Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

Webster defines redemption as: The act of making something better or more acceptable.

While in college, I took a class more than once if my achieved letter grade was below an acceptable level. I had to demonstrate that I reached a certain mastery of the concepts taught in order to move forward. If you never went through this yourself, Congratulations!

If you are familiar with this process, you likely pushed your preconceived capabilities or you sloughed off, maybe drank too much, worked your way through to pay for school, started a family before you could afford them or some derivation of the common events listed above. Congratulations for having gone through it!

I never envisioned going through this life-lesson route once, let alone again. Academics and life having some direct relationship? Hmmmm.

Is it possible that even after reaching the executive leadership level in an organization, that a new opportunity be presented offering reconciliation of scorched earth created by former decisions required to perpetuate a previous business? If that is God’s plan, it is. As if he is saying, “Do it again. This time, be better.”
-to your family
-to the people you influence
-to ALL of the stakeholders involved, regardless of their predisposition…

Everything happens for a reason. Your life is a set of experiences that prepares you for what’s next. As they say in Dale Carnegie training, “practice makes permanent”.

Reflecting back on my time on earth, specifically while holding leadership roles…
I didn’t shake every hand every time every day. (Not a politician)
I didn’t make everyone feel they were special (Not Oprah Winfrey)
I didn’t convert every brilliant idea into billions of dollars (Not Elon Musk)

But,
I did commit to a series of challenges that most sane people would have walked away from, and most did.
I did commit to finishing what I started.
I did point out the true potential of the people and organizations I encountered and refused to buy in to the same excuses they used themselves to take an easier route and concede before the race was over.

This time, I’ll do it with noticeable compassion and demonstrated empathy.  Do you need a hug?

Save yourself the trouble and show how much you care before you try to change the world. Otherwise, you’ll be destined to repeat it … until you get it “right”.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

No profane words were used in the creation of this blog.

I was 14 when it really started. Today, we hear stories of 4 year old children…and ultimately their parents…reprimanded at daycare for simply repeating choice words heard at home. Maybe even played out with some body language for dramatic emphasis. Comparatively speaking, I’m a novice. In reality, my inspiration was survival.

I was driving a gravel truck working alongside grown men, a black swan trying to fit in a game of white swans (I thought it would have been flock, too). One particularly crusty old man (call him Bud for the story sake) seemed to be offended by my presence. We both had spots on our face; mine were pimples and his were basal cell carcinoma. I thought we were kindred spirits. Bud probably just smelled like spirits.

It had rained the night before and county road shoulders get soft and aren’t all accommodating for two loaded trucks passing each other. Bud crowded the crown (no center line stripe in rural Minnesota) and I got sucked in like it was quick sand. This incident triggered a stream of profanity from both drivers and my boss/father/rescuer who had to back up his loaded semi half a mile to pull me out.

I still blame Bud because even at 14, I sensed intention which he denied vehemently later when questioned by my protective boss. His disposition was vocational and mine was innocent, naive and dutiful. Frankly, I was tickled to spend time with Dad. The myth, the legend, the self-made man who seemingly willed his way through the work world. Easily the hardest working man I ever knew…and I just wanted to make him proud (Eh, Freud?).  Hard to do that from an f’n ditch.

In order to do that, I had to perform, in order to perform, I had to fit in. In order for a 14 year pimply-faced kid to fit in, I swore, like it WAS my job.

I found little empathy or humor from the gravel pit masters. So I listened, I mimicked for approval’s sake and I carved a sliver of approval by cussing like…a truck driver.

Many people are offended by the language abuse for whatever reason; preference, religion, intelligence. I recognize I leave an impression when I use it for impact, for emphasis or a throwback to playing to the crowd for approval.

In the future, I plan to watch more carefully what I say. Discretion is important to exercise when it concerns matters of the tongue. As leaders, we have a megaphone (or live mic) placed in front of us at all times, whether we see it there or not.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

If ever I lacked time to write a quick and sticky thought, it is this week. However, this regular contribution to my weekly journal of interesting leadership tidbits has been marketed as “tenacious” so I best suck it up and convey some gritty wisdom.

I started a new gig this week and as I’ve told a number of my new colleagues, I’m enamored with this place. I am genuinely excited!

•I respect, empathize with and support the CEO in his mission to make this organization world class
•I have purpose doused in significant challenge
•The entire team of peers have substantial talent, drive, intelligence, professionalism and preserve ample energy for humor, albeit with a hint of wasabi-like irreverence
•The environment has been uber welcoming and associates are already seeking my input, insight and opinion
•The vernacular regarding exceptional client service, professional accountability, excellent operational performance, and nimble adaptability inspires me
•Finally, there is room for improvement

The leadership landscape in this corner of commerce is almost irreconcilable:

*I’ve worked the network and the companies who have it all figured out (or at least the outward projection would convey that) have little time or opportunity for a seasoned vet to occupy a genuine leadership role.

