The Fire Within

I live in a very competitive house. My wife and I don't really play games together because neither of us like to lose so it tends to get a little too tense. Being great parents and all we have passed that competitive spirit down to our kids, who all stomped off after losing in a kids vs. parents Pictionary grudge match. My girls also dance so they have had it ingrained early from their very first dance competition. Competition is just a part of life.  Competition is funny though because it can be a good thing, but if taken too far or not looked at correctly it can become a problem. You see on any team you have internal competition and external competition. For instance in sports, you have competition on a team where you have to see first who is going to make the team, then when you figure out who your starters are going to be. So the competition is also your teammate. When you are teammates you then need to work together to beat the competition. Whether you are the starter or the b...

In America we certainly like our sports. The games we watch or play bring out our competitive spirit. We want to win and we want the other team to lose. For most of us we can't play sports so we try to take that competitive spirit into our workplaces, be it a corporation, a government organization or a non-profit. If we aren't winning we are losing. We want to turn everything into a game where there is a clear winner and a clear loser, because that is what we understand the best. It sickens me to watch what is happening in the political arena in our country as we descend further into the black and white of needing to have only one winner. There has always been a difference of opinion and two parties who don't have the same ideology, but it felt like it used to be more about how to take those differences of opinions and find a way to make something work that everyone can agree on. You can't watch a debate or political ad, read a news article or the latest social media po...

Centuries ago generally the government was handled by a king of some sort. The king had territory and all who lived within it were subject to the king. If you had a good king things could be pretty good, if you had a bad king things could get ugly.  If you were the king life was great. Servants took care of your every need, you had riches and castles to live in. If you were a subject, you would have to answer the kings call when needed. If the king decided he wanted to attack his neighbor to try to expand his land, then you would have to go to war for him. If you survived and were victorious your prize was basically getting to return home to your family. The ages of kings is mostly gone now because as time has gone on it became pretty clear that society and civilization doesn't progress unless everyone is able to progress. If the king is the only person that can see improvement in their standing the only way to move up is to kill the king. But there can still only be one. There is ...

I'm guessing you are a person who has to deal with other people in your life. I know there are a few people that choose to live a reclusive lifestyle, but chances are they aren't reading this. For the rest of us we have other people we deal with. Parents, children, spouses, co-workers, friends, family, classmates, teammates, and even the people you pass on the road or in a store. I did some quick research on interactions per day, and like any topic there were too many studies to count. Generally speaking it looks like the average number of interactions per person per day is between 10 and 25. I did a quick recap of my day and I counted 35 people I interacted with. Above average, but probably nothing compared to people that work in retail or customer service positions. However you count it we interact with a lot of different people. All of those interactions and all of those people lead to many opportunities for what I will call friction. Many interactions can be positive, b...

It is easy to want problems to just go away. We've all faced some problems where our answer is if we ignore it or put off dealing with it maybe it just ceases being a problem. Sometimes that can be effective, but it all depends on what type of problem you are facing. The area where it almost never works is when there is interpersonal problems between you and another person. You are never going to get along with everyone. At work or school there are people that just have different ideas from you and you will always be like oil and water. Recognizing the fact that you aren't going to be best friends is one thing, but ignoring issues that make it hard for you and another to work together is completely different. If you are in a leadership position it is important to identify areas where team members just don't get along. In sports you will often see it where a member of the team is traded because they just don't fit in with the rest of the team. Generally there are eno...

We have many words that we use to describe how we want people to behave at work and in life. We want people to be accountable, to be responsible, to take ownership or take the lead. Often I feel that gets misinterpreted as control. Take the word ownership, when we think we own something for some reason we think we can control it. If you own a business you are in charge, and there are pieces you can control. You can control who you hire and fire. You can control your pricing. You can control the features your product has. You have no control over how the people behave, if your customers like your product and if anyone will buy it. If you own a house you can control the temperature and the color of the walls but you can't control a storm breaking a window. If you own a car you can control how often you wash it but you can't control if someone hits you in the parking lot. Being accountable or responsible can be viewed in a similar fashion. It is important to find the right w...

Heard an interesting quote recently by Jim Collins (author of Good to Great  and other titles) attempting to summarize Peter Drucker's life and work, who was probably the greatest management thinker and author of all time. He said that Drucker spent his life trying to answer the question, "How do we make our society both more productive (i.e. better management) and more humane?" As a manager this idea definitely hit me hard because it is something I struggle with, and I see most people in management positions struggle with. We have a very competitive nature in the business world and this need to either be successful or just hold on to our jobs over people that seems to have no morals. Where direction given is sometimes simply, "Just get the job done." I use a lot of sports analogies in my job, and most successful teams have a coach that has been strict, or pushed them to reach higher levels of performance. There is a balance there in so many places in life,...

It has been an interesting and crazy last couple of weeks for me at work, but it is probably the most energized I've been in at least a year. Aside from the normal every day craziness, we are in the process of rolling out some new tools and procedures on how to organize our work and requests. I didn't realize how much energy starting something new gives me. To start with a blank canvas, learning from the last paintings you did and seeing all of the possibilities it can become, there is no greater feeling in the world to me. I've written about starting new things before ( here and here ). I've never been a person that minded going through change, which is unlike many people. But the thing that I realized is that it isn't about change, or the shiny new toy to play with that will be less interesting in a few days. It is about the opportunity to create something better. Usually you are going through a change, trying something new, because things aren't going as ...

I always find it funny how a lesson in life starts forming and God finds a way to bombard me with messages to make sure I got it. Today's lesson continues to be culture, but how much I impact culture by what I say and what I do. How do I respond to someone doing something that goes against the culture my organization wants to build? Do I say something or let it slide just because I don't want to be that guy or don't feel like it is my place to say it? Every time I let it slide I'm accepting a culture that goes against the goal of what we want to create. Jon Gordon reminded me today that I have to be ever diligent if I claim to be leader in this short video here . What I do on a daily basis creates the culture I'm a part of. It doesn't matter what happened in the past, what am I doing right now to make our culture great?

My most recommended and most read business book is Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team . I was reminded of it once again as I was reading a tweet from @simonsinek : A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other. This is exactly what Lencioni talked about as the cornerstone issue in dysfunctional teams often stems from a lack of trust between people. When you don't trust each other you don't openly talk about issues and work together to find a resolution. If you spend all of your time covering yourself so you are protected when things go south you aren't working on pushing things forward. Do you trust your manager, your employees, your teacher, your coach, your kids or your parents? If not you are never going to function effectively. I've been having a lot of conversations lately about culture and how the environment established by the leader impacts the team. If you want to fix the culture, ...

It is easy to see a successful company and have the urge to be like them. You want to implement similar processes, adopt their culture, and share their vision. That rarely works. Your organization is different and needs to come up with its own values, vision and structure. Interestingly enough, what you pick for your culture has less to do with how good your culture is and is more about if everyone in the organization believes in it. For anything to succeed, it doesn't really matter what you pick, it matters that everyone is in agreement and does everything in their individual power to help support it. The people that don't care about or don't agree with your organizations culture, vision or values won't do a lot to make it work. If you are stuck in a row boat in the middle of a lake, how quickly you get to the shore has little to do with which direction you choose to row in. It has everything to do with everyone in the boat rowing together.

I'm guessing we've all been in situations where it feels like you are fighting between departments or groups that you ask, "Are we not on the same team?" If you've never felt like that, you are either in a great environment (which I would love to talk with you and understand how it happens) or you are a company of one. But if you do find yourself in that situation it can be very frustrating. If we are all on the same team why is it so hard to work between divisions, between departments and with another individuals sitting right beside us doing the same job? Even when you talk about the people that feel like you aren't on the same page with, they are nice and helpful, you would describe them as a good team player and yet the silos still exist. So what do we do about it? It all comes down to getting buy in and agreement on the goal. If everyone agrees to what the goal is and what they are trying to accomplish you have far fewer issues. It is getting everyon...

Some people believe that at the basic level all types of leadership can be summarized by two concepts, the carrot and the stick. Do you operate under the notion that people respond best to being rewarded when they do things right or that they need to be punished when they do things wrong? You see this manifested so often in the world, those leaders that think nothing motivates more than a good old fashioned butt chewing. I think that it is rarely effective, certainly in the long run. At the same time you can't be happy about everything, accepting when mistakes are made. Jon Gordon tweeted recently and he worded beautifully how to find the right balance, "Positive leaders are demanding without being demeaning." You can be demanding, expecting better things and higher levels of performance without yelling at someone where they feel humiliated, embarrassed or ashamed. Life is hard enough to be doing that to each other. Most people already know they made a mistake and hav...

