The dream of owning my own business was never a thing, and yet, that was what was on the horizon. If I really believed in what I was seeing both as a need and my talent, I had to act. On Faith, or In Faith but either way, how?
executing Together
Through daily iterations of a spreadsheet of 1765 engineers around the globe, we were as ready as we could be to launch Project One on January 1. If someone ever suggests you do a massive corporate reorg at the first of the year, just say the sentence that I work with leaders on the most. A complete sentence that, as they say in Charades: 1 word, 2 letters. “No”. I would love to tell you we were confident this would be executed well, but honestly, we were really never sure what the real objective was in the first place, so we would hit something…
Together… wondering..
Arriving on a late afternoon flight to Mountain View, we had to save our energy for the return flight… in only 5 hours. The Red Eye home was required to keep a meeting with a key customer that could not be moved. And we wondered and worried about this meeting, mysteriously called with only 24 hours’ notice, mandatory, and with an attendee list that was not clear. Luckily the business leader I was scheduled to meet in that customer meeting was on the flight out and back… so we would be in whatever this was together. And that made all the difference…
observing Together
Engineers LOVE problems. Nothing can bring us more joy than a big, complicated problem, with lots of loose ends. And, soon you observe that business people do not like problems. Not in the least – not big ones, not small ones, nothing that resembles them. They like things to run smoothly, with smiles all around. And having just come from a season of EVERYTHING was a problem, which even the business people were in agreement with, I was stepping into a completely different world and observed…
partners Together
What is your intention?” It is such an obvious question once asked, but not one I considered often. In my previous role, our leader’s “intention” to get us a partner Executive Coach to hone our leadership skills was met with shock and disbelief. Really – now? When we can’t find time to go to the bathroom? My wife was observing the stress changing even with what detergent she had to use to get my clothes clean. Now – when we were not sure this business would even survive?
Together managing…
🖋 The view from the new office was great – facing east over a man-made lake, I would be rocking out to Ray and watching the sunrise most mornings. I had negotiated hard for my offer – with the encouragement of my mentor, and was now glowing in the realization that I was well-positioned. A role that was a mix of technology leadership which I knew, and people development which I wanted to focus on now, Together in one place. One morning in the first week I was there, the recruiting manager who I had negotiated with came in, closed the door, and asked “Do you have anything you would like to tell me?”
engaging Together
“Oh wow. That is going to really cost you”. I had just gotten a call from the recruiter for the role that would take my career to the next level. Having made it through most of the interviews, I had won her over, and it was now down to the “final” interview: dinner with my family at the home of my boss and my peer, the CTO – Together with their families. They both had smaller kids – 8 and 6. Having started early (surprising you right ?) my kids were now mostly grown… so who would I take with me? And would I be able to pass this “charm” interview?
renewing Courage
A well-orchestrated job search, as 100’s of leaders I have worked with over many years say, ends with 2 outside offers, and one inside offer. It then takes Courage to choose between them, and also a lot of faith that you have done the best you can, and look forward with that same Courage. It all sounds very clean and tidy, which might lead you to wonder why I was in the building on a Saturday morning early, loading up most of my “stuff” with my wife … and slinking out of the garage…
executing Couragously…
I landed the role I am writing about this week late in 2002 with some luck during the opposite of what we are seeing now. An economic downturn after 2001 had frozen hiring, depressed salaries, and I felt fortunate to get anything, even this now meat-grinder role. The Courage to think about doing something else was tied up in one of the hardest issues to confront – money. Do we have enough, will we have enough, particularly with kids just heading into College. And yet, I knew that this was going to slowly kill me if I stayed…
wonderful Courage
“I know that we have the right team to pull this off!” said our VP from the front of the packed room. Giving us encouragement was one of the wonders of this particular leader’s talents, and what had got us all together. And, the wonder now was that this speech was exactly the same we had heard about a year before… and wasn’t working. Now it sounded more like pleading… and the feeling in the room was different – more desperation, and less belief we could actually do this…
observing Courage
It was 5 pm, and we were all lining up to go into the everyday “Evening Status Meeting” on the top floor of Pho IV, the newest building in our complex, and the heart of all of our work. I rarely left the building during the day, with breakfast, lunch, and dinner catered in so we didn’t take time away from the “work”. These meetings were twice a day – morning and evening – but the evenings are always brutal. As the “service” organization, the IT team was brought in nightly to be drawn and quartered by the SVP’s of the business, on “why haven’t you”…
The Courage to partner
If anyone tells you there is only one way to do something, they are lying or very misinformed. And it is particularly true in IT systems – both being told there is only one way, and that not being true. Our current predicament was caused by an IT person who was disgruntled with the way systems were being built, and left the org to build systems “in the business” – otherwise known as “without oversight”. And because he built them quicker and also knew more about the underlying business, the business used his group more and more. Now – those systems had to be replaced and completely re-implemented by “our” official IT group… and I had to be his partner…
Courage to manage
The Bermuda Triangle of my corporate experiences are: Pain, Change, and Courage. You might wonder why I chose Lovin, Touchin, Squeezin as the soundtrack of this post, and to be very clear, unlike others managers in the corporate world, those were never done by me 😉 But leveraging the principles of understanding what people really need and want from their workplace helped me manage and navigate between all of these elements. So what best practices have I experienced?
engaging with Courage
“Don’t be a Fred”. By now we are used to the different Southern Virginia dialect, so when our minister was reading one of the most prominent phrases in the Bible, we knew what he meant. Sorta. “Fear NOT” is one of those phrases that is like everything I do now – Simple, but not Easy. In the face of Continuous Change, most of which may NOT be of our own making, how do we engage Courage over Fear? I can’t solve this, but I believe it is something worth engaging in…
renewing Continuously for a Change…
“If your employees need their weekends to rest and renew, you might have a burnout culture.” I saw that headline … and the only edit I would suggest is to remove the word “might”. There are articles almost every day about it, and many leaders I work with are moving between roles to get away from it, believing that is caused by their situation. Sadly, it travels with them, and the dirty secret is the person who is most responsible for burnout is… you. I know – because it was (and is) me…
executing Change Continuously…
So what the heck is a Change Agent anyway? I didn’t see that career path in the College Catalog, but there are sure a lot of people out there with that title on their business cards. You’ve seen them, I am sure – in conference rooms, and in my generation, nice looking suits/pantsuits, expensive briefcases, and a stack of forms and “best practices” that they are bringing to your neighborhood to “help” you. And they always have an execution plan – timelines, milestones, and something called “deliverables” that they are going to “help” you develop. Yeah – like I actually have time to execute anything else… other than them 😉
Continuously wondering about Change?
If you study people, you quickly recognize that putting them together into groups and teams is… complex 😉 And if you wonder why I love studying musical groups, you can see how simply adding one new person completely changes things. In the research around Teams, the highest performing have been together for more than 2 years… but less than 5. Balancing Change and Continuous is something that is worth wondering about…
Continuously observing Change…
God is in fact a comedian. If you don’t believe me, then why would he put me into a “natural” career path where my most Continuously uttered phrase is “Slow Down”? Never a core competency of mine, it is the stance that I try to help others with … as they whiz past something important that they have said, or missed an implication of not observing what they actually know – versus what they want to be true. They are interested in Change – sure – but often miss the signposts on their Journey that make change both possible, and positive…
Continuously Changing partners?
Today I am hosting one of the final workshops for a group of brave souls who are piloting the Designing Your Life material that I prototyped on myself for the last year. They have all discovered the magic needed to sustain Change, particularly Continuously: partners. I would love to claim it is the material, and even my excellent leadership – but you all know me 😉 There is something about realizing that you are not alone…
managing Continuous Change…
“Why do I have to Change… AGAIN?” It is one of my most often asked questions — usually as I wrote about yesterday, in a raised tone of voice. The less polite version is clearer — “THEY should Change!!!” Yes… and “They” are not in this conversation… you are. You asked for this. Or didn’t, but either way, here we are again, managing Change… and the impossible nature of that work. In a workshop early in my Coaching career, a man said he can cure migraine headaches.
engaging with Continuous Change?
Change is exhausting. Continuous Change would then be constant exhaustion. So why would anyone actively choose to engage this as a stance for their life – work or personal? If we have learned something from the last 2 years it is that Change is in fact always happening, and either we get good at it, or we are constantly the victim of it
renewing The Middle
In the span of a little over 24 hours we were with friends who have celebrated over 50 years together, and then other friends that were celebrating the marriage of their daughter. The latter was filled with other young people who met at a Christian Camp set in the mountains of Virginia near Roanoke. The outdoor celebration was perfect for any occasion… but particularly perfect in this very strange year.