*This industry continues to consolidate like we saw yesterday where one behemoth bought another (Jacobs to buy CH2M – for those don’t track this industry). They will be shedding talent at a pace similar to the AECOM + URS deal.

*Political uncertainty combined with legislative gridlock makes me wonder if the government will ever get out of their own way, let alone mine.

My point with all of this…

You have to have a place to practice your craft if you’re going to stay lucid and effective.

I am blessed to be given the opportunity to lead with other leaders, iron sharpening iron.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

Whenever you have to visit multiple providers with MD, PhD or DDS at the end of their name in a given week, it’s probably not a good indicator of what your quality of life has been.

On the other hand, we are pretty fortunate in this country to have access to specialists that allow us the opportunity to maintain a high quality of life.

I’m reminded of the current debate on healthcare languishing on in Congress and it makes me wonder, what’s the right thing? There seems to be as many opinions as there are people affected.

Our household has endured a tremendous amount of heartache in the past two years with health insurance providers; cost, access, pre-approvals, clerical errors, pharmaceutical idiosyncrasies, etc.
-and I am fully aware we are among the fortunate.
•we have pretty good coverage
•we have access to competent professionals
•we have the means to pay what insurance doesn’t

What does that say about the state of healthcare in this country? Is there something missing here? Or are our expectations unrealistic regarding degree of service compared to the associated cost?

I grew up believing you get what you pay for. Specialists cost more than generalists and when you really need a specialist: heart, brain, cancer, or pain…you need a specialist…or you suffer.

While I am writing this blog, I hear national news in the background talking about a “skinny repeal” and the ultimatums that senators are laying out about whether they will vote for a new healthcare bill. The lack of leadership displayed by our elected officials is appalling, especially on this issue.

John McCain came back from Arizona to vote Tuesday just to move the senate forward after being diagnosed with brain cancer. He lit up his senate colleagues in a lengthy rant, calling for compromise and essentially accusing them of a lack of leadership…but then said he wouldn’t vote for the bill in its current form. From my perspective, he almost got it right.

You can’t tell me he wasn’t reflecting on healthcare while it impacts him so directly today and his future given the diagnosis.

Leadership requires doing things that may not win the popular vote but is considered by the majority to be the right thing. Several senators, regardless of party affiliation, are putting their own skin or the party platform ahead of what the American people need. This is not leadership, it’s self serving and avoidance of the tough conversations with their contingency that should take place after they vote for a national improvement, not a state centered bill.

The human brain responds five times faster to negative news than positive according to author Don Rheem, CEO of E3 solutions. In that spirit, I point out Congress’ inability to compromise and pass legislation this country desperately needs as an example of what not to do.

Leaders think bigger than what’s immediately in front of them. They look forward and lead with conviction. They are not concerned about their own welfare until they know others are taken care of.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

Have you noticed how quickly we tend to leap to judgement?

•situations
•locations
•each other

We are all subjected to an onslaught of messaging that encourages us to place a value; financial, contribution, aesthetically pleasing or otherwise…on virtually everything we encounter. Have we forgotten some of the golden rules to live by?

-Assume noble intent
-Do not judge a book by it’s cover
-Innocent until proven otherwise

-We judge others by their actions yet we judge ourselves by our intentions. {Hmmm. Read that one again.}

How about “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Luke 6:37 NIV

Does this assume we don’t assess, compare, measure and hold accountable for performance?
Nope.
However, I believe the complete answer may lie in the subtlety of the definition and intent.

Webster says a judge is “one who gives an authoritative opinion”.

So, what makes you an “authority” on whatever it might be that you are judging?

Been there, done that?
-Once or twice?
-Seven times?
-Hundreds of times?

My personal belief is that we, as a society in whole, have grown intolerant of anything we haven’t experienced or don’t fully understand and we don’t understand what we refuse to take adequate time to familiarize ourselves with.

Trust your gut … but take the time to perform the diligence necessary to properly assess, validate, and calibrate. Snap judgements might satisfy the desire for immediate feedback (you’ve been Pavlovian trained to salivate for…) but you will assuredly miss treasures that persevere despite the broken world they may come from.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

Perhaps the single best book I’ve been introduced to on leadership is written by James Kouzes and Barry Posner, titled “The Leadership Challenge”.

The authors highlight Five Practices of exemplary leaders I’d like to share with you.

The Five Practices aligned with the Ten Commitments of Leadership are:

•Model the Way
-1. Find your voice by clarifying your personal values.
-2. Set the example by aligning actions with shared values.