I was reminded of an idea I found in The Captain Class by Sam Walker, social loafing. The basics of it is for some strange reason when people get together and try to tackle a task they don't put in as much individual effort as they would if they were doing the same task alone. Of course the overall effort is greater because you have more people, but as an individual your effort is lower. Most teams operate this way, "I do my job but I'm not going to give extra effort, why should I when nobody else does?" Suddenly the individuals are in a race to the bottom to see who can give the least amount of effort and still achieve the team goals. It is hard to recognize because as a team you are accomplishing your goals, but could you actually achieve more? In the book the antidote to this situation was the presence of one person that leaves no doubt that they are giving everything they have to the team. It is usually the person that other complain about in the hallway conver...

No matter what your job you need to be thinking about how you can grow. You can become more proficient in the skills you have or you can learn a new skill. The one thing you can't ever do is become satisfied with where you are at. If you choose not to grow you are putting yourself into a very small box, where you are is where you will be. You also need to surround yourself with people that push you to grow, or have the same growth mindset. Challenging each other to not be complacent with where you are at. Look for teams that have a shared value of growth. No negativity, no drama, no competition. Just a group of people that set higher goals around a desire to be better than they are today. It is hard to keep that up if you are the only one on the team trying to achieve something more.

Teams are funny because you don't have a lot of control over who your teammates are. Work teams, sports teams, family teams - you can choose to quit and find a different team, sometimes. Decide if that is a better fit for you out there. But there is no way to know if you like everyone on the team, let alone if you can be productive teammates. Any team you choose to be a part of there is a chance not everyone likes you. It is hard to tell some times with the different personality types and how they interact with you and the rest of the team. Those that don't say hardly anything, they sit in a meeting but don't say a word. Do they agree or disagree? You never feel like you know where you stand. Those that act nice but you know don't like you. They smile, converse and seem fully engaged, but you know how they are and the way they talk about other teammates. What do they say behind others backs and how do they act to them?  Those that want what is best for the team but...

There are many days as a manager I feel like I'm a good manager, but a terrible leader. Managing to me is making sure the work gets done. Does everyone know their tasks and accomplish them? Is the paperwork done, the reports written and the performance evaluated? If I'm being honest it isn't that hard to be a manager. But leadership is so much more difficult. Leadership is inspiring people to work together to achieve a common goal. It is easy to have a goal, but a common goal? Too many people have their own goals or they really just don't care, they just want to do their job and collect their paycheck. That is where leadership comes in. It is one thing to know what the goal is, but to support it, care about it and do what is needed to help achieve the goal? It is so much harder. It is why I think there are a lot of people in management positions that aren't very good leaders. All managers aren't leaders, but you don't have to be a manager to be a leader. An...

I have never in my life gone surfing or rock climbing. The real rock climbing that is, not the kind with the plastic walls and the harness with the person assigned to ensure you don't fall. I don't think I ever will either, too many other interests to do in my life. So I really had no draw to read Let My People Go Surfing ,  but for some reason a book I had won years ago was the one that I happened to pick up off my shelf and was very quickly drawn in by. It is the story of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. It takes you through the history of the company and how it established its values. The second part of the book expounds on the philosophies that Yvon keeps as the focus of his life and what his business stands for. If you are in business there are obvious examples that you can take out for yourself, help to guide you on developing your own philosophies to guide you. But the really intriguing part for me is how it has made me rethink how I shop and how I'm going...

Every day communication trips me up at work. People not understanding instructions because they weren't clear. Projects not getting done right because the requirements weren't detailed enough. Not getting responses to questions that are asked. These are all things that I control. Beyond that I'm also responsible for other team members, so I have to coach and help them without resorting to statements like, "Do as I say not as I do." There is always room to get better at communication. I know I've written on the subject before, different days provide new insights to me. What I've come up with today is that communication needs to be CUTE: Comprehensive - complete, every point is covered. Often you hear it is important to be concise. I agree, when fewer words are sufficient to get the point across. But you should never favor being concise if it isn't a complete picture. Understandable - don't use a bunch of jargon, if it is confusing them you are...

One of my favorite words is dichotomy, for me it tells a story about life. Dichotomy describes two things that are completely opposite from each other, things that are mutually exclusive. But sometimes those opposing things become complementary. Take for example hot and cold. They seem contradictory but with the right elements they become great. Put ice cream on a chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven and you have a magical dessert that is way better together. When you find things that seem like they are opposite, finding a way to make them compliment each other is usually when greatness emerges. A marriage between a man and a woman. Various departments in a business. Offense and defense on a team. These work the best when the two sides realize they are on the same team and find ways to work together, make the other side better. Our world continues to get more divided where each side of every issue expends all of their energy proving why they are right and the "enemy...