Musings at Altitude

I was all smiles tonight as I attended the wedding of a dear friend.  He married his constant companion and best friend after 7 years of getting to know each other.  She was absolutely beautiful, and he was his typical goofy self as he tried to hide the nerves with his facial expressions and comical actions.  You could tell by their words and the looks in their eyes that there’s a special bond between them now that has been tested over the years and has emerged with strength, compassion and love.  You could also tell that both of them are bringing their own unique contributions to this relationship, and because of that, “for the rest of my life” is something not only meaningful, but definitely within their grasp!

As I stopped by the table of honor to congratulate the beautiful couple, the groom introduced me to his 82 year old grandmother and told her that my wife and I embody love.  He told her that after almost 26 years of marriage, we are still madly in love with each other.  How cool is that!  His 82 year old grandmother told the groom that she had already met my 14 year old daughter and had made a new friend.  That’s pretty cool too!

I’m still smiling in thinking about the wedding, the beauty and the love…and I’m also smiling in thinking about my wife who is 1200 miles away right now and yet still introduced with me as the embodiment of love.  That’s certainly something to smile about!

To the bride and groom, I wish you love for each other beyond compare.  And as you now begin your lives together as husband and wife, I wish you the lifelong passion that comes from knowing the friendship you share is just the beginning of a bond so tight that no issue or person can tear it apart.  I hope you capture the words and the smiles from tonight and carry those with you “for the rest of your lives”!

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Last night, my 20 year old son asked “Dad, you want to go see Saw V with me?”  I quickly said, “uhh, no.”

Shortly thereafter, my 14 year old daughter asked, “Dad, you want to see High School Musical 3 with me?”  I equally as quickly said, “uhh, no.”

It’s hard to imagine any larger extreme in viewing preferences than those two.  It’s also hard to imagine me at any time wanting to see either of those two movies.

Of course, both of my kids know very well that my answer would be “uhh, no”.  I ought to say, “sure” and watch the “you got to be kidding me” look that would inevitably occur on both of their faces.  The look would immediately be followed with “you serious?”

Then once again I’d say, “uhh, no”.

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I’m going back and forth between the Oklahoma State – Texas and the Georgia – LSU games.  I switched over to the Texas game just at the beginning of an on the field interview with a billionaire that is a big contributor to Oklahoma State.  The announcer asked, “I’m sure folks want to know what it’s like to lose a billion dollars.”  Without a moments hesitation, he said, “it’s happened before”.

I remember back in the late 90’s working with an Irish businessman who told me, “I’ve had 27 companies and only one of them has really made money – that one made me a billion.”  Two years later, the global company that gave him all that money for his company when they bought it from him went bankrupt.  I’m sure he lost hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in the telecom and Internet meltdown at that time.

The statements from both of these individuals do not surprise me.  In fact, most of the very successful business people I’ve had the privilege to work for or work with take huge losses in stride.  In some cases, they are forced to start over after experiencing enormous success.  Through it all, they have this incredible sense of calm, seemingly knowing that what they did before can obviously be done again and fully expecting that if it will be done again, it will be done by them.

Equally as important, each very successful business leader I’ve known has worked through several significant failures before achieving any significant success.  They credit those failures with sharpening their business skills and giving them a thirst for success even greater with each failure.  And none of them judge success based on their personal financial situation; in fact, several folks have told me that their greatest successes may not have made them much money at all.  Others have said their greatest failures actually made them some significant money.

It’s rare if ever that any successful business leader experiences only positive events in their business or personal financial situations.  Reality is that setbacks occur.  Reality is that significant financial loss occurs much more often than we typically think about it or want to admit.  For many of us who have trusted our money and our life savings to the stock market, we’re certainly getting hammered right now, and many of us are experiencing some significant financial losses.  Hopefully we too will recover and have the same confidence of getting it all back as these very wealthy business leaders seem to have.

But I love the line, “it’s happened before”.  There’s nothing like that kind of calm perspective in the midst of significant losses.  Maybe one day all of us will get the chance to know what it’s like to lose that much money and then get the chance on national TV to answer the question “what’s it like to lose a billion dollars?”

OK…back to reality!

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I suffer from an inability to focus on more than one thing at once.  For example:

— if I’m reading a message on my email, whether on the laptop or the blackberry, if someone is talking with me I hear very few if any of the words that are spoken and if they then need an answer when they are done talking, I’m in big trouble

— if I’m on a conference call and push “mute”, and then in addition to listening to that call also begin working on a slide deck or catching up on other work, inevitably, when someone on the call then asks, “what do you think?”, I’m stumped because I have no clue what they’ve been talking about

— if I’m walking and typing on the blackberry, I eventually have to stop because I can’t watch where I’m going and type at the same time

— if I’m working intensely on something – anything – and I’m interrupted by something more important, when I return to what I was working on, I can’t just pick up where I left off, I have to get back into the mental frame of mind I was in at the time of the interruption in order to pick up at that same spot

We’ve heard the term “multi-tasking” a lot in the last decade.  I’m proud to admit that my kids can typically move in and out of conversations and shift their focus between multiple things instantaneously without losing a moment of interconnectiveness.  But I can’t do that.  The minute I shift, focus is lost.  And to regain focus, it takes time to re-establish my mental state at the time that the original connection was lost.

In times of aggressive change and intense emotional connection, an inability to multi-task can be both a blessing and a curse.  It’s a blessing if my attention and focus is on the highest priority issue at any given time.  If I’m talking with individuals that have the greatest anxiety and I’m focused solely on them at the time and helping them overcome that anxiety, then that’s a good thing.  If I’m working on the communications that difuses the most volatile issues within any transformation process, then that’s a good thing to.  If I remember to prioritize and keep faith and family at the top of my list while still undergoing intense stress at work, then being a single-task guy can be a good thing.

But in today’s world, the issues come at a pace and from angles that don’t reward single-task people.  That’s where the curse comes in if you, like me, can only focus on one thing at a time.  In any given day, change leaders are faced with a multitude of issues all hitting at one time – people issues, organizational coordination issues, other business issues not related to the change at all, personal issues, political issues, economic issues, etc.  For single task people like me, each issue has to be addressed, but typically in a very serial fashion – one at a time – and so much time can be lost in shifting from issue to issue.  On the worst days with the greatest disparity in issues, it’s easy to feel completely overwhelmed, and unfortunately, change by definition fuels the business quicksand you can easily feel like you’re in.  Thus the curse of being a single task guy in a multi task world.

In this perfect storm of business unrest (ecomonic challenge, political challenge, and competitive challenge), I’ve found some simple things that I do to allow my single-task mind to nimbly shift focus in this multi-task world:

(1) As often as possible, meet in someone else’s office and while walking to that office, use those precious few moments to become completely attentive to the individual and the issue that is being addressed; if I walk into that meeting reading emails on my blackberry, something that I read will occupy my mind throughout that whole meeting

(2) Schedule 15 minutes between meetings to allow for that “blackberry check”, but while in the meeting, don’t look at the blackberry and don’t allow interruptions; single-task people can be easily distracted by any single email and thus completely lose focus on what’s being said by the most important person at the time which is whoever I am meeting with

(3) Chunk the day as much as possible and get meetings with similar issues as close as possible to each other; anything that can be done to use schedule as an advantage for focus is a really good thing

(4) Have trusted friends and advisors that you can share with and vent on at any time during the day when the issues become overwhelming – which they will - and trust them to calm you down and get you focused back on the most important issues at hand

(5) Share the burden of change with your team members and resist the constantly creeping feeling that you’re in this alone and the weight of the entire organization is solely on your shoulders; in sharing the burden, share the responsibility for issue management and problem resolution with the team

(6) Find something that makes you smile all the time and then use that something to bring those smiles all the time; for me, it’s typically faith and family that brings smiles - and you’ve seen lots of my reasons for smiles in the pictures in past postings; here’s another one – nothing like a granddaughter that shares the passion for blogging:

Nothing truly prepares you for the intensity of issues in a change process.  For those of us blessed and cursed with an inability to multi-task, that intensity can quickly become overwhelming.  Fortunately, I’ve been able to find moments of peace amidst the insanity by finding those precious moments of “shift time” that allow me to unwind from one issue and build up for the next.

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As I watch my little granddaughter, I can’t help but compare a baby in its phases of growth to a startup business.  Bear with me as I make these comparisons:

(1) both babies and startups begin with some form of plan that then leads to early concept formulation, incubation, and then birth; during this phase, both are nourished through a lifeline to the parent or founder

(2) once born, both babies and startups primarily eat, sleep and poop; they consume resources, cry when things don’t occur immediately as they want and need them to occur, and are carried around and mostly dependent on others for both nourishment and growth

(3) after some time, both babies and startups form personalities, and they begin to smile and to laugh as things fall into place, and they react to the stimulus that occurs around them

(4) after more time, they both begin to get some strength in their structures as babies start holding their necks up and sitting up and startups start gaining some confidence and find courage in their growth path

(5) eventually, babies start walking, at first falling down a lot and then eventually establishing that balance that comes from knowing trying over and over again; startups are exactly the same – they first fall down a lot and then find balance from trying time and time again

I could actually go on for quite a while in this comparison, but I’m sure you got this point long ago!  We’ve all heard many times, “this is my baby” when referred to companies.  Those that say that aren’t far from reality!

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After writing that last post 36 hours ago, I’ve been trying many, many different approaches to meet the very high standard of loving more than just the lovable.  I wanted to share a few of the techniques I’m now using to get closer to this goal:

(1) Deep Breaths – I’ve been taking a lot of these lately, just to make sure I think through my responses and my actions.  I carry a card in my wallet that’s visible every time I pull the wallet out of my pocket.  It says, “Stop-Think”.  Loving the unlovable sure isn’t easy, but if I can slow my response mechanism down and squelch my tendency to pop off in response to an irritation, then I just might have a chance to not exacerbate any given situation.

(2) Constant Counseling – I spend even more time seeking the listening ear from friends and family in the hope that by venting to them I can prevent emotional response to others.  I’m blessed with several good listeners as friends, and I’m also blessed with a brutally realistic wife who keeps me grounded and makes sure I put everything into the right perspective.

(3) Unceasing Prayer – Philippians 4:6 says, “In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”  When I’m dealing with situations or with people that I know will create distress for me, I do get anxious.  I’ve been saying a lot lately, “be anxious in nothing”.  If nothing else, it forces me to pause and not immediately respond and then regret that response later.

I did a quick assessment today on how I’ve done since I pondered this yesterday, and I think I have to give myself a C+ thus far.  I’m definitely thinking about my actions and my reactions now, and that alone is causing me to move one step closer (potentially) to loving the unlovable.  However, I find myself saying some not so loving things when I vent on my friends and seek counsel from those so much wiser than me!  I also find myself praying a lot more for peace and understanding, and I’m actually finding some peace though not yet necessarily understanding anymore.

Overall, I’ll take a C+ now because I know how much I need to grow in this area to meet expectations!  To keep my sanity though, I may need to take baby steps up the grading chain, so I’d be ecstatic to get to a B- in the coming days!  To get to an A, I have to cut out the venting and the anxiety.  Though I’ve never been happy with a B, to get to the A is an incredible mountain for me to climb.  I better start climbing now!

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I’ve been struggling lately with one particular passage in the Bible – Luke 6:31-34:

“Here is a simple rule of thumb for behavior:  ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them!  If you only love the lovable, do you expect a pat on the back?  Run-of-the-mill sinners do that.  If you only help those who help you, do you expect a medal?  Garden-variety sinners do that.  If you only give for what you hope to get out of it, do you think that’s charity?  The stingiest of pawnbrokers does that.”

And then in Luke 6:37:

“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults – unless of course you want the same treatment.”

I can’t tell you how much I struggle with this.  One of the hardest things in the world for me to do is to love those who disagree so aggressively with me.  I suffer from the “it’s so obvious that I’m right” syndrome and when anyone steps up and offers a different opinion or provides an alternative path to reaching the same objective, it irritates me beyond belief.  My wife has gone as far as to say, “wouldn’t the world be better if everybody was just like you”, as she in her own subtle (or not-so-subtle) way tries to show me the weakness in my character here.  She has also told me at times that I’m the type of guy that really doesn’t like working for anyone else because I hate someone else in that position of authority telling me what to do.  Unfortunately, she is mostly right on that point too.

The older I get the more I look at myself and see so clearly the areas of my character and personality that need changing.  I guess that’s part of maturing, but I really struggle when I see how I’m supposed to act and then realize how I want to act!  Those two seem to be extremely opposed to each other at times because I just want to get things done.  My personality is Ready-Fire-Aim, meaning we’ll perfect the path to target after we’ve got things moving in any direction.  Some have even said that my personality is actually Fire-Ready-Aim, and I can’t argue with that either.  Sometimes you just have to act, and then plan, and then perfect the path to target.

I’m not yet sure where this thinking is leading me, but I am sure that I have lots of work to do to apply the scriptures above to my work and to my life.  It’s clear that I’m to love others – my enemies, my antagonists, my non-agreeing partners – everyone.  It certainly won’t be easy.  It’s a lot easier to love those that love me; it’s a lot easier to snuggle up (in a business perspective) to those who agree with me; it’s a lot easier to seek alliances and affirmation rather than to bridge differences and overcome disparities in thinking.

This one will take some time, but maybe, just maybe, by understanding what the expectation is I’m already one step closer to meeting it!  What I really worry about are the setbacks that will almost certainly come during my journey to achieving this expected level of love.  Hopefully it won’t be one step forward and two steps back…maybe I should focus on one step forward and only one step back for now!

