Great leadership has nothing to do with your job title. It’s not about how much money you make, how many people report to you or what school you attended.  But leadership is critical to success no matter how you define success.  So why aren’t more people skilled leaders?

We love habits and resist change.  The most powerful thing that keeps us doing the same thing over and over is the chatter in our head.  Here’s a real life example.

When I was a Director of HR I worked with a bunch of scientist.  Now these weren’t middle of the road scientist, these were the top scientist working with big questions like how to improve the recovery process for heart attacks victims or how do you increase the world’s food supply particularly in areas where it’s hard to grow food.

Every year management employees and I completed an annual performance appraisal and salary review for all employees in R&D.  Every year we told them “your salary is based upon your performance and the market”.  (Heard that before) Well one day, a group of scientist challenged that assertion and simply said “prove it!”

Gulp!!!! Augh!!! You know for an HR professional that’s a question we run from and of course all the weasel words came to mind.

• I’ll never be able to sell this to management.
• What if we’re wrong? The legal ramifications are huge!
• We don’t have the data to be able to do that.
• I don’t have the resources to do it.
• Shoot! I didn’t make one of these decisions and now I have to defend them?  Not fair!

I wondered how I was going to handle the outcome regardless of the decision from the EVP, R & D.  You see, in addition to hearing the above chatter in my head I was also pondering what if I got authority to do this work?  I had no clue as to how to put together something that would prove or disprove our compensation assertions.

Well, later that week I met with the EVP, R&D and told him of my conversation with the employees.  Once I concluded, he leaned forward and said he’d heard the same thing and gave the go ahead to figure out if what we told employees was really true.

My mouth dropped (or at least it felt like it).  The surprised look (or terror) on my face prompted him to ask, “Was there anything else?”  It was then I had a moment of truth “do I admit I had no clue how to prove or disprove these assertions or fake it and go try and figure it all out on my own?”

I decided to fess up and tell him I didn’t know how to prove it.  He leaned forward and said “you don’t have to and in fact, it is better if you don’t.”

“What????”

“Put together a team of researchers and let them figure it out.  It will be simple for them as they are used to solving these types of problems.  Include our finance director on the team too.  You have a month to come up with an answer.”

It didn’t take long for them to put together a model that in fact did prove what we had been saying -performance mattered.  We proved high performers reached the mid-point and the top of the range on average in 3 and 5 years respectively.  Mid performers reached the mid-point in about 5 years and stayed there and below average performers didn’t reach the midpoint until after 8 years in their role. There was a correlation between our performance reviews and the rate increases and bonus received.

I’d love to say that this is true everywhere but I can’t. In fact, there is a lot of data that says the contrary is true.

For most of us, our mental chatter keeps us doing exactly what we’re doing and to change means we have to buck the system in place.  Managers blame HR and HR says if it was important management would pay attention and so nothing changes. Few of us muster up the courage to be a leader and challenge the status quo.

Many of you have or are completing 2013 annual reviews. Can you say with confidence your compensation process rewards based upon performance and just how do you know it does? What would it take for you to find out? How much and what kind of evidence does it take for you to change the trajectory of your leadership?

Let’s hear your thoughts.

As I began reading the opening chapters and looking at the toxic behaviors he was writing about I wondered, how are we going to work through all this? We did so with great conversation and input. That’s what’s great about this book, it is awesome stand alone read, but it’s even better and life changing when processed with a group.

Dealing with Toxic Behaviors, Toxic Emotions, and Toxic Influences, Craig does so with a humorous way, a Biblical way, an honest look and a path directed towards clean living in a contaminated world.

At times the book was like looking in the mirror and saying, “Man, you got work to do.” The book showed the flaws and failures of my life. Even more Craig showed the path of forgiveness and a new way of life. The stories he shared of real life people dealing with some horrific situations and the contrast between being overwhelmed by the toxins of life and even better overcoming the toxins of life were powerful.

As a communicator and a leader, my favorite chapter was Chapter 3: Lethal Language: Experiencing the Power of Life Giving Words. When I am at my worst, my words can be cutting and condescending. When I am at my best, my words are encouraging and life building. Craig challenged me to look at how I use my words and to put more thought into each word that I say.

I give Soul Detox 5 out of 5 stars. It was a great staff read, even more it was a much needed personal read. As Craig says, “When we recognize the toxins that assault us daily, and discover ways to live in this world without absorbing these toxins into our souls, we can experience the ultimate spiritual intervention!” Thanks Craig for helping me to recognize my own toxins, and even more for experiencing the transformation that happens when I discover God’s plan for clean living in a contaminated world.

Preflighting the Flight Deck, P-3 Orion

By Don Mathis, Kinetic Social CEO

Last week, I began a post on how the OODA loop – Observe, Orient, Decide, Act! – played out in an emergency situation faced by my P-3 Orion patrol squadron aircrew. We were over the North Atlantic on a Search & Rescue (SAR) mission, and the irony that we might be the ones needing rescue was not lost on us.

The point at which I broke off the narrative was just as we were pulling out from a dive towards the thundering waves below us. Fighting asymmetric thrust, we had lost an engine at low altitude on the same side of the wing where another engine was already shut down. We were yawing left while in a steeply banked turn, near – or even slightly below – minimum controllable airspeed.

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In the moments after we recovered from our fall dive towards the sea, the pilots got engine #1 going, gained altitude, and secured the malfunctioning #2 engine. We all breathed a serious sigh of relief.  I remember looking out the bubble window just aft of the flight deck, watching for the now shut-down engine number #2 propeller to wind down to a stop.

But it never did. The enormous four-bladed Hamilton Standard propeller kept on rotating. The plane shuddered with vibrations. The flight deck could not get the prop to “feather”.  Feathering is when the prop blades are halted and angled into the wind to reduce drag after shutting down an engine.

There is an old saying among crusty senior Orion Flight Engineers: There are only two things on a P-3 that will kill you and they both start with P: Pilots and Propellers.

The flight deck crew executed all of the emergency procedures outlined in the manual in their attempt to feather the prop. Nothing worked. The propeller RPMs slowly increased as the plane’s very forward motion through the air caused the prop to speed up in its rotation.

So now, with the prop wind-milling freely, we faced the risk of a propeller overspeed. It is one of the most dangerous situations on a turboprop aircraft:

1. There is a chance that centrifugal force will wrench the 1,200 pound prop right off the aircraft, which could slice through the fuselage and / or lead to an out-of-control plunge … both catastrophic scenarios.
2. Equally concerning, an overspeeding propeller decoupled from the engine’s reduction gear box could lead to a fire.  Not a good thing when that engine is attached to a wing with thousands of pounds of fuel. Attached to an aircraft with 10 souls on board.

Without getting too technical, we later learned that the reduction gear box – the component that, in rough terms, connects the engine to the propeller – had experienced a catastrophic failure. It “fodded out” other key components of engine #2. “F.O.D.” is an aviation acronym for Foreign Object Damage; when the reduction gear box failed, it sprayed metal parts at high velocity throughout the engine.

VP-6 P-3 Missing #1 Prop. Photo Credit: Approach Magazine, 1987

There have been several accidents – in the Navy we call them “mishaps”, in typical military understatement – under very similar circumstances to the ones we now found ourselves in. In 1987, A P-3 in Hawaii faced a prop overspeed that, after two hours of flight time home, eventually led to the propeller separating from the aircraft. The prop took out the engine next to it and nearly led to the loss of the aircraft as it was on final approach.

Worse, a P-3 out of Adak, Alaska had a very similar situation, ending with disastrous results. In that case, the overspeed condition eventually caused a fire. The crew discharged the engine fire extinguishers; it caused a fire again, they extinguished it again; when the overspeed led to a third fire and their extinguishing agent was exhausted, the crew was forced to ditch the aircraft in the heavy Alaskan seas. Five members of the crew perished including the patrol plane commander. He had stayed atop the aircraft after escaping through the cockpit roof hatch before the plane sank, counting his crew to ensure all got out of the plane. He was swept away by the waves after that.

Our flight: #2 Prop in Overspeed

In our case, the crew had to carefully walk through the OODA Loop in this crisis. First, where should we go? We were pretty much in the middle of the North Atlantic; St. Johns, Newfoundland was the nearest land. So we headed there, still several hundred miles away and on the other side of the ocean from where we’d started our flight that day. The P-3 that lost the prop off of Hawaii flew for about two hours before its overspeed condition led to near disaster; the aircraft off Alaska, less than that. It would take almost three hours to fly to St. Johns. We all knew the history of these other flights.

Should we plot our course near identified ships, in case we needed to ditch? (We were far, far outside of helicopter rescue range). But if we did this, we’d add minutes or more to the flight, which could have fatal results. We decided to fly straight to St. Johns.

How fast should we fly? A trade-off between precious time versus the risk of the faster slipstream possibly speeding up the runaway prop. We opted for operating the aircraft at as slow a speed as practical while maintaining at least some margin of safety above minimum controllable airspeed (see my prior post about the P-3 that stalled and spun when they got below minimum controllable airspeed). It was a painfully slow speed, prolonging our flight over the crashing seas to a safe haven.

VP-47 P-3 Ditched in Gulf of Oman. Photo Credit: Bert de Jong

Should we prepare for ditching or for bail-out? This was an easier one… no one really thought jumping out of the plane in parachutes over the ranging North Atlantic was a good idea … even if we survived getting out of the plane, the odds of finding us in the seas below were slim-to-none.

Each question led to more questions, each decision led to action after observing the developing situation and orienting to it.

The next several hours were the longest many of us would ever experience. The crew was mostly silent and nervous. I recall sitting at my station, warily watching the very big, violent ocean below, going over and over my emergency ditching and egress procedures in my mind, and dwelling on the low odds of surviving a ditching so far from rescue.

My communications duties included telling everyone I could about our situation and our location after we’d declared an emergency. We communicated with SAR resources, our Navy command, other aircraft, and oceanic air traffic control out of Gander, Newfoundland. Over the Atlantic, there is no radar tracking; you call your position to controllers who monitor your progress. I’ll never forget hearing the concern in the controller’s voice; he was professional, but you could tell he thought he might be the last person to speak with us alive.

During the course of the flight, we regularly experienced jarring and unnatural vibrations originating in the engine, as critical components continued to disintegrate. We briefed emergency procedures for ditching and for fighting an engine fire if it broke out. And we watched that big #2 propeller going round and round, wondering when it would speed up fast enough to cause a disaster.

At one point, an officer suggested we fly another thirty minutes past St. Johns, a civil airfield, because of all the top secret crypto gear on the aircraft. There was a Canadian military base where our equipment and codes would be more secure, he reasoned. If looks could kill, he’d have been dead on the spot.

Eventually, we made it to St. Johns and landed safely on three engines. We’d never been so thrilled to be back on terra firma. In an expression that I heard one of our sensor operators use, we spent that long, long flight “puckered up tight enough that a team of horses couldn’t pull a greased knitting needle out of our arses”. But we made it.

In a future post, I will discuss the OODA implications of all this. Stay tuned!

This post is dedicated to the brave men and women of the Navy Patrol Squadron community past & present, and especially to those who have lost their lives while being ever vigilant in defense of our nation.

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Don Mathis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kinetic Social, a company launched in 2011 with a core focus of marrying “Big Data” to social media on behalf of large brand advertisers.  He also serves in the active reserve of the US Navy, where he is the Commanding Officer of a highly deployable, selectively staffed, joint-service combat logistics unit that supports forward deployed war-fighters.

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Thanks for visiting this site! I’m glad you came but this site will not be active any longer as now I have a NEW SITE!! please jump over to  www.ptbump.com   I would be honored if you would even subscribe to my site so that you can keep up to date with me.

Blessings!

1. Health of the leader = health of the church. Perry spent the first day working on the health of the leader. Danger signs that you’re working too hard, ways to know if you’re unbalanced between work and family, and practical ways to minister for the long haul. Great stuff for a driven guy who sometimes struggles with balance.

2. Acts 1 has to come before Acts 2. I loved this insight. Everyone wants Acts 2 to happen: the Spirit falling down, thousands of people getting saved. What we don’t look at is Acts 1, where the church filled a critical leadership need in preparation for Acts 2. Perry correctly taught that many churches don’t grow because they don’t have the leadership capabilities or ministry infrastructure to handle growth. All churches want to grow, but unless leadership structures are healthy and expanding, a church couldn’t handle the growth God wants to give it.

3. Preaching style matters. Perry’s ministry is successful for a number of reasons, but one of the primary ones is his preaching style. Controversial to some, Perry’s in-your-face, PG-13 preaching style cuts through the fog and speaks to issues close to the heart. Perry will never win awards for style points, but his passion and transparency strike a chord with 25,000 people a week. Most of his critics don’t even have 1% of that audience.

4. Established denominations are losing their voice. I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been to a conference by my denomination where I was fed and inspired like this. Although a born and raised Baptist, I’m now going to conferences outside of my denomination for inspiration and growth. That does not bode well for established denominations.

5. You can have a big ministry in a small town. Anderson and the surrounding area is no larger than Columbus, MS, where I minister. Perry reaches 10,000 on his main campus and over 25,000 throughout the state of South Carolina. You don’t have to be in a metro area to have a large ministry. You just need a vision bigger than your town.

6. Young people can change the world. I was thoroughly impressed with the employees of NewSpring Church, 95% of whom were younger than me. NewSpring is giving young people a chance to make a difference, and the next generation is taking them up on that offer.

7. The church in America can still grow at an exponential rate. The church can still grow. In thirteen years NewSpring has grown from a living room to over 25,000 on a weekly basis. Not the church as we know it, but a church able to hold onto the core truths of the gospel and be willing to adapt to the 21st century. While traditional churches will continue to die out, churches like NewSpring will continue to change the world. My prayer is that Mt Vernon is one of those churches.

Flight Emergency v2 by Patrick Cheng

In a previous blog post, I talked about empowering individuals with double As. The idea came up from the concept of lithium powered batteries that power up electronic devices: appreciation and affirmation really do empower individuals. This past week, I was listening to an episode of the EntreLeadership podcast where Chris Hogan, a former All-American college football player, talks about empowering others by giving them A.I.R to breathe. We all know that air is vital to our survival, much like food and water. A general rule mentions that humans cannot survive if they do not breathe air within 3 minutes.  That’s how important air is for our survival. Conversely, we also need to breathe A.I.R. on a constant basis in order to survive in any organization. Leaders need to understand the importance of A.I.R. in the success of their organization.

1. Appreciation. I’ve already talked about this in my previous blog post but it is worth repeating. Appreciation is one of the cheapest and most rewarding way to reward your staff. It applies to anybody as well: your spouse, your kids, your parents, your customers, vendors, suppliers, etc. A short, hand-written thank you note still has its place in this day and age of digital communication.
2. Inspiration. To inspire someone is to literally stimulate their energies to achieve something beyond their imagination. Bill Gates was inspired by Dr. Henry Edward Roberts to start Microsoft back in 1975. Steve Jobs inspired a lot of people to do something great. As leaders, we need to be pedlars of inspiration to people around us, especially our staff. You’ll be surprised at what they can accomplish when they get an inspiration from you.
3. Recognition. Didn’t we all love getting those stickers and stars when we were in pre-school? What about that plaque that we got for being best in math? Unfortunately, recognition, like dinosaurs, have become extinct inside corporations. Managers usually think that employees are already getting paid for what they do so no other form of recognition is necessary. Sadly, this is also one of the top reasons why employees leave an organization. To retain top talent, practice the art of recognizing them both privately and publicly. It could be as simple as giving them a plaque or certificate or as extravagant as hiring a marching band. Be creative, just make sure you do it on a regular basis.

If we need to breathe air within 3 minutes to live and survive, breathing it regularly makes us healthy. We need healthy individuals to fill our organization and what better way to do it is to empower our staff (and everybody else) by giving them A.I.R. to breathe.

I would like to offer up just a couple simple thoughts about keeping it simple:

1) Stay focused on what really matters.  You don’t have to do everything that everyone else is doing. What matters most to you? Then focus on that and do it with quality and passion.

2) Learn to say NO!  Yes, you can say NO!  Learn to do it. Practice with me right now… say NO! come one out loud. NO!  It feel good, NO?

3) Stay simple; Do a few things great rather than a bunch of things with only mediocre results.  Figure out your basic priorities and stick with them. When you focus on keeping it simple it prevents you from going off in the wrong directions or taking ministry “rabbit trails.”

So Keep it simple.. How do you keep it simple? What advice would you give!

He along with his associate Michael Salisbury shared some fantastic insights from their 15+ years of friendship and ministry together. Last night they shared about things they wish someone had told them at the start of their leadership journey. Here is just a few of the dot point notes I took from last night I found very helpful:

Don’t discount the role you can play in a young persons life.Have Fun!

You’ve gotta enjoy the ministry your doing.

Know what are your drainers & replenishes.

Be true to yourself

You reproduce after who you really are, not who you present to be.

Be servant hearted… But remember, God will do what he wanted, either with us or despite us.

You choose your attitude! You can choose how you are going respond to.

The grass is not always greener on the other side…

Believe Big, even if the last time ‘failed’. The size of your God, will determine the size of what you believe God can do!

Be accountable. Find out Godly mentors, for different areas. You’ll need to go find them.

I fast & I pray, I listen & obey.

I’m so thankful to Phill’s friendship and ministry over the years. I hope these quick 11 points help grow you in your life and leadership.

Your Life Matters.

In military aviation, the “OODA Loop” has the status of a biblical commandment: thou shalt Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. It is a decision framework which has utility across military operations … and in business too.

My first practical application of OODA occurred as a young Flight Communications Officer in a Navy P-3 squadron. We were over the North Atlantic, during a Search and Rescue mission that went (very much) awry. The fact that I’m here to write about it is testament to the skills and training of my crew, imbued with the OODA mandate. Its power as a decision-making framework was indelibly imprinted on me that day.

I’ve written about leadership lessons in the context of crisis management in my post, “Double, double toil and trouble” (parts #1 and part#2) … this is a different spin on lessons learned in a crisis environment while serving with the Navy.

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The scene: we were flying a Search and Rescue (SAR) mission looking for a missing woman. She had been trying to sail the North Atlantic solo. We were part of a multinational search effort, over the middle of the ocean (not far from where the Titanic sank, as one of our crew later pointed out). The weather was “rough as a cob”, with heavy overcast, a broken cloud layer at about 1,000 feet, moderate to severe turbulence and 25-foot swells in the dark seas below.

Our 10 member crew was flying the venerable P-3 Orion, a four-engine turboprop patrol aircraft used for anti-submarine warfare … but which doubled as a pretty good long-range SAR platform. Three were on the flight deck, the rest of us “tuberats” operated from the main compartment of the plane.

P-3 With Engine #1 In Loiter Shutdown

Important fact in the story: we had our #1 engine in “loiter shutdown” to conserve fuel and extend our time on station (the plane’s engines are numbered one to four, starting with #1 on the far left side of the aircraft, and ending at #4 on the far right). Shutting down #1 was common on station.