•Inspire a Shared Vision
-3. Envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities.
-4. Enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations.

•Challenge the Process
-5. Search for opportunities by seeking innovative ways to change, grow, and improve.
-6. Experiment and take risks by constantly generating small wins and learning from mistakes.

•Enable Others to Act
-7. Foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust.
-8. Strengthen others by sharing power and discretion.

•Encourage the Heart
-9. Recognize contributions by showing appreciation for individual excellence.
-10. Celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community.

The book is a must read.
The summary above should be committed to memory.

What it says to me is … build an environment where the people around you can be their best self everyday if they choose then make sure you don’t get in the way of their aspirations and development with policies and procedures that send different messages.

Set clear expectations for performance because people want to know how you define success so they can interpret it for themselves and take action accordingly.

Communicate with people. Open your heart, make yourself vulnerable, transparent, flexible, responsive…emote. If someone is asking the question in your organization,
“Do leaders really care about me?”
-What I deal with day-to-day,
-my dreams,
-aspirations,
-challenges,
-concerns?

Be assured that
“Good leaders do.”

Remember what Abe Lincoln said,
“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

The framework shared above is what I would call a good start. Buy, read and put into practice the principles in the book.

Lead on.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

I’m not a chemist and pH balance is not my forte’. I’m just a guy who notices things and when they make me curious or chuckle, I write them down.

I’ve had the good fortune of being home most days the last few months so I walk our dog, take her to the vet, spoil her rotten so she’s here and happy when I’m not. She’s Mama’s shadow, snuggle buddy, snack hound and furry baby. You get the picture.

We have new neighbors. Seem nice enough and they have a large, older, female yellow lab. It let’s us all know when her Mom and Dad aren’t home. I couldn’t help but notice after the new neighbors moved in, their grass started dying.

I also noticed that when OUR dog soaks the grass, it grows faster than the area around it.

The other day at the vet after a $1300.00+ dental bill followed by a $350.00 check up and “other maintenance”, the vet asked me the question, “Would you say her quality of life is good?”…are you shitting me? I coughed a little, smiled and said “Definitely.”

Now we all know that dog breeds have typical behaviors, typical ailments, and typical life spans. The longer they live with us the more attached they become. Simply put, pets enrich our lives. We don’t want that to stop so we extend their presence as long as possible, usually disregarding the price tag.

Pets are a $60B+ industry in this country alone. (This figure is staggering but at least I know I’m not the only one taking out a loan every time I visit the vet.)

So I have to ask the basic question, when you pee on the proverbial lawn, are you killing it or do you make it grow? Does the reflected quality of your life enhance the life of your organization or does it kill it off? When you walk out of a room after sniffing around, wagging your tail and leaving behind…pearls of wisdom…were people happy you dropped by or just happy you left?

If an honest answer isn’t the one you want, what are you doing about it?

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday! (I’m posting this one a little earlier than normal so I can focus on what’s what when)

This week my wife Carole and I celebrate 32 years of marital commitment to each other. We raised a family together, invested in the communities we lived in, supported and demonstrated care for each other, navigated countless challenges and still manage to have heartfelt conversations now and again when we’re not distracted by the busyness and hard edges of life.

A few years ago I was talking with my friend Rajesh from Wisconsin. He told me as we looked around the room of design professional leaders, “Any one of us could get a job somewhere else…but could you recreate the life you now have with your family? It’s important to get (and keep) your priorities straight. Figure those out and everything else will fall in place.”

I’ve been through three and one half career moves (out of, in to, out of and almost in to again) since then. Each one painful…but progressively less so. Practice makes permanent. I keep thinking I can will my way to keeping a role but safe choices and the right choices are rarely the same. My voicemail used to conclude with a deliberate “Make it a great day!” because I believe attitude is the gate to the mind and one of the few things I have 100% control over. This does not translate to keeping a leadership position just because that’s what I prefer. There are entirely too many other variables at play for you to have ultimate control over your career. Besides attitude, staying within the bounds of legality, morality and ethical behavior, your choices may impact you differently than you’d like to believe.

In a marital relationship, there are fewer variables and the choices you make are more obvious. For instance, when I ignore my 50% equity partner, there are swift repercussions that hit the bottom line. Also, “for better or for worse” is a stark comparison to working in an “at will” employment state.

My path to vulnerability includes an admission that my desire for clarity as it pertains to “how much?” continues to consume more brain power than it should.

How much
•time should I spend at work?
•time can I spend at home?
•time do I spend on myself, restoring my soul, without feeling guilty about it?
•time will I spend in prayer?
•how much nest egg do we need to be comfortable when the paychecks stop coming?
•how much of the time, talent and treasures I have been blessed with do I give to others?

