Author Archives: CraigWhitney

Texas, Football and Heroes

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I’m in Austin for a few days, so I found a high school nearby with a track I could run on.  I was reminded that football is more than a sport in Texas.  It’s mid february and there was a whole team of guys out there getting on their gear and warming up – hoping their hard work would someday make them heroes.  If touchdowns we’re all that mattered, the 6′ 2″ kid throwing frozen ropes in warm ups might have a shot.  While I was running a Dad walked over to the track from a nearby apartment with his two boys in tow.  They must have been about 4 and 6.  The did a lap around the track and then they all went and found the high jump pit.  Dad was running and doing awkward flips on the pads.  The boys were jumping all over dad.  They were all laughing and smiling.  It made me wonder if any of the football heroes in waiting even noticed that a real hero was already on the field.

Priorities

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About 15 years ago, I experienced a classic case of burnout.  I was trying to do too much and when I couldn’t do it all my solution was to try harder.  In my season of recovery, I discovered the value of living by priorities.  I wrote out six priorities that have remained largely unchanged since:

1. Be a man of God
2. Be a loving husband
3. Be an effective father
4. Be a faithful friend
5. Be a life-changing leader
6. Be a good steward

As 2012 begins, these priorities help me evaluate where I’ve been and where I’m going.

Do you have priorities? What are they? How are they shaping the person you’re becoming?

Vision is Your Signature Song

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Take yourself back to high school. Who was you favorite band?  Now, without thinking about it, what song came to mind? There’s a good chance it is that bands signature song.  For example:

  • Boston – More than a Feeling
  • Eagles – Hotel California
  • Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’
  • Bon Jovi – Livin’ on a Prayer

Besides knowing when I went to high school you’ve also learned something about leadership and vision.  If you’re a leader, vision is you’re signature song.  It’s the song everyone knows you by and the song everyone expects you to sing.

  • People curious about who you are and what you stand for may never get past the 30 second iTunes version – can you capture the heart in just 30 seconds.
  • Most people will know the radio version (yes, I remember radio too) – is it well produced and easily accessible to as many people as possible?
  • Then there will be a the true fans who take the time to download the extended version and add it to their favorite playlist.  – Have you given them something special to make it worth their time and money?

Don’t have a signature song?  If you want to lead, it’s time to write one.

Riding Up

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I bought a road bike last fall.  No carbon fiber frame, just a craigslist bargain.  It’s been good exercise and created great opportunities to ride with friends.  A few months back I was at a meeting with my friend Ken, an avid and more experience cyclist. His advice was simple, “If you want to get better, ride up.”  Made sense, so I thought I’d give it a try.  I found a local group on meetup.com and put the ride on my calendar.  When I went to the garage to load up I had a flat – by the time I got it fixed and drove to the meet up, the group had left.  There were other cyclists in the parking lot so I figured I’d ask around, maybe somebody else still wanted to ride.  I met Danny.  As he was getting ready, he was telling another cyclist about his recent knee surgery – the doctor had just given him permission to ride “easy.”  I’m thinking this may not be the workout I was hoping for, but at least I’ll get in a ride. As we headed out on the 30 mile route Danny began telling me about his double centuries, marathons and 9 IronMan Triathlons.  This wasn’t going to be easy – this was going to be the very epitome of riding up.  My legs, my lunges and my ego survived.  I rode the fastest 30 miles I’d ever done – by 20 minutes.  And, I learned more about cycling in 2 hours than I had in 6 months.  All of that, by simply following someone better than me for a couple of hours.  Ken was right.  If you want to get better, ride up.

Is there a skill you’ve been wanting to improve?  Find someone better than you and ask them if they will let you ride up.

Chess or Checkers

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Sorry for back to back posts from email newsletters – but this was too good to not pass along.  It’s from the Marcus Buckingham Company April newsletter.  Marcus co-authored Now Discover Your Strengths, a must read if you are not familiar with Strengthsfinder.  He also wrote First Break all the Rules which provides great insight into the difference between great leaders and great managers.  This metaphor is simple and powerful.

“The best boss I ever had.” That’s a phrase that most of us have said or heard at some point, but what does it mean? What sets the great boss apart from the average boss? What do great managers actually do?

While there are as many styles of management as there are managers, there is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: They discover what is unique about each person and then make the most of it. To simplify, average managers play checkers, while great managers play chess.

The difference? In checkers, all the pieces are uniform and move in the same way; they are interchangeable. You need to plan and coordinate their movements, certainly, but they all move at the same pace, on parallel paths. In chess, each piece moves in a different way, and you can’t play if you don’t know how each piece moves. More important, you won’t win if you don’t think carefully about how you move the pieces. Great managers know and value the unique abilities and even the eccentricities of their employees, and they learn how best to integrate them into a coordinated plan of attack.

This is the exact opposite of what great leaders do. Great leaders discover what is universal and capitalize on it. A leader’s job is to rally people toward a better future. He can succeed in this only when he can cut through differences of race, sex, age, nationality, and personality and, using stories and celebrating heroes, tap into those very few needs we all share.

The job of a manager, on the other hand, is to turn one person’s particular talent into performance. A manager will succeed only when he can identify and deploy the differences among people, challenging each employee to excel in his own way. This doesn’t mean a leader can’t be a manager or vice versa. But to excel at one or both, you must be aware of the very different skills each role requires.

What do you think – are you better at chess or checkers?

In case you don’t know me, I’m a chess player, without a doubt.

Successful People are Annoying

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Patrick Lencioni is the author of some of my favorite books on leadership and organization.  He sends a monthly email called Pat’s POV -it’s worth subscribing too.  The following is from April:

A friend of mine (I’ll call him Al because that’s his name) recently embarked on a new career as a consultant, and he has been wildly successful, even during these difficult economic times. Anyone who knows him will tell you why he has done so well: he is one of the most diligent, enthusiastic and painstakingly thorough people you’ll ever meet. In fact, if you were a competitor of his, you’d say he is over the top. Even annoying.

Anyone who is being honest with himself will admit that the only reason to be annoyed by Al is because he is setting the bar high for himself and his competitors, and because he is able to leap over that bar every time. His success makes perfect sense.

A client organization I’ve worked with a lot over the past few years, Chick-fil-A, shares many of Al’s characteristics. The Atlanta-based restaurant company is known for extraordinary service and customer loyalty, as well as strong financial performance. Anyone who has worked with them behind the scenes knows why — they are extremely picky about everything they do. They approach every project they engage in, from new product launches to leadership training, with extraordinary attention to detail. And they never, ever do something halfway. They take time to do research, think through their options, and carefully discern what would be best for their customers and employees. And then they do it again.

I will be honest here and tell you that even as a partner and vendor to Chick-fil-A, there was a time early in our relationship when I thought my friends there were a little over the top. In the process of doing a project, I’d be tempted to say, “Come on now. That’s good enough. Let’s not overdo this.” And then I would see the end product of their diligence, whether it was a management training program or the opening of a new store or a new menu item, and I would think oh, now I get it. Again, their success makes perfect sense.

Any competitor of Chick-fil-A who finds them annoying, and many of them certainly do, would have to admit that it’s just plain hard to compete with an organization that sets the bar so high and clears it again and again. Of course, customers don’t find Chick-fil-A annoying; they love the consistency of their service and products. And employees don’t seem to mind it either; the line of people who want to work there is a long one.

All of this says something interesting about success. If you’re not willing to do things that others would say are over the top, and if you’re not comfortable being criticized for being annoying and for having standards that seem perhaps just a little too high, then you’ll drift toward mediocrity. And though no one would ever aspire to being mediocre, it is more tempting than we might realize.After all, the majority of people out there will encourage us to take the easy route, because that isn’t threatening to them. They’ll support us as we justify cutting a corner here and lowering our standards there, because it isn’t reasonable to do anything more.

And I suppose that’s the whole point. Success isn’t about being reasonable. It’s demanding. It’s over the top. It can even be annoying. But it’s worth it.

Reading it I realize I’m more often annoyed than I’m annoying.  I’d rather it be the other way around.

Big Vision and the Big Ask

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I spent the last two days in Stockholm at a church planting conference.    The organizers have a vision to start 50 churches in Stockholm by 2020.  They modeled some great things leaders can learn from.

1. If people don’t laugh your vision is too small.

In the U.S. planting 50 churches in 10 years is a big goal, but there are plenty of organizations who will do just that and more.  In Stockholm church attendance is between .5% and 1%.  (Yes, you read that right, only 1 out of 100 at best.)  50 new churches are needed, but to say you want to do it is cause for raised eyebrows if not outright laughter.  At the same time, the audacity of that vision makes it compelling.  Do you have a vision?  Is it big enough to make people laugh?  If not, maybe it’s too small.

2. If you have a big vision make the big ask.
I was at the conference to speak – an honor – but I didn’t get away without being asked more than once by more than one person to help make the vision happen.  No hesitation.  No apology.  Just a straight up very specific and very big ask.  Just like the big vision was compelling the big ask was impossible to brush off.  Do you have a vision?  Do you know how and what to ask?  Are you doing it?

On my way to Europe

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I have the amazing fortune of making two trips to Europe this spring.  Today, I am flying to Stockholm for the beginning of a 12 day trip with John Burke.  We’ll be in:

  • Stockholm
  • Helsinki
  • Tallin
  • Oslo
  • London

The full details are here.

If you’re interested enough to follow along, I’ll be posting updates in three places: