Reflections from a first time Operator

  • New publishing cadence

    Since last fall, I’ve been considering relaxing my firm commitment to the weekly cadence of publishing the blog. I started the blog as an experiment and committed to shipping weekly for at least a year. Having now written weekly for over two years and shipped over 100 posts, I consider it a highly successful experiment. I have had a lot of fun with it. It’s catalyzed many interesting and unexpected conversations with family, friends, and professional contacts, and been excellent validation for how highly I value synthesizing thought in writing. Looking back at my initial goals I feel I’ve satisfied all of them.

    The motivation for writing the blog has always been intrinsic. More recently, the number of times I have started to feel writing the post is a chore has grown to a higher proportion than I would like. It’s certainly not a burden every week, and I never expected writing a weekly post to feel exclusively joyous as no meaningful work ever really is, but the ratio is currently too lopsided.

    This past week, I didn’t ship for the first time. It wasn’t a mistake or unintentional. I simply decided, I don’t want to ship something forced and it’s time to make a change. My biggest fear with dropping the weekly commitment, and what has prevented me from taking action to date, is sacrificing a hard and fast rule means I run the risk of de-prioritizing writing and it never happening. The perspective I’ve seen shared by professional authors on writing is unanimous: great writing cannot be achieved unless practiced often and consistently, and it’s not exclusively a joy. Sometimes it sucks and that is part of the process. But I am not a professional writer, and this is only a creative passion.

    So with that, I am dropping my commitment to ship on a weekly basis but will maintain the blog and ship something when I have an urge to do so. I’m not certain how frequently that will be. This decision feels right and as with all experiments, I’ll change course over time as needed. Thank you to everyone who has engaged with me on the content. That has been a motivator for me over time.

  • Big C

    This week, Julia, Henry, and I are off on vacation to Vienna and Barcelona in celebration of my mother-in-law Catherine’s (aka ‘Big C’) retirement and 60th birthday. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have Catherine as my MIL; I genuinely enjoy spending time with her, and we have always gotten along splendidly. Our shared love of Julia, and of having a good time, gave us a solid foundation to build on.

    Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time with Catherine and learned a great deal. She has a unique ability to get along with and immediately befriend everyone without restraining her strong opinions on many subjects. That is a rare and nuanced skill, and she’s mastered it. Additionally, I give credit to Catherine for making me a more empathetic person and holding less judgement than I might have ten years ago; “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”, as she says.

    Catherine has always seemed keenly aware of her own mortality and placed a high value on the pursuit of a good time and living in the moment; life is short and she takes advantage. I have always respected that and look forward to continued good family times.

  • Reference calls

    I’ve found recruiting managers have varying views on reference calls: proponents swear they provide insight into making the right hire and critics believe a reference shared by a potential candidate is almost certainly going to be a sugar-coated positive call and can’t be relied upon.

    Many years ago, Amin introduced me to a variant of the reference call, which I have found to be consistently high value: the post-hire reference call or maybe better described as the “set up for success” call. This involves asking a HIRED candidate (i.e., post job offer signed) for 2 references, ideally their most recent bosses. I’ve done this for every senior (VP) level hire we’ve made for the past six years, and it’s been a unanimously positive experience.

    A “set up for success” call begins by stablishing with the reference that the candidate has already been hired and anything shared will have zero impact on their prospects of joining the company. This takes away the fear of negatively impacting a former direct report’s career opportunity, which most people don’t want to negatively influence, regardless of whether they like them or not. Instead, you explicitly state your intent to set this person up for success and seek feedback on their strengths, opportunities for improvement, and look to better understand how to manage them from someone who has already had that opportunity.

    Most former bosses want to help their ex-employees, particularly at the executive level. As a result, I have found people particularly forthright about watch outs and strengths, which genuinely help set someone up for success as part of their onboarding. Even now, looking back at notes from previous calls I’ve participated in, I believe much of what was shared reflected accurately upon finally working with those individuals. Onboarding new employees is a critical determinant of their ability to be successful and a ‘set up for success’ call is an excellent tool to incorporate in the process.

  • Marathon

    Last week, I ran the Toronto marathon, and Julia ran the half-marathon. It was a big success all around; I felt great and cut almost 30 minutes off my last run and Julia achieved her goal of beating my half marathon PR, thus taking the Owen Cord family crown.

    I choose to rawdog my races; no headphones. One of my favourite parts of a race is taking in the bystanders, reading the signs, and seeing the festivities along the course. There are the common, dad-jokey generic ones:

    • “You paid for this!”
    • “All this for a banana?!”
    • “Today, you’re allowed to finish fast”
    • “Whine now, wine later”
    • “The pain is temporary, the Strava lasts forever”
    • “You run better than the government”
    • “You’re still faster than the TTC”
    • “Rats don’t run the city, you do!”
    • “Run if you think I’m sexy”
    • “I trained for months to hold this sign”

    And then some unique ones, which I always appreciate:

    • “Don’t worry, if you fail your run here, you can always run again in Alberta!”
    • “Run like your mama flew in from Mexico to watch you!”
    • “[name] hurry up, I’m hungry”
    • “Anything to avoid therapy”

    The last time I ran a marathon was pre-Henry and I underestimated the time commitment involved; it was a lot, especially the last 6 weeks leading up to the race. Many other things took a back seat. I’m fortunate to have a supportive partner in Julia or the training schedule wouldn’t have been possible. I love running but not enough to make it such a priority in my life right now and so I’ll be taking a break for the foreseeable future.

  • Mindset & Mantras

    For most of my school years, I liked school. I always enjoyed learning. And I was always a strong but not exceptional student. In grade 12, knowing my grades would determine access to Universities I took class much more seriously and excelled academically. I applied and was accepted into Ivey’s Advance Entrance Opportunity (AEO) program, which guarantees acceptance into the two-year business program beginning the third year of post-secondary, conditional upon maintaining a strong academic record (80%+ average) and extra curricular involvement.

    Then I had a rough transition from high school to university. After a decade of spending most of my time with an extremely tight knit group of friends I grew up with, I went to university and had to largely start from scratch. I wasn’t particularly engaged in my coursework and ended up barely attending class. The lack of structure wasn’t good for me. I stayed up late and struggled to get up in the morning. I smoked too much, gained about 30 pounds, and started to get bad acne.  My grades slipped. In my first year, I finished with a high 70’s average and missed the 80 required to preserve my AEO status. In second year, I moved into a house with a group of friends and established a better routine; started to exercise a little bit and attend classes more, but still not much. I finished second year with just under an 80 average, which meant my first two-year average was below the threshold needed for AEO; fortunately, they did consider other factors, such as grades in certain pre-requisite courses, which were my best, and extra curricular activities. Offers were extended on a rolling basis and I can recall everyone I knew in the AEO program receiving one before me. Thankfully, I scraped through and received my acceptance in the final round. I was thrilled albeit a bit ashamed about jeopardizing the opportunity.

    On the first day of school at Ivey, I can remember the Dean giving a welcome speech. In essence, “if you are in this program then you have excelled academically and in extra curriculars thus far in life. Everyone in this room is used to being a 90’s student and you will have to re-calibrate your expectations now that you’ve entered this program”. All I could think was, well fuck me. I don’t deserve to be here.

    And then classes started and fortunately, I loved them. I found the content engaging. The smaller classroom sizes and case study teaching method resonated, and I started to enjoy school again. I was generally shy and didn’t participate often but I enjoyed it. It was a fantastic first term and turning point in my secondary academic experience. At the end of the first semester, grades were released. Ivey uses a tight bell curve with 80% being the class average. I received an 81%. Surprisingly, I was really disappointed. Based on my day-to-day experience in the classroom, I felt like I could do much better.

    So after receiving my first semester grade, I decided two things: I would put my hand up and participate in every single class. No exceptions. And I would say “yes” and apply to every single extra curricular opportunity, no matter how busy I was. I would find the time to take it on. Throughout that second term, I stuck to my commitments and raised my average closer to 90.

    I didn’t get any smarter between my first and second semester. But I did dramatically change my mindset. I stopped thinking “I’m so lucky to be here, I hope they don’t realize I’m a fraud” and started thinking “I deserve to be here”. I have and continue to believe that mindset and mantras can be extremely powerful tools in impacting your behaviors. What you believe about yourself will manifest in how you behave and there is an uncanny ability to influence your life based on those beliefs.

  • Gift giving

    Gifts (i.e., presents) become a lot less meaningful when you’re an adult, have a job, and can mostly buy the things you want when you like. But when you’re a child, a big part of the excitement around your Birthday or holidays like Christmas are the gifts. For a while now, most of our family (Julia excluded), has been deliberately scaling back the material gift giving around holidays. And for good reason. I mean, do you really need another sweater? I’m slightly embarrassed to say when the weather turned this year, I counted 22 sweaters in my closet. That’s silly.

    …but having said that, there is something so delightful about receiving, or even better, giving, a gift that hits just right. When you find something unique that demonstrates a deep understanding of the person’s interests or wants, it is so satisfying. And it doesn’t need to be expensive or an item necessarily. It just needs to satisfy the recipient. I’m planning to start keeping a mini tracker of gift ideas for family, friends, and colleagues because I often struggle to come up with a great idea when it’s time-sensitive around the event. Hopefully, it pays off this year and if not, well, there’s always another sweater!

  • Leave the past behind

    One consistent theme I’ve observed in the most effective leaders I’ve worked with is the ability to leave behind past events once no longer relevant. They use the past to learn, but they don’t spend significant time or energy focusing on or talking about past people, events, old processes, etc. The go-forward plan of action and belief in the future is often much more relevant and important to the team and so prioritizing their time and focus here is more effective.

    Conversely, some of the more junior or less effective leaders I’ve worked with often spend a considerable amount of time discussing prior events, team members, or old and now outdated ways of doing things. They get a bit stuck in the past and struggle to move on.

    Let’s say you have an executive who oversees a function (e.g., marketing) and their success requires a close working relationship with a leader in another function (e.g., production). The marketing leader depends on sufficient advance warning on new products coming off the line to prepare the appropriate brand content to support a launch. Well, say the production supervisor is notorious for dropping the ball on communicating with marketing and often leaves them in a panic, and then that production supervisor is terminated. Fast forward six months: an effective marketing executive will have moved on and re-established a better working relationship and process with the new production supervisor. An ineffective marketing executive will continue to discuss the problems caused by the old production supervisor, distrust the function, and struggle to establish a better working relationship with the new production supervisor.

    Typing this out, it seems straightforward. And yet, I’ve seen examples of folks getting stuck many times over the years. Better to focus ahead.

  • Defining success

    I was listening to a podcast this week where the guest responded to a question on his definition of success. Much of what mattered to him doesn’t to me so I thought it would be interesting to take a crack at my own definition. It’s a fun exercise.

    My definition of success looks like…

    • Maintaining high-quality relationships with your spouse, family, and friends;
    • Having agency and a very high degree of control (within reason) over your schedule and how time is spent;
    • Spending time pursuing physical and intellectual challenges that are rewarding to accomplish and in which the pursuit itself is gratifying regardless of the outcome;
    • Feeling your professional time and efforts matter, can make a meaningful impact, and relate to a field you’re passionate about;
    • Spending professional time working with people you enjoy working with;
    • Continuously learning;
    • Having sufficient wealth so a) money takes up a minimal amount of mental energy and plays a small role in most decisions, and b) affords you the ability to dine out as often as you’d like, and to order what you’d like without too much consideration for price; and
    • Living an authentic life where you feel you show up both socially and professionally as your true self.

    I didn’t spend too much time on this so I’m not certain it’s exhaustive, but these all came to mind quickly.

    It will be fun to look back at this in a few years and see if anything changes.

  • Public infrastructure

    If you live in Toronto or have visited at any point in the past five years, you almost certainly have engaged in the traffic discussion. I started traveling more seriously to and from Toronto a little over ten years ago and the route from my parent’s house, where I typically stay, to the airport typically takes me on the Allen to get to the 401. When they first broke ground on the Eglington line, I was excited about finally adding to the city’s insufficient public transit network. World class cities require extensive public infrastructure. Over ten years later and with no end in sight, the whole project has turned into a real “laugh / cry” situation and public embarrassment.