To execute The Middle
Many of you don’t believe all these things happened, and I don’t blame you. Unlike now, you didn’t have a camera in your pocket to record video – but boy if I did… IBM was the Apple of the 80’s – growing faster than the US economy, without rival in the computer business, literally called Goliath.
wondering what is The Middle?
The Moody Blues create music you cannot approach casually. Yes, they have amazing – well everything – but it forces me to really think — hard — wonder about things. Even the title of the albums put you in a different place – like today’s – To Our Children’s Children’s, Children. Those don’t exist for me – yet..
How do you observe The Middle?
The clearest way to know you are in The Middle is you are taking fire from all “sides”. In politics, another native Texan, Jim Hightower, said it colorfully — “There’s nothing in The Middle of the Road other than Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos.”
partners for The Middle
I became aware of The Middle as a management concept when I was in charge of Product Management — a critical job for any company, but particularly for a software company. The idea that you can build “anything” is mostly true — and only limited by resources — which are mostly time and people. As such, everyone thinks it is easy to do what their own area needs —
managing The Middle…
As I turned out of my subdivision this morning, I came face to face with a car that was coming down the hill right at me… and of course, that meant I was coming uphill right at him. Luckily we had a “centerline” and with the road curving, what appeared to be a problem was resolved as we both stayed “on our side”. It occurred to me how much implicit trust is involved in The Middle.
managing Under Pressure…. a quick update…
… do you know the scene in Forrest Gump where he just stopped running… and didn’t really offer an explanation? Thankfully, a few of you noticed that I “stopped writing” – which meant a few were actually paying attention and reading these daily muses. To be honest, like Forrest there was not a lot of thought given to it: once I realized I was going to make it for 365 in a row, that was an easy target. And crossed, it was interesting that I still had something to say – sorta
Joy renewal
As I stepped into rediscovering Joy, it is not a surprise it is related to creating things. Raised in a family of tinkerers, I was always in the process of either building something or helping someone build something. The wonder of imagining something that hadn’t existed before was something that was second nature with my Dad, having built things even in his youth out of scraps around his house.
executing Joy
Joy has been complex for the last year, and if you think about it, for a long time. We have been marinating in people either pointing at others who are keeping them from their Joy, or even more dangerous, how could I possibly be Joyful when I am so downtrodden. The transference of our own ability to manage… ourselves … to others has been spectacularly executed. It may be why watching the recent NCAA championship was so fun – it was watching some amazing players who have navigated all of the crap this year and now are at the peak of their Joy…
wonder of Joy
I am in a season of 35 one-shot coaching conversations with MBA students who had been taped in a simulation that they were set up to fail in… and no wonder, most did. Told they only have 15 minutes to convince the COO and CTO to take action, they soon realized there was nothing that would please them… because they had not taken time to ask them what they wanted. Some of the students even dreaded coming to our calls thinking that they were going to learn “what they did wrong”. And of course, that is not at all what happens…
Joy observation
It is a convenient coincidence that the “empower” words come in the order they are in. Yes, it is easier to make the acronym work, but these “middle” words tie together particularly well. That became clear a year or so back when I was talking with a partner who observed that I had lost my Joy. At first, I was a little taken aback, but as we talked through the assessment, she was right
partners with Joy
As we discussed with Happiness a few weeks back, Joy can be a fleeting commodity. It often arrives when you may or not be even looking for it, but appears with a smile, a laugh, a look. You may not know what has caused it, but the endorphin rush in your brain confirms it is real..and wants to recreate it again. For the last few years, all I knew was that something that I used to have, and had misplaced along the way, not in a dramatic way, more like how you lose your keys. You know there – somewhere – and you slowly retrace your steps to where you can remember last having them…
Joy management
Mistakes are the Joy of management, You read that right, and by the end of this, I hope to help you see that is true. We like to think that we are there to ensure things are done “right” and “perfectly” but if you read these enough, you know that mistakes are what has made both my life more interesting, and also the music I love the most. Today’s track is a perfect example of this, going through multiple mistakes to come one of the most important and iconic U2 songs.
Can you engage with Joy?
I have spent more than a year avoiding writing about one of the most expressed emotions I have seen escalate daily… and I am not going to engage now. I have always been more of an optimistic person, and people who know me get tired of me saying 2 phrases. Both are aspirational, and convey a real sense that I really do want to bring to every conversation. They are a direct antidote to that other thing that has been circulating and now has taken on a fever pitch in all areas of life… but there I go again. Let’s spend the week on better things – let’s talk about Joy!
renewing your Faith..
Easter ends 40 days of preparation this morning, and in many churches, it will begin with early Sunrise services, or as they are often titled, Son-Rise services. After Friday, and making it through the Day of Decision, we are now to the morning of what was predicted. What you had Faith in would be renewed: is it the world of men that had killed, dominated, and crushed a rebellion, leaving fear and trembling by all those who had seen it. Or could your Faith be in something else, something unseen, requiring deep belief in something that seems impossible…
Faith execution
One of the most difficult things to execute as a leader is called a “Declaration”. In the field of speech, that is defined as “a public communication that moves us toward a future possibility.” It must have Authority, a clear definition of the future state, inspire others to join in, be within their grasp… and slightly out of their reach. It is that last part – getting people to step up and join in the journey that is often complex… as without execution, it is just words. Faith is what causes you to actually move forward…
wondering about Faith
The wonder of Good Friday is back upon us. The Faithful focus on 3 major events in the year, and you can get a good argument going on which is the “most” important. It would mirror the conversation in the Upper Room last night – who is the most important Disciple? Who is the favorite, who has the most important role in the team? The bickering and fighting, jockeying for position…it is really a wonder that like many leaders, he would have thought twice about going through with the plan. After all, were they really worth the price that was to be paid?
Faith observations
Happy April Fools Day! If there was a holiday that I revere, it would be this one. As a natural cut-up and jokester, I often circle this day on the calendar for something fun. This year, it corresponds on the Faith calendar to a day called Maundy Thursday – one that I wasn’t really in tune with, the night of The Last Supper that you probably do know about. It is now observed as a fairly somber service where the church is stripped of all elements and hung with the darkness that would come with “Good” Friday…
partners in Faith
March Madness is all around us again, and I am really happy to have it back. So many memories of my life are tied to these months, and the early decisions that were made then are still playing out. Yesterday we talked about the bumper sticker about Faith and I realize that some of you don’t like me bouncing around my timeline, but at least the U2 storyline will be consistent. For there is really no way to talk about them without weaving in one of the most important partners in the band… and therefore a bit about my own story that is very similar.
management Faith
“Faith isn’t Faith until it is all you are holding onto”... read the bumper sticker that was on our refrigerator. Our little family was now in Northern Virginia in a house that we could barely afford, and had been slowly rebuilding/rehabbing it into our home. The kids...
The Faith to engage
How do you know that your team will actually deliver something for you? Frankly, how do they know you will do the same for them? It is well known that the number 1 reason someone stays in a job is their relationship with their Boss… and the number one reason they leave is… It is a constant conversation with leaders at all levels, and comes in all flavors but mostly centers on a word that once spoken, freezes a conversation: Trust. I want to engage this week and explore a word that I believe is both easier to use, and one that can also bring some complexity worth the hassle – Faith.
Happiness renewed
One of the arguments I enjoyed using in Debate was “Causality”. It is something that is often muddy – did this particular thing CAUSE this other thing. We see it all the time now in our reporting, and often is something that is simply correlated. A famous one is the Number of People who Drown in Swimming Pools and the Number of films Nicholas Cage stars in – have the same shaped graph. You could imply that one caused the other, but I doubt that would stick. But do you believe that Happiness causes renewal, or vice versa, or are they even causal?
executing Happiness
Being a “human doing” is easy for me, and probably the closest common denominator to what integrates Happiness into my day. If you remember fractions, and frankly who doesn’t, denominator means the quality/number that reduces those crazy-looking numbers into something you can combine together. Without stretching the math metaphor too far, it means that it is present in all of the things you are working with. All my best stories include, “I was … “ followed by something I was doing… A “human being” …and being Happy at that… a complicated conversation to execute…
Happiness wonder
As I crested the hill west of Tyler as a 17-year-old freshman, Happiness was palpable and real. My favorite radio station would only get stronger, a good stereo to set up in my dorm room was in my trunk, and an easy drive ahead to take me into the…. Future. I was as prepared as I could be, and now it was only to wonder how the story would unfold. Looking back 45 years later, wonder is what I can see in each of the various phases and steps that have landed me here… but Happiness… what actually is that?
observing Happiness
In the Will Smith movie 15 years ago, we see a man working to pull himself through a difficult period of his life. Starting as a Stockbroker, he quickly falls into a series of bad outcomes, until he is clearly not “Happy”. As we watch this true story brought to life, there is a particular phase he observes again and again. “Thomas Jefferson… how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what?”
Happiness partners
Who is around you when Happiness shows up? Seems like an easy question - and yet, as we discussed yesterday, very few of us actually know what it is in the first place, so noticing partners who are there, particularly those that are consistently there, is not...
managing Happiness
Like many things I start, they go well… until some odd unintended consequence pops up, usually just as I am figuring that out. When someone asked me to describe “What is Coaching?” being visual, I start with my Thumb (counseling), Pinky (Consulting), Pointer (life...
Happiness in engaging
As we round the bend on a year of many things, I was looking at my ring finger. Being old, it takes a LONG time to heal, and about this time last year, I was rebuilding one of my flower beds. We have a large surplus of rocks, otherwise known as living on a mountain, and they make easy garden borders. As I was placing one, the point crushed my finger – right on the nail. About 10 minutes of pain… followed by a year of the nail turning black, and being like that for most of the last year. Now, it is almost back to normal, with only a few changes… an interesting metaphor. What reminds you of what has engaged you for the last 364 days?
Differences that renew
Mid-day yesterday, the Earth passed through the mid-point of the trip between Winter and Summer - a day where there is no Difference between the number of hours of light and darkness. Exactly the same for a moment… and like teams that perform well, that stasis can...
execution Differences
I have been thinking about Teams a lot lately, particularly those that are formed in a crisis. They typically execute with “show up in a conference room at ….” and from there, take on a life and a feeling that is hard to describe. Leaders of those teams have a unique challenge – how to assemble a group that has all of the various skills that might be needed, and then, how to keep them together when there is not a lot that they share. Differences that bring strength and breadth also challenge you to communicate and lead in a way that says execution is about the work and not about what happens to you or others 😉
Different wonders
After listening, the hardest thing I work with leaders on is unlearning what they know. That may seem counterintuitive, but honestly, they don’t know it. Their brains have made it up… based on facts that it has chosen to observe, and ignoring those that it really doesn’t want to notice. The fancy name for it is the Ladder of Inference, but Paul Simon says it clearer “Still, a man hears what he wants to hear.. and disregards the rest”. When you really understand the depth and breadth of this deception, it is really any wonder we know anything…
Success had been tasted, but also had left some residue for Van to wonder about and resolve. Now in New York, he was influenced by Bert who helped Here Comes the Night and Gloria become hits to sign a contract that he didn’t read. He had a few songs collected and was persuaded to go into the A&R studio to record “4 singles” – which is typically 4 ‘good’ songs, and 4 that are the B sides. Now admittedly his B sides were great, but these were all recorded in only 2 days in March of 1967, and he really didn’t think much more about it…
… until he was called to let him know his first solo album was being released, including cover art that was highly psychedelic, and titled Blowin’ Your Mind. Van had never been a drug user, and was adamantly opposed to the release of the album, but the contract was clear that all control had been given completely to Bert, and as such the album came out. Even after Bert’s death later that year, the contract was in dispute which included a ban on performing without Bang Records approval… and Van was forced to move to Boston.
He struggled, but eventually was able to work out of the contract and land at Warner Brothers after, I kid you not, a $20,000 drop of cash in a warehouse on Ninth Avenue…and the commitment for 36 more songs. Van recorded them – on an out-of-tune guitar, with lyrics about Ringworms and sandwiches. They are known now as the “revenge recordings” and only saw the light of day in a 2017 release by Bang 😉 And… the wonder is that the time in Boston allowed him to work on one of the greatest albums ever… but I am again ahead of the story…
Like Van and his contract, your brain literally sees what it wants to see… even if that is not real. It constructs facts that match what it has seen before… unless you can slow it down and wonder what you are missing… what is not seen, or heard, or inferred. And it is particularly perilous as you ascend into leadership – where the common idea is you are paid for what you … know. And often that can work… until it doesn’t. And then you need to have either the ability to wonder yourself what you are missing, or have people around you that see it… Differently.
Those people blow your mind, saving you from decisions that the “facts’ in your head may support, but are actually wonders of your imagination. Differences in perspective that you need to either develop in yourself, or in those around you, so that your decisions are based on an integrated view. Differences that will challenge you, will even raise your anger, but can… in fact… slow down that supercomputer on your shoulders … to actually make better decisions. They are around you, and, like the hit that started a career that we still celebrate in spite of the contract, may come from a Brown Eyed Girl.
observing Differently
Your brain is an amazing invention, observing and integrating literally billions of bits of information every second. They measured the bandwidth of your eyes which is close to 9 GigaBytes a second. For reference, that amazing 4K TV you watch is about 25 MEGA bytes/second… so your eyes can actually send your brain 360 separate programs simultaneously. Use that when you get in trouble as I do for channel surfing. One they cannot do well is see a hot pan or in the dark, and in both cases, without other senses, you would get hurt… which is exactly the same in leadership.
Different partners
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! An interesting day like most modern holidays that has a Different story behind it than you may know. The day is supposedly the day he died and was buried in his adopted Ireland, and to celebrate that, the Lenten season’s ban on drinking is lifted for this day – and probably why there is so much of it 😉 After 20 days without, and anticipating 20 more days until Easter, it is a day to let it all hang out. And while the Irish were hated by most Americans when they arrived in the 1840s, we were more than happy to embrace any holiday that allowed a party…
engaging Differences
Turning to engage this week, we lost an hour… but that means we gain more evening on Wednesday … to celebrate the gift that Irish have been to the world, particularly to America. As a mutt myself, I have a special affinity for “… your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”. And it gives me the excuse I need to write about one of the true giants of music, and hopefully tell some stories that are Different – which is what the musical soundtrack and this week’s theme start with. Differences – which has received a lot of attention but…
Differences in management
Leadership and management are about making a Difference. Ask anyone who attempts it, and the motivation is to make things better, faster, more efficient, easier. Some definition of Different is embedded in both the role and the calling. Those who are not that role will often look up at them and wonder first why would anyone want that job, and then second, exactly what the heck are they talking about? Clearly, it is some other language, as what they are saying makes little or no sense to them…
renewing your Values
Of all of the Values that most teams and leaders list, renewal is rarely on the list. Particularly the leaders who really “care” and talk about “servant leadership” and are those people you want to follow. They find it very hard to carve out time for the most important resource – themselves. As I start working with leaders, I realize that most of my real value is forcing them to spend an hour or so on… themselves. Sure I can bring some Value with my clever questions, listening, some observations, even some much-requested “advice”… but realistically… just getting them to focus on themselves is what I am paid to do now…
The Value of execution
For as long as I can remember, I have been working – and not in a negative way. I love doing things, solving problems, creating things, particularly when they are complicated. As an executive I had to realize that making things EASY was actually WAY more important… and also, WAY more difficult. The way I would explain this to you in-person would be to draw a Venn diagram – which most of you won’t even remember from Geometry or Algebra. The idea is you have a circle, I have a circle. Where they overlap, we share… objectives, deliverables, targets, mission, etc. Easy with 2… but when organizations are large, the execution overlap becomes smaller and smaller… sometimes the Null Set…
The no wonder Values..
Like most weeks, Friday’s wonder post is the easiest to figure out with both what I am going to say, and the musician that embodies that quality for the band. It is a rare treat that the story also aligns with the song title. And if you read these enough, you might guess the player I focus on the most is the Bass player – and this week you would be right. But I am already ahead of myself – one of my Values that is less helpful is being “Restless” – racing ahead and never being happy with where I am. It is what made me a great Youth worker at church, and an even better recruiter…
Values observed
Today we observe exactly a year from when the Coronvirus became viscerally real. It had been bounced around through the weeks since January, but most people acknowledge that when the NBA suspended their season on March 11, 2020, that was the gulp heard around the...
Are partners Valuable?
There is a point in every career where it is clear that alone, not only can the work not be accomplished, it will not be nearly as Valuable and rewarding. For me, it was always that way. In High School Debate I had a partner. My first job at Texas Instruments was shared with a partner who handled “business” software while I handled the technical programs. The remainder of my time there and well into IBM, I shared offices and roles with peers, some easier than others. Not everyone makes that shift, and there are many singular leaders who give the impression that it is all about “them”, and occasionally their Values of “the cult of personality” can survive and persist… but at what cost?
management Values
I guess I actually DO have a nickel for every time I stood up in front of a new team, as the “New Guy” and said, “Hi, I am Mark House, and here is what I am about.” Actually compounded over the years, it’s what allows me the freedom to do this crazy new career, helping others have THEIR speech ready for that opportunity when it comes. And I actually stole most of mine from other great leaders along the way, who I suspect stole theirs from others. Because managing with Values actually works… because people can normally tell what your Values are (or aren’t)… before you can.
