Grandpa Bob Encouraging Leadership

If you sign up for the Air France frequent flier program, you’ll get a list of security questions to answer in case you forget your password.  The first question presented:  My favorite destination is…

What could that be?  Yosemite with its beautiful trails and waterfalls?  Milford Sound in New Zealand, with its other-worldly (Middle Earth) landscape?  How about the Three Sisters in Australia?  England, where you learn quickly the meaning of “mind the gap.”  Islamorada, in the Florida Keys?  The clear tropical waters of Tahiti?  How about the top of Mauna Kea at sunset?  The top of Mount Whitney?  Mike’s Sky Ranch?  Aruba?  The Panama Canal?  The South Rim of the Grand Canyon?  Mammoth Cave in Kentucky?  Napa Valley?

This favorite destination thing can be challenging.  How about the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon?  Jack Daniel’s Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee?  The top of the Empire State Building?  The Acropolis in Greece?  Wrigley Field?  Floating lazily on Lake Mead?  The top of St. Peter’s Basilica?   The Grand Bizarre in Istanbul?  The Lincoln Memorial?  Cape Canaveral?  How about the Taj Mahal?  The Kon Tiki Inn in Pismo Beach definitely makes the list.  Sunrise in just about any desert?  Glacier Bay in Alaska, playing basketball with your kids on the top deck of a cruise ship?

I’ve had the fortune of visiting these and many other destinations, but none rise to the level of favorite.

At the risk of breaching security protocols, here’s my answer:  home

I used to think rain was a bad thing.  It meant my carefree childhood would be interrupted by the realities of rent and the cost of groceries.  I’d have to worry about why my mom and dad were upset…sometimes with each other.  Rain brought a feeling of hopelessness into our house that wouldn’t leave until it stopped.

Rain meant that my dad didn’t work.  Oh, sure, he’d get up early in the morning just like a normal work day.  He would even make the call to his company to ask if they had anything going.  He always sounded so comfortable with what he was hearing from the other end of the phone.  I knew different.  They rarely had anything going on a rainy day.  If they did have something, that work went to someone with higher seniority.  I learned at an early age what it meant to be low in seniority.

I didn’t have the same fun other kids had splashing in puddles.  I remember one kid used to run as fast as he could and slide in the wet grass, just to see how far he could go.  Every slide was a world record in his mind.  Somehow I always had my parents in mind.  I knew they were worried about how long the rain would fall.  When would things dry out enough for dad to go back to work?  Would this be a long winter?  Would we make it to Spring?

Jeff Williams always wore his Mammoth Mountain sweatshirt in the winter.  He used to go snow skiing on the weekends.  Sometimes, his parents let him skip a day to go during the week.  He was one of the kids with the cool owl eyes.  The ones that come from having your sunglasses on while snow skiing.  He knew that rain meant snow, and snow meant good ski conditions.  I never skied as a child.  That wasn’t an option.  Rain meant no money, whatever the ski conditions.

Rain taught me early, too early, about the realities of economics.  As each year passed, with the same cycle of foreboding, I decided I would never let rain threaten my economic life.  When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the list of choices I’d rattle off were always jobs that didn’t stop because of rain.  It didn’t matter what the job was…only that the weather couldn’t touch it.

For my entire adult life, I’ve lived by the promise I made to myself as a child…always choosing jobs that the rain can’t touch.  Today, I can enjoy rain.  In fact, I’m listening to a passing shower as I write.  I love the sound it makes, cascading off the roof.  Rain has a unique purity.  Nothing compares to the clear, brisk air after the rain has passed.

Yet, even as I appreciate the magnificent beauty of rain, I can’t help but feel a slight twinge of anxiety…an echo from my childhood.

I love campfires.  I don’t get to sit around one as often as I’d like, but I treasure each opportunity. Gathering around a fire with family and friends, watching the flames, feeling its warmth, roasting marshmallows, helping kids make the perfect S’more, being blinded by smoke.  Always a good time.

