Musings at Altitude

When my daughter read that last posting she came clean with one of my old Sports Illustrated magazines:

 

I now know that when she’s done scouring the pages for hockey news (that’s all she looks for), she uses the magazines to test nail polish and then to paint her nails.

I’m certainly glad that she’s getting maximum value from the magazine!

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Recently, after returning from several weeks worth of travel, I was looking through my several weeks old stack of mail, and I noticed that my Sports Illustrateds (should have had several weeks worth) weren’t in the pile.  I still had my Inc magazines, my Wired magazines, and my Forbes magazines, but not my Sports Illustrateds.

Today, I was sitting in my office on a conference call and my 14 year old went out and checked mail for us.  She walked back in and laid the mail on my desk and walked out with something cradled in her hand.  She walked back in just a bit later with my Sports Illustrated.  I think I now know where my Sports Illustrated goes…but who would have expected my 14 year old daughter?  Nirvana?

PS. My 20 year old son got to the Swimsuit edition first.

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I’m enjoying the milestones that are occurring right now (or fixing to occur).  Here are some that have been most exciting and creating the most anxiety today:

— First grandchild.  Our oldest is two weeks out from delivery and looking like she’s going to bust today!  It’s been incredible watching the buying start immediately after announcement of being pregnant, and I don’t even want to go back and figure out how much has been spent till now nor even think about what’s going to be spent once our granddaughter arrives.

— First new car for my daughter and son-in-law.  They went out yesterday and bought their first new car.  That’s always an exciting moment and an early milestone for many young couples.

— 200,000 miles on my car.  I’m 40 miles away from hitting 200,000 on my Acura MDX.  It’s a 2001, and I’ve driven it hard for just about 8 years now.  We’re going to take some pictures when we hit this milestone, but my guess is that the car won’t last much longer…I’m certainly not looking to 300,000.  I’m committed to not buying a new car till this one does blow up…but I sure see several cars I would love to drive right now!

— Son’s first job.  He just got hired by the world’s largest retail chain…starts with a “W”.  He looked at several other high profile retailers, but neither of them turned fast in offering jobs.  I suggested he go to “W”, and sure enough, within 2 weeks he had a job.  I’m excited for him, though he seems pretty numb about it all.  I’m also excited about the 10% discount we can now leverage because he’s an employee!

— 14 year old entering high school.  Oh boy.  Here come several firsts…first real boy friend…first drive (she did that yesterday)…first date (oh my gosh).  I have the advantage of having been through the boy and dating stuff with my oldest, but this is my youngest.  The anxiety of the first is replaced with the anxiety of your last.

— Five years with one company.  I never accomplished that before.  I’m not sure I’ll ever accomplish it again.  I live in a constant state of anxiety when it comes to jobs…I like change…challenge…growth…excitement…changing teams and then team building…winning.

— First I-Pod.  This may not seem like much to some, but it was a pretty big step for me!  I’m enjoying listening to my tunes everywhere I go.  Of course, my daughter set it up for me!

This year I’m going to do something similar to a “bucket list” and then track my milestones and firsts against that list.  Time is going by fast and that bucket list is going to be long!

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I’ve decided to document my 10 most inevitable and irrefutable (sort of like Murphy) laws of business:

(1) When you are waiting on that call announcing a big deal or waiting for that one chance to talk to a key person you’ve been courting for months, that call will come in during those very few seconds you break to use the bathroom after waiting for hours and holding it as long as you can

(2) When you finally establish an email dialogue with a potential client that you’ve been waiting seemingly years to connect with, when you push send on that one note you really need to be brilliant on, you’ll find an error in the language that really makes you look foolish (by the way, “recall” doesn’t work)

(3) When you have just one visit to close a deal you’ve worked on for months, something will go wrong with your plane reservations – guaranteed

(4) If you find a major error in your presentation before the most important presentation of your life (they all seem that way), the one Kinko’s close enough to quickly redo that presentation will either be overwhelmed and can’t do it or be out of power because that entire city block has gone down

(5) When your team says “this one’s a slam dunk”, expect that effort to be the hardest one to close for the year

(6) When you submit your budget and have thoroughly scrutinized every possible line item and every possible component cost or spend, one of the approving authorities will say “did you include this” and you’ll immediately go “doy” because you didn’t

(7) In any major meeting of the senior leadership of an organization, when the officiator asks “who wants to go first”, no one will make eye contact and my pity to the person on the far right who always gets picked to go first

(8) If you write in an email a flaming rebuttal to any particular issue and want to only send it to a certain small group of like minded folks to you, somehow that email finds its way to the individual who set you off to begin with even though you wanted to vent without them ever seeing it (did I mention that “recall” doesn’t work?)

(9) When you absolutely have to have a specific budget approval approved by a certain date in order to meet mission milestones, it absolutely positively won’t get approved on that date…in fact, it will only get approved when the time pressure is off and it’s not that important from a time standpoint anymore

AND

(10) The minute you think you’ve seen it all, you haven’t; the minute you think you’ve heard every single excuse imaginable, you haven’t; the minute you think you know exactly what investment is required to achieve a desired business objective, you don’t; the minute you think you’ve communicated enough to make sure absolutely everyone knows exactly what’s going on, you haven’t; the minute you think you’re a shoo in for that promotion, you’re not; and the minute you think that business success is all because of you, it isn’t

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I mentioned in an earlier posting that my hopes for one of my children to go to the Air Force Academy were dashed when my daughter said “just shoot me now” when I suggested she focus on making it to the Academy.  I’ve somewhat recovered from that major setback in the last few days, and I’m focusing now on getting one of my kids to follow me into some form of business entrepreneurialism.  My oldest has just received her nursing degree and just yesterday got word back that she received her nursing license for the State of Colorado.  That’s awesome, and I’m very proud of her.  But she probably won’t go into business anytime soon.  My middle son is now talking about enlisting in the Air Force since he hates school and really does want to see the world in a sense.  He hates being in any form of leadership or overseeing role, and he probably doesn’t realize how most of the Air Force critical missions and services are led and then performed by the enlisted corps, so he may be in for a shock if he does indeed pursue this path because he will be in a leadership role at some point during his time in the Air Force (just a guess…but probably a good guess).  But he certainly doesn’t see himself in any form of leadership position in business right now.

That gets me to my 14 year old again…maybe my last chance for someone to get passionate about business too.  I’ve got sparks of hope with her on the business side right now.  While we lived out in the Washington DC area, she and a couple of friends started a “we’ll do anything” business and got a few jobs cleaning garages and raking leaves.  Her advertising strategy was word of mouth and leveraging Dad’s friends back then though, so she never really turned the corner into a knock on doors and experience some rejection type of business.  Since we moved back to Colorado, she’s listened closely at times to my business conversations, and specifically focused in on one where I was talking on the phone about my struggles with certain team members that weren’t pulling their weight and thus getting paid much more than they really deserved.  In her typically blunt way, my 14 year old asked, “if they aren’t working then why are you paying them at all?”  Oh if it were that easy.  But what a great way of simplifying the issue to what should really be done when folks aren’t capable of or aren’t motivated to do their part in achieving mission success.

This morning I received an overnight mail package from one of our operating companies with their annual operating plan inside.  My daughter asked who it was from and what it was, and then she went off on the pundits who are picking the Colorado Avalanche to finish way down in the Western Conference standings in hockey this year.  She of course bad mouthed Detroit in the midst of her spew (what good Avs fan doesn’t) and then came to her own conclusion that the Avs would be awesome this year (what good fan wouldn’t)regardless of what the critics and supposedly experts are saying.  When she was done spewing, she looked at me and said, “so that operating plan is sort of like a game plan for hockey”.

I wish I had her ability to look at things and so simply and perfectly compare the business stuff to anything else in life that’s important to her.  I believe she has a chance to be a good – actually great – business leader.  Business is so much about passion, so much about simplifying complex things into things others can quickly grasp and act on, and so much about shared planning, aggressive practice, and then focused execution.  She’s got all of those down even at 14 years old.  Hopefully, between now and the time that she launches big time into some revenue adventure she’s excited about, those that surround her will spike that passion and build on her early excitement for team work and business success. 

That would be cool.  That may be my only hope!

