Musings at Altitude

As I look into an organization, one of the great challenges I have is assessing leadership when things are going well.  I find myself in the good times wondering if it’s the organization, if it’s the product or solution being sold, if it’s the customer with the need, or if it’s the leader creating the right business scenario for success – or is it a combination or some mix of all.  I get most troubled when leaders take lots of credit for the upside when the “weather” for business is so good, and then they quickly start a blame game when the weather starts to change.

I’ve been in both extreme business scenarios – (1) perfect business weather where the customers have lots of money, the needs are clearly defined, the urgency is immediate, and our business is the right contracting path; and (2) the perfect business storm where the customer is short on money, the needs are questionable, the urgency is “not now”, and our business is one of many different possible paths to contract the few things that will ultimately move forward.  The perfect business storm – in fact the worst imaginable business storm - occurred for me in 2000 and 2001, where the market collapsed, the telecom companies took a beating, the IT budgets were squeezed and the consultants were tossed out.  Our 18 month old consulting firm went from an aggressive ramp with a global presence in year 1 to struggling to survive and a localized presence in year 2.  As I look back on that two year period, it’s hard to believe how quick the rise and then even quicker the fall – we went from perfect weather to the perfect storm in those 24 months.  On the government contracting side, in my 25+ year business career there have been several periods of incredible government spending thus accelerating opportunities for lots of companies.  We had that type of period in the 80’s when we were spending aggressively in advance of ending the Cold War, and then that type of period again in this decade with the increased spending because of the Global War on Terror.  Lots of companies were able to take advantage and grow during both periods of heavy spending, and lots of leaders took credit for great performances during these periods of “perfect business weather”.

During both extremes, I’ve seen leaders dramatically shift focus or ignore key indicators – pipeline, margins, costs, operating income, employee churn, etc.  During the good times, the pipeline is full and the operating income is substantially rising, so folks ignore the decreasing margins and increasing costs.  During the really bad times, folks are consumed by pipeline and the loss of employees and excuse away the rising overhead and rapidly falling operating income.  During one such period, one business leader told me “if we had sold more we would have lost less”, ignoring the fact that if that leader had reduced costs when the revenue creation stagnated, then maybe the actual loss would have been more understandable (though no loss is really ever acceptable) rather than staggering thus costing that leader their job.

The leaders I have enjoyed the most are very humble people.  During the good times, they give credit to others, to the markets, to their customers, and to the timeliness of business actions.  During the bad times, they reduce costs, they tighten their OODA loops, they relentlessly watch the business weather (but don’t blame that weather because the really good leaders saw those storm clouds coming and prepared well in advance), and they minimize potential losses while motivating their teams and taking the burden of change and any assigned blame on themselves. 

As I look at and assess leaders today, I spend lots more time focusing on their actions and their attitudes during the downturns.  If times are really good for any particular company, I spend quite a bit of time now looking behind the positive numbers and seeking out their actions against the always present irritants of business – that’s where I can sense how they would act and react when the inevitable downturns occur.  In perfect business weather, decent managers can effectively lead growing companies, but it takes tremendous business leadership to effectively navigate any company in the perfect business storm.

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A good friend sent me a note yesterday with a comparison of a boss to a leader, attributed to H. Gordon Selfridge:

The boss drives his people; the leader coaches them.

The boss depends upon authority; the leader on goodwill.

The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm.

The boss says “I”; the leaders says “WE”.

The boss says, “Get here on time”; the leader gets there ahead of time.

The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown.

The boss knows how it’s done; the leader shows how.

The boss says, “Go”; the leader says, “Let’s Go!”

I surely can’t argue with this, but I can tell you from personal experience that there are certain situations and certain mission where you inherit certain people or a certain state of affairs in the effort and even those considered good leaders are completely flummoxed.  I’d never consider me the “best of leaders” (I have way too much still to learn and to prove to lay claim to even being an “effective leader”), but I have served in lots of leadership roles and I have been completely flummoxed at times in the job at hand or the people I’ve been staffed with to complete a specific mission.  In thinking back, I’ve been flummoxed more by the team members inherited than by the complexity of the mission at hand.  Maybe that’s why I enjoy a startup environment so much – though money may be tight, at least you can typically build your own team of people you totally trust to accomplish the job at hand.   There have been times though where I’ve been given that “impossible mission” and jumped in boldly thinking my leadership would change the inevitable outcome.  Sometimes it did, and those efforts were euphoric.  Other times it didn’t, and those times were devastating.