Our hopes of finding anyone alive in that witches-brew of a sea were slim (and as it turned out, the target of our search was never found). We’d been briefed that the woman may have abandoned her sailboat in a red life raft; this would be extremely difficult to find in the rough waves, and so we were flying a tight search pattern low over the water – about 500 feet. All windows were manned, infrared video feed was being monitored, and our radar was operating. I was staring intently out my bubble window; my station was positioned just aft of the flight deck. And I was trying hard not to get air sick from the bumpy ride as I tried to keep a good look-out.

At some point as we lumbered along boring holes through the sky, the aft port window observer called out a red object in the swells below (an adrift ocean buoy, we later found out from the Coast Guard C-130 that replaced us on station). The pilot yanked the aircraft into a steep left bank to circle back to the sighting.

And that’s right when things went bad.

As the pilot applied a steep bank angle to turn us around and inspect the red object we’d seen, the #2 engine “crapped out” in the banking turn. For those keeping count at home, that’s two engines out on the same side of the aircraft.

Now, the (awesome) P-3 Orion can loiter for hours on station with two engines shut down … but most crews avoid shutting down two engines on the same side of the plane. It’ll fly that way, weight, weather, and fuel permitting (it can even fly on just one engine under the proper circumstances). But this needs to be managed carefully, and in our case, just about everything that you’d prefer not to be the case with two engines out on the same side was indeed the case: we were heavy with fuel, we were at a relatively low airspeed, we were under 500 feet of altitude, and we were at a steep angle of bank.

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When I was still in my initial training, I was once sitting in our medical clinic at the Naval Air Station, getting my annual flight physical. One of my instructors happened to be there, and as we were waiting for our EKGs, we got into a discussion of when problems occurred in flight. There were probably thirty people waiting in chairs lined up in the passageway. My instructor had me stand up and face the doors down at the end of the passage, where outside, it was a nice day. He said, “See the sunlight out there? That’s not when the shit hits the fan.”

He then stood behind me, made me close my eyes, and started violently shaking me and shouting questions about what circuit breakers to pull, what procedures to implement in the event of an emergency. He was shouting like a drill instructor. The thing he shouted the most as he concluded his lesson? “OODA!! OODA!! OODA will save your life!”

This created quite a spectacle for the other people quietly waiting for their physical exams.

What is OODA? OODA was originated as a concept for fighter pilots in the Korean War, by Colonel John Boyd. He observed that decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. By processing this cycle more rapidly than an adversary, one can “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain the advantage.

As I was taught during my training, the “adversary” we often faced in the patrol squadron community was accident chains – i.e., the series of events that build on themselves leading to an accident. In this sense, OODA isn’t useful only as a strategic framework (though it is definitely that… more on OODA later). It has strong utility in an emergent crisis, even if the cycle is compressed to mere moments in time. We were taught that training was the key to ensure that the cycle could be effectively compressed. But our training scenarios almost always required a process based on OODA.

My instructor shouting “OODA!!” at me was one of my most memorable lessons from my training. And I was definitely thinking about it that day on our SAR mission.

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Back over the North Atlantic: when we lost the #2 engine on the port wing in the midst of our left turn, the aircraft made a sickening lurch towards the sea. The cockpit crew had to do a number of things immediately: most importantly, they had to fly the plane, ensuring that we didn’t fall below the power curve or fall below the minimum controllable airspeed given our loss of engine thrust. Our biggest risk in the moment was a stall – essentially, the aircraft falling out of the sky.

In our case, in addition to leveling the wings, the flight deck pushed the nose towards the crashing sea swells – the fastest way to keep our speed from bleeding off and avoiding a stall scenario. Incidentally, dropping the nose of a plane towards the earth’s surface is a very unnatural thing to do. There is a human reaction to pull back on the yoke or stick in an emergency, especially when close to the ground. Pilots are trained against this, but the phenomenon has caused more than a few fatal accidents.

The flight deck crew also had to manage power on the two good engines as well as make the correct flight control inputs to manage the asymmetric thrust (engines operating on one side of the aircraft but not on the other). They also had to restart #1 while more or less simultaneously securing #2.

And this all had to be done in mere seconds … the sea is awfully close and the room for recovery is very narrow at 500 feet.

It was a lot to manage, but they did it. There are a few examples of P-3 crews that have not fared as well. In one case, a P-3 had their #1 engine shut down during a training flight when their #2 engine began vibrating intensely and had to be “bagged” immediately. Unfortunately, with two engines off on the same side and with the airspeed too low, the aircraft stalled … at least 5 G’s were reported in the subsequent effort to recover, yielding substantial damage to the aircraft. The plane did five spin rotations from 5,500 feet, before recovering at an altitude of less than 200 feet.

Recovering our aircraft after the failure of engine #2 was the first OODA Loop that day, but certainly not the only one. It was a tightly compressed OODA Loop, with the entire decision-to-action process occurring in seconds. The quick reactions and deep experience of the flight crew saved the plane as we bottomed out maybe 150 feet above the swells.

But that was just the beginning of our problems…

To be continued in my next post later this week.

Follow Don on Twitter @KineticDHM
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Don Mathis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kinetic Social, a company launched in 2011 with a core focus of marrying “Big Data” to social media on behalf of large brand advertisers.  He also serves in the active reserve of the US Navy, where he is the Commanding Officer of a highly deployable, selectively staffed, joint-service combat logistics unit that supports forward deployed war-fighters.

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This blog post  was inspired by a conversation I had with a high school friend. Imagine planning a trip to your vacation getaway. You know that you will need to do the following to get to your destination

1. Drive about 5 hours
2. Get your gas tank full and may potentially refill along the way
3. Check to make sure your coolant tank is full
4. Pack your stuff in preparation for the long drive

While driving, you definitely need to do the following

1. Check your speedometer to make sure that you’re not driving too fast not too slow. Driving too fast will get you a ticket. Driving too slow will take you longer to reach your destination
2. Check your temperature. You want to make sure that your engine does not overheat while you drive
3. Check your fuel meter. You want to know when it’s time to gas up

It’s amazing how many people put a lot of effort in planning for a trip and have very detailed information. Unfortunately, we don’t do the same thing for our goals. The first month of 2013 has just gone past us and items in our New Year’s resolutions have either been ticked off a checklist or totally forgotten.  If we put more effort into planning, tracking and specifying more details into our goals, I believe that we will be able to achieve more of them. We’ve got the entire year to work on our goals and New Year’s resolutions.  It’s not too late to start.