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I’ve been trying to ignore my 401(k) and follow through with my commitment to have confidence in the companies I have stock in and the overall future economic strength of the United States.  As I looked at the carnage of my retirement accounts this morning, my first thought was “oh my gosh”, and my second thought was “and yet I’m so blessed”. 

I’ve been thinking about the lesson I learned from my daughter this past Friday, and as I look at what I do have and the blessings that I have received, I can’t help but think about the times when we struggled, where we worried so much about having money to pay bills and being able to put food on our table, and when we didn’t know if we’d be able to make that next house payment.  Those times are still so fresh in my memory because they weren’t so long ago.

During times like those and times like these, I received great comfort through my faith.  In Psalm 19, David said:

The heavens declare the glory of God;

The skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

Night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language

Where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

Their words to the ends of this world.

As I think about the struggles that David went through before he became King and as I read the prayers and the praises he lifted up to God in the midst of all that adversity, I take great comfort in knowing that his prayers and praises back then are equally applicable today.  As I think about the persecution that folks are incurring around the world and as I think about the hunger, the disease, the war, and the poverty that engulfs much of humanity, I go back to this Psalm and find hope and strength.  Because the God of then is the God of now, and the comfort that He provided to David back then is comfort available to all of us now too.

When I’m in the depths of my deepest despairs because of finances or job problems or issues in life, none of it compairs in any way to the challenges faced by so many others in this country and in this world.  I have not felt the persecution that those of the wrong faith or wrong ethnicity are facing today and have faced throughout man’s existence.  When I wake up in the middle of the night worried about something, it does not in any way compare to those who wake up in fear of their lives or from the reality of total loss through environmental or economic destruction that has occurred.

I pray for those who are in the depths of despair right now, but what I learned from my daughter is that the prayers need to result in action.  Maybe that miracle that is needed by someone in despair is waiting for the committed actions of others of us who may in some way be impacted by these times but through our actions realize that even though impacted we are still so blessed.  In thinking about the lesson I learned, I’m reminded so clearly of the words found in James 2:14-17:

What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?  Can such faith save him?  Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

I’ve spent lots of time praying, and now it’s time to have my faith and my prayers result in action.  And for that growing and now urgent desire to help others, I can thank my 14 year old.  She has set a great example for me now to follow.

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When I travel a lot and get totally consumed by the business challenges, I often times need to be reminded about my priorities.  Today, my 14 year old reminded me of those priorities when she asked me to take her to a local food bank so she could drop off food that we had bought at her urging last time we were at the commissary.  The mission of the organization we visited was “serving neighbors facing financial crisis.”  And while there, after dropping off the food, she wanted to know how she could do more to help, and she volunteered to stop by weekly and help in any way she could.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been more proud of her – it’s something very special when your children take the lead for the family and through their own actions show the rest of us how God wants us to be. 

On the plane on the way home this week I was reading a book that focused on “servant leadership”.  It was a good read, and I was reminded of simple acts of kindness that could go a long way to living a life of servant leadership.  As I watched my 14 year old today get passionate about giving to and serving others, I realized how all those lessons I learned in that book are being lived out in the compassionate heart of my daughter. 

I sit here tonight smiling because through her actions she has reminded me of my priorities not only to be a good father to her but also to be a good servant leader to others.  That should be my priority, and at least for this evening, it was.

Thank you sweetie…I love you!

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After starting the season 0-3, the Colorado Avalanche finally won one tonight – that means excitement and peace in the family – for now at least!  Slow starts in hockey aren’t unusual, but the consequences of slow starts are brutal – especially on the coaches.  The Chicago Blackhawks already canned their coach after a poor start…it was very conceivable that others would end up with the same fate.

To put that in perspective…the Blackhawks were 1-2-1 on the season…just 4 games into an 82 game season…and the coach was canned.  The Blackhawks brought in Joel Quenneville to be the new coach; Quenneville was available because the Avalanche fired him after coaching the Avs to the playoffs last year.

I can only imagine what business would be like if we had the same mentality for our business leadership that they have for hockey coaches.  Suppose we have a slow start in the first quarter and we’re coming up short on revenue or income…whack…the leader is replaced and for just a short period of time the company rebounds with new wins…with those wins that were delayed for that quarter, the company then meets its budget targets for the next quarter and then for the year…all credit goes to the new leader.  That’s the way it happens in hockey.  Not sure it would be quite that way in business.

Regardless, AVS WIN!!!!!  My 14 year old just came in and told me how cool it was to see their first win…she was of course at the game…now she’ll finally sleep good…and might even be acceptable to live with for now!

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