Category: Everything else

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.

“To be rich, you don’t need to make more money; you chiefly need to better manage the money already flowing through your hands.”

“Measure your wealth not by the things you can buy but by the things that no money can buy.”

“Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. They only thing people will remember is what kind of person you where while you were achieving.“

I’ve been sharing collections of notes from Kevin Kelly’s book “Excellent Advice for Living.”

I loved the thread in these three notes. The first talks reframes wealth in a way that focuses on what we control.

The second reframes the purpose of attaining wealth.

And the third puts the attainment of wealth and conventionally defined success in perspective.

Often, the lessons we most need are old lessons framed in new ways.