    During my Secondment period at SIG Combibloc, I had the pleasure of visiting numerous SIG manufacturing facilities around the globe, including those in Germany, Switzerland, the US, China, and Brazil. Despite for the most part producing the same or similar goods and equipment, the variance across facilities was stark. What fascinated me most was how culturally different the attitudes were across the workforces. China stood out in terms of the employee’s dedication and commitment. I recall observing the shift supervisor address the floor workers before their shift began and seeing them sign off with a collective chant; it reminded me of a well-trained military. It was by far the most productive and efficient plant at that time. I reflect on that experience whenever I see videos of large-scale infrastructure rapidly being built in China (e.g., train stations in a day, hospitals in a week, etc.). It seems to me that China has a clear commitment to the “greater good” (e.g., building infrastructure) at the expense of the individual.

    I was in Toronto recently and the radio was covering a story about a man who lives next to the site of a future Ontario line station in the East end. He was complaining to a sympathetic reporter about the non-stop noise and disruption he was suffering as they built out the station by his house and shared the effort he was putting into contacting his MP and Metrolinx to limit their working hours. I couldn’t help but think how a Chinese citizen complaining about the same situation would be received and what a distinct illustration of the value we ascribe to individual rights. For the sake of this one guy’s personal inconvenience, we might add months or years to a project that will support millions of people.

    I’m an optimistic person but I have zero confidence in North America’s ability to build large scale infrastructure efficiently. We value the individual over the collective, which has many merits. But not when it comes to building public infrastructure. Hopefully I’ll be wrong.

  • Henry’s first performance review

    I’m a big believer in delivering feedback early, and often. So, with Henry approaching his first birthday in June, I thought it was time to start putting in place a more structured feedback loop and delivered his first official performance review. It was different than other performance reviews, since he’s currently navigating a pre-verbal communication phase. Naturally, I had to leverage my training in Situational Leadership and adapt my style to his maturity and ability. Based on his current role level and life tenure, I decided to limit my focus to a few key takeaways.

    I spoke with him about two key areas I’ve identified for improvement: trying to avoid shitting on one’s own private parts, and physically abusing the family canine, Frankie. I consider both to be serious subjects, so I was disappointed when he started to giggle as I raised these.

    On the other hand, I commended him on his negotiation skills. Julia is a tough boss but I’ve noticed Henry escalate situations rapidly at times of disagreement through the use of physical force and vocal expression, almost always allowing him to achieve his desired outcome. I complimented him on his strategies and may try to leverage these learnings the next time I am dealing with a challenging client.

    For his professional development plan, I’m hoping for enhanced mobility skills with an annual objective of independent bipedal movement without faceplants and refined mealtime execution, with a goal of 80% food-to-mouth. I offered up a stretch goal related to personal hygiene and diaper awareness, while acknowledging that may be ambitious at this stage.

    He did not participate in a 360-degree review component for this cycle, but I am expecting a constant feedback stream for the rest of my life.

    Overall rating: Good boy

    Hope everyone has a good April 1st tomorrow 😊

  • Being held to a higher standard

    The other day, I was in the final stretch of a run and coming North up the street near my home. Coming South towards me were three ~12-year-olds riding scooters, spread horizontally across the sidewalk. As I was coming towards them, I was expecting one would make way for me to pass. But they didn’t and because there were cars parked along the street on one side and a building on the other, I had to awkwardly squeeze myself between a car and the sidewalk to avoid hitting one of them. And I kind of got the sense these kids were aware of the situation and purposefully not moving out of the way because they thought it was funny. Naturally, my first thought was “what a bunch of little pricks” and I briefly fantasized about having just barreled through them. Fortunately, it was only a fleeting immature and petty thought. I was then thinking if I had acted on that impulse, how pathetic a grown man would look in that situation. Because even if those kids were being little shits, adults are held to a higher standard, and rightfully so.

    It reminded me of a situation at Avanti that happened many years ago, when we first started using Microsoft Teams. There was an employee who routinely posted snarky, sarcastic, and ‘know-it-all’ responses in public channels. Mostly in response to other people asking for help or clarification on product related topics. He was older and had significant subject matter expertise and was working in an individual contributor role. It would have been apparent to anyone reading that he was being a jerk. His Manