Success – Page 16 – Grandpa Bob Encouraging Leadership

Which wolf will win?

“Which wolf will win?” The boy asked his Grandfather.

An old Navajo and his grandson went walking in the woods. The Navajo spoke to his grandson, teaching him of the plants to eat and the plants to avoid, teaching him how to read the story written in the dusty earth by the paw tracks of animals. When the old man saw that two wolves had traveled across their path, he knelt at the tracks and turned to his grandson to teach him of his spirit.

“Grandson, there are two wolves in your heart fighting for your attention. One wolf is snarling with rage, the other is howling in harmony with the moon and all living things. As you grow up the fight will grow stronger between these two wolves.”

“Which wolf will win?” The boy asked his Grandfather.

“The one you feed.”

I’ve seen this story a few times in my life and came across it again today. It’s a great reminder that each of us control the biggest decisions in life:

Help or Hinder

Build or Destroy

Admire or Envy

Harmonize or Rage

Encourage or Discourage

Explore or Avoid

Listen or Ignore

Care or Neglect

Seek or Hide

Love or Hate

Which wolf are you feeding?

Photo credit: http://www.medicineofthewolf.com

Diary of a Competitive Stairclimber

I lasted about three floors before going past my personal “red line.”

I’ve been a competitive stairclimber for about five years. This means I train on a StairMaster pretty much year-round for one or two stairclimb races each year. Races generally start on the ground floor of a skyscraper, and end at the helipad. The Willis Tower race (formerly Sears Tower, in Chicago) finishes on the 103^rd floor, where they have crazy observation windows that allow you to step out into “space” outside of the building. [Note to self: next time I compete in the Willis Tower climb, don’t spend the prior day tourist walking with Janet all over Downtown Chicago. Do that after the race!]

Like most sports, there are elite competitors, and then, everyone else. Elite climbers make it to the top in amazing time, often climbing a floor every 8-9 seconds. I’m usually in the top 15-20% of my age group (40-49), with a 12-14 seconds-per-floor pace. Unfortunately, I can’t say my lack of speed is an age thing, since more than a few of the elite climbers are in their mid-40’s.

During my first stairclimb race I was lucky enough to get passed by an elite climber. He had raced earlier in the day, and was taking a “leisurely” training run during my race wave. I took note of his technique as we approached the 40^th floor of a 63-floor climb. He took two steps at a time, pulling himself up hand-over-hand on the handrail. He made it look pretty easy as he passed, so I gave it a try.

It was definitely much faster, and got my upper body into the climb. It also meant more muscle groups would need oxygen. I lasted about three floors before going past my personal “red line.” I was forced to stop and catch my breath, before soldiering on with the standard one-step-at-a-time method. I had seen the secret, and knew I’d have to train differently to prepare for the two-at-a-time technique.

People have asked me how I’m able to climb without hurting my knees. Climbing stairs is great for your knees, lower back, and hamstrings. It’s a low-impact, heavily aerobic exercise. We only climb, and never descend. That’s what elevators are for. Climbing creates long and stretching strides, focusing the work onto your muscles and soft tissue, and away from your joints.

Which brings us to today. My fifth year climbing the Aon Tower in Los Angeles, benefitting the American Lung Association. After the question about knees, the next question is some variation of, “Doesn’t it get boring, just climbing stairs? What are you thinking about during a race?” I suppose it’s the same things other endurance athletes think about during their races.

To definitively answer this question, here’s a brain dump of what I was thinking earlier today as I “raced:”

Only three runners in front of me to start. Ten second intervals.

“Good luck on your first race. Do you want to start in front, or behind?” Steven answers that he will take off behind me. I put in my earbuds and fire up my iTunes StairList (thanks to Jennifer for creating this list many years ago).

Ten seconds to start. Remember that I am starting on the 20 minute mark.

I love the quiet just before the start. Go!

Save Ferris! Nice choice, Jennifer!

The start is different than previous years. We entered a different door and hit stairs immediately.

No rhythm for the first 3 or 4 floors, until we get into the main stairwell.

Fifth floor. First person passed.

Two steps at a time. Nice rhythm.

The first ten floors are always the hardest, even though I just did about 20 floors of warm-up before the race.

Tenth floor. Steven is right behind me. Awesome! How cool is it that my son-in-law is running this race with me! He’s gained ten seconds on me already. Stud!

Move to the outside! Why do slower climbers never move to the outside like the instructions say? There goes my nice rhythm.

Back on track. Water stop!

“Sorry, we ran out of cups.” Well, that’s a real mind-f***. It sure is dry in this stairwell! I take a quick swig of water from my hand.

That’s not a very sanitary thing to do. 100’s of climbers are touching these rails, sweating on them, and you just took a swig of water from your hand after using those same rails.

16^th floor! Where’s Steven? He must have slowed up.

18^th floor! Focus on two-at-a-time.

I wish I hadn’t forgotten my gloves. I’d have better grip on these handrails.

Nice mandolin. Perfect time for a little string quartet music. Nice choice again, Jennifer.

21^st floor. One-third done. I wonder how my pace is. I’ve passed a bunch of people.

It would be great if the stairwell would change direction. Turning left over and over is making me dizzy.

Deep breaths. Focus on two-at-a-time. This is comfortable. Passing more people.

30^th floor. Nice cheering section. Is that a clapping toy? Cool. It sure is dry in this stairwell. My lungs are burning!

Water stop! Amazing what one Dixie cup of water does. Quick back stretch.

Two-at-a-time. Steady pace.

Takin Care of Business. BTO! Rock on!

1-2-3-4. Turn, 2-3. 1-2-3-4. Turn, 2-3. 1-2-3-4. Two-at-a-time still working!

45^th floor. This thing is almost over. Look at that crowd of people ahead…all in pink shirts. That’s a big team!

I see an elite runner as I turn. He’s not close enough to pass yet, but he will be in another floor. Just doing a training run…two-at-a-time, of course. There he goes. Stud!

50^th floor. Mark Anthony. Not my favorite song right about now. A bit too slow. Two-at-a-time is still working! Awesome. Only 13 more floors!

52^nd floor. My lungs are burning. They named this race right. Fight for Air!

Last water stop before the finish. Big crowd here. Only ten floors to go.

1-2-3-4. Turn, 2-3. 1-2-3-4. Turn, 2-3. 1-2-3-4. Two-at-a-time still working! Not as fast as the elite guy. I’ll just have to train at a higher level. He’s gone.

59^th floor. Only four to go. Two-at-a-time working! Move to the outside! What’s the deal? A whole bunch of people all of a sudden. I wonder if I can get past all of them in four floors.

1-2-3-4. Turn, 2-3. 1-2-3-4. Turn, 2-3. 1-2-3-4.

Color change. 61^st floor! New direction on the stairwell. Push to the finish!

Last turn. Bright sunlight. Here comes the roof!

Stay focused. Push to the finish. Man, my lungs are burning!

Finish line! Clock minute is 34. What was my start minute? Oh yeah, 20. 14 minutes. Dang it. Slower than last year. Hey, that’s Garth Brooks. The song is almost over.

What a view! First time I can remember it being clear and bright at the finish of this race. Look how clear the Hollywood Sign is.

Next event is in late-September. The US Bank building in Los Angeles. It’s about 75 floors. That event has always conflicted with something else. I plan to climb it this year. Time to ramp up my training. More StairMaster, more trail running, more rope climb, more squats, less ice cream (hey, let’s not get crazy!).

Bring it on!

View from the helipad

Thinking about Redemption

“It comes down to a simple choice, get busy living, or get busy dying.”

If I’m flipping around the TV and happen to fall on The Shawshank Redemption, I stop what I’m doing and watch. It may just be starting. Andy is erroneously convicted of murdering his wife. Or, it could be in the middle, as Andy and Red’s lifelong friendship is building. It could be the end as Andy makes his triumphant escape by climbing out of the hole he dug in his cell and swimming down a 500-yard sewer pipe to freedom. Doesn’t matter, I’m in until the end.

I could go on about all the nuances of the plot, the symbolism, the character development, and the thematic genius of the movie, but I won’t. Well, maybe just a little.

I’m focused on one quote from the movie:

“It comes down to a simple choice, get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Throughout the movie, Andy Dufresne is hit with life-crushing challenges. He takes each hit, feels overwhelmed, and even mourns being the victim. He then gets up, dusts himself off, and takes control. He decides to get busy living. The alternative is unacceptable.

His redemption isn’t just his ultimate escape from the prison, but the redemption all of the people he touches along the way. Andy brings a new perspective to everyone around him. He helps the other prisoners find their own value. He sets in motion a long, and silent, quest for justice. Even as a prisoner, he controls the direction of his life, and his own redemption. It isn’t the world around him, but the world within him that points the way.

Each of us get to make choices…every day:

Make progress, or make excuses.

Add value, or take it away.

Be an asset, or a liability.

Build trust, or erode it.

Help, or hinder.

Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

I don’t know the full definition of redemption, but I’m sure it lies in these choices.

Your Future Called…Here’s 10 Things You Should Know

People will dictate the future. It won’t be a poll, the Internet, social media, or some secret government agency.

The future will start, as always, with ideas. The ideas that become reality will be those that capture the imagination of strangers, most never knowing the origin of the ideas they now “own” emotionally.