The Value to engage
As the New Year is now entering the end of the 1st Quarter, the pace of work is picking up – both as the crisis appears to be receding, but also a normal part of each year. Budget’s being finalized, and most of the year-end Performance Reviews completed, businesses and leaders are now making decisions on where to focus. What projects need to be accelerated, those that may need to be slowed, and staffing that needs to shift. Simultaneously, employees are engaged in the same decisions – is this really the place for them now… or? And key to both is … Values.
Celebrating renewal
After the encouragement of my roommate, and after trying other ways of renewal that were less fulfilling, I found the group at our local church to be the major hub for activities and renewal. We would gather for meals occasionally during each week, and particularly on Sunday, with literally 12 guitar players, leading singing for maybe another 20-ish. Friday nights were often go-kart racing or other fun activities, including one Halloween party that we are all glad there were no cell phone cameras for – no real bad activities, but some that, seen 45 years later, might be judged differently…
Celebration execution
Politics, or trying to not write about it, had a hand in starting these columns years ago. After being active in High School, begrudgingly, I tried to stay out of it in college, but to no avail. I was spotted by a junior in my sophomore year, and he wanted to groom a successor. There was a Student Senate, and the Engineering School needed someone to be on it, and he suggested I ran – which I did and served for 3 of my 4 years. He also wanted me to take over the Student Engineers Joint Council (SEJC), the student leadership group for the School, which I also did. This was one reason I was standing in the middle of the road on a Friday night, missing a shoe, waiting for my girlfriend to pick me up… and likely be executed…
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?
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
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
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
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…
Performing and renewing
After that jarring start yesterday, let’s take a more restful approach for today’s conversation. It is difficult to tell what is real and what is Performing, particularly as you consider another’s or your own stance on faith. Paradoxes of what is said versus what is done can be a conversation that goes in directions that are not renewing for anyone. For me, it has helped to realize it is more a dance, and sometimes the steps are not clear or easy, and balance is hard to hold…
executing the Performance
So who are you… really? A jarring way to start a Saturday conversation, but one that could be well-timed. Freed from your 9-5 commitments, what do you pick up and execute … first? As I have mentioned repeatedly, doing is what I do… Performing and acting. Resting happens only in the process of actually executing something to be completely honest. A weekend is best ended when there are activities that have been completed, things built, people entertained… you get the idea. Performing and execution go hand in hand in my world…
wonder who is Performing?
In my world, we talk a lot about Authenticity. Ironic as we also talk about Performing… and Presence… and lots of other catchphrases that are offered up as insights to help people become “better”. It is a wonder that we make any progress, with over 15,000 books published – each year, and the countless “self-help” blogs, video blogs, and writers like me giving you their pearls of wisdom to make it sound simple. I can offer this insight – it is not easy… but the trick I have found is don’t lose the ability to wonder what it is that makes you Perform at your best. There is always someone to help you in ways you can’t even imagine…
observing while Performing
Working under pressure has always been my “go-to”. Since I am now a coach, people think I have this all figured out, well I do. That IS what makes me tick. CHANGING that is not easy work as many have observed over the years. Threading the needle through difficult...
Your Partners in Performing
The First 90 Days is one of my favorite topics to work with new leaders on. That time is when they are at their freshest to see things that can really help business change and grow… and also are at the highest risk of stepping into things they are just starting to understand. As it is early in the year, I have a number that are on day 20-30 of that transition, and are feeling the compelling push to Perform – do SOMETHING… and another of my least favorite management “truisms” that is patently false – “Quick Wins”. They are rarely either, and most often damage your reputation with at least one partner.
What manages Performance?
There is an entire industry now built up around what is called “Vulnerability”. Brought to the forefront by researcher Brene Brown, now a legend, the concept is that deep inside all of us are fears that need to be managed. Left unchecked, they can get in the way of our best Performance, and often are topics that I work with leaders to understand and reframe – the coaching word for turning Lemons into Lemonade. The paradox often is that by not showing vulnerability in your early career, you appear to have it all figured out… which, to those of us later in our career, we can remember those days… and how Performance changes….
engaging Performance
A good friend was leading a workshop for leaders, and it caused me to pause. She enjoyed drama and theater, including music and dancing which we had discussed often… as hobbies. She was now offering training for managers on Improv, what they shortened “improvisation” to in Performance competitions. Perhaps from my days in Debate, where the Theater people were… “different” – a feeling they had about us also – I thought it was little off. What would Improv have to do with leadership? And then… I was called in to engage a team with…. no preparation…
The renewal of Harmony
Our week on Harmony ends where my first experiences were: singing at church. My parents hosted “The College Kids” from church in the early 60’s. They sang and played Peter, Paul, and Mary songs, and watching them blend their voices “in renewal” encouraged me to learn how to do that. I don’t know precisely what “ear training” is, but there are pictures of me sitting with my Flute-o-phone playing Harmony. Hearing the notes and getting your brain/voice to match was a fun challenge, which eventually I mapped into reading music… sorta…
executing with Harmony
When teams are at their peak, there are ways of executing together that anyone outside of the team may or may not even be able to observe. Little looks and phrases become cues for Harmony that is hard to duplicate. While the reason for being together may be stressful, those hours of work start to build up muscles that become second nature. In one season, I was in meetings 3 times a day with the same people – 6 days a week. We got tight enough to really understand how to cover for each other’s faults, and build on the strengths in ways that most teams will never experience. What causes that Harmony?
The wonder in Harmony
Finally, we get to the song that triggered the week. I have been trying to be more explicit about leadership and management tips lately, and hopefully, you have gotten a few. Today’s story is so rich that I don’t have space (or the need) to point it out. So wonder with me …. by this point, The Fifth Dimension is well on their way, having won multiple Grammys with multiple platinum records. They were in New York City playing a series of concerts when Billy Davis noticed his wallet was missing – having fallen out in the cab he had just stepped out of. “Well, that’s gone…. “
observing Harmony
We were at the hospital for a procedure, and the nurse couldn’t get the IV started. Without missing a beat, another one came right over, picked up the work … and the conversation … without even missing a beat. As a keen observer of teamwork, I perked up and started to chat her up about what it is like to work here? “It is amazing – from the people who take out the garbage, to the staff that mops the floors, to the administrators who make sure we have what we need, we all come together to provide you with the best care”. We were then whisked off to another room, with a similar experience…. How does that type of Harmony happen?
partners for Harmony
In watching the Food Network with my wife, there is a catch-phrase: If You’re Looking, You’re Not Cooking. Exactly the opposite is true with leadership, particularly now. Before last year, at least talent was mostly limited to work they could drive to… and now, I know for a fact that people have started preparing for the annual spring job search with a NATIONAL target. The war for talent is only going to get more intense as you can work from anywhere, and what will they be looking for? Harmony and partnership – pure and simple. The number one reason people stay is the relationship with their leader…. And the main reason they leave is … exactly the same.
Is your management Harmonic?
Harmony is distinguished from Unison singing – everyone singing the exact same note together. When men and women sing together, even though they are singing the same note, they are often separated by an octave or more. But choosing a Harmony requires intensely listening to each other, and you will often see the singers lean in, cover an ear, and then either read a note or more likely, trust their well-trained ear to pick up a note that blends together with the others. As more singers are involved, you have to be careful to not only hit your note, but stay out of the way of the others… constantly juggling your own musical path with those around you…
engaging with Harmony
A meme popped up last fall pointing out, in February “…a whopping seven planets (the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, plus asteroid Pallas) will all be clustered together in the sign of Aquarius, creating what’s known as a stellium in astrology. This intense influx of Aquarius’ fixed air sign energy in February will shift our focus to humanitarian issues, technological advancements, and unconventional innovations. And these themes will guide the framework of our society throughout all of 2021 and the years ahead.” But didn’t we hear this already – in 1967 – the dawning of the Age of Aquarius?
renewing Rhythm… You and Your Calendar
The one remaining element of Rhythm critical to Management Hygiene is summarized with a single word: When? All of the work on priorities, partners, directs, strategic planning, even email fail… unless they make it onto your calendar. As I tell each leader: your calendar does not lie – it shows who, what, and why you do what you do, and the paradox is that managing the calendar is the easiest and hardest exercise we do. In one engagement a leader wanted to move from 12 hours a day to 8. As we examined each day, by Thursday, after eliminating no meetings, I moaned, “…so you don’t really want to work less..:”
Rhythm that executes… Email and Writing
I grew up with email. My class was the last class to learn slide-rule in high school, and the first to move from punched cards to a terminal. And it was just as inside IBM and outside networks were starting to connect remote people together in ways that are still taking over our lives. I took typing in high school, not to be an admin (like my first bosses thought), but because being able to do it well was the connection to the rest of the world. Interestingly, studies have shown that people hate email – it takes up way too much of their daily Rhythm and produces very little ROI – and yet, they can’t let go. So who is executing whom?
wonderful Rhythm… Strategic Planning
In the early weeks of the year, the Rhythm of many organizations is “Strategic Planning Meetings” – otherwise known as “…wonder what the heck do we do now?” It is the place where the realities of last year, the current market assessments, and the dreams of the future come together to set out goals for this year. Similar to “Feeding the Bear”, well-run organizations have what they projected for “this” year from last year’s “5-year plan”, and can simply reorient that to what is now happening. But particularly last year has probably thrown that up in the air… or has it? Who sees over the horizon that you need to find?
