Journey

2021: Are we there yet?

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Our first rainy day in months is welcome, but it has made me stare into some of the gloominess of the last 6 months. It has made me turn for a minute to reflection on this last week.

This last week I crossed over my six month mark of working from home. Six months of endless zoom calls, six months of starting work earlier than ever and a sense of never really leaving it each day. And, it was a hardest week yet at the “office” since this pandemic started.

This last week a friend died. He left us and the outpouring of support is immense. If he only knew how much he was loved, and that he wasn’t alone. I am reminded how complex mental illness is, and how we can’t assume we know the story for people. We can only reach out, support each other and be present. I am reminded that it is okay to talk about not being okay. And, that so many people out there are hurting right now.

This last week we had our highest days of COVID cases in Utah, and neared 200,000 deaths in our country. It feels like it will never end. That “normal” won’t return.

This last week also marked the loss of a hero to me. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died at 87 last night. It was honestly a punch in the gut. In a world where so much of our public discourse is filled with personal attacks versus attacking the issues, she was a beacon of hope for demonstrating what persistence can do for the world. I am so appreciate of her leadership, her willingness to be an unrelenting vocal advocate for what she believed and for all of us who try to follow in her bravery.

But, as I sit her cozy in my beautiful mountain town, graced by autumn colors, the sun peaking out between light rain showers, I also think about the good of the last week.

This last week, I was able to join like minded leaders in a small work group within the Park City Community Foundation board and talk about what the biggest needs of our community will be in the next five years. It was inspiring and helped me see the change that we can each be in this world.

This last week, I was able to watch my kids confidence grow at the sports that they are participating in. Matthew had a great flag football game, and he came bounding in the door after the win telling me he was a “defensive specialist” and had two interceptions in the game to help his team with a shut-out. Katharine did three runs with her new running club. And, she smiled about them and was proud of her own accomplishments.

This last week, I felt the support of Jon in all of my hours. No matter how long the days were at the office, he was by my side (literally at times). Bringing me coffee, water and lunch. Checking in between zoom calls and supporting me with hugs when I needed them.

This last week, I was available for my friends and my family as they needed me. I talked to co-workers that I hadn’t connected with in awhile, and I felt the support from so many.

On balance, I still wonder if 2021 is here yet. I commit in tribute to RBG to move forward with persistence, and I commit in memory of Zach to move forward with a smile while knowing that I am never alone.

My Career: Should I have a plan?

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I have been helping a number of my teammates on their growth and development plans over the last quarter.  In doing so, I have been reflecting on whether or not having a career plan is a key to professional success.

The benefits of a plan

  • A plan forces you to think about what is important to you for the future.  It is impossible to think about a plan or a roadmap for your career without consider the question, “where do I want to be in 1, 3 or 5 years?” In thinking about this question, generally the only way to answer it is to work hard to look internally to identify what is important to you.  To me, this is one of the largest benefits of planning.
  • Even if the plan is a loose set of steps, it helps you to take a step.  Sometimes in my professional life, I have felt frozen – like I don’t know what to do next.  A plan can help nudge you forward.  It may help you to read a new book, attend a new online training, or have a mentoring discussion with someone that you respect. Even a small step is better than none.
  • Having a plan allows you to share with those around you what you are interested in doing and why.  This becomes important because at times, those around you can see things that can help you that you may not be able to see.  If you have shared your plan, you can get help from your people.

But there are downsides to a plan as well.  I appreciate how real some of these downsides can feel.

The downsides of a plan

  • You can spend too much time thinking about the plan and not enough time taking steps to make it happen.  The act of planning alone can be what freezes you.  If this is the case for you, an imperfect a step forward or one that isn’t on a “plan” is much better than continuing to stay in place.
  • With a plan, sometimes you can get so focused on executing your plan, the steps that you have outlined, that you miss an opportunity that isn’t wasn’t on the plan.  Todays world of business (and life for that matter) is changing very quickly.  In fact, in my 20+ years of working the speed of change has never been greater.  So, we all have to stay adaptable and willing to let whatever plan we have change based on opportunity.
  • Sometimes by having a “career” plan overemphasizes this part of your life.  It is hard to keep life in balance and planning holistically for your life is probably a better way to think about it.  I will let you know if I ever do this well.  It is hard!

So, my question for all of you reading is which side do you land on?  Is having a “career plan” a priority for you, and how has it helped? or hurt?

Taking Pride in the Journey

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A few weeks ago, I heard Chris Warner speak.  Chris is one of America’s most renowned mountaineers having summited five of the worlds’ tallest peaks including both Everest and K2.  He also is an entrepreneur (the founder and President of Earth Treks, Inc.), publisher and speaker sharing the lessons that he has learned on leadership through his many expeditions.  In 2007, he led the Shared Summits expedition successfully summiting K2 and proceeded to produce an Emmy award-winning film about the expedition.

His message in his talk was a good one.  He spoke in reference to his journey to the top of K2. Other athletes on other teams abandoned some of their friends, didn’t help others succeed and even stole equipment from his team. Alternatively, his team’s approach was different. They helped others to succeed and stay safe. Some of these choices to help others along the way caused additional hardship to Chris’s team. But, in the end, they completed a successful climb that they are proud of until this day.  My favorite quotation was:

Don’t get to the top of the peak you are climbing and not be proud of the way that you got there. – Chris Warner

There are a few reasons why this resonated with me so much:

  1. Often times as a goal-oriented person, it can be easy to see my individual choices and actions as a means to achieve the end goal.  Instead, what I constantly have to remind myself is that the journey is what I will remember and learn from. It is what builds my life. Without remembering this, I can get too focused on the end and not enjoy the process of getting there.
  2. My gut instinct is so often right.  In my life, there have been moments where I didn’t feel good about a decision I made.  My gut often times was telling me in the moment to make a different decision, or to reverse my course.  Sometimes I listened, sometimes I didn’t. Luckily, these decisions were small and time passed with no consequence.  However, despite the lack of consequence, I have regretted not trusting my instinct and reversing my course if for nothing but the knowledge that it would’ve been the right thing to do.
  3. I only have one life to live.  How I live this life, or in Chris’s case how he climbed K2, is the ultimate reflection of my character. I try my hardest to do what is right at every turn, to make choices that I would be proud of my children knowing that I made.

My Top 10 Lessons in Making Organizational Change Succeed

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This week at work I heard the phrase “just because you didn’t plan well, that doesn’t make it my emergency.”  It brought me back to my last job where seemingly everything was an emergency due to lack of planning. We were launching 300-400 different products every year and most of them got out the door only with sheer grit and determination at the 11th hour.  There was no plan on what to launch, why to launch a particular product and how to launch the products successfully.  They had been amazingly successful despite this based on some amazing products and an amazing team who was committed to putting in the effort required to make it happen despite the barriers in their way.  This approach brought a lot of good:  a camaraderie within the team, a commitment level within the people to succeed, and an amazing creative spirit to solve what seemed to be unsurmountable problems.  With those good things, came many bad: higher costs of manufacturing, excess inventory costs, incomplete retail launch plans due to insufficient time, ineffective marketing plans given limited lead time for planning and perhaps most importantly – organizational stress and pain.

So, the senior leadership team set on a journey to introduce business and marketing plans to this team.  And, when I say journey, I mean journey…an ever-winding journey.  Our goal was to evolve to a company with a plan so that our launches would be more successful and our business more successful.  We talked a lot about doing this while maintaining the strengths that the organization demonstrated throughout its history.  It sounded good, and per all of the business school lessons and the experience our management team had in prior companies, it should’ve worked.

What I underestimated, and can only see clearly in arrears, is how the culture of this company impacted the degree of change that would be accepted.  The culture was built as an entrepreneurial startup team – doing anything needed to make things successful.  It was built for variety, unpredictability and wacky, late stage brilliant ideas winning the day.  Even the slightest move toward an annual operating plan felt so imposing to this team.  Their skills were not set up to succeed in this environment and it not only felt overwhelming, but it did the exact opposite of what we desired.  We simply doubled the pain.  Now, there was a fair amount of organizational stress and strife about the product planning process in addition to the stress (and cost) we incurred for late-stage changes that put our shipment dates at risk.  So – double the pain, no gain.

Ultimately this journey was one of the factors that made me leave this job.  Sitting here 5 years later, after hearing someone refer this week to a lack of planning driving unnecessary organizational stress and cost, I wonder out loud (is that possible on a blog?) what lessons I have learned (mostly through mistakes) in the last five years about introducing change into a team or company.  Nothing like a list to make you think about it.

My top 10 lessons in Change Management:

  1. Don’t underestimate the story of an organization. This story often time helps you uncover the culture, the values that the team lives by and the strengths the organization has to help you succeed.
  2. That said, don’t be scared of change.
  3. If people don’t understand the reason for the change, the context as to why it is important, and they don’t buy-in, the change will not be broadly successful.
  4. Just because something is written in a textbook or theoretically the right thing to do, doesn’t mean it will work.
  5. Having a plan is important….being willing to adjust the plan as it meets barriers is essential.
  6. Creating allies in your change, particularly those with high organizational influence, is critical for your success.
  7. Don’t just change for change’s sake. You don’t have to make your impact through large change and innovation. Strength is often found in accepting what already is and making minor improvements that drive high value.
  8. Be inquisitive in everything that you do.  There is most often a great rationale for why things are as they are, and understanding this rationale will help necessary change be adopted more smoothly.
  9. Every person accepts change through the lens of their personality. Identifying an individual’s state of mind and meeting each where they enter a conversation on change will help reduce fear of change.
  10. There isn’t one way things should happen. Your way is often wrong, and can be made better through leveraging the strengths of the people around you.