GOOD LEADERS ARE GOOD FOLLOWERS: At one level or another, every good leader is also a follower. They instinctively recognize that they only exercise authority on loan. They are also aware of their own accountability to someone or to a higher institutional authority. Pope Benedict XVI seems to have exhibited the traits of a good follower in a number of ways, including the following three -

1. FAITHFUL SERVICE. The hallmark of good followership is alignment with a leader’s vision. As a Cardinal, he faithfully served his predecessor, John Paul II, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and later as Dean of the College of Cardinals, a position that made him second only to the Pope himself. Good followers make good team players. As the former Pope’s most trusted confidante, his mandate was simple … purify the faith. The massive body of written work he leaves behind remains a testimony to this faithful alignment.

2. SUBMISSION TO THE LEADERSHIP OF ANOTHER LEADER. In whatever capacity Pope Benedict XVI continues to serve when he exits the Papacy on Feb 28, he will follow the lead of a new Pope — an unusual position for someone who himself has reached the pinnacle of earthly ecclesiastical power. One of the Pope’s many titles is ‘servant of servants.’ In this capacity of servant leader, following another will not be a challenge for this proven follower.

3. SUBMISSION TO AN AUDIENCE OF ONE. We live in an increasingly aggressive secular environment fueled by ethically relativist academics and politicians, and a media and entertainment elite that is ever so wiling to mock, undermine, and cast aside moral absolutes. Many of such thought leaders seem to have no need for a Sovereign God who sets boundaries and holds leaders responsible for their actions and stewardship. I have no doubt that in the vast loneliness that is the Vatican City, as Pope Benedict XVI contemplated his future and the future of the Church he leads and loves, it all came down to one thing — submission to an audience of One … the One who called him to become a fisher of men in the very first place.

In conclusion,

1. Good leaders are also good followers
2. The absence of leader followership always leads to hubris, unfettered arrogance, and self-destruction.
3. All leaders are ultimately accountable to someone — a higher governing authority, and whether they acknowledge it or not, to the One who rules over all. To not acknowledge God’s Mandate and Sovereignty over the affairs of men and women, is to court unmitigated disaster.

May God Help us all!

]]> http://victoroladokun.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/pt-1-7-leadership-lessons-from-pope-benedicts-resignation/ Wed, 13 Feb 2013 12:17:10 +0000 Dr. Victor Oladokun http://victoroladokun.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/pt-1-7-leadership-lessons-from-pope-benedicts-resignation/ Today, Pope Benedict XVI (the former Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger) became only the second Pope in a thousand years to step down from office — this time on account of deteriorating physical health. I have long admired Pope Benedict XVI as one of the brightest theological minds of our time. If in doubt, read some of his works such as – Jesus of Nazareth; Holiness is Always in Season; New Outpourings of the Spirit; and the Joy of Knowing Christ: Meditation on the Gospels, among many others.

There are 3 key leadership principles I believe we can take away from his resignation.

1. KNOWING WHEN TO QUIT: There comes a time when every leader has to look him or herself in the mirror and say, “Its time to move on.” There is no indignity to this. Just a recognition that (a) they have fulfilled their roles in the season of time they have occupied their respective positions of influence and (b) it is time to pass the baton on to a new generation that can run with the vision with a new sense of purpose and vigor.

2. MISSION VERSUS POSITION: In our post-modern world, too many leaders are so wrapped up in their positions and titles, that they will do everything and anything possible to stay on their lofty perches, while ensuring that every pretender to the ‘throne’ is prevented or dissuaded from even thinking about it. In essence their positions have become idols. However, Pope Benedict realizes that the position he is relinquishing is temporal and that the larger universal mission of the Catholic Church is a whole lot bigger than himself. If his physical body is going to be a detriment to his spiritual responsibilities, then something had to give. In this case, it was going to be his position, and not the mission of the Church.

3. IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU: Humble leaders always recognize it is not about them, but rather, the larger organization and constituencies that they serve. While there is precedence for a Pope resigning from office, lets keep in mind that this was almost a thousand years ago! As a leading theologian and historian, Pope Benedict must have been aware of the ground shaking reverberations that would accompany his announcement. But at the end of the day, it all came down to – “Its not about me.”

May we continually be blessed with leaders who know when to hang up the proverbial gloves; make distinctions between position and the larger mission; and who have the presence of mind, grace and humility, to know it is not about them!

]]> http://keithrhiggons.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/business-lessons-in-the-walking-dead/ Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:59:29 +0000 Keith R. Higgons http://keithrhiggons.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/business-lessons-in-the-walking-dead/ http://dhmathis.com/2013/02/11/toil-and-trouble-part-2/ Mon, 11 Feb 2013 12:07:28 +0000 Don Mathis http://dhmathis.com/2013/02/11/toil-and-trouble-part-2/ By Don Mathis, Kinetic Social CEO

Continued from my last week’s post, Double, double toil and trouble Part #1

My last post described a crisis situation my command faced in Bahrain. It was 2002, and we had been warned that tens of thousands of angry demonstrators were heading our way, with the objective apparently of overrunning us.

The subject of the post was about how the Navy has taught me, among other things, to manage through a crisis. As I wrote last week, “it’s a skill that has come in handy in my civilian career. From swiftly changing market conditions to frivolous lawsuits, from irrational competitors to even less rational bloggers whose journalistic integrity would make Rita Skeeter blush … operating in an entrepreneurial environment sometimes feels like brief moments of sanity in an otherwise ultra-manic universe.”

But back to that day in 2002… in my last post I broke off just as, at the time, I was beginning to think we were in a true no-win scenario, that we might not actually get out of it unscathed. Or as we say in the service, we were on the verge of being in “a world of hurt.”

Watching how people reacted to all this was very interesting (I mean, in retrospect). Some folks fared badly. I remember one officer – not from my command (nor my branch of service I’ll add), and I won’t describe him further lest he someday read this – who was on the verge of real panic. He was planning to “commandeer” a vehicle and make a dash for it. He asked me if I wanted to come, as I caught him rifling through a cabinet for truck keys. And I’ll admit, it was tempting – staying where we were was beginning to feel like a death sentence. But I declined. Whatever the outcome, I understood that it was my duty to be there. It may have sucked, but I had volunteered for serving in the first place … abandoning that commitment wasn’t an option.

It was pretty much precisely at this moment that my Commanding Officer (CO) arrived on the scene. He didn’t need to come; he had left the safety of the main base to get there, and with the evacuation order in place and the Marines already deployed, he could very much have justified staying where he was. But he didn’t. Moreover, he would not have stayed away in a million years – we were “his people”, and he would have moved heaven and earth to be there and share the consequences with us.