I can think of 2 specific times (so many more, but so little time) where I charged forward in an impossible mission trying to be the leader mentioned above, and all of my efforts led to despair:

(1) I was challenged to lead a development environment where I inherited a low cost team that had no experience with the capabilities that were being packaged into the product and had no real experience with the people that would eventually buy the product if it ever made it into production.  Because the costs were 1/4th (at least) of what it would cost using a “slam dunk” development team, I was asked to “lead” this team to success in spite of severe constraints and extreme reservations.  Sure enough, all the “let’s go” in the world didn’t help as we struggled to hit deadlines and struggled with delivering capabilities.

(2) I was challenged to client manage a deployment environment where the opening comments from the customer were “you came in so low on your price it is worth the risk to see if you can pull this off even if you don’t”.  That was an incredible statement of faith from our client!  Sure enough, the client was correct as our development teams struggled with delivering capabilities to the schedules or at the costs committed to.  As the struggles mounted in the development environment, the client team (consisting of analysts and project managers) bore the brunt of the “I told you so” comments and faced head on the frustrations of the client.  As we lost the trust of the client and the inevitable end of the program became much more clear (to the client team – not sure the development team really ever felt it), the client team was fixing breakdowns in the relationship daily, but we could never overcome the breakdown in delivery of the product.

For both of these, there was a silver lining in the cloud of despair.  For the first, in spending so much less on the product and by taking quite a bit more time to deliver, the internet bust occurred saving the owner and primary investor many millions of dollars that would surely have been lost if we had used a high priced team and charged forward with a more aggressive schedule.  For the second, by trying to deliver an enterprise scale application on an impossible schedule at an impossible price, the customer was able to leverage that project to show intent to change to the incumbent and to force the incumbent to negotiate with more sincerity and less ego, hopefully saving millions of dollars in that process over time.

The fact that there was a silver lining eased the pain just a little after time, but every leader regardless of circumstances feels the burden of failure to an extent that’s hard to explain.  Even the best of leaders at times may jump into that “impossible mission” thinking that their leadership skills can overcome the incredible constraints.  When those constraints are team members not capable of achieving in support of the mission or funding limitations that prevent getting the right people or the right technologies to support the effort, then even the “best of leaders” may not be able to overcome the inevitable.

With all this being said, I’m yearning for that next impossible mission and the challenges of getting a team (probably not perfect) to achieve a result (probably not possible)!  That’s where you really do learn what kind of leader you are.  That’s where you really do make a difference.

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I was able to spend a couple days at home this past weekend.  As usual, my wife and I verbally sparred much of the weekend as we got used to being together again (that’s a natural process when you’ve been gone all week) and we crowded into each others’ space.  During the sparring, at a certain point in the conversation, my wife said, “if a man learns a lesson but a woman isn’t there to witness it, did he really learn anything at all?”  I sat stunned for a moment, knowing that the comment was aimed at me but immediately wondering (like I always do) what the hidden message may have been.   As I think back on the conversations and that particular comment, I really don’t remember what may have precipitated that comment, but I’m pretty sure it could have applied to lots of things I do.  My wife is an incredible teacher, educating and then re-educating me on so many things in our relationship.  She’s also an incredible discipliner, making her point and then taking punative action against me as the purvayor of the crime.  And she’s very astute – seriously astute – knowing when the change in my behavior may be a temporary response to pacify her and then being able to ratchet up the penalties to achieve a permanent change in behavior.  The punitive action can take many forms – the silent treatment, the cleaning spree with every cleaning motion done with serious intent, not doing things she would typically do thus “encouraging” me to do it, and even every now and then a verbal smack in the face.  Some of the punishments don’t work nearly as well as the others.  I’m slow on the pick up (many would just call me dense), so many times the cleaning spree or not doing something to encourage me to do something just don’t work.  As the punishment escalates though, even someone as dense as me eventually realizes that I’ve done wrong.  But realizing you’ve done something wrong doesn’t necessarily translate into learning – that’s a much different path and for me a much different problem!    I did spend some time this weekend doing things that I don’t normally have the sense to do – helped with the cooking; helped with the dishes – ok, that’s about it.  And I think my wife was actually startled just a bit by my help…she wasn’t really used to it.  And I’m not sure why I wanted to help this week, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.  I really do think I’m learning.  I’m learning that I’ve taken things for granted just about my entire life.  I’m learning that I’m lazy by nature, but more upsetting, needy as well.  I’m learning that I use my aggressive travel schedule at work as an excuse for my laziness and neediness.  I’m learning that I’m fat.  Ok…I’ve always known I’m fat, but now it’s really starting to bother me.  I’m also learning that I’m really disorganized at work and in life, but I can cover the disorganization at work with my passion and long hours, but I can’t cover my disorganization in life without lots of help, and thus the neediness.   It’s still early in my current change process, but I truly am learning lots of things.  I’ve gone as far as to say that I’m in a mid life crisis with the things I’m doing and the things I’m learning.  Since I’ve spent a lifetime mired in my ways without learning anything at all, my wife has every reason in the world to be suspect of my learning and even cynical of such learning.  And maybe that’s what drove her to ask that question.  But I can tell you this – in life just like in school, it seems like every now and then things just click.  I can’t explain why the changes are occurring now, but I hope these changes are permanent and I hope the smiles that come because of these changes become contagious!

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I had an early wake up call this morning, catching the hotel shuttle to the airport at 4:15 and on a plane and out onto the tarmac by 5:45.  These early morning flights are filled with people snoring and then a rush to exit the plane upon arrival at the destination to get to the bathroom which they didn’t use on the plane because they were sleeping!  This first leg was completely uneventful – it was the second leg of the flight that caused me to shake my head in utter amazement at human behavior.

As a 1K flyer, I have the privilege of boarding early on United flights.  I was the 3rd person on the plane and buckled into my window seat at 6A.  As others started coming onto the plane, a family of 5 boarded and were assigned 4A, 4B, 5A, 5B, and 6B right next to me.  The mother looked obviously agitated as she buckled in the car seat of her young child in 5A.  The father got his other two children into 4A and 4B, and then he came back and sat down next to me while the mother was up front talking to the cabin crew.  The father told me about the struggle he had with the ticket agent trying to get seats together, and how it really wasn’t a good idea for his two kids to be up in the 4th row all by themselves.  Both got seriously nervous when flying, causing them to use the air sick bags often during the flight.  With 2, 2, and 1 seating, there was no good way for them to split up because any one of the children sitting by themselves would be even more nervous than if the two children were sitting together.

After a couple of minutes, the mother came back and told the father that the only way to re-position was to convince one of the aisle seat individuals to give up their seat so they could get a 3 and 2 seating arrangement.  They asked the gentleman sitting in 4C if they could switch with him, and he immediately said no since he wanted an aisle seat.  They asked the lady in 6C if she would consider switching and she said she’d had her aisle seat for months.  The person in 5C had not yet arrived. 

About this time, their oldest daughter in 4B gave in to the fear of flying for the first of many times during the flight as she used the air sick bag.  After realizing that this was not going to be a one time occurrence, the flight attendants provided the family with bigger trash bags to use for the rest of the flight.  Amazingly, when the oldest daughter threw up this first time, the gentleman in 4C that wouldn’t give up his aisle seat calmly moved down the aisle and stood while the mother took care of her daughter.  When this first episode was over, the occupant of 4C calmly came back and sat right back down next to the girl that just threw up.  He wasn’t bothered or concerned at all about what just happened.

When things had settled down (we were still at the gate with the door open), I asked the father how long they had been traveling.  He said they had just arrived from Hawaii and were connecting to that flight to New Orleans.  The mother – who was still standing at the ready in case of another episode – told me that her husband had just gotten back from Iraq one month earlier, just in time for their household goods to be shipped out of Hawaii for their new duty station in Florida.  They had been living in a hotel for a month in advance of this permanent change of station.  They had lived in Hawaii for 4 years, and their kids were very scared of flying.  They were heading to New Orleans to pick up their car (it had been shipped) and then they’d drive over to Florida.

By the time she was done telling me their story, the holder of 5C came down the aisle, an older gentleman, probably 75 or 80 years old.  He was her final hope.  I told her to ask him if he’d take the window seat if I moved over to the middle, thus taking the issue of that dreaded middle seat off the table.  Without even asking questions, the older gentleman said sure, and we re-positioned, let him in the row with us, and we all got back in our seats.

The mother sat right in front of me in 5B with her car-seat-strapped-in child in 5A and her oldest and most nauseated daughter sitting next to her in 5C.  The father went up to 4B and buckled in next to his middle child in 4A.  The daughter in 5C continued to use the air sick bag throughout the entire flight.  She never was able to settle down and rest for the entire two and a half hours.  As she continued to throw up, the lady beside me in 6C calmly pulled out her brought on board lunch of a sandwich and cookie.  As the young lady in front of her threw up, she calmly chewed her food, looking up every now and then just to see what was happening.

You gotta wonder what people are thinking today and why no one would give up their seat for this family that just needed a helping hand.  They were obviously stressed from an already very long trip.  They obviously needed to be close to their children, and you couldn’t have had more proof than the first episode with the air sick bag before we even all got buckled in.  You gotta wonder what was going through the mind of the guy that calmly moved so the mother could take care of her child when she threw up and then he calmly went right back to that very same seat without any acknowledgement of the tough situation that existed.  You also have to wonder about the woman sitting next to me that wouldn’t give up her seat either and calmly ate her meal while the mother took care of her daughter as she was throwing up right in front of this lady.  Have we really become that immune to the trauma around us and are we really that non-caring about the situation of other people.  I’m not sure I can think of a more important reason to give up that aisle seat than to help this family, and yet neither of those two would, and thank God for the older gentleman who didn’t even hesitate when asked (without even being given a reason).

I was in a position to watch this family from behind during the entire trip.  Not once did the mother or father exit the kind, caring, concerned and comforting role and become cranky or aggressive with their kids.  When the baby cried or the daughter threw up, the mother responded with love and compassion.  The father took care of the middle child up in front and the mother took care of the two right in front of me.  I was impressed and inspired with their patience throughout the entire flight.

I see examples of kindness and compassion quite frequently as I travel, but unfortunately, I see way too many examples of the callousness of people as well.  Today took the cake though when two people seeing a clear need decided their seats were too important to show any compassion.

You gotta wonder.

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This weekend is very special for me because of the sacrifice of a man 2,000 years ago.  We celebrate on this weekend His death and His resurrection, and I seem to then spend lots of time thinking about the sacrifice made, the example set, and the expectations then of me and others because of that sacrifice.  I believe we are here on this earth to serve, and I can’t find a better example of service and sacrifice than what Jesus showed to us in His short time here on this earth.

In so many ways we’ve lost our purpose of service to our Creator and service to each other.  We have the perfect example in His son and yet we let our egos, our desires, our defiance, and our defenses get in the way of humbling reaching out to Him and to each other.  As I look at the world today, I see a dramatic rise in tensions and a dramatic rise in rhetoric.  I see an incredible self-centeredness emerging (not that it hasn’t always been that way) and a win at all cost mentality that pervades most contentious relationships.  I’m surely not pointing fingers at others without pointing fingers at ourselves or even at myself.  We exhibit that same behavior at times in our politics, in our litigational mentality, in our business relationships, and in our personal relationships.  I’ve exhibited that same behavior at times where I’ve believed I’ve been completely right and I was willing to do anything to prove my point, even by dumping on another person and causing pain in other peoples’ lives. 

Near as I can tell though, that’s not the example that was set and that’s not the attitude of humility and servitude and sacrifice that we’re supposed to put forth.  As parents, we often times put our kids in time out so they could think and reflect and learn from a particular issues or after a particular behavior.  Even today we still here folks say “take a chill pill” as the emotions run rampant and the tensions get high.  Jesus gave us a great example of how to handle stress and how to handle the issues of life – break away in quiet prayer and reflection and spend time alone speaking with our Creator.  He showed us the ultimate chill pill and the ultimate time out, though He broke away not from sin or from conflict, but for reflection and recuperation.  We can learn from that lesson though – maybe when things get tense for us or when conflict is imminent, at those times we too should break away for reflection and recuperation.

As we prepare for this Easter celebration, I am committing myself once again to service to our Creator and service to others.  I’m also committing myself to breaking away for prayerful reflection and recuperation.  Maybe in my own special way I can ease some tension in my own life and through that example allow others to feel less tension as well.

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I think we all have experienced those weeks where it seems like in every major effort we’re engaged things are going wrong.  This was one of those weeks.  We have several key events occurring all at one time and the bumps in the road have been frequent and burdensome.  I watch our team members as these bumps occur, and I see many different ways of handling the chaos, the changes, the setbacks, and the frustrations.  I would expect that with more experience there is more acceptance, but instead I see equal amounts of irritations coming from those who have years of experience as well as those who are new to program execution. 

In my business life, I’ve had the fortunate (or unfortunate) opportunity to be in incredibly tense environments (if things went wrong) with world leaders, in incredibly expensive environments (if things went wrong) in space launch activities, and in incredibly stressful environments (if the revenues weren’t achieved) in business operations where layoffs or even business shutdowns could occur.  Today, I tend to take the bumps in the road much more in stride since I spent so much time in the gut wrenching pressure of my jobs in the past. 