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I was sitting in my office at home today with the music cranked up loud and my singing carrying well into the house (we had guests too, but what the heck, I rarely get to belt it out here at home and any of our guests might as well be family anyway).  My son wandered in during one of the breaks between songs and as I paused to catch a breath, I said, “pretty good, huh!”  His reaction was so typical:

 

He’s got great talent with both music and art, but he obviously has no appreciation for fatherly acoustics!

I kept singing and he eventually wandered off.  He’ll be back though…most likely when the music isn’t on.

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My last post was pretty serious…moving into that grandfatherly phase and out of the fatherly chaos has affected me in ways that I didn’t quite expect (even though I’m only a tweaner right now).  But if I have to have an empty nest soon, it sure will be cool to share this incredibly large house with my childhood sweetheart and life long companion:

 

My travels have taken me all over the world and every now and then we stop for just a day or two and spend time focused only on each other.  This was Venice Beach in California.  I’m pretty confident we’ll find things to do, places to go, and new thrills to experience as the years march on…in fact, in some ways I’m pretty excited to find out what new adventures we’ll embark on and where some of that freedom will take us.

For now though, I’ll keep pumping memories into my way too small brain…time is marching by way too fast right now.

PS.  Thank you sweetie for the gift of those that are now independent or heading towards independence…with me gone so much, your handiwork is beautifully displayed through each of them.

 

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My wife and I have been married over 25 years now and we’re going through family changes right now.  We’re moving from being just parents to soon being grandparents (3 weeks away if all goes as scheduled).  We currently have 2 of our 3 kids living at home, but our 20 year old son has the itch and my guess is that we’re only months away from being 2 of 3 out of the home and being only one child away from empty nesters.  And our 14 year old is entering that less than clingy phase that Bob Carlisle talks about in “Butterfly Kisses”, so the time we’ll share together will slowly diminish leading up to her departure from home in a few short years.

Up till recently, I didn’t think much of all the changes – in fact, I was really looking forward to a bit of privacy and a distinctly different level of noise and harmony in the home.  But the closer we get, the more I already miss the noise, the constant tension, the uniquely family debates, the “give me my space” requirements of each of the kids, and the oldest/youngest/middle child abuse or special treatment depending on which they were and which they weren’t.  I look back fondly on needing a van to give each their own bubble and I’m not so sure anymore that I’m looking forward to when the two seat sport coup will suffice.  Just 7 years ago we built a 6,000 square foot home to give each of our children just about their own floor and we’re soon to have 2,000 square feet per person too much in the house -  I already hear the echoes that will occur as my wife and I will talk and we’ll have no bodies in the home to dampen or absorb the voices anymore.

I’m one that thrives on change, but I’m sensing that there may be some changes that have a much more sentimental affect on me than others, and in a sense, I may want certain change to maybe go into that otherwise despised holding pattern…just to prolong the wonder and the beauty of the moment and thus to further lock into my memory the beauty of what is and what was and thus delay the inevitable what will be.

I can also see now that there are certain events in our lives that further reinforce our mortality and just by their very nature open up the emotions and the inevitability of our “later years”.  In these years, those you love the most move from dependence to independence and from desiring the close proximity of safe and secure to the distance of confidence and maturity.  I know they’ll still call…every now and then…and then once in a while need something special that only a mom or dad can provide, but the better we do our job as parents in those formative years then the less they need to call – hopefully though they’ll want to call.

As my wife helps my oldest prepare for the soon to come new member of our family and as I counsel my middle son on career paths and choices even though he’s in those time-to-support-myself-and-make-my-own-decisions years, I already cherish those few months or maybe years I still have with our youngest needing to some degree her parents (she can’t drive just yet!).  We’re so lucky that our kids are all strong and independent; yet we’re somewhat unlucky in how quickly they move into those need-to-support-ourselves years.

These sentimental moments seem to come so much more frequently now – that’s a consequence of aging too I guess.  In this sentinmentality though, I hope to lock in the memories and the moments so I can relive each one when the contact and the needs diminish.  In some ways, I hope that holds off for a while.

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On the final evening of any multi-day trip, I sit down and recap and figure out if progress was made or not.  On a business development trip, it’s very easy to determine if progress was made and relationships were advanced.  It’s a lot more difficult when working on staff issues or trying to move forward corporate programs.