We were recently on a Mediterranean cruise.  The trip was awesome, and for most of our 10-day journey, the seas were calm.  But, toward the end of the cruise, we had a rough sea day.  A combination of 12-foot seas and 45-knot winds meant we were rocking and rolling.  Not good for a guy who can get seasick standing on a dock.

Breakfast is served near the top deck, which, thanks to the laws of physics, rolls much more than the lower decks.  As I finished up my custom omelet (one of the best things about a cruise), and looked out at the churning seas wondering if that omelet was such a good idea, I was surprised when my father-in-law said, “Looks just like a campfire to me…I could watch these seas all day.”  Where I saw whitecaps, swells in every direction, hopelessness and nausea, he saw a campfire.

The beauty of life is in the eye of the beholder.  Cherish your campfire moments.  They don’t always require a fire.

In the grand scheme of things, what are you entitled to receive from life?  From your loved ones?  From the people around you?  From your career?

I submit that dwelling on what you are entitled to receive diminishes happiness.  Time spent being grateful for life, your loved ones, the people around you, your career…increases happiness.

Gratitude is the foundation of true happiness.  Entitlement is at the other end of the spectrum where things like disappointment, envy, and sadness reside.

My twist on Bobby McFerrin’s famous song:  “Be Grateful, Be Happy!”

I ran in the shadow of an eagle today.  Sounds cliché, doesn’t it?  But this was an actual eagle.  I was lucky enough to be running on a trail where the eagle wanted to fly.  That eagle may have been thinking about its next meal, making sure there were no other eagles in its territory, or any number of other things that eagles think about while soaring effortlessly through the sky.  As I ran, all the eagle and its shadow brought me were peace and tranquility.  I ran with the eagle for quite a ways before our paths went in separate directions.

Each of us share paths with those around us…family, friends, co-workers, customers, our boss, and even people we’ve never met.  Here’s hoping that as we share our path, we can bring the same peace that my soaring friend brought to me today.

Which one do you spend more time chasing…mice, or elephants?

Of course, I’m speaking metaphorically. Mice represent the small details, interesting diversions from the real questions, symptoms instead of root causes, etc. Elephants are the big strategic decisions, the tough questions, the root causes.

When budgeting for expenses (whether at home, or at work), do you spend a lot of time comparing the cost of paper clips between two vendors? Do you worry about the cost of an additional travel day associated with attending a trade show, or the strategic benefit of attending the show in the first place?

Do you worry about the cost differences for toner and paper, or consider ways to modify your processes and eliminate the use of paper-based documents?

How often have you been in a disagreement with a friend, relative, colleague, or spouse over a “mouse” issue, and let that disagreement mask one or more “elephant” issues? The mouse issue may seem worthy of all the effort, but rarely is.

Chasing mice while the elephants run free is almost always a bad idea. It wastes energy, and our most important commodity, time.

Better to chase more elephants.

I read the term “simulated progress” in a blog post by Seth Godin.  He wasn’t talking specifically about this term, but it is what I remembered from his post.  I’ve been sort of obsessing on it ever since, thinking about all the ways I have participated in activities that simulate progress.  Status meetings, strategic planning updates, budget reviews, process improvement meetings where ideas get discussed and never implemented, exercising to burn the extra calories I choose to consume, etc.

Sometimes simulated progress can lead to real progress.  But, more often than not, simulated progress only serves to make us feel good, create some fleeting sense of accountability, and generally limits actual changes to the status quo.  The intangible feeling of progress merely masks the fact that no real progress has occurred.  We are no closer to actually achieving something meaningful.

I’ve participated in, and even led, activities that (in retrospect) were only creating simulated progress.  I wasn’t doing it purposely, and I’m sure I had the best of intentions.  The others who were participating along with me were motivated to create some type of positive result…progress toward goals we had identified.  These activities weren’t 100% simulated progress, but I know some that had a high percentage.

I could go on.  Suffice it to say that the road to status quo and competitive disadvantage is surely littered with examples of simulated progress.