Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

Does anyone remember the line in City Slickers when Curly (Jack Palance) counsels Mitch (Billy Crystal)? Noooooo, not the “I crap bigger than you” line. The other line- here’s the set up…”you all come up here about the same time. You spend 50 weeks a year getting knots in your rope and you think you can spend a couple of weeks up here and untie ’em. … What’s your one thing?”

•You gotta figure out what your one thing is.

I have searched all over trying to figure this conundrum out. It’s personal. It’s a quest. Mine has reached a Milestone. My one thing is – Improving.

When it comes to ones self,
•Doctors claim to have originated the concept of continuous learning.

When it comes to business,
•LEAN processes, famous at Toyota, are founded on continuous improvement.

When it comes to helping others,
•Mentoring is often the term used. Maslow referred to this in his later work as helping others achieve self-actualization.

After we stumble our way through life and finally figure out who we are, what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, we make a conscious decision if that’s going to be good enough or not. Do we want to be content with the point we’ve reached in life when we lifted our head long enough to observe our surroundings? Or do we want to be … better?

Do you want to be better in terms of health?
Do we want to be a better human, spouse, parent, sibling, coworker, patient, leader, player, or performer?

I saw a video some time ago where a hulking high school football player was challenged to crawl down field with his coach on his back. The coach blindfolded him to remove the barriers the player would have put on himself. While riding on his back, the coach encouraged him to push beyond what his body was telling his brain. As you might guess, the player went considerably further than anyone anticipated he could. The coach replaced the messages telling the player what he couldn’t do and replaced them with what he could.

Imagine how much easier it is to crawl “down field” without having to carry a sweaty old man on your back. Imagine having that voice in your head pushing you to get better. Imagine changing out the tired looped recording playing in your head telling you all the stuff you can’t do with one that says “Yes, you can!”
You can do more.
You can make a difference.
You can lose that 20 pounds.
You can solve that critical problem, raise a family on a single income, get that promotion, pull the company out of bankruptcy, …prove every last one of those negative voices wrong.

You can be better and no one but you is stopping you.

Once you get there, start showing others how to get there, too.

Have a blessed weekend.

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

On the front page of the local paper, at least the way it shows up on my phone, was an article about the cost of a recently selected attorney; $1,000/ hour to save $ Millions on a $ Billion + project.

These are numbers we can’t fathom, both psychologically and from a day-to-day pragmatic perspective. We buy cars that are in the thousands or tens of thousands a few to several times in our lives. We buy homes that are probably in the hundreds of thousands on average a couple times in our lives.

Millions and Billions don’t really register.

If you have to dig a ditch:
•Would you use a spoon because you own one? Probably not.
•Would you buy a shovel? Depends on the size of ditch, right?
•Would you rent a backhoe? Might depend on your ability to operate or your confidence of what’s under the surface.
•Would you hire a large general contractor who has the equipment, operators, expertise, reputation and bonding? If it’s a major project-and a $Billion scope qualifies as major in my book-this is the most likely avenue.

The right tool for the right job.

When is a professional service provider the “right tool”?
Whether it is an accountant preparing financial documents (i.e. tax forms), an engineer preparing bidding documents (i.e. plans and specifications) or an attorney preparing legal documents (deeds, contracts, easements, formalized agreements between entities) and the advice of when to say yes and when to say no…professional services, often times looked at as an expense, might best be considered an investment.

There are new television commercials about a certain tax software that doesn’t require a genius. They are clever, humorous and they imply that all tax filings are made simple by the use of this particular software. My guess is that under most individual filings where they are uncomplicated, you may get by with a software tool. There are also circumstances where you may pay a small fee and miss a big deduction and not even know you left money on the table.

The point? Professional services fees are hardly front page news. You (typically) get what you pay for. Big, complicated issues require special solutions to get it right the first time so you don’t have to do it over or make it more difficult than it should ever have to be.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

My latest white space/ guilt-free, off the grid time will include a couple of days snowmobiling. If you’re Canadian, you may say “snow machining” or “sledding, eh” but I call it snowmobiling and so it shall be.

My snowmobile roots go WAY back to 1964. I’m on my mamma’s lap in the family pick up as a new born while dads got big sis and big bro on the brand new ski-doo on the Red River of the North-enter the proverbial thin ice and pop dumps it. Saves the kids, apparently gets the sled out too but likely not wearing Gore-Tex back then. I’m guessing Car-hart coveralls from the old Nodak store and Red Wing Wellington boots. Can you say hypothermia?

Turns out Dad’s love affair goes back to HIS childhood walking to a country school in a far north North Dakota town wishing there was a “magic carpet” instead of walking (7 miles up hill each way in a foot of snow- pardon the embellishment, it’s my story) to school – so when Gjervold motors stocks a yellow, one lung sled, it’s destiny.

I took that same soaked sled for a joy ride around the house years later and while looking backwards at big bro and big sis not so politely encouraging me to get off, I straddled the clothes line post between our house and the neighbors. Simultaneously putting my unprotected melon through the plexiglass windshield. Oops! I would have heard tweety birds chirping were it not for the claims of “Wait until your Dad gets home and sees this!” and “You’re gonna get it.” I failed to realize Dad was trying to sell it and needless to say the buyer that came over that evening…was no longer interested due to the body modifications I had just completed.

I’ve rationalized over the years that the primary reason I LOVE to snowmobile is the past time/sport/expensive hobby is one of the only circumstances I have experienced where you can get yourself OUT of trouble by grabbing a hand full of gas. Yee-Haw! As opposed to a number of other times where I began a quick downward spiral predicated by “watch this!” and punching whatever I was driving. More gas meant more trouble.

We have trekked many thousands of miles and spent a good hundred thousand dollars (hurts to even type that) in search of the perfect powder experience where we’ve sought to justify the enormous time and money spent to squeeze a few more horse power and better handling designed to tackle taller obstacles and replicate that initial snowmobile high. I wouldn’t want to calculate the cost per mile but I can tell you, some of the most memorable times I’ve had on this planet were on a snowmobile with buddies, family or even by myself.

I have a Reader’s digest worthy story I could recount, and some day might before I forget it all. It involves sugar snow, elk fajitas and two guys out of nine who were both nick named “cave man”, the town tweeker and a $900 bill I was more than happy to pay.

Remember, this is a white space story so even I can’t tie this one to leadership. It’s meant to demonstrate that even the most tenacious need a breather.

Have a blessed weekend. Go make some memories!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

It’s a new year and while many are focusing on resolutions, I didn’t make any this year. Not because I’m clever or lazy or so perfect that I couldn’t stand to improve behaviors, habits or beliefs…I think that there will always be room for improvement. I’m avoiding short term disappointment, guilt and anxiety. It’s also important to remember that we are running a marathon, not a sprint.

I’m busy enough on high priority items and have decided that a certain amount of white space in the calendar is necessary to incorporate and critical to defend.

From a time management perspective, If you don’t feel like you have the time to do something well, what makes you think you’ll have the time to do something over?

I resolve, by not resolving, to do… less… better and actually get more done. This also relates to delegation. Are you humble enough to accept the fact that you aren’t the best at everything? Even more so, have you identified what you are exceptionally good at and also identified who is best at other tasks you need done whether at work or at home?

A coworker identified these tasks as PtG (Pay the Guy).

Whether it is a renaissance complex or simply getting caught up in the whirlwind of life, we tend to attract tasks like flies to a strip and then get frustrated when we can’t get them all done in a timely manner.

In addition to putting more white space on your calendar, delegating more tasks and identifying what you a REALLY good at, I’ll offer up the prioritization advice reportedly worth nearly half a million dollars today. You decide whether it’s worth that much to you.

Story:
You may have heard the story about Ivy Lee and Charles Schwab (the steel guy, not the investment guy)
Lee offered to increase the productivity of Schwab’s executives by 20%. The idea is very simple and the story goes that Scwab wrote a check to Lee for $25,000 which equates to roughly $400,000 today.