Rhythmic observation…Status Reports!
A basic element of any effective management system is “No Surprises”. “Simple but not easy” does not even start to describe this critical part of your Hygiene. In fact, I have used a fairly graphic way of describing it to leaders, probably driven by where I now live. Our street in Virginia has a Rhythm of what are politely called “Bear Interactions”, the largest in our area… and our area has the most in the whole state. So we fairly regularly have a bear walk past our house. In fact recently, we observed not 1… or 2… we had 3… on our deck. They were small, but like surprised leaders, they can pack a wallop….
partners with Rhythm
In the same spirit as 1-1 meetings, nothing is more important than Rhythmic conversations with peers and partners. It is complicated, as for most of your career you are “competing” with them, imagining that only one of you will get the step up. There is truth in that, but also that without good relationships, you will become more and more insulated. To stay with the musical metaphor, without the band, the lead guitarist is flashy… but rarely would be recognized. So who are your “bandmates”, and how do you sort out how to partner with them?
manage Rhythm.. 1-1 Meetings…
One of the first questions I used to ask leaders in our initial Coaching conversation was “How often do you meet with your direct reports?” More often than not, it was met with a few moments of puzzled silence, and then typically “Oh we talk every day!” The HARDEST thing about coaching is not letting your judgment enter into the conversation. But to be honest, I normally sigh, and, as I’m a terrible poker player, that usually takes the conversation into a different place. I have at least learned to back up and ask a better question: “What is your approach to management?”… which helps me deduce the same thing… do they use the Rhythm method?
engaging Rhythm…by Listening
Balance is hard to achieve in any endeavor… until you notice you are getting slightly off-center. When I conceived of this blog, it would be a little music, a little leadership, and a story to make it memorable. These last few weeks, the leadership insights were like many management books, “Be Like Me,” which I find… not helpful. I needed to re-engage to establish a new Rhythm. The backbeat: it is Black History Month, so an African American artist focusing on Rhythm – what I call “Management Hygiene.” … there is only one person…
A Decision to renew…
As I was reaching the end of Junior High, I started to feel like I wanted to renew my faith by leaving my parent’s church. Not their faith - that was, and is, a lifelong gift I have from them and has never been in doubt. But there was another Methodist church in...
executing Playful Decisions…
My 14th birthday came near the end of the 9th grade, as I was about to head into High School. One of the Decisions my parents made was to push me up an entire year… and in Texas where kids were often held back so they were older/bigger for Football that meant many of...
wonderful Decisions
So who are we… really? If you study Ancestry family trees or watch Finding Your Roots on PBS, you see the family trees that create the web of life around us. The paradox is looking backward there are all these Decisions that created you… and then, looking the other...
A Decision to observe…
When my father observed that I was interested in photography and actually reasonably good at it, he Decided to buy me my own camera. The Rolliflex was a great piece of equipment with fantastic lenses and shot huge negatives that were 2 ¼” square. It was truly a...
partner Decisions…
Like everyone, I knew of Einstein, but the assignment was to give a live talk in costume for 10 minutes… and no pressure - it was only half your grade for that semester of 8th Grade. I already had an interest in science, but Deciding to spend hours partnering with...
managing Decisions…
I have written before about my best friend in Junior High and High School being Jewish. It was very clear to both of us that we really did not fit in, and at least I had only to stick it out for 5 years before I got out of East Texas. He had been raised there, his...
Decisions to engage…
Having missed Texas History, normally taught in 7th grade while I was in Florida, I found myself engaged in an advanced World History class taught by a relatively young woman teacher. She really knew how to keep us challenged, and again it was an interdisciplinary...
What is Efficient renewal?
Listen on iTunes My father was an Industrial Engineer, which he would remind you meant he had to master the hardest parts of ALL of the engineering disciplines. Schooled in drafting and lettering, he was rarely without a pencil and graph paper. That field...
executing Efficiently
So back to my teen years, and now I was “old enough” to be some help on the farm in Lubbock. Archie - everyone called my Grandfather that - had 200+ acres about 10 miles south of town, and I would spend 2 to 4 weeks of every summer out in the High Plains. I would...
The wonder of In-Efficient…
Listen on iTunes The wonder is at this point in my story, the LAST band I would have listened to was Asleep at the Wheel. My negative framing would have been “... an unoriginal cover band for music from an Okie - with lots of twangy steel guitar. Yuck”....
observing Efficiently…
Listen on iTunes When I was a small baby, my parents were out visiting Mom’s folks in Lubbock, Texas. My Grandmother kept babies in her home for much of her life, and as such knew a lot about them, and had other resources that she would draw on. One of her...
partner Efficiency
Listen on iTunes One thing that was big in East Texas were formal dances. No exaggeration, there were no less than 9 formal dances… a year. In fact, the Senior Prom when I got there was INFORMAL just to be different than the others. There was...
Efficient management
Listen on iTunes Breaking into the tight community that Tyler is was not something that anybody could manage Efficiently… much less an 8th grader. The money center for the Oil-rich area of East Texas, the bankers and lawyers they needed were now surrounded by...
The Efficiency of engaging
Listen on iTunes If you have noticed these postings being more coherent, better written, and easier to understand, it is due to my new partner/editor/producer. He has engaed each evening to sort out what I am trying to say, and providing insights that I think...
The renewal of Healing
If you needed another reason to dislike Texas, it hosts all 4 of the poisonous snakes, in addition to spiders and scorpions typical for the Southwest. East Texas was heavily wooded, compared to the near-desert conditions of West Texas, and in the leaves of those...
Healing execution…
Something that gets executed along with music is dancing. And generally speaking, that involves someone of the opposite sex, which somewhere in Junior High start to appear - different - but in a better way. And whether it is right or wrong, again it typically falls...
The Healing of wonder…
We moved to Florida when IBM started a facility there. Dad’s career needed a rotation through a “development lab” where he would understand what is involved in designing computers. It also brought some hands-on experience from customers and the “field” that ensured...
How does observing Heal?
One universal comment from people of my generation about the current times is “Thank GOODNESS there is no video to observe what we did in our youth”. As I start each week, after many comments from people observing “man do you hop around a lot!”, I now at least try to...
Healing partners
The first song that came on when I requested The Partridge Family is today’s offering, I’ll Meet You Halfway – perfect for the partner discussion. So exactly what does that really mean? When I was researching the song, various negotiation websites returned definitions of “halfway”, most of which made the point that it is rarely half of anything in a transaction. Actually, “partner” has the same fate – everyone thinks they know what it means, but it is rarely a common definition…
managing Healing
We moved to Florida when I was 10, halfway through 6th grade. Younger than my peers by at least a year, small to begin with, from Texas, I didn’t fit in on many levels. The Partridge Family started in the fall of 1970 just as I was entering the 7th grade, and my Mom...
Can Healing engage?
One thing I noticed last year was how the choice of music affected my mood. It always recharges me, but some music does that in different ways. That led me to intentionally engage in the various genres of music, some of which are not necessarily in my wheelhouse. ...
The renewing concept of Goals…
Wrapping up my current project, I am writing a paper to tie the software/hardware purchased back to what the organization was trying to do. Computer systems and software can do just about anything… and most organizations aren’t really clear on where they are going....
Could you execute these Goals?
Goals are simply statements... until they are executed, measured, and then revised. If you follow the state of the art in project management, that cycle has gotten shorter and shorter, to the point that now Agile Sprints are measured in weeks. The dirty secret...
wondering Goals…
It’s Kickoff season in most businesses, where Goals for this year are described in big meetings with lots of hurrahs and fanfare. In well-managed businesses, last year’s Goals will be measured soon after in the performance management process where each individual...
A Goal to observe…
I started this blog to explicitly keep me from writing and commenting about politics, and I don’t plan to start now... other than to point out the songs for this week, including yesterday’s and today’s were chosen last week. I do see the irony in that, and will add...
What Goals do partners have?
While we were both enjoying our classic cars, the business itself was in a tailspin. The CEO had decided that the cash cow product line needed to be rewritten in the new language that was “perfect” - Java. After nearly 3 years, a version was running about half as...
How Goals manage…
At the end of the day, Goals are made for management. This is why I find it fascinating that so few managers actually use them in a consistent way - for the teams or more surprisingly, for themselves. And I was no different - I headed into corporate America out of...
So…will your Goals engage?