Continuous calibration of these items is not necessarily healthy but will likely continue for some time to come. I know that an abundance mindset is far better than a scarcity mindset but it is a daily effort to keep this priority straight.

Since meeting the woman who consciously elected to become my bride, I’ve worked for seven different companies. Some I knew were temporary, some I thought were until retirement but all were meant to help advance the mission of the Michel family to be successful.

Have a blessed weekend! and remember to show and tell the ones you love just how important they are to you.

Video of solar flare courtesy of NASA

Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

Pardon the technical jargon and please humor me through this week’s blog…it wanders a bit.

Recent headlines in one of the technical journals I subscribe to mentioned something we can all relate to: Loss of electrical service. Imagine, if you can, there would be

•No TV
•No computer
•No cell phones

You may have heard of solar flares and the impact they can have on the electrical grid. A CME is worse. It is slower and it disturbs the earth’s magnetic field more severely. There is also a 10% chance, according to experts on this subject, an event similar in magnitude back in 1859 (known as the Carrington effect) that knocked out telegraph systems in the US and Europe, could happen in the next decade. In case you think those odds or the stat is unrealistic, there was a smaller but similar event more recent in 1989 in Quebec that impacted a major city, shutting down the Montreal Metro and the airport.

Why did this grab my attention or why should it matter to you?

We tend to take things for granted, like: electricity and the sun.

My good friend Dave from Montana spent his life in the electrical business and shares stories about electrical outage restorations. He recalled one during our conversation just last week where an elderly customer called in…the next morning…hoping a power line crew could get out “by the weekend”. Tell me your heart doesn’t skip a beat when power goes out during an electrical storm for more than thirty seconds and you start worrying about food spoiling in the freezer. Imagine waiting (patiently) for several days…

Now think about how much you rely on the sun. Pretty much everything we do hinges on this fiery ball a mere 93 million miles away…and we plan our lives around it, every single day. If the sun started spewing excess plasma our direction, what would you do?

One of the many issues leaders are asked to consider is disaster planning (i.e. Zika virus, computer virus, connectivity issues, wood ticks, lawsuits or floods) and now we have to think about explosions on the sun?

Yes.

Leaders are not rewarded for complacency, they are charged with finding ways to eradicate it.  Come prepared…or stay home.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

This week I was reminded of the power and the value of relationships. I created the opportunity to meet with several long-term relationships for a variety of reasons, as detailed below:

•First meeting-There are a number of ways to deal with stress but I’ve never learned how to avoid it. I found a deep tissue massage helps alleviate much of what gets under my skin. It’s also important for me to work with a professional who knows what needs work and how to resolve it quickly. While traveling to this week’s destination, I was able to schedule with my preferred massage therapist to work out the kinks. Awesome!

•Second meeting-I have 28 sweet “tooths” so all but 4 have crowns. After a relocation to the Twin Cities, I finally met with a new dentist who tried to suggest I needed…a lot of work…so in seeking a second opinion I met with my original dentist (who I trust). He sorted through what needed to be done and compared what was unnecessary. The difference is about $10,000. Thanks Doc!

•Third meeting-I met up with a long-time friend, going all the way back to childhood, for burgers, beers and BS. We talked through work, motorcycles, kids, spouses, aspirations, frustrations and just caught up on life. Good food for the soul.

•Fourth meeting-While in a particular town for a potential career changing meeting, I scheduled coffee with a colleague who knows my industry, knows my background and seeks my personal and professional opinion, and I hers. We covered some work issues, people issues, concerns, aspirations, and Father’s Day plans. A confidence builder on top of just maintaining a cherished friendship.

It is important to be aware, more important to maintain but even more important to acknowledge how much the people in your lives mean to you.

•What’s it worth to be able to reduce your stress?
•How often do you wish you could get a second opinion on critical, high value concerns?
•Do you spend much time reflecting with decades old friends on glory days when you used to dream about what you’d do when you grew up, just to check in, stay humble and recalibrate?
•When is the last time you needed to know you were good enough for whatever comes next? Who do you seek counsel from?

Perhaps most important, how are you balancing the scales?  Reciprocating?  Actively listening?
Who is looking to you for help, stress reduction, a second opinion, soul food or a confidence boost?
Are you making yourself available?
What will you do TODAY to follow through?

This weekend is Father’s Day celebration.  My dad was a lot of things to me.

-A disciplinarian

-A living example of hard work

-An entrepreneur

-A mentor

-A moral compass

If your Father is still alive, give him a long hug, even if he’s not a hugger, and tell him exactly what he means to you.

if he’s not, spend a few minutes in prayer and talk to him.  I’ll think you’ll find there is more than one Father listening.

Have a blessed weekend!