As I watch others today though, I fully understand and fully empathize with those who tear themselves apart when changes occur or when the path that was planned can no longer be achieved.  For those people I offer the following:

(1) Don’t seek to blame – I’m fond of saying that “life is all about assessing blame” because so many folks in this world immediately look to blame someone when something goes wrong.  I can’t argue that sometimes human error can create complete havoc, but those times seem rare to me in my experience.  Instead, I often see that 1 in 100, or 1 in 1000, or even 1 in 1,000,000 thing happen that causes the disruption.  There is always time to assess and correct after things get back on track, but disrupting the corrective action to place blame has never seemed to be of any benefit to me.

(2) Don’t sink into the business quicksand – I really enjoy the movie “The Replacements”, and I like the part in the movie after they lost their first game together and they sit in the locker room talking about fear.  The coach asks the players what they fear, and after several comical answers about spiders and bees, the quarterback says “quicksand”.  He goes on to explain that it occurs when one thing goes wrong, then another, then another and the harder you then try the further you sink – like quicksand.  That’s a great commentary on business too.  It’s very easy to let one thing that goes wrong and then another to pile up on your emotions and then you quickly start sinking and the harder you try the further you sink – in the business quicksand.  When things go wrong, assess and respond to them one at a time and resist with all your might the things are piling on impulse.  From my experience, when you start solving problems one at a time, you build momentum in the opposite direction and pull yourself out of that quicksand.

(3) Don’t quit communicating – My first reaction when things go wrong is to hunker down and try to solve those problems and bear all the burdens on myself.  That’s exactly the wrong thing to do.  Based on the severity of the problem, there always seems to be comfort in numbers and it only makes sense that the more smart minds that are working a problem the better.  I remember the scene from the movie Apollo 13 when the mission director through all the components of the space ship on the table and said here’s what we got let’s get to work and solve this problem.  He had a room full of people actively engaged in problem solving and they came up with a solution.  We don’t always have the luxury of having a room full of people to solve problems, but we surely have a small group or at least one other that can carry the burden and offer solutions with us.  A good friend is fond of saying “you don’t lead alone”.  I’ll modify it just a bit and say “you don’t bear the burdens alone.”

(4) Don’t think the worse – I’ve had moments where when something went wrong I immediately said “this can only happen to me”.  So many people jump to conclusions, sink into the muck of project despair and then have to work even harder to dig themselves out.  I’ve become very comfortable lately with stepping back and collecting information, and waiting to get the whole picture and both sides of any story before reacting too aggressively.  I fully realize that sometimes the timing and importance of an issue doesn’t allow us the luxury of patiently waiting for data.  In those cases though, getting enough information fast enough to assess and decide on corrective action is critical.  In most cases, when I sought confirmation or requested more information, I reacted then in a much better way to the issue at hand.

(5) Don’t forget to cherish those who are on that business or project battlefied with you – In every business I’ve been in, the bonds were so much tighter when we fought together through those bumps – maybe even better called huge barriers – in the road and came out on the other side stronger and tighter as a team.  I’ve personally witnessed other cases as well where the challenges of the hurdles became so destructive to those trying to overcome that it tore that team apart.  With respect for each other and trust in each other, any problem can be overcome.

(6) Don’t forget to smile – I can’t remember who always told me “it’s hard to frown when you’re smiling”, but it’s true.  In the worst of times, there always seems to be something that causes that ever so fleeting smile, and when those smiles begin, they often times become contagious.  I’ve had folks that got truly annoyed when laughter was occurring in those worst of times, but I’ve personally found faster resolution and better ideas when folks find ways to loosen up.

Every now and then I think about finding that perfect project or that perfect job where everything goes right and every day is a complete joy.  I’ve never found that project or job yet where everything goes right, but I have decided that the joy part is all in my control!

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Throughout my life I’ve played to the stereotype of folks from Mississippi.  I’ve been known to say, “I’m from Mississippi, so please speak slower.”  Or, “in my Mississippi math, it comes out to ________”.  I’d then smile and folks would nod knowing exactly what I meant or exactly what I was joking about.  But over the last few years, I’ve begun looking at Mississippi and thinking about Mississippi very differently – though some of my old habits in cracking jokes about Mississippi haven’t yet stopped.

I grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, born in Biloxi and raised through grade school in Gulfport.  I was able to walk to elementary school and ride my bike to junior high and high school, and my entire world centered around school on weekdays, church on Wednesdays and Sundays, and roaming the neighborhood in summers.   In 1969, I lived through Hurricane Camille on the beach front in the Buena Vista Hotel as my Dad worked feverishly to fill sand bags to try and block the tidal surge that was inevitably coming.  He and the staff gave up when they recognized it was a valient attempt at stopping an unstoppable force, and then they all evacuated the lower floors to get upstairs.  We lived that night, huddled on the second floor on the hotel, but the hotel never recovered from the hurricane.