Welcome to the official start of 2021! This Monday is the first of many days that stand out on the calendar every year, and are circled with a unique energy. Hopefully, you got some time away from the grind of last year, took to heart that this year will be...
The renewal of Retrospectives…
Preparing to renew...Living in the DC area, we always had a snow/ice storm sometime in December. Set up to “work-from-home” since 1992, I stayed home and wrote reviews all day. Watching the snowfall, it was a privilege to write about the many great things my...
executing Retrospectively..
After 2020...I wonder what “20/20 Hindsight” means now… or 20/20 vision. With that "amazing" year firmly in the rearview mirror, Retrospectives are popping up all over the web. Your most important “this,” how you learned “that,” which strategy was …...
Retrospective wonder…
Where is your wonder?Something that we collectively lose track of as we get older is our ability to tune into our own inherent creativity. I am reminded of that with my grandkids, who are constantly up for something: singing off-key, painting outside the lines, or...
observing Retrospectively…
Believing what you observe... Retrospectives are, at their heart, all about observation. It is taking time to look at what happened... compared to what you thought would happen, and then adjusting accordingly. There are formal mechanisms in the Agile community that...
Who partners with your Retrospective?
Energy partners...As an extrovert, much of my energy comes from interacting with others. My wife is an introvert… so the rhythm of my being gone for a few days worked well mentally and financially for us both 😉 The long drives to DC allow me to charge up with loud...
managing your Retro-perspective
manage to Celebrate?Leadership books are always a hot topic with Coaches, and in a recent inquiry, many were bantering about this or that book that has some new insight or wisdom. For all the writing and focus on what makes great leaders, we seem to be missing so...
Retrospective to engage…
Particularly In 2020 - and every year-end...This week will end with probably the most anticipated change in numbers - ever. Rolling from 2020 to 2021, there will be a collective sigh that this year is over. The fascinating thing was remembering back to last year, we...
Unexpected renewal…
Within walking distance of Fannie was one of the best TexMex places - probably in the country, but for sure in the DC area. As such, you could walk down, have a good lunch, a Margarita (I can now confirm), and walk back renewed in an hour. Hand-made soft tortillas,...
executing Unexpectedly
Once you set your mind towards something, it actually fools you by finding more data to support that “perception”. The “red car” problem is Unexpected .. and real - once you start looking for them, your brain is more than happy to throw out the others and focus on...
wonderfully Unexpected
Merry Christmas!!! When I saw “wonder” would align with the day, I knew all was right with the world. For today is full of many miracles of wonders and love, some of the best of which are Unexpected. I am not easy to surprise, being a control freak...
observing Un-expectations..
Knowing that you need to make a change, and actually doing it are related, but take a different focus. Much of the trite advice you see, like “You should go TO something and not run FROM something”... like my Bosses feedback… not so helpful. In fact, my experiences at...
Partners in the Unexpected
Today’s lesson comes from trigonometry - and now I know I have lost most of you. Hang in there - it is not that complicated, and a better leadership lesson is “what goes up, must come down”. I just like the symmetry that a nice sine wave has - gently cresting, and...
Unexpected management…
Control is an elusive term in management. Computer systems are all built from “requirements” - what is known, “expected”, or assumed, and how to manage it. They only control what you prepare them for, and even the illusion of AI that you hear so much about is still...
engaging the Unexpected…
It is the season of Christmas Cards, the time when you see pictures of old friends, and families that share the stories of the year in pictures and letters. Some are very sparse with only a few clues as to what happened during the year, while others have complete...
If you don’t Prepare to renew….
When I get to the end of writing about an artist, there is always a tinge of remorse. Have I featured enough about them to make it worth your while to wander through their catalog? I am constantly amazed about what I learn, and I hope that I can get some of that...
To Prepare to execute
In the ‘90s, the mode of communication was a “pager”, and by the time I had one, they at least had characters so it was very similar to the texts’ of today. In Ops, I was paged literally 50 or 60 times a day… some were informational, some were important, but you were...
Can you Prepare wonder?
If you sized Fannie Mae on its impact, influence, and swagger in the Housing Market, it is a giant, like the huge Georgian Mansion that it occupied on Wisconsin Ave. But as a company, it was actually very small - around 5,000 employees. As such, it didn’t command...
observing Preparation
I exited Ops to go back into the Development part of Fannie, supporting a group of reusable components that were the “secret sauce” to accelerate what you now know as “apps”. The idea is to have some proven “building blocks” of function so that you are Preparing...
Preparing to be a partner
A common thing people Prepare for is the next “promotion”. The next level up is an illusion that I have now heard hundreds describe as: “better”, “easier”, “more satisfying”, or my favorite, “more powerful”. It is always implied and often stated that clearly it is...
Preparation management
As I have gotten older, I have recognized that knowing what you don’t know… admitting it and asking for help… is a virtue that is not well recognized and not well understood. I really didn’t want to be an Ops person, didn’t have any choice, so when I had enough...
engaging Preparation
If you are involved in the latest thing in IT development, you have probably heard the term “technical debt” - otherwise known as decisions made in the past to make things “easy” that have snowballed into something needing attention, now. In Ops, that is shown in...
renewing Persistence
Three amazing gifts of moving to the DC area and working for Fannie Mae changed the course of my life. The first was realizing that THESE people had a LOT of money, so trying to fight and catch them was very unlikely. The second I have written about before - now...
Persistent execution…
You’re going to think all of my time as a “customer” was doing deals with vendors, and that is not far from the truth. I came of age as custom software turned out to be more complicated and expensive to write and support than “standard” packages… and also led to the...
wonderfully Persistent…
This spring I will have worked full time for 45 years. From age 17 till now, almost exactly 15 years as builder/vendor of computer systems, 15 as a customer/user of computer systems, and now 15 years studying people and how they interact with each other. The most...
observing Persistence
As engineering continued to grow, I picked up another direct report with a great team focusing on backend services. While our handcrafted tools were great, we observed companies now offering solutions that were similar, and offered the advantages of “support” and...
A partner with Persistence
The NeXT team was integrated, with both Ops (now) and engineering (the future) in the same small team. This meant those engineering the future were also living with the actual issues day in and day out. As our prestige grew, I stepped up into engineering for all...
managing Persistence….
If you talk to any IT person, other than those on the Network team, you will find that pretty much everyone hates the Network team. They are never wrong, never changed anything, and in our case, a small mistake could wipe out whole swaths of perfectly fine systems. ...
Persistent engagement
Now that you know the Team, there are still a few stories that are worth spinning around my tour through Ops with the NeXT team. Today’s starts with the fact that our NeXT PC’s were required to have 32 Gig of memory - when 4 was normal and thus, “our” PC’s were full...
renewing Promises
The culture of most Ops groups are the same everywhere… and yet unique compared to other parts of IT. It is almost entirely understood by one simple metric: have you been on call yet? New guys (and they were mostly and are guys) would show up with an impressive...
How does a Promise execute?
We were again in my office, which you are going to soon think is more a Disaster Recovery location, particularly after today’s offering. We were sitting in the dark - not because of the hour, but because there was no power in the building. As you might guess, those...
wondering about Promise…
I know I have written before about the great office I had for this season - whiteboards on both big walls - and a big conference room table - a very nice dining table, actually. Anyway, none of that mattered as it was very early in the morning, and the whole team was...
The Promise of observation…
Like children, you don’t really have favorites on a Team… or shouldn’t. It is where the analogy with Pooh may break down, as he is Christopher Robin’s best friend and confidant, and also the center of the story. And like Piglet, the name and character can sound a...
The Promise of partners…
When I started teaching at JMU, I started to notice people that I worked with from there… and there was a very consistent theme. They were all really nice people. In fact, if you are in the Mid Atlantic area, and work with someone that is easy to get along with, ask...
Management Promise…
I really hadn’t intended to land in Ops, and frankly thought my “career” was over. Pretty much everyone wanted the NeXT team to fail… hold their breath, and this will pass like other “brands of the month” that most organizations see happen. What they didn’t know is I...
engaging the Promise…
Our group was “Advanced Technologies”, doing cutting edge work with the Promise of Object Technology, Artificial Intelligence, etc. And we were in the IT group responsible for systems that ran the "business", and were barely off of Mainframes in the early 90’s. Our...
renewing your Thanks…
We spent about as much time at Church as we did at home during this season. Some of it was proximity - we were the go-to for all kinds of things since we could walk there in 30 seconds. Beth was involved in a Wednesday night dinner for the church family - the...
executing Thanks…
After playing for a few years, particularly around Church, people got to know a bit about what we were doing. A member of our church approached us: his son was taking “violin” and was interested in possibly playing with us. He was “only 12”, and as the person that...