This represents a phenomenon that I find is rarely understood by the “outside world” (i.e., those who haven’t served). When you have the privilege and responsibility to be a leader in the military, you learn quickly that it is all about your team, about your people. As a (different) Commanding Officer I once had used to say frequently, “take care of your people, and they will take care of you.” The bond you develop with your team, the sense of commitment to their safety and well being, goes far, far beyond what occurs in nearly any civilian counterpart scenario.

Back to my CO in Bahrain: not only did he come to join us at that moment, but he projected a vision of calm despite the overwhelming tension and impending violence. I’ll never forget the easy command he seemed to have of the situation … how he got the specwar commander to stand down his defensive perimeter and put away his heavy weapons, and yield the force protection mandate to the Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team Marines with their non-lethal gear. How he got everyone aligned to complete the lock-down with order and discipline. How he ensured that we had at least a fighting chance to egress the area once our work was done and the violence had commenced.

It is a fair statement that without his leadership, people would have still been running about like headless chickens as the demonstrators crashed the gates. But this was a group that knew how to function as a team, and the CO had spent many months getting them to operate as such. He brought the team back to that level in a matter of moments. His transformation of the scene was almost breathtaking.

Long after, I asked him about that time. He admitted to me that he was as frightened as the rest of us. “But Junior,” he said to me, using the nickname that he had begun calling me on my first day reporting to him, “always, always keep your game face on.”

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So what lessons can be drawn from this experience, lessons that transcend service in a war zone? A few, I think:

1. First and foremost and always: the team matters, and it matters above all. The CO saved the day in Bahrain, but only because he had a good team in place already with mutual respect shared between leader and led. Note to the business leader: if you ever think that the story is more about you than your people, you are in real trouble
2. Second: keep your game face on. Not because you are trying to present a false sense of security in the face of adversity, but because situations are influenced by people as often as the other way around. Psychology is a part of every issue. Embody confidence because you find the reasons to be confident, and give that confidence to your team. If the guy or gal in charge loses their cool, you can bet that the team will too.
3. Finally: act. Action solves problems, and “analysis-paralysis” rarely adds value beyond a certain point. Too many business leaders get shell-shocked when facing a crisis. Personally, when things seem challenging I find it helpful to remember that history is filled with people who have faced situations far harder than my own. Determine a solution and execute … even if it doesn’t work, at least you are engaged, and perhaps you’ve generated new options as a result. The CO that day immediately commenced giving direction to his command, and that eliminated much of the hand-wringing and doubt around the viability of our situation.

My Grandfather, who was a Captain in the Merchant Marine, used to say “God damn it, do something.” Be proactive, make a decision and – as we were only half-jokingly taught in Officer’s Candidate School – if that decision happens to be right, so much the better. A bias to action will overcome many obstacles in and of itself.

How one manages when times are good is no indicator of competence… it is when the challenges are extreme that we see who we really are. I got to see that in Bahrain. I’ve seen it at other times during my military service. And I’ve seen it in my civilian work (albeit with less dramatic consequences).

In a future post, I’ll talk about a time when I put that learning to a pretty serious test in my civilian job.

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Oh, by the way, as to the situation that day in Bahrain? It culminated in anti-climax (for the US military, at least) … but this message about crisis management wouldn’t have  resonated as well if I told you that upfront, would it have?

In fact, what makes it possible to focus on general learnings from a tale like this, for me anyway, is precisely because it ended benignly. Most of us in the military have had experiences post-9/11 that were also, perhaps, great “lessons learned” events, but that are far too painful to openly discuss. Or to debase by translating them into a business lesson.

The demonstration that day occurred at the Pearl Roundabout, and the protestors did try to march to the military air terminal. But the demonstration was smaller than the intel folks had forecast, and the marchers never got to us. The Bahrain anti-terrorism police stopped the protesters on the way, in much the same way they have stopped protesters in the last few years of the Arab Spring: with bone-breaking tactics.

And while this is not a political post or blog, it merits noting: these strong-armed tactics may have worked to stop the protests in their tracks. But the sense of hopelessness that drove them in the first place remains as palpable as ever across the Middle East. It is hard to see how there is a happy ending under such circumstances.

Follow Don on Twitter @KineticDHM
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Don Mathis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kinetic Social, a company launched in 2011 with a core focus of marrying “Big Data” to social media on behalf of large brand advertisers.  He also serves in the active reserve of the US Navy, where he is the Commanding Officer of a highly deployable, selectively staffed, joint-service combat logistics unit that supports forward deployed war-fighters.

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‘Leadership’ is a concept we often resist.  It seems immodest, even self-aggrandizing to think of ourselves as leaders.  But if it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vocation, and it can be an evasion to insist that it is not.  When we live in the close-knit ecosystem called community, everyone follows and everyone leads.

Even I – a person who is unfit to be president of anything, who once galloped away from institutions on a high-horse – have come to understand that for better or for worse, I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do.  If you are also here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership of some sort.

It becomes a bit scary doesn’t it?  If Palmer is accurate, then everything we do is a form of leadership and we can’t avoid the responsibility for what happens in our organization.  So, the question becomes, what kind of leadership are you exercising? What kind of leadership do you want to exercise simply because you are part of your organization and you are acting within it?

Best wishes,

Gage

*Palmer, P. J. (2000). Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. Jossy-Bass:  San Francisco.

To SEE the BIG picture.

To SEE the DETAIL on the BIG picture.

To SEE who can HANDLE the DETAIL on the BIG picture.

To SEE above the mess or clutter, of what’s going on and have the ability to  maintain some clarity of vision and help others navigate that journey with you.

Jim Collins in his book Great by Choice describes it by saying that leaders of great businesses have developed an ability to ‘ZOOM IN, ZOOM OUT’. It’s not so much about should we change things but about being vigilant to sense changing conditions. Great leaders can do this as fast or as slow as is necessary due to the fact they have a handle on conditions. They SEE it. 

[What do you think?]

Learning about crisis management in the Global War on Terror

I last posted about why my Naval service has meaning for me. How I get the opportunity to serve with folks from all walks of life, unified in a common endeavor: doing something for the sake of others, doing something that isn’t just about the predominant “me”-obsessed cultural zeitgeist.

It’s grounding, especially in my civilian world of ad-tech entrepreneurship, where the bullshit can be so thick you need a full MOPP suit to keep from choking on it.

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But the Navy’s also been one of my most important classrooms. I’ve learned more about management and leadership in the service than I did at B-school or McKinsey, and I draw deeply on these lessons at Kinetic Social.

