Month: December 2023

I accidentally walked into a glass door recently. A few reflections –

(1) I think there were two causes. The first was the usual suspect in accidents – I wasn’t paying attention. I remember glancing to the side and then walking in… or at least attempting to just before I felt the pain. Always a great reminder for life – pay attention.

(2) The second was that the glass door was, well, very clean. I now understand why there’s regulation about markings on glass.

(3) I remembered a (funny) scene in the movie “Storks” – Birds can’t see glass. I felt genuine empathy for birds that get injured flying into glass buildings as I reflected about it.

(4) Our body is such an incredible machine. Blood, then clot, then swelling, then on the way to healing.

(5) Medicine 2.0 is also amazing. I got some ointment, a quick tetanus shot (a precaution when in India), some Tylenol, and I was away. I wondered when we’d be able to say the same for medicine 3.0/preventative medicine.

(6) It was hard not to think about how different health systems are. I saw an emergency doctor within minutes. I’m sure I’d have been waiting a couple of hours near home. And the bill to my insurance provider would have been something obscene while I focused on the relatively small copay number. I love living in the States – but the healthcare system could do with a reboot.

(7) I assume this is what it feels like to be punched in the face. I’ve written about being punched in the face (“Everyone has a plan until they’re punched in the face”) but it’s always been metaphorical.

(8) Luckily, no bones were broken. Things could have been a lot worse. There’s always something to be grateful for.

(9) Whenever accidents happen, I think of “the bigger accident superstition” – every time something bad happens, it is a gift because it is a sign that something much worse has been averted. I’m not a superstitious person. But I do love this one.

Neil Kaye at the European Space Agency shared a visual of global temperatures from 1940 to present. Each circle is a year and each row represents a decade.

Some pictures are worth a thousand words. This is probably worth a billion.

The Carbon Almanac team shared this with a simple message –

The facts are clear. We all need to act in our own way. Investing with non-fossil fuel funds. Voting for climate friendly policies. Volunteering with an environmental organization. Managing food waste. Advocating for bike lanes. Reducing use of fossil fuel vehicles. Starting climate conversations to raise awareness.

It’s not too late. But we have to start.

Indeed.

I coined a term around my hardest-won lesson from the year – vision lock. It was hard won because it came after a painful three week reset on an initiative. The main reason for that reset was a lack of alignment on the vision for where we were headed.

It was bouncing around in my/our heads. I just hadn’t the taken the time to write it down and bring people along. This causes churn when the stakes are/feel high. The churn that this caused felt extra painful because it could have been easily avoided.

Vision lock, to me, is 3 things –

(1) Write out the vision for the project you are working on. This is typically done with the leadership on the project.

(2) Take the time to align this vision your most important stakeholders. These stakeholders are typically the “investors” in your project. This group varies depending on the importance of the project – it may be your executive team for one and your business unit leadership team for another.

(3) Ensure every member of the working team can articulate this aligned vision.

The goal isn’t to have a vision that is written on a stone tablet. Plans evolve. But it is important there is a documented starting point for that evolution. Vision lock helps us get there.

Since this experience, I’ve changed how our team tracks key projects. We used to only track a project’s execution status on a weekly basis. Now we also review the “vision lock” status. It’s been very helpful.

I typically revisit my favorite book – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – every holiday season. As I thought about the book, I realized that “vision lock” is just an extension of chapter 2 – “Begin with the end in mind.”

I chuckled. 13 years later, I’m glad I’m finally onto practicing Chapter 2.

In the long run, our happiness at work will be inversely proportional to our desire to get credit for every one of our contributions.

A song we’ve been obsessed with lately is “Exile” – a collaboration between Taylor Swift and Bon Iver.

This is one of those collaborations where two incredibly talented artists come together to create something that is better than the sum of the parts. The song – about two former lovers sharing their perspective after their break up – is equal parts haunting and breathtaking. I could listen to the frustration in Iver’s voice as he sings “So what am I defending now?” again and again.

There’s a powerful moment in the song when the two of them share opposing takes.

I never learned to read your mind (Never learned to read my mind)
I couldn’t turn things around (You never turned things around)
‘Cause you never gave no warning sign (I gave so many signs)
So many signs, so many signs
You didn’t even see the signs

The line “I gave so many signs” in response to the other saying “you never gave no warning sign” is so powerful.

It is emblematic of every broken relationship I’ve been in or seen – one unable to read the signs the other thinks they’re giving.

A problem broken down is a problem half solved.

Attempting to learn something everyday over the years has been an exercise in –

– converting the wins to opportunities to practice gratitude.

– converting the mistakes and losses to rich learning experiences.

Most days, it is simply a case of doing a bit of both. Life is a mixed bag… and it is what we make of it.

A friend shared the story of the Choluteca bridge in the Honduras. As they went about building the bridge in the 1990s, they enlisted Japanese architects to build a state-of-the-art hurricane resistant bridge.

It was a wonderful work of engineering.

Until the next major hurricane which altered the course of the river underneath it.

Alas, the bridge had to be abandoned. All those years of effort were wasted on a bridge to nowhere.

This friend shared that her reflection from the story was about the bridges she was building in her career. She intended to reflect on whether she was simply making “good bridges” that were bridges to nowhere.

It is definitely a question worth pondering.

Another one is about the adaptability of the bridges we’re building. Change, after all, is inevitable.

“Risk is what is left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.” | Carl Richards on his blog

The note and the sketch resonated.

Good documents go through three phases.

The first phase is when we put down our unstructured thoughts. At this stage, we can parse the flow – but it isn’t yet ready for anyone else.

The second phase is when we structure it well enough that the core team working on it understands where we’re going.

The third phase is when we frame it in a way that anyone outside the team gets it.

There’s a chasm between the final two phases. Most docs never make it to phase three because it generally requires us to completely rewrite or reframe a doc that seems to be working just fine.

But this is what experienced writers do well. They focus on the end outcome instead of getting overly attached or comfortable with any version along the way. The end result is almost always simple – especially compared to prior versions. It is why most docs don’t make it to phase three.

Simple is hard.