So, although the process exists for a reason, and there may be parts of the process that are necessary because they enable you to follow the rules/laws, or they keep you/others safe or enable success today. The goal of your job is ALWAYS BIGGER than the process. I guarantee it. How can I do that? Because if the BIGGER thing didn’t exist, there would be no need for the process. The process exists to achieve the thing, not the other way around.

I know I have a problem because the microwave says :01

Great people, teams, and businesses are great because of the things they achieve. They achieve greatness by always growing, always moving forward, and always pushing past mediocrity. Replacing comfort and contentment with healthy amounts of discomfort and stress. This requires team members to speak boldly, candidly but always with positive intentions.

In life you will enter into dark places, all people do. Living life trying to avoid dark times is not helpful. Figuring out how to leave the dark place as quickly as possible having learned the intended lesson is a much healthier approach. Here are thoughts on how to achieve that.

Change is hard but a requirement for long term sustainable success. It goes against human nature and business nature so you must be willing to be persistent in a respectful way as you challenge the status quo knowing what got you to here won’t get you to there.

According to a book I was recently reading, Your Oxygen Mask First, most leaders who are chasing after their version of greatness suffer from a pretty severe tendency to neglect themselves. This apparently has adverse effects on a leader’s ability to achieve the greatness they are chasing. Put me on that list. I am probably an all-star in that endeavor, maybe even a future hall of famer.

Its important to freely share information because The concepts that information is still held firmly under lock and key and that the flow of information is something to be closely controlled are radically and irresponsibly flawed ideas. In a world full of information that is free and easy to come by, context has replaced content as the key driver of value in information. We must stop living like ostriches with our heads in the sand, shocked that people know “secrets” and instead share information and context freely. It is for the greater good to do so. Allow others the professional courtesy of being treated like an adult who can be trusted and allow others to trust you.

Let me share a brief personal story with a broadly applicable life lesson. Our youngest daughter is adopted. She joined her forever family at the age of 6.

The world has evolved into a real-world Wanka Factory (think of Willie Wonka and his chocolate factory with the room made of edible goodies where Gene Wilder encouraged us to live in a world of pure imagination).

Have you ever considered why do you participate in travel sports…really? I spend time with a Mindset coach and executive coach talking about the travel sports landscape and how to improve the chances of the experience being positive for your family and young athlete.

Last week I shared how the not being a jerk principle is about healthy conflict not about avoiding being a jerk. I have been reading bestselling author and Wharton professor of organization psychology Adam Grant’s book Think Again and just got to a chapter where he draws the same conclusion. So you don’t have to take my word for it.

This guiding principle is less about avoiding being a jerk and more about creating a culture of candor and inclusivity recognizing that as we explore candor and diversity of thought sometimes you will be a jerk and the best thing to do when that happens is apologize.

If you have a job, you are in the problem-solving business. You might be on the front end of that (customer service or sales), operating in the background (marketing, product development), work in the trenches (IT, manufacturing), or find your work adjacent to those who are (HR, Learning). Still, the reason your job exists is that a need was identified, and your company felt it could meet that need. You were then hired to support solving that need either directly or indirectly.

I want to celebrate my wife. It was one year ago that COVID really started to change the way we lived in America. It is also about that time my wife, a small business owner (although as a non-profit, she reminds me the board owns it), had to begin to lead her customers (pre-school families), her staff (teachers and admins), and strategic partners through the new normal.

When I am reading to learn or for self-improvement purposes, I love the art of the highlighter. I agree with statements like if I am not highlighting every few pages, then a book is not worth the time. So I buy highlighters in bulk (mostly cause I misplace them).

I am at an indoor water park with my family. I walk to the bathroom. I notice sitting at a table along my path is a child likely aged five. The child is sitting on his mother’s lap. The young child is drinking a dark brown (black) carbonated liquid through the straw of a McDonald’s cup.

When setting goals, you first need to figure out why you don’t have them already. Conquer what scares you about setting goals. So you can achieve your goals more often.

I had the great opportunity to join Cara North and Joe Suarez to talk about best practices for leading creative teams. It’s 37 mins of conversation on topics including: the basics for leading all teams, the evolution of the creative professional, getting through episodes of Imposter Syndrome, autonomy at work.

Manana (Spanish mon ya na) Iguana by Ann Whitford Paul was one of my favorite books to read to my kids. I enjoyed the ability to use some Spanish vocabulary and an accent even though most of the book was in English, it made them laugh as I fumbled over the Spanish words. But more than sharing the laughs together, I loved the lesson to be learned.

Challenges that drives us to the brink, can also become opportunities to do what we never thought possible. This happens when you switch your focus from what is being done to you, to what can you do with the challenge. My 2020 reading list helped me change this mindset.