When I was old enough to work, I went to work.  As with most of my friends, faith and church were core to who we were, and church was not option.  Of course, school was not an option either.  When I left my troubled first six years of school behind, my Dad sat me down and said I would need to do my part to pay for college.  He would not be able to pay for it.  It wasn’t long after that when a Liaison Officer for the Air Force Academy showed up at my junior high school and a picture of the Academy went up on my wall.  For those last 6 years of grade school, I had one goal – get to the Academy.

I remember one day in the spring of 1978 when I got paged over the school intercom system with an announcement that Representative Trent Lott was on the phone for me.  I also remember to this day my English teacher at that time saying, “he can wait” since she was of a different political persuasion, and making me wait the final 10 minutes of class before letting me go to the phone.  Much to my surprise, Representative Lott was holding, and he quickly informed me that I had received an appointment to the Air Force Academy.  I still remember the excitement I felt which slowly changed to anxiety as I realized I’d be leaving Mississippi, leaving the security of home, and heading to a part of the world which I had never seen before except in those pictures of the Academy.  My Academy years were spent locked up in school, and then, when I got those rare breaks, I’d rush home to Mississippi.  There was an awful lot of comfort there and an awful lot of love from both my folks and my friends. 

Because of Mississippi, I made it to the Academy.  Because of the Academy, I had the opportunity to travel the world in the Air Force, to work at the Pentagon as young officer, to work in the overhead reconnaisance business in space launch communications and to work in the White House as a military communications officer.  Because of the military, I made it into business and I’ve worked all over the country and all over the world since. 

At school and in each job, the education I received, the understanding of real faith that I gained, and the lessons in humility and persistence that I learned in Mississippi provided a foundation for life that was unbeatable.  Even more importantly, my best friend and life long companion also came from Mississippi – my wife!

As I look back today, even with the great foundation I was provided, I made no real effort to understand Mississippi.  I was and in many ways still am ignorant about my home state.  But in spite of that self induced ignorance, I can tell you this…when I see the resilience in folks in my home town today as they rebuild from Katrina, I’m proud.  When I see the commitment to carrying on traditions and to rebuilding lives, I’m proud.  When I see the laser like focus on recovery – with or without the help of the federal government – I’m proud.  And when I get to visit my Mom and Dad and my wife’s Dad back home, I’m proud.

I’m blessed to be from Mississippi, and I’m grateful for the opportunities I have today to visit Mississippi for work and for vacation.  I’m also thankful for those who are working on folks like me to change the stereotypes.  One such campaign is the “Mississippi, Believe It” campaign which was built to inform both those in and from Mississippi and those from elsewhere about the real Mississippi.  When you get a chance, stop by and take a look.  The Cirlot Agency did a tremendous job of addressing the common stereotypes of folks from Mississippi and providing the true picture.  Here’s the web site – http://www.mississippibelieveit.com/faq/.

I’m sure in the coming months and years I’ll still stoop to my old habits and make some of my “I’m from Mississippi” comments.  But maybe with time and more learning about my home state, those statements will morph to a new meaning and I’ll say that with a real understanding of Mississippi rather than ignorance.

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I really hate debating – verbally parlaying; arguing back and forth; desperately hoping to win someone else over to your position or ultimately yielding to the other and letting them feel the euphoria of you giving in.  But when it’s all over did anyone really win?  When I debate, I typically give in because I’m tired of debating.  I’m not yielding to the opponents position; in the end, I realize it just doesn’t matter if I duke it out till some undefined end and then maybe claim verbal victory.

In business, the sad part of an aggressive debate is that both parties who are truly passionate about their own positions will walk away from any debate and still find a way to get their position or their preferred path moved forward.  The debate does in some ways make visible the key issues in the argument, but I’ve rarely seen really good people walk away from a heated debate with one side saying, “that guy was right”!  I learned early on in my marriage that I couldn’t debate worth a lick.  My wife would out spar me in what seemed like seconds – I just couldn’t stack up.  I found out over time that although I lose to a pro in a debate with my wife, I lose to much less professional arguers in my business life.  I just can’t keep up with the line of reasoning that even modestly good debaters will follow.  I’ll put up a good fight for a few minutes, but then my mind goes numb, the words I speak are out of synch with the argument being made, and my mind goes back to things I should have said rather than focusing on what I should be saying…all of that leads to disaster if there really is an important point being debated.  Fortunately, it rarely is that important so who wins or loses I guess is good for egos but mostly irrelevant to business progress.

