What partner keeps you Alive?Both of our predecessors quit. Mine, in Product Management, and his,...
Leadership topic - partner
with customers and teams to produce world-class results. Manage stakeholders, address issues effectively and practices the fine art of negotiation. Blends people into teams when needed; Can quickly find common ground and solve problems for the good of all; Can negotiate skillfully in tough situations with both internal and external groups; gains trust quickly of other parties to the negotiations; has a good sense of timing.
Roadblock – Competes first versus sharing responsibility, Optimizes for their team/personal goals first. Delegates pieces and parts; treats people as a collection of individuals not a team.
Belong as a real partner?
Belong as a real partner? Be a 15-year-old boy, in a suit at Kroger’s, buying Tampons on a Friday...
What partner eases your Mind?
I have not created anything alone since I was 14... Craig is the reason a lot of this work exists....
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.
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…
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,
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…
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.”
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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?