Nothing in life travels in a neat formation accompanied by bugles and cavalry.
A lot of it shows up filthy and unkempt, prominent in the mess we’ve made around our foxhole.
These lessons are typically the offspring of hubris, naivete and ignorance … or from overlooking the land mines hidden beneath our feet.
We’re sharing valuable and practical leadership tips and tools to help you BECOME a better leader.
First, you must start BEING a better leader … implementing NOW the changes necessary to adopt the proven strategies of successful leaders. You might start by building on the communication matrix and making sure you’re defending the castle to get done what only you can do. Make some time so you’re thinking past today.
The week just ended is my favorite sports week of the year. Some of you will say, “Nah, you got your calendar mixed up. Baseball season opened the previous week.”
Of course, I could say, “but the home opener for the Giants was that week” and then you’d say, “OK, so you’re a big Giants fan. I get it.”
A few of you may suspect that’s not the reason. Not that I don’t love the World Champion San Francisco Giants and all … but honestly? That didn’t even occur to me as I braced for the greatest sports week of the year.
There are a lot of reasons why I love the week that just ended.
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It lasts about 300 to 400 milliseconds. It occurs about 10 to 20 times per minute.
Over the course of a day, excluding about 8 hours of sleep, it amounts to about an hour and 20 minutes on average, a fair chunk of time in our waking day.
If you consider that the universe is about 14 billion years old, about 54,000 years would pass by during any given span of those milliseconds.
Some might argue that we can’t see anything during that period.
Yes, all that happens in the blink of an eye … about 1/3 of a second.
It ain’t much but in those small fractions, a lot can occur.
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“It’s not the will to win that matters, everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” ~ Paul “Bear” Bryant
Many moons ago when my daughter was 3 years old, she really wanted a Barbie dollhouse for Christ
mas. She never played with Barbie dolls … never liked them much either … but she loved all the little people and things in that doll house. We found one and hid it in the attic to await Christmas Eve when we could sneak it under the Christmas tree.
My wife and I went up to the attic around 10 p.m. that evening and it was only then when I noticed the small print on the side of the large box … “less than 500 pieces.”
What? 500 pieces? To assemble? At this hour? Alas, yes … and man, was it painful to have to stay up until 3 a.m. putting it together. How’s that for preparation?
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This week, two North Bay organizations deserve a round of applause!
First, congratulations to Amy’s kitchen for its innovative approach to employee health care. They recently opened a primary health care clinic at their Santa Rosa production facility.
From time to time, we offer a round of applause to organizations and individuals making significant leadership contributions in their companies and communities.
This is a terrific idea and a clear recognition that a company CAN do more to meet the health care needs of its employees. It’s encouraging to see a prominent North Bay company take this important step.
Brian Ling has been a long time friend and colleague in Sonoma County, and has been recently hired as the new CEO of the Sonoma County Alliance.
How to Keep Smart People from Killing Each Other
This phrase is powerful in so many ways. Smart people can often be prima donnas – I’ve born those accusations myself … the first part, of course, not the second (and typically disguised in less elegant terms) … but the brilliance of some people is often more blinding than enlightening.
Fortune magazine recently asked Dr. Mehmet Oz about the best leadership advice he had ever received.
As a Chief Resident associated with Columbia University, Dr. Oz’ mentor told him that the hardest part of being a leader was “keeping smart people from killing each other.”
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“Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.” — Peter Drucker
If the execution of a company’s plans is an avowed priority, critical to the success of both the CEO and the business, why aren’t CEOs spending enough time on it to make it successful?
Why is it that every time the Conference Board surveys CEOs to identify their Top Ten Challenges, “consistent execution of strategy” or “excellence in execution” is invariably cited as being in the top two or three “greatest concerns” … yet, when CEOs are asked about their greatest disappointments or failures, they routinely list their company’s inability to execute?
Huh? How is it that a subject among the top three goals of most CEOs is the very one where the CEO has the least amount of success? Is this simply a conundrum tucked inside a mystery hidden inside an enigma … or can we sort out some of this ambiguity?
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Déjà vu all over again?
How often have you heard that phrase banging against your skull … and how often was it telling you … “I’ve been here before” … “Didn’t we already solve this problem?” … “Why does this subject keep coming up all the time?”
Late last year, I embarked on a retrospective of my first 100 newspaper columns from the last four years. You may recall that I emphasized how often so many of those issues continue to be the same challenges year after year.
They’re constantly resurfacing, often in disguise as a different issue altogether … but really, the same ‘ol, same ‘ol.
I promised you then that we would attack the litany of reasons that these same issues keep popping up like whack-a-moles. I don’t think we’ve gotten “dumb and dumberer,” so what’s going on? Why are we tackling the same problems over and over again?
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For most of us, this is the time of the year when hope springs eternal. We’re revved up for an exciting new year, determined to change all of the things that didn’t work last year so we can pound the ball out of the park in 2012.
Nothing wrong with any of that. Commitment, momentum, focus … these are the energies that will fuel our engine and help us jumpstart 2012 with the vigor and rigor that we need to make this year the most successful ever.
Yet, like most New Year’s resolutions we’ve made, the “gum loses its flavor on the bedpost overnight”.
We soon discover that it’s much easier to start than to finish.
We struggle to keep the engine stoked with the same energy that propelled us into the New Year.
We begin to feel some of the air already coming out of the tires, and begin to wonder … “where did that new-found energy go”?
It comes back to that whimpering sound of “hope springs eternal.”
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To tell the truth, I really just wanted to cry.
That was my reaction as I scanned the dining room at the Assisted Living facility into which my 93-year-old mother just moved. Not because it isn’t a terrific facility. It’s one of the nicest I have ever seen, visited or heard about, with a wonderful and genuinely caring staff. No, it’s not that at all. It wasn’t weariness, either, although it did follow on the heels of a draining four-day transition, including a crushing array of painful and tedious sorting, organizing, shopping and hauling to massively downsize and, sadly, to discard even more memorabilia from a rich life of living.
This article was originally intended as my holiday message to you. It was published in the December 26 electronic edition of the North Bay Business Journal, but published in the print edition on January 9. Its spirit, however, is eternal.
Not all of it mind you. Two big boxes of family history are headed my way, as I’m the last stop for any chance to digitize and preserve almost a century of living so it can be shared throughout the widespread family. All of the forthcoming scanning and cataloging will be a dose of dullsville … invited and welcome, yes … but infinitely time-consuming nonetheless.
It includes hundreds … more likely, thousands … of photographs, yearbook pages, commencement programs, newspaper articles, announcements and the collective minutiae that memorialize a life, two lives really. My father, who passed away 10 years ago … as one who never let a piece of paper slip through his hands … successfully squirreled away records and magazines from as far back as the 1940s and 1950s that escaped our notice in the decade-earlier downsizing round.
You might figure that the tears are sentimental or nostalgic. I wish it were that simple.
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Welcome to Exkalibur. I’m Lary Kirchenbauer, President of Exkalibur Advisors, Inc. Please take advantage of our resources to help you build your business ... and let me know what more we can do to serve you.
Read my latest column from the NY Times affiliate, the North Bay Business Journal.
Within a three year period I had two different startups and one acquisition to deal with. Lary's involvement in the projects allowed me to raise substantial amounts of capital on all occasions. He makes even the most monumental task seem effortless. His tireless attention and focus on the project gets things done, done right, and under deadline.
Don Meahan, owner and operator of Alaska’s Naknek Anglers, LLC