In a sense, my disgust with debating probably goes right back to my lack of patience and my desire in business to have a rapidly spinning OODA loop.  For me, debating is resistance – it’s slowing down any particular path while everyone works hard to get others on board with their particular position.  It seems so obvious to me that a path – any path – ought to be taken and then the course corrections or “debates” ought to be held during the mission operations rather than well in advance.  If the debate was held under mission constraints, you’d think it would be tightly focused.  In fact, it may be so time constrained that there would be no debate at all – that would be nirvana!

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Throughout my business life (actually throughout my entire life), I’ve struggled with patience.  When I see things that need to be done, I’d like them to get done or at least move forward toward being done immediately.  When I see a path that needs to be taken (at least from my perspective), I can’t understand why that path isn’t immediately taken.  When I see an obvious answer to any problem or any challenge, I want to immediately address that problem or respond to that challenge in the way that seems obvious.  For some who know me (my wife comes to mind first), they would agree that I am impatient, but they’d immediately offer their input as to how right I might be in the path I sense should be taken or the resolution I may be pushing to solve for any particular problem.  In fact, in one of my more outspoken sessions of complaining to my wife about my frustration with some insanity at work and a failure to take a particularly obvious path (this was many years ago), she quickly responded, “you’re absolutely right…wouldn’t the world be so much better if everyone thought just like you.”  That shut me up!

But I am by nature very impatient.  I like things constantly moving forward.  I like things constantly changing.  I’m a big fan of the “Ready, Fire, Aim” mentality, and I get seriously bored in any lengthy planning process.  In software development, I’m a big fan of RAD – Rapid Application Development.  It seems to get something exciting and meaningful much faster.  In business, I’m most stoked when you have only months to do a multi-year job or when you have a seriously significant deadline with severe business consequence if it’s not pulled off – the time intensity of both of these then makes planning a parallel process with significant urgency that folks can’t spend any time pondering during any part of the planning cycles.

My lack of patience in most things related to business has caused many people to call me “flighty”, “not committed”, “high risk”, “unfocused”, and even “foolish”.  At various times, I probably couldn’t argure with any of those.  In fact, I could probably give you an example of each one of these as I look back over the last 25 years of my life in both the military and in the commercial world.  But even though I wouldn’t argue in looking at specific examples, I think I would argue that desiring movement, or desiring change, or desiring aggressive growth when those are the principle causes of a lack of patience doesn’t naturally point to a risky or unfocused or foolish approach to business.  In fact, I’d argue that you should give me a team full of just such risky, unfocused and foolish people, then match those with a couple of mission focused check and balancers, and we could make some wonderful business success happen.

But I wasn’t thinking about business when I started thinking about patience – or that lack of patience that I have.   Instead, I was thinking about a recent lesson given to me by my Dad concerning patience.  As I typically do, when I get a bit frustrated by life and I feel my lack of patience getting to a point where I might make irrational decisions, I call my Dad, and he’s great at listening.  He’ll let me vent and when I’m done he’ll always pull out some gem of wisdom that I spend days then pondering and internalizing.  That happened recently when I was on a long drive and needed to vent so I called home.  I told my Dad about the frustrations I was experiencing, and how I was praying hard for patience.  I talked about how God wired me with that knee jerk reaction mentality and how I was struggling with knowing if that strong desire to change (in anything) was based on God’s will for what I should do or based on my own selfish desires to just change. After letting me vent for quite a few miles my Dad said, “you shouldn’t pray for patience, but wisdom, for wisdom precedes patience.” We went on to talk about several more things and then my Dad asked, “can you give me one example in the Bible where a lack of patience was used as an example of good by God?” He mentioned Abraham and Sara who got impatient and took matters into their own hands. He mentioned Jacob and his mother who also got impatient and took matters into their own hands. In those cases and many more, a lack of patience (and maybe a lack of trust in the promised outcome) got folks in trouble when they decided to act rather than patiently allowing God’s plan to be played out. Fortunately, God fulfills His promises in spite of our lack of patience (or lack of trust), but my Dad’s point was well made – I shouldn’t believe that God made me to be impatient. Instead, I should pray for the wisdom that only God can provide and then through that wisdom gain patience.