The wonder of Thanks…
Fannie Mae was located off of Wisconsin Ave in a HUGE palace of a building - fitting for the “home of housing”, but imposing and a little stifling. As such I had a regular habit of getting out for lunch, often walking north to a great Thai restaurant that had great...
Thanks-observing
Happy Thanksgiving! ….and, of COURSE I have a story - actually more than one. Come on - it is 250 days in a row - today, and that doesn’t count the 175 I wrote before. You may or may not be Thankful, but I am for the opportunity to try to make sense out of the...
Who are you Thanks partners?
When I arrived at Fannie in 1992, there were about 400 developers/contractors… and we used about 400 development tools. Now, innovation and creativity are important, but at the end of the day, we were a bank, so the ROI of that many different tools was hard to...
Can Thanks manage?
Before I left IBM, my new Boss needed me to come to a very important kickoff meeting before I was supposed to start. The good news is that the meeting had some people from IBM there, so I sorta blended into that team, although I got some paranoid looks from the other...
What Thanks engage you?
Leaving something is never easy, particularly when I hadn't actually looked for a job in over 13 years. I also had to navigate telling my parents the IBM that provided our family its livelihood was now completely different than they had experienced. There were also...
Can Change renew?
Our offices in Crystal City were magnificent, with my boss having a great view of the city. It was a small team, so we would gather around his desk and he would engage each of us.... only after he finished reading The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The...
Change execution…
The whole concept of LeadingWithMusic is to talk about using the power of Music to Change the way we think and act as Leaders and people, taking you on a journey linking the 2 together with examples from both. Lately, I have been receiving a lot of feedback that my...
The Change of wonder…
Today's story starts in a Maryland suburb with a kid graduating from high school and started at a local college. There he started working on building his first guitar from scratch, and realized this is what he wanted to do with his life, and dropped out of college....
What does Change observe?
So at this point, we were trying to get a staid Federal manufacturing facility to become "lean" and cost-efficient to produce commercial products. At the same time, we were trying to steer through the Unix wars both inside and outside of IBM which were becoming pretty...
Change partners…
If you ever are asked to work a business show, my advice would be say NO. You stand in a booth and answer questions from people who are never actually interested, and/or handing out chatzki which is what they really want. With my reputation, I was nominated to work...
Do you manage Change, or….
Being "different" was a core competency of not just me, but my boss for this season, and probably why we bonded so well initially. He could have easily selected an office in FSD Headquarters in Bethesda, but having been around HQ in other divisions, he knew that would...
SO… engage with Change?
As you might have guessed from last week, despite saying we would never move to DC, by the Summer we had made the decision to make a Change and permanently leave Texas for the DC area. Even though the project was not in the greatest shape, the opportunities looked...
The renewal of Hope..
Transitioning the project from Research to FSD included my boss changing into our division, and physically moving from New York to DC where our headquarters was. His choice of offices was a small marketing office that was in Crystal City mostly used for reps that...
executing Hope…
Having already worked multiple business shows for IBM on the Space Program, I was the natural person to hit the road for demos once we had enough hardware and software to do something convincing. It is always a little stressful - ensuring you have the right...
The wonder of Hope…
IBM had always been involved with the American government marketplace and formed the Federal Systems Division in 1957 to give a special team for that focus. Initially working on Defense-related projects, it would quickly also be the home of the work on the Space...
observing Hope…
Now surfing across the top of IBM, I had access to VP's and Senior Vice President's who literally managed over 100,000 people. It was a long ride up through the many layers of the company to get there, competing on ideas and approaches against each other to "win" the...
What do you Hope for in partners?
While I was helping get the Intel card up and moving through IBM, our specific challenge was to build something that had multiple processors. The idea was to demonstrate that with more than one processor, you speed things up faster than waiting for the silicon to get...
managing Hope…
It was always dicey traveling out of the Ithaca area in the winter, which is basically not July 😉 We were heading to a meeting down at IBM Research in late January to discuss the handoff of the design to manufacturing, and 4 of us were standing in the Binghampton...
Hopeful engagement…
Our little card was starting to get some notice across IBM, and for our little team, I was assigned to go out and meet with customers. As such I had been having conversations with a sales rep out in Chicago that was working with a very large publishing firm. She had...
How to renew your Fun?
The center of the IBM universe was a very small town in "upstate" New York, which I had learned meant "... everything NOT in New York City". Nestled between Valhalla, and Pleasantville (who could script that), Armonk was we now what we call the "Mid Century Modern"...
Fun execution…
With many not flying, it is fun to reminisce a bit about a different era of flying, when it was a little less uptight and a lot more Fun. If you are under 40 you probably never flew on a 747 or a DC 10, and definitely not one that had a stand-up bar - in the cabin. ...
The wonder of Fun…
I have traveled to the Silicon Valley area that is now so revered since early in the '80s at the start of my career. When I first went out, there were still lots of cherry trees that were native there, and the "Valley" included stands that sold baskets of them by the...
Fun observations…
This little card from Intel was roiling large portions of IBM, which I had Fun observing. This nearly 100-year-old company had been able to dance through multiple changes adroitly. Now with so many competitors in so many different fields, the byzantine leadership...
partners for Fun…
I know I was gone for 250 of the 300 days available in 18 months for this season… New York’s taxes are SO horrendous AND they only tax you when you are “in the state” that you actually keep track. When I had the chance to actually take the family to Chicago (where...
Fun management…
Fun is important... These stories will exceed your realism meter... as in "there is no way THAT is true". Yes, they are... and I will not exaggerate - they don't need it. It was a bizarre season where I 1) had the energy to keep up this craziness, 2) it seemed...
engaging with Fun…
Where does Fun begin?We were into our second week of touring Europe with the kids. I realized that with Amie 12, the “family” would be in a different place within 6 years. We had set about driving through Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and were this day somewhere...
The Opportunity to renew…
I have written about being fired before, and I have used that story with a number of others who now I can honestly say, "I know how you feel". It is not fun, and yet... like the Stock Market, it puts in the "bottom" that you either grow from, or get angry. In this...
executing Opportunities…
I was fortunate that there was another tech company literally across the street that needed a VP of Engineering. I interviewed with the leadership team and found it was similarly a merger of 3 companies that were mostly in the Imaging space - storing and processing...
wonder what Opportunity is?
After a couple of years, the work at Merant was into a "good" rhythm. I was enjoying meeting with customers and trying to figure out how to develop Product Roadmaps that would resolve issues they were having both with our current offerings, and also the market...
observing Opportunity…
The company I joined was headquartered in Maryland, but I led teams from an acquisition located in Beaverton Oregon, which in turn had bought a company in the UK. Being in DC was actually helpful as I could bridge the time differences, but also meant I had long trips...
The Opportunity to partner…
At a Women In Technology meeting a few years ago, a young woman said "How did you construct such a perfect career plan for all of these experiences?" Well... if you read these regularly, you know that planning is not really a core competency. Recall I got the Fannie...
management Opportunity…
It was another meeting, another group of people, and by knowing the list, I didn't even need to know the topic. I could tell you who would say what, what would not be decided, what would not be done... and I knew more than ever it was time to move on. Through a series...
Opportunity to engage…
Some of my first memories are musical - playing records at 78 because the would go faster 😉 And of course, the College Kids dancing and having fun while music was playing set the standard that those go together. I took piano and quickly got good enough to...
renew your Guts…
The structure of these postings causes me to bounce around a lot. To be frank I don't need an excuse to bounce around - that is a core competency so maybe I should replace renew with random 😉 And I am old enough to know that doesn't work for others... and actually...
execute your Guts out..
Two of my kids worked in my organization - not directly in my chain, but in an adjacent piece that did Operations for the code that my team wrote. Ops and Engineering classically have "different" types of mindsets, and I had actually been in both, and recognized that...
Guts to wonder…
I come from a long line of tinkerers. Both my grandfathers had no money through the Depression and World War II, so they had to reuse/repair everything. That was passed along to my Dad who looked with disdain on "new" anything. People make fun of McGyver, but I grew...
Do you have the Guts to observe?
It was another Lock-In for our Church Youth Group. A time tested recipe for lack of sleep, lots of hormones, and hopefully some memories that will last. This particular one I arrived on fumes to start with - a long hard week of work, and then the drive down to...
What Guts do your partners have?
When you would walk into a Debate Round, you would put your name on the ChalkBoard - your number, and then your names, so the Judge would know who you were. You would get scored both as a team and as an individual. As such you had a "brand" as a team. Jack and Jones...
… the Guts to manage…
We were losing the game. It was the final of the All-Star Tournament, and as such it was a blend of players from multiple teams. It was the age (U-16) when individual stars could be overcome by great teamwork, which is how we had gotten into the Finals. And yet, we...
engaging with guts…
I had already planned to get back to harder rock this week - I fake the love of the others music but hard rock is my first love. Following Feet was going to Guts - as in: "You are going to need them to get your own and other Feet to move". AC/DC was what I had...