Lee’s idea
1. Before you leave work, write down the six most important things you need to do tomorrow.
2. Go home. Leave work at the office. Spend time with your family. Read books. Write. Have fun.
3. The next morning, start with the first thing on your list. Work at it until it’s completed.
4. Work down your list. Interruptions will happen. Get back to your list as quickly as you can.
5. Repeat. Anything still on your list will probably go to the top of tomorrow’s list, unless it’s no longer relevant. Flesh out the list and go home.

If you are already doing this, Congratulations!
If not, give it a try. It does make a difference.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

The holiday season is upon us and if we look beyond the wild buzz of retailers, the disruption of the weather that brings us snow and cold as reasons to stay inside and even beyond the charming behavior of our children, nieces & nephews, grandchildren or other youngsters grabbing our attention at the annual Christmas program…we should not forget the reason for the season.

Isaiah 9:6a For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.

This is a big ol’ birthday bash for the answer-with an after party we can only dream of.

The older I get, the louder the question that nags at me in the dark annals of my subconscious…
What is all of this about?
Why am I here?
What purpose do I serve?
What happens when I am unable to connect my ambition with a purpose like I have previously as a son, husband, father, grandfather, employee, manager, leader, and mentor.

It’s the same answer.

Christ

John 3:16 For God so loved the world (that’s you and me, kids) that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him shall have everlasting life.

This is a broken world we were born into that carries with it sin, pain, death, destruction, and evil. We busily work to rationalize our existence, to minimize pain by pretending it isn’t all around us, insulate our sin with material items, lull ourselves into a false sense of security that we can somehow cheat death.

God designed each and every one of us with strengths, weaknesses, purpose and mortality. He doesn’t make mistakes. He knows everything you have done, are doing and will do…everything.

Jesus’ purpose was to become the way, the truth and the light. Through God’s ultimate sacrifice, he came and conquered sin, death and the devil. Our purpose, while on earth, includes celebrating his birthday like many of us are about to do but it goes beyond that.
Challenge: What if you woke every morning like it was Christmas morning and with child-like enthusiasm, you bound out of bed and instead of looking under a tree, you read a chapter or two from the greatest story about the greatest gift and carried that gift throughout your day with inner peace and joy, sharing it with those who need to hear it most.

Have a blessed weekend and Christmas holiday! May it be filled with laughter and the Fruits of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

Note to my faithful readers: I have elected to put down the “drumsticks” for a week or two. The cadence will continue in the New Year.

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

I spent most of this week in Las Vegas at the PowerGen conference put on by Pennwell publications. With roughly 20,000 attendees (manufacturers to service providers) it was an exciting and enjoyable, albeit huge venue. I probably saw less than 20% of the showroom floor.

What I learned was virtually everyone associated with power generation is trying to better understand what next looks like.

The industry used to be simple; fuel sources were predominantly fossil-based until it was widely believed that coal-fired power generation was detrimental to our planet. The socioeconomic drivers would surprise you. President Obama just finished making promises in Paris based on what I consider selective science. I’d parallel his position on gun control and healthcare with his cabinet’s view on the environment. Simple, uneducated approaches to complex issues with careless disregard for root cause analysis leads to ridiculous legislation and confounds an entire industry, if not the entire business climate.

Power generation is a complicated business and the incredible reliability the typical consumer enjoys is beyond comprehensive reach for the vast majority of the public and among those who have the capacity to understand it, many are apathetic.

I’ll make it really simple …
•When the wind doesn’t blow, wind turbines can’t generate electricity.
•When the sun doesn’t shine, solar farms can’t generate electricity.
•When it doesn’t rain or snow/melt and fish species are endangered, hydro electric dams don’t function to the capacity they were designed for.
•We lack adequate, economic storage
•Gas generation is cheap right now but that will change-I guarantee it.
•Nuclear generation has a troubled past with Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Nuclear technology is largely misunderstood and human beings don’t deal with uncertainty well. Thank you, misinformed media.
•Coal supply is plentiful and when the idealists with no regard for the technical aspects of this complex issue (base load generation needs to start) reach for their light switch and it affects their ears but not their eyes, perhaps they’ll come to their senses.

My position is that we require a mixed portfolio of power generation resources.
-There is no single answer.
-There is no simple answer.
-The answer is far more technical than political and needs to balance energy affordability, energy security and energy sustainability.

Leadership includes finding long-term answers that take into account all issues rather than pushing a simplified response through an executive order or a government agency position.

Have a blessed weekend.

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

One of my junior high foreign language instructors, Mrs. Marks, told us that she took philosophy while studying in France. Her final exam (perhaps thesis-it’s been several decades) was to answer the question, “Why?”, and it was to be presented orally, in French, not her native tongue. She shared that after much deliberation on how to respond, she simply said, “Pourquoi ne pas?” (Why not?) – she recalls that she received a passing grade even though she was supposed to provide 45 minutes of discussion on the topic.

What inspires deep thinking for you?

Have you ever pulled your head out of the whirlwind long enough to contemplate the bigger questions of:

•Why am I here? {Purpose}
•What’s my one thing? {Core Competency}
•What positive qualities have I been blessed with and am I emphasizing those strengths and using them to improve my life and the lives of those around me? {Focus}
•Will the contributions I’ve made and the sacrifices I’ve suffered through be remembered accurately and fully understood why specific decisions were made? {Legacy}
•What brings me joy? {Happiness}
•Does my family really know how much I love them? {Demonstrated Affection}

Perhaps the most important question you should ask yourself today:

What actions and behaviors am I going to start changing for the better as a result of reading this post today?

Leaders are learners, not just while in school. School didn’t pose all of life’s questions and put the answers in the back of the book, at least not the schools I went to. School should have prepared you for life’s questions by teaching you how to become a problem solver;
-State the question completely, yet succinctly
-Gather data and information
-Form an assessment with the tools made available to you
-Take action
-If it doesn’t provide the desired result, repeat the process.

Remember, Edison tried a multitude of attempts to perfect the light bulb (some sources claim 1,000 and others claim as many as 10,000 attempts). When asked how he dealt with that amount of failure, he simply acknowledged that he discovered that many ways not to do it [or that it was a 10,000 (or place your favorite number here) step process].

Have a blessed weekend.

Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

I’m going to depart from my leadership tone for this week. It’s Thanksgiving and most of you are not at work today. If you have a vacation policy that allows the day after Thanksgiving as a personal holiday, a regular holiday for those robust places to work or you just took the Friday after a Thursday holiday, it doesn’t matter. You’re not at work…

So what are you doing with this gifted day?

You likely stuffed yourself with the Butterball dressed up next to the cornucopia, accompanied by candied yams, French cut green bean and mushroom soup casserole with the dried onions on top, stuffing with or without the giblets, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, or some variation of that. You probably took a tryptophan-induced nap, watched some TV, played some games…

• So maybe your waist grew 1” closer to blowing out your waistband but that isn’t what I was referring to in the blog title.

• In college, I recall a Gold Star band trumpet player who grew his scruffy beard for deer hunting season around this time of year. He was convinced that good food and family time made his beard grow fuller and faster, like it was 1” closer to a real beard by the time he returned from the holiday.

• Actually, life affects us in funny ways. Things that sneak up on us (or at least me) where we find the person we want to spend our life with, we raise a family, we prepare our children for the “real world” and we usher them off to get smart, get a job and create a life for themselves. Holidays roll around and we hope like crazy that they desire to come back and share some time and stories. They move miles and/or states away and we hope they feel “the emotional tug” to get 1” closer…at least once or twice a year.

I recently saw an interesting Harvard Business Review article from a couple of decades ago highlighting the book by Daniel Goleman that explained how a leader’s high Emotional Intelligence (EI or EQ) is what makes them exceptional. (So maybe I can’t help but slip a lesson about leadership into my story.)  The five areas that describe EQ are;

• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Empathy
• Motivation
• Social Skill

Moving 1″ closer to adulthood or 1″ closer to becoming an effective leader, you need to open up your heart.