People will dictate the future. It won’t be a poll, the Internet, social media, or some secret government agency. People, acting in the pursuit of their own self-interest, will decide with their votes at the ballot box, and the way they choose to spend their dollars.

Nothing predicts your future better than your own attitude and expectations.

The future belongs to those with personal motivation, determination, and a willingness to fail in pursuit of success.

Your future is finite, just like everyone else’s. Enjoy today as your prepare to greet tomorrow.

99.9999% of your success will happen when you open yourself to helping others succeed first. Of course, you already know that since you listen to Zig Ziglar.

The mark you leave on the world starts and ends with those closest to you. Everything else is a bonus.

Learn to teach and you will never stop learning, or helping others. This is closely related to number 6.

You are the only arbiter and defender of your core values. Think about your core values, understand why you have them, and live them to the fullest, every day.

History continues to find its way into the future. Study history. Study the people who drove history. Learn the lessons history provides like your future depends on it…because it does.

Seven Steps to Creating Your Goalprint

People who buy shovels don’t want shovels…

There’s a classic quote in business:

People who buy shovels don’t want shovels. They want to make holes, or fill in holes as quickly and easily as possible.

Chances are pretty good that you’re selling shovels to someone. Or, maybe you dig the holes?

Either way, the planning, the shovel, the digging, and the hole itself are all merely steps along the way to achieving someone’s goals.

Your goals? Maybe…that all depends on whether you know what your goals are.

The funny thing about goals is that no one has the same goals. They may share some, or agree on goals to pursue together. But, no two people have the exact same goals.

Each of us has a goalprint as unique as our fingerprint. It captures our passions, our dreams, and the specific goals we’ve laid out for our lives. Partially-developed goalprints live in our subconscious mind, until we take the time to bring them into our conscious mind and fully define them.

Consciously defining our unique goalprint isn’t easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is.

Here are the seven steps for creating and living your personal goalprint:

1. Define five things you are most passionate about, and how you plan to center your life around these passions over the next five years. Not willing to focus your life on this list of passions? Maybe these aren’t really your passions.

2. Define at least seven things you plan to experience over the next ten years. A quasi-bucket list, only with a ten-year horizon. Notice this isn’t a list of seven things you want to experience, rather a list of the seven things you plan to experience. How many of these involve the things you are most passionate about?

3. Money isn’t everything, but it does make the world go around. With this in mind, write down how much money or assets you plan to have set aside for big ticket expenditures (i.e., home purchases, kids’ college, retirement, something you were passionate about in item 1, etc.) in one year, five years, ten years, and twenty years. What income do you need to hit these targets? Start saving now, if you haven’t already.

4. Define what you plan to be in one year, five years, ten years, and twenty years. This can be personal, professional, or anything else you define as what you plan to be. Keep working until your “what” supports what you’ve listed in the first three steps.

5. If you’re blessed with a spouse, or a soon-to-be-spouse, compare and discuss your answers in the first four steps above. What do you have in common? Are your goalprints compatible? How will you each accommodate and support your spouse’s goalprint in the coming years?

6. Hold yourself accountable for fulfilling what you’ve laid out in your goalprint as you make decisions in your life. Enjoy defining success on your own terms.

7. Repeat this exercise once a year.

Unlike fingerprints, our goalprint will change and grow over time. That is, if we have the courage to let it.

____________________

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The Bargains We Make

I bargained with Life for a penny…

I came across this classic poem recently:

My Wage

I bargained with Life for a penny,

And Life would pay no more,

However I begged at evening

When I counted my scanty store.

For Life is a just employer,

He gives you what you ask.

But once you have set the wages,

Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,

Only to learn dismayed,

That any wage I had asked of Life,

Life would have willingly paid.

–by Jessie Belle Rittenhouse (1869-1948)

My Question for You

What is your bargain with Life?

Are you working for a penny, or something more?

How about your end of the deal?

Are you even keeping score?

If we get out of Life,

Only what we ask,

I say go for the Moon,

And reach for the stars.

But, are you willing to bear the task?

Your Talent Won’t Be Enough

Enough for what?

There are very few truly one-man (or one-woman) shops. Show me a successful sole proprietor, and I’ll show you someone who leads, and relies upon, a team of talented individuals…whether they realize it or not.

How can this be? Doesn’t the definition of sole proprietor mean that one person is the sole talent? Well, sort of, but not quite.

Imagine that you’re an awesome flower arranger. Your bouquets are exquisite. Their beauty is unmatched. You decide to take a risk and open your own flower shop. Your confidence is high. After all, your flower arrangements are incredible. Customers will come from miles around to buy your arrangements.