Not one to ignore the incredible advice of my Dad, I’ve been praying hard for wisdom lately.  I can’t say that I feel any more patient since I’ve changed the focus of my prayers, but I can say that when I feel impatient I do pray for wisdom a lot harder!  Just to reinforce what my Dad told me, I started reading the book of James this morning, in a translation called “The Message”.  In the introductory comments to the verses, the authors said, “prayer is foundational to wisdom.”  Earlier, they had said, “wisdom is not primarily knowing the truth, although it certainly includes that; it is skill in living.   For, what good is a truth if we don’t know how to live it?  What good is an intention if we can’t sustain it.” 

So I’ll keep praying for wisdom, and hopefully through my prayers I’ll also find patience.

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For the last two days, I’ve been sitting at or below sea level, and the temptation to yield to the burdens of business and thus sink into despair have been great.  I talk often about the OODA loop – observe, orient, decide, act – and I’m convinced that we’ll never be able to effectively quantify the business lost because of the slow response of any corporate bureacracy.  I’ve been blessed in my life to see the very best of OODA loop performance in business, and unfortunately the very worst as well.  The best goes back almost two decades now to my Air Force days when decisions were made on the information known and the path was adjusted as more information became available.  I can’t remember a time where we actually said “no”, and we all held ourselves accountable to rapid recognition, rapid response, rapid deployment, and very rapid availability of operations capability.  During those incredibly stimulating days, we responded to any stated (or even unstated but recognized) need with speed.  Our OODA loop was spinning tight.  Risk was something we lived with – we didn’t ignore it, but we sure didn’t focus so much on risk that we denied the operations folks from getting their needed mission capability.  We were spurred on by a passionate focus on our mission and a common commitment to deliver to each other what was needed to get that mission done.  For us, we delivered capability.  For our customers, they delivered clear requirements, funding support, operations support, and ultimately critical feedback throughout the entire definition and delivery process.  It was about as close to nirvana as I can imagine, and it’s rare in business that I can come close to that rapidly spinning OODA loop environment that I experienced in that one job in the military.

I have found in business that start up companies can come close to an exciting OODA loop spin, but the actual tightness or velocity of the spin is highly determined by the founding team or the individual that’s been tasked to be the money rep and leader for the company.  Only rarely can some other member of the company actually influence the spin of the OODA loop.  As companies get bigger, other members of the executive team (not the CEO or any of the remaining founders) could be significant accelerators, but more likely, significant resistors to any speed needed to achieve phenomenal business results.  The reasons given to slow things down are too many to state, but they include too much risk, unclear ROI, no money available, can’t trust the execution, not enough margin, don’t have time to look at it, and the one that becomes the catch all when no other excuse seems reasonable, it’s not in the plan.  In any particular instance, one or more of these may in fact be true.  But how many great opportunities drop in our business laps without risk, or without timing problems, or without funding or investment challenges, or without some schedule problem that creates so much chaos that other things need to be set aside to respond effectively to that great opportunity that faces us.

I visited a company yesterday and today that had their act together.  The functional leaders actually said, “although I don’t agree with this because of how risky it is, the program manager makes that decision and my job is to support him.”  I looked at the program manager and I could see that he (1) understood he had that responsibility and (2) knew that with that responsibility came a huge burden to spin the OODA loop very fast to achieve success…lots of eyes were glaring down on him.  But the company as a whole supported the program manager’s decision.  That dialogue was a clear example of business nirvana to me.  In that company, the OODA loop was spinning fast and tight as they responded aggressively to business opportunities and executed flawlessly most of the time.  When problems did exist, they learned from those problems and they talk about those problems constantly.  With that focus, the OODA loop spins even tighter.

I’m in a company today that needs these examples of those doing it right to model that behavior for us to accelerate our OODA loop.  For every person pushing hard to spin the cycle faster, others are yanking hard in the opposite direction to slow things down and create comfort in methodical execution.  We have had several times recently where we went through the “OO” very fast, and then the great resistance of the organization begins acting against the “DA” driving lethargy into any execution process (if we get there).  The great challenge that we face is that the resistors don’t act in concert with each other, but they seem selectively perched along the path and ready to jump into the resist cycle at the very moment that a previous resistor may be losing grip.  I’d cherish the opportunity to take them all on at once – we could get all the resistance out in the open and get on with it or we’d stop the process, but at least we’d attack and respond to each resistor and then accelerate into the business opportunity at hand.  One of many things I haven’t figured out is whether or not the resistance and the resistors are malicious and devious or instead good hearted people just behaviorly incapable of living with a fast spinning OODA loop.  I’m hoping the latter.

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