Open up your hearts this holiday season, not just your pie hole. 🙂

Have a blessed remainder of this extended Thanksgiving weekend.

Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

When you’ve accumulated knowledge, wisdom, courage, intuition, maturity, and confidence-what do you do with it? Keep it to yourself? Use it for your own benefit, wealth or job security?

We tend to want others to play by the same rules we were taught to play by, don’t we? This condition we create adds no value, it simply builds a wall. Does this really serve anyone? With age comes wisdom…isn’t part of wisdom to recognize that knowledge gathering evolves with our surroundings? For instance, my three year old grandson can navigate an iPad like nobody’s business. He still enjoys having someone read to him but the pace and vehicles for his learning has expanded compared to mine at that age. We must also evolve.

Here’s a novel idea…
Assume noble intent. That “kid”; young, inexperienced, naive, innocent, shy kid you’ve unfortunately, maybe even accidentally dismissed might be the vessel God sent to you to carry your experience into the next generation.

What does it take to be a mentor? I submit it starts with building a bridge. Not half way, not most of the way…all the way! When you cross that newly built bridge, you will find a willing set of hands, an engaged mind, and steady feet that simply needs tools, someone to instill confidence in them, and to show them the way.

The bridge pictured above (courtesy of WordPress) was built adjacent to Hoover dam in Nevada. This complex engineering and construction feat is a marvel. It’s amazing what we can do when we put our minds to something. So, you may be saying to yourself, building a bridge the whole way is difficult, time consuming, expensive, risky…blah, blah, blah. Yes, it is. It’s also rewarding, energizing and the absolute right thing to do.

Look in your mirror today. Stare at your eyes for a minute. Those eyes have most likely seen things that others younger than you haven’t. You possess skills others don’t. You’ve got something to give. Something to pass on.

It starts with a bridge. Build the whole thing! Because you can. Because at some point, long before you knew what a bridge was, someone, probably several someone’s, built one all the way to you.

Have a blessed weekend!

Good morning, Leaders! It’s Friday!

My misperceptions of strong leaders of large and successful organizations included being a hard ass, subscribing to command and control tactics, all stick, no carrot, fire branded by all the stressful situations they encounter on a daily basis.

Those situations may exist in pockets of the workforce but are probably not associated with successful companies you’d want to be part of today.

It was nine years ago, late October in New York where, at a CEO roundtable, I heard leaders sharing information on their successes and failures. Making themselves vulnerable, passing on stories of incredible endurance, passion and love. Yes, old men in suits and ties, in a theater setting, talking to a nearly all male audience about love. Was this the twilight zone?

Nope, just a tectonic shift in my beliefs. Nearly a decade later, I recall the moment but I still didn’t anticipate that would begin the melting process.

Scientists say we are made of mostly water. If so, perhaps the hardening of the heart is actually more freezing than hardening. If, over time, we begin to realize that our perceptions were inaccurate, inappropriate and misapplied, what would YOU call the change in thought? Softening, thawing, melting…how else would you explain the relative ease at which I start leaking out of my eye sockets?

The human condition is a confounding proposition. You enter into this world fragile, screaming in pain, covered in vernix and amniotic fluid and we immediately begin to form a thicker skin; cry ourselves to sleep, demonstrate our ability to take a joke, a skinned knee, a disappointment at the school dance, perceived failures in life that harden our hearts. If we try to stay tender, we hurt more.

Then, one day, the process starts to reverse…if you’re lucky. The birth of your own child or grandchild. Milestone accomplishments from first step to first word, to first date to first job. God gifted you with a blessing: innocence, new beginnings, watching the same process you went through but filled with joy rather than pain…and you start to melt, from the inside outward.

Youngsters with your elastic, supple, ivory soap like skin…you will grow calloused over time … until you don’t. You have the ability to expedite the human condition by acknowledging this process and consciously electing to bypass it.

No freezing, no melting, just love.

Have a blessed weekend