I find myself smiling a lot more on the last day of my business development trips, and I find myself scrutinizing my activities to a great extent on the final evening of my internally focused activities…it’s a lot harder to define and perceive success on the trips where I’m focused on staff work.  I find my emotions mirror my activities too – I achieve incredible highs when I focus outward and upward and I experience some pretty significant lows when I focus inward.  Since I recognize this now, I try and schedule my activities to (as much as possible) mix outward and upward facing activities in with my inward focused events.  That way I can minimize any time I’m at an emotional low and pull myself back up to some level of emotional high through my scheduling of activities.

Nirvana for me is a full week of outward and upward facing events – client visits, relationship development, client team meetings, and operating company visits.  These are invigorating.  I end each day (typically) smiling.

Purgatory for me is a week of internal audits, internal reviews, back office transactions or board meetings.  They wear me out.  I’m mentally destroyed by the end of any such week and it takes me quite a bit of time to recover.

I was in the home office this week, but each day I mixed in an outward facing meeting with a full slate of inward focused discussions.  The outward facing meetings were awesome this week, thus tremendously moderating the typical deep emotional dive that would come from the internal activities.

After more than 25 years of post college work, I’m still learning so much about how to optimize my excitement in business and how to schedule my activities to keep me at a peak level of engagement and involvement.  We all perform at a much lower level when we’re deeply discouraged or mentally worn down…I’m definitely that way.  I perform best (IMHO) when my optimism is overwhelming and my excitement about tomorrow’s slate of meetings far outweighs any burden from current business events.

Tonight I’m smiling…great meetings today; great excitement about the future; great optimism about the chance for change; and great hope for a multi-billion dollar decade ahead.  Most importantly, I’m getting on a plane and going home…that sort of trumps anything else I may be feeling at this time!

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We’re in the 4th quarter of our business fiscal year now, and we’re in that final push to try and hit our numbers while finalizing our annual operating plans and budgets for this next business year.  For many, this is the dog days of summer…for me, it may be the most exciting and definitely the most stimulating part of the year…at least it was in the operating companies…not necessarily as exciting at the staff level…but definitely still anxious for our companies and excited about my next chance to get back to the adrenaline rush of the end of year close.

As we push hard in this final quarter, I’ve come up with the following end of year resolutions:

(1) visit with each of our major business platforms to encourage them in this final push and see what if anything I can do to help them end the year strong; the last thing they need is someone distracting them though, so this really is a “show the flag” and also stress my empathy for what they are going through trying to hit or blow through their numbers

(2) create three new partnerships that will open up a myriad of possibilities for our companies in the coming year; it’s always great to look forward while you’re under the pressure of the current end of year close; but these relationships that are created can’t distract those focused on the end of year close – it’s a tough dance at times, but we need to open doors without requiring extensive time of our executing teams

(3) develop a leadership pipeline; in the coming months, we’ll need new senior executives in several of our companies; as we shift from growth to the first billion to accelerated growth to the next few billion, we’ll need a different type of executive, one who has “been there and done that” in taking companies from chasing contracts to creating wealth options for the parent; but we’ll also need executives who aren’t solely chasing personal compensation – it’s a special breed that wants to be part of a very different type of team

(4) stop my whining; being on staff sucks…that’s all there is to it, but it doesn’t do any good to whine; the staff of a billion dollar company has the same mission as the Pentagon does for the military – organize,  train and equip our business units in the field and then get the heck out of the way so they can execute their business mission; staff members of big companies that came from operations in the field feel the same way that commanders in the military feel when they are assigned to the Pentagon or a major staff – it’s pergatory to them; ultimately, the operating companies take their forces into the field and win the business war…the staffs do not; but the operating companies can’t win if the staffs don’t support them right; if I focus on those in the field fighting the war, I’ll stop focusing on me and hopefully stop my whining

While getting these 4 done, I’ll need to do my part in organizational restructuring, subsidiary consolidation, strategic planning, and end of year assessment/evaluation.  All of this makes the 4th quarter the most exciting quarter of the year.  Tensions are high – not everyone will hit numbers – but everyone sure will kick into high gear to give it that final push in trying.

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