A few weeks into the process of opening your new shop, you discover that flower shops don’t run on flower arrangements alone. There are building leases to negotiate, furniture and fixtures to procure, point-of-sale systems to deploy, website interfaces to create (if you’d like to receive orders from some of the national flower delivery services), suppliers to line up, insurance coverage to purchase, merchant account services (if you plan to take credit cards), and payroll systems (for the one or two part-time employees you’ll be hiring, just for starters).

You’ll need to connect your talent with the talents of a wide array of other people, just to open your shop.

It’s the same thing in a larger company. Your ability to build trusting relationships across your company, and across your industry, will have more to do with your long-term success than individual talent. Creating a reservoir of trust with talented people, and relying on them, just as you’d rely on yourself, is critical to your success…and theirs.

Your talent, alone, won’t be enough. Enough for what? Enough to accomplish whatever your definition of success is.

Defining Semi-Retirement

I’m definitely not retired, although I have let the term, semi-retired, roll around in my head. It seems accurate, for now.

For the first time in nearly 30 years, I’m living the life of a semi-retired person. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it all began about six weeks ago. That’s when I parted company with my employer after a little over fourteen years of service. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I think we were great for each other. I learned a lot, contributed lots of value, helped many people advance in their careers, and enjoyed the fruits of success.

I often counsel people to remember that in any organization, large or small, every day could be your last. Many probably think I’m being a bit dramatic with this advice. While not speaking literally (well, maybe I am), the main message is to be prepared for a sudden exit, either by your choice, or the company’s.

My departure was my choice and the process took a few months. Heeding my own advice, my wife and I were well prepared. We’ve saved and invested (sometimes wisely) for our entire life, lived simply, and recently wrote our last tuition check (a big milestone in any parent’s life).

My friends congratulated me on my early retirement, but I was quick to push back.

I’m definitely not retired, although I have let the term, semi-retired, roll around in my head. It seems accurate, for now. “Semi” opens the door to a world of options, and sets a high bar for what I’ll choose to do in the future.

What’s next? I’m not sure, and I kinda like it like that.

The Most Important Strategy Presentation You’ll Ever Make

Was this the most important strategy presentation you’ll ever make? It probably seemed like it, with all of the hard work and sleepless nights that went into it.

You’ve figured out how to ask real strategic questions . You and your team have used those strategic questions to layout your strategy for next month, next year, maybe even the year after that.

You’re working on the big strategy presentation for your boss, and his boss. You have 30-45 minutes to present. It has to be perfect. Your PowerPoint slides need to be crisp, concise, and informative. Most of all, they must smoothly convey the sheer mastery of your team’s strategy.

You rehearse with your management team. You adjust and tweak each word, each number, and every bullet point on your slides. You gather as much supporting information as you can to support your conclusions. You write out every question you can anticipate, and make sure you have a clear and effective response for each one. You are ready.

Your company’s dress code is business casual, but it’s tradition that you wear a coat and tie for these annual strategy presentations. Your preparation pays off. You deliver a brilliant strategy presentation. There are a few questions thrown your way, but you’ve anticipated every one of them. Your boss, and his boss, are clearly impressed and excited to offer their support for your strategy.

You gather your team for a short post-presentation update meeting. You congratulate your team for all of the work they’ve done on the presentation. High fives all around!

Was this the most important strategy presentation you’ll ever make? It probably seemed like it, with all of the hard work and sleepless nights that went into it. But, it definitely wasn’t the most important.

Having your manager’s support for your strategy is a big deal. But, your manager, and his manager, won’t do much to help you deliver on the brilliant strategic vision you and your team have laid out.

Remember all the time and energy that went into your perfect presentation? Imagine if you spent even half of that time and energy preparing for, and presenting to, your customers and your employees.

The most important strategy presentation you’ll ever make is to the people who will deliver on your strategy…your customers, your direct reports, and everyone who works within your organization.

It’s not a one-time event that lasts 30-45 minutes. It’s a never-ending conversation that should be happening with your customers, and across all levels of your organization…every day.

Remembering to Breathe

Nearly all sports are the same (at least on one level).

Nearly all sports are the same (at least on one level). It doesn’t matter if that sport is soccer, baseball, golf, archery, skeet shooting, curling, downhill skiing, long distance running, ice skating, motorcycle racing, or competitive yodeling.

They each start with the same fundamentals:

Relax and stay loose
Calm your mind
Visualize success
Bend your knees
Don’t forget to breathe.

One could make a case that each of these fundamentals are of equal importance, but my money is on the last one. Consciously remembering to breathe puts us in the right state of mind to remember the other fundamentals.

We each face challenges on a daily basis. Some are small, and some are huge (at least from our perspective). Here’s a strategy for tackling each of them:

Relax and stay loose
Calm your mind
Visualize success
Bend your knees
Remember to breathe!

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My Wage

My Question for You

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