Feats of renewal…
Where are your Feet going?My new profession is a lot like teaching Sunday School. You enter someone's life and, for a season, are with them for a part of their journey. Hopefully, things will go well, and at least with 6th-grade boys, they will graduate and will no...
Feet executing Feats
How do your Feet execute?I am pretty sure this is the longest I have had my Feet in the same place... probably since I was born. I am taking yet another class, this one on "The Neuro Science of Change" spending a lot of time on the "embodied self"... and for me, it...
Feats of wonder…
wonder what Feat you will be impacted by?I was wearing a baseball cap with NASA on it, which matched the T-shirt of the young man checking us out at Costco. We naturally struck up a conversation, not that I ever need an excuse 😉 I started talking about my work on...
observing your Feet’s Feats…
Are your Feet going where you want to go?Many people are starting to reconnect to their initial goals for their lives. Being forced to actually hold still for Covid, I can certainly relate - this much time to NOT be chasing after something has brought a different...
The Feat your partners perform…
What Feat will you do for a partner...High School Debate was something you could not do by yourself. You had a partner, and you won or lost together, and there is something about being closely linked with someone else that has always worked better for me. Growing up...
How are your Feet managed?
Do you manage on the wrong Feet?Breakdowns are typically the places where great stories start... not end. It is the realization that something is not working, or you are not fitting in, or the thing you have designed doesn't work. While it seems like a failure, it...
What Feat engages your Feet?
Feet engage for different reasons...Happy "Federal-Sponsored-Holiday-for-Italian-Americans-now-controversial-because-of-who-they-chose-to- honor." Columbus Day was on-and-off through history - starting in 1792, refreshed in 1892 when 11 Italian Americans were lynched...
… the renewal of Patient…
It was the classic corporate meeting, conducted in a classic large conference room on the West Coast. All of the officers of the company were gathered to hear from our new CEO. Until recently, he had only been a member of the board, but with acquisition after...
…executed by Patience…
Engineering is a field that requires systematic thinking, applied linearly, and methodologically to problems. The best compliment you can pay them is using the phrase "reduced to practice". That means that you can actually show someone else exactly how to reproduce...
…the wonder of Patient…
My sons were musing with me about the continuing dominance of the USB interface on computers. The "Serial Bus" was originally looked down on - it was slow, it was "only serial", and would "clearly be replaced with faster". The new version of USB will actually likely...
observing Patience…
Our boss had hired a consultant to come in "help our Team be more productive". It was like the LAST thing I really wanted to do. First, we were not a team - more a collection of people put together because we all had something to do with Data... but beyond that, it...
Partners for Patience…
We were in a bad place. We had sold software that we had barely started writing, and the customer was figuring it out through a series of conversations that had made it up the chain to the business leader. My engineering team was obviously intimately involved, and...
Patient management…
Those two words have NEVER been used with me... until I had to. It was the only thing that would work, at scale, with a global team. Being random and abstract is lots of fun, and I still have times for it... but to really manage well, you have to be predictable. In my...
Patiently engaging…
You may not realize it, but not only have I been working on an artist each week, but these themes have also been building. So after Virtue, comes Patience... well, after someone who like me didn't have it, suggested it 😉 I have slowly been telling more and more...
The renewal of Delegation…
If you feel bad about how effective you are with Delegation, look at God. As we like to say these days "... you had one job.....". He set up... wait for it.. the ENTIRE universe. Like I remind people often, everything you see around you comes from about 28 lego...
Delegation execution…
"Every time I give them something to do, I have to redo it. Spelling errors, grammar, all of it!" Gently I suggested ... "... you have trained them to do that". "OH no! I am not a micromanager - I really support my people, and want to see them grown and...
The wonder of Delegation…
Watching my grandkids, you watch as they slowly begin to control the world around them. Their first tool is crying, which puzzled young parents eventually figure out the difference between a tired cry, a frustrated cry, a hungry cry, or a bored cry. As they get...
What do you observe in Delegation?
My love of jazz was cultivated over years, noticing that I studied better with songs that didn't have lyrics. Not that I don't appreciate great lyrics, but it frees my mind to focus more on the tones, and also the "work" I am trying to do. I never studied in the...
Your partners in Delegation…
In the process of looking for a new Senior VP of our business, I was on the interview team. While I would not be reporting to this person, he would be leading the business teams that my engineering teams supported, so my input was helpful. I received the resume in...
Managing Delegation….
"Delegation is a math problem. If you can figure out how to have 5 others do the work you could do even 50 % as well as you, you will be 250% more effective." That was the way I was welcomed into the ranks of "management". Buried in that simple statement are a...
How do you engage Delegation?
As things are stabilizing this fall, more and more people are offering on-line workshops. The ability to teach to an audience that can be global, without having to rent a room, organize food, travel, etc, has been remarkable. Done well, you can actually create a...
Navigate and renew your Positive Intelligence…
Like Activate, Navigate moves you forward...I finished a different class last week with over 60 coaches from all across the globe. It has been confusing for my wife as I have been mixing the 2 together in our daily walks through mountains and finally put it together:...
Activate and execute Positive Intelligence!
Activate helps you execute..So long as we are taking a brief tour of my Father's gifts to me, there was this jem - "Engage Brain before putting Mouth in Gear". And with as many voices going on in there, that is harder than it sounds. 😉 "Still the mind" was Bruce...
wonder about Innovating Positive Intelligence
Innovate is a wonder to behold...One of the great gifts my Father gave me was an ability to turn things around. He had a famous saying that rings in my ears daily: "If you can't fix it, Feature it". It is so nonsensical as to be comedic... yet true. Stepping into...
Explore while observing Positive Intelligence
observing you will find Sage Explore..."Slow Down." "What are you not seeing here?" These were not easy, natural shifts for me. Rushing to the "right" answer, jumping forward with the "obvious" thing to do, even finishing peoples’ sentences because "I knew what...
partner with Sage Empathize for Positive Intelligence
The partners you need are 5 Sage voices... That is probably the longest I have written about "negative" things in a long time. The way the Positive Intelligence material is presented is similar: we are spending time really getting a grip on how to blunt the voices...
The Controller Positively mis-manages Intelligence
The Controller gives the illusion of managingStratocasters are amazing instruments, particularly in the hands of a true master like Eric. After the gifts he purchased, he had a few remaining - and because you can mix and match parts, he disassembled them and created...
Does Positive Intelligence engage your Victim?
When The Victim engages... When I put the "setlist" together for these two weeks, can you believe I didn't have Layla anywhere? It is such a classic Clapton song that I wasn't sure where to slot it in, and actually didn't at first. Add to that there are SO many...
Restless renewal of Positive Intelligence…
Both Restless and renew start with "r"...As often happens, today's post was penciled in first. This is my last remaining personal Saboteur and the one that I think guides all of mine... Restless. And I knew it would land on Sunday, the day of Rest, a Sabbath set...
Avoiding executing with Positive Intelligence?
The Avoider can execute on auto-pilot... Being caught between Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, Eric more and more just wanted to be a small-time blues guitar player. Hard to pull off when you are acknowledged as one of the greatest ever. But rather than confront that,...
wondering if Positive Intelligence is Rational?
Rational, particularly Hyper, makes you wonder... All rock music is Blues - at high volume. Full Stop. If you are Hyper Rational, that is what you would say. It all started with 3 chords, in the Mississippi Delta literally at the Crossroads of Highways 1 and 8 in...
Sticking with Vigilant observation of Positive Intelligence?
Sticking to what I am observing is... I can't tell you how many people have tried to get me to focus. When it happens, it can be amazing - like putting all 21 spelling words into only 3 sentences when I was in the 2nd grade. But - it is extremely rare, and why...
Is Pleasing your partner in Positive Intelligence?
The Pleaser is a partner that... I am told often that I have a very pleasant demeanor. Normally as I am listening to others talk, I will smile, nod to encourage the person to continue to talk. Ministers in particular have commented that as they deliver their message...
managing Hyper-Achiever with Positive Intelligence…
Like Eric's use of an overdrive pedal ... When constructing the stories each week, I try to keep the music in order, making it easier to understand. The additional constraint adds to the 7 empower elements, the theme for the week, the musical selections, and my...
engaging Positive Intelligence… Here Come the Judge!!
engaging Positive Intelligence...Like everyone, I have had a bit more time at home lately, and have been putting that into learning. I am just starting a new program called Positive Intelligence, which claims to put together research about The Brain, Positive and...
How do you Engage to Leave?
Listen on iTunes I was going to take the week off from writing (again) when of course a great song comes on. One thing I love these days is how much time I have in the car - seriously. I love driving and I made it a gift to not “work” in the normal sense...