One of my biggest learnings? How to manage through a crisis. It’s a skill that has come in handy in my civilian career. From swiftly changing market conditions to frivolous lawsuits, from irrational competitors to even less rational bloggers whose journalistic integrity would make Rita Skeeter blush … operating in an entrepreneurial environment sometimes feels like brief moments of sanity in an otherwise ultra-manic universe.

The trick is to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs’”, to paraphrase Kipling, and drive your vision through the gauntlet of crises achieving success despite them. Or perhaps because of them: “Sometimes a crisis is a good thing for a company. Recovering from a knockout punch often requires heroic efforts from the team,” wrote Fred Wilson in his blog post How Well Do You Take A Punch?  How you cope, how well you turn adversity into opportunity determines your eventual success.

This post is about a “trial-by-fire” dose of instruction in the art of crisis management while serving with the Navy.

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In 2002, I was deployed to Bahrain early in my first overseas “Long War” tour. This was a time when Afghanistan was still a pretty safe place to be in an unarmored Humvee, a time when no one really believed – I mean, none of us on active duty in the Middle East – that we’d actually invade Iraq. The war then was against Al Qaeda, and we were making progress. These were the salad days of the War on Terror.

On a particular early Spring day when the weather was amazing and the god-awful summer heat hadn’t yet started roasting the Persian Gulf, I was on duty at the military air terminal in Bahrain, a major logistics hub for Central Command. I had just enjoyed a stroll back to our side of the airfield from the little gedunk shack that served a terrific shawarma, when my Senior Chief came sprinting towards me across the aircraft ramp. “Sir! We’ve got a real Charlie Foxtrot!” he shouted. Charlie Foxtrot: mil-speak for Cluster F#ck.

Protesters in Bahrain

The early signs of unrest in Bahrain occurred long before the Arab Spring started in Tunisia or Tahrir Square. Bahrain’s Shiite majority – about 70% of the population – has long felt oppressed by Sunni minority rule. And when I say long, I mean centuries-long. Bahrain was conquered by the Sunni al-Khalifa family in 1783, and they have ruled the country ever since. And in 2002, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa – who had earlier pledged to implement a genuine constitutional monarchy – was actively backing away from real reform and retrenching. The Shia felt betrayed and feared greater Sunni oppression, and sporadic protests broke out … a precursor to the troubles in Bahrain today.

Bahrain is home of the U.S. 5^th Fleet, and that’s why I was there, in the midst of a crisis that began to unfold around me on that otherwise pleasant Spring day. Then, as later, Bahraini opposition demonstrations often began at a place called the Pearl Roundabout (it is now destroyed). There had already been a series of protests over the past few weeks, nominally in solidarity with Palestinians against Israel. But the subtext of Shia-versus-Sunni and an anti-American flavor was strong.

On April 5^th, just a few days before, 20,000 protesters lobbed Molotov cocktails at the U.S. Embassy compound and breached its walls, with Bahraini anti-riot police stopping the demonstrators by using clubs, rubber-coated bullets and tear gas. A McDonalds that I’d been to was attacked as a symbol of America. Rumor had it that Shia doctors had set fire to their hospital in protest. A U.S. sailor was badly injured by an improvised explosive device attached to his car. It was a tense time.

The Pearl Roundabout was less than three miles from where I was at the military air terminal. On this particular day, the protest that formed there had the earmarks of a major civil disruption, a pre-planned event that could signal the beginning of serious sectarian violence – or so our intel people thought. They warned of 50,000 to 75,000 people, agitators embedded in the crowd with weapons, organization provided by Iranian-linked terrorists. It wasn’t clear that the Bahraini authorities could control or stop it.

And this crowd was supposedly marching our way to overrun and destroy the military airfield. All the makings of a lovely day.

US Marine FAST Company

The protocol for such events was simple, at least in theory: bring in the Marine Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team; evacuate most  personnel out of harm’s way, shred classified materials that cannot be removed; fly out  all aircraft that  could fly, tow any which couldn’t to the civilian-side of the massive airfield to buy time and allow the demonstration to dissipate. It should have been fairly straightforward.

But “the enemy gets a vote,” and in this case, one of our enemies was Murphy. As in, Murphy’s Law.

Just as we were thinking that we had a good handle on the situation, a C-5A Galaxy that was randomly and coincidentally transiting the theater at 35,000 feet declared an emergency and came screaming into Bahrain with a smoking engine. All of a sudden, we had a plane that couldn’t get out and that we lacked the equipment or time to tow away from the military air terminal.

A plane that was an awfully big, juicy symbol of America’s presence in the Middle East.

That would have been bad enough. But it got more interesting than that. On that C-5A was a contingent of special operations forces and their equipment. The Major in charge informed me that he wasn’t leaving the aircraft with its top-secret gear, and he’d defend it if necessary. When I told him that the senior officer present at 5^th Fleet HQ had ordered him and his troops to leave the airfield and find safe haven, he refused and told me his orders “came from an authority higher than mine”. And then the Major began deploying his troops in a defensive perimeter around the aircraft.

Special Warfare Operators

SO… now we had an angry crowd of demonstrators gathering a few kilometers away, preparing to march on our position and supposedly lay waste to it. We had Marines with non-lethal gear ready to hold them off … but we also had specwar operators armed to the teeth – with quite lethal gear, as you would imagine – surrounding an airplane as big as a building ready to defend it at all costs (what the hell was on that plane anyway?).

This all developed incredibly rapidly, and there was a growing, palpable sense that things were getting out of hand. It wasn’t even clear who the proper command authorities were with the specwar guys added to the mix, and we now had a seemingly impossible mandate to secure the facilities in the face of an uncontrollable mob hell-bent on destruction.

It was starting to feel like I was in one of those military Operational Readiness Assessment exercises where they keep throwing increasingly difficult complications at you. Eventually, such exercises end up putting you in a preposterous situation, the Defense Department’s equivalent of the Star Trek Starfleet “Kobayashi Maru” no-win scenario  … except that this was no exercise. We were most certainly on the verge of being “in the shit”.

To Be Continued in my next post…

Follow Don on Twitter @KineticDHM
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Don Mathis is the CEO and Co-Founder of Kinetic Social, a company launched in 2011 with a core focus of marrying “Big Data” to social media on behalf of large brand advertisers.  He also serves in the active reserve of the US Navy, where he is the Commanding Officer of a highly deployable, selectively staffed, joint-service combat logistics unit that supports forward deployed war-fighters.

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I couldn’t help think this morning looking back at the times the “Lights” seemingly have gone out on me. When ministry get’s hard and those unexpected hurts come, the lights seem to go out. How do we  handle it? Yes, the Sunday School answer is we are supposed to pray, I’m not trying to be disrespectful but too often, my reaction is too sunday school and not real. Let me explain. I have often criticized people for incorrectly throwing out Romans 8:28 as a safety net verse and almost name it then claim it attitude. 

When I have found myself down and hurting or struggling, that is one of the last verses I wanted to turn to for some reason, until lately.  It’s like the Spirit redirected my heart towards this passage and not just the one verse. Romans 8 is a powerful and transforming passage. It’s a “turning on” passage.

Let me give you a few light on moments in this passage for me and how God has been turning it on in my heart.

1. When you down, when someone hurts you. Remember who you are, in CHRIST. Vs.1 You are forgiven and loved by the Creator.

2. Your present suffering is accomplish things only God can see and you can and need to rest in that TRUTH! vs. 18  (yes, we may have to wait to see the good in it.)

3.)Remind yourself of what you KNOW. VS.28- What do you know about the Character of God. Who is he to you? What has he done for you? Spend some time focused not on the problem your facing but on the God who faces it with you. He says it will be GOOD (remember when he said “it is good, back in Genesis?, that means its really good.)

4. You can overcome whatever your facing! Vs. 37  I know what people can do and I know the effects of their sinful behavior and how it hurts, I know about problems in ministry that you may think cannot be overcome except by running away and hiding. Let me say from someone who has many experiences in this field. You can and will, by God’s grace and power overcome.  Begin by turning this over to him and rest. Keep walking ahead the course he’s set before you and stay faithful. Forgive quickly, live in peace!

I hope when the lights go out? you can power up with the Source of all real power!

Share with me, how do you “turn the light back on?”

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

It’s become a cliché but this is still a wonderful way to help people cope when faced with tasks that feel overwhelming.  Over the years, I’ve collected other bits of wisdom and advice to help me cope with large, or complex, or overwhelming tasks.

Anne Lamott’s* version of managing the elephant is to write no more than can be ‘seen’ through a one-inch frame.  When faced with a project that seems so impossible that you can’t find a way to get started, the idea is to start by writing a small amount.  Don’t worry about the entire report or getting the perfect first sentence, just start with a middle paragraph.  When I was hesitant to start working on my doctorate because I didn’t think I could write a dissertation (a great example of missing the forest for the trees), I was given a great reminder from a friend.  She told me that a dissertation was only 5 research papers and that I could write 5 research papers.  She was right about that and it demystified the idea of a dissertation.

Yoga teacher training helped me understand ways to manage complex tasks.  Our teacher taught us to juggle.  But he didn’t start by handing us three butcher knives to work with.  He didn’t even hand us three balls – he gave each of us one small ball.  Our first task was to learn to toss it up to the right distance and catch it again.  Then toss the ball up and catch in the opposite hand and pass back to the first hand.  Then he added a second ball and walked us through each step and didn’t add a third until we could manage two.  If someone got stuck, it was the role of the teacher to find the next smallest step that would move the student forward.  Next time you have a complex task, don’t work to figure out the entire project – see if you can identify a small manageable task to begin.  Then look for the next smallest task and so on – one bite at a time.

There are two important leadership tasks here.  One is to help your colleagues, co-workers or teammates find their way into the complexity before them.  Helping someone find the next smallest step gets them started and makes the entire project less overwhelming.  The second leadership task is to celebrate the small wins.  If all we see is the elephant, we can forget the importance of the accomplishments along the way and get discouraged by the length of the to-do list. Leaders don’t wait until the final task is done, celebrate the steps along the way.

We have all learned ways to manage the tasks that come our way.  What tips or advice have you been given that helps you deal with large, complex tasks?  Do you know any sayings that help you keep your perspective when you feel overwhelmed?

Best wishes,

Gage

* I couldn’t find a single office website so here is a link to Anne Lamott’s twitter feed. She’s worth following! https://twitter.com/ANNELAMOTT

1. No one is in charge. The airport doesn’t appear to have a CEO, and if it does, you never see her, hear about her or interact with her in any way. When the person at the top doesn’t care, it filters down.

2. Problems persist because organizations defend their turf instead of embrace the problem. The TSA blames the facilities people, who blame someone else, and around and around. Only when the user’s problem is the driver of behavior (as opposed to maintaining power or the status quo) things change.

5. By removing slack, airlines create failure. In order to increase profit, airlines work hard to get the maximum number of flights out of each plane, each day. As a result, there are no spares, no downtime and no resilience. By assuming that their customer base prefers to save money, not anxiety, they create an anxiety-filled system.

7. The ad hoc is forbidden. Imagine an airplane employee bringing in an extension cord and a power strip to deal with the daily occurrence of travelers hunched in the corner around a single outlet. Impossible. There is a bias toward permanent and improved, not quick and effective.

8. Everyone is treated the same. Effective organizations treat different people differently. While there’s some window dressing at the edges (I’m thinking of slightly faster first class lines and slightly more convenient motorized cars for seniors), in general, airports insist that the one size they’ve chosen to offer fit all.

11. No one is having any fun. Most people who work at airports have precisely the same demeanor as people who work at a cemetery. The system has become so industrialized that personal expression is apparently forbidden.

It’s all common sense, but these are all points worth remembering. Show leadership, don’t finger point when there’s a problem (do your residents really care if it was the person who answered the phone or the maintenance tech who forgot to document the complaint?), your prospects/residents don’t only care about price, take initiative to provide unexpected service and treat everyone as an individual and make sure you have some fun.

Easy!

Whether we like it or not, the things that we do every day do make an impact whether you’re a manager leading a team or a stay-at-home mom. It’s not a question of whether or not we’re making an impact but rather how we want to make an impact. Executives and celebrities tell stories about how their parents encouraged them to pursue their dreams, teachers who didn’t give up on them,  supervisors who believed that they can accomplish far beyond what they can think of. The list goes on and on.  I get to tell the story about how my mom exemplified honorable work ethic and hard work, how my pastor friend Alfred taught me that excellence must be a lifestyle and how my wife’s wise words of “your time will come” kept me going.

How we make an impact on someone else’s life may not end up on tomorrow’s newspaper or the next New York Time’s best seller’s list. But I’m pretty sure they will end up as stories getting told by your kids, the next generation of leaders or potentially as a story embedded in a TED talk.

Question: Do you have a story about someone who made an impact in your life? What about something you did for someone that is worth sharing to others. You can leave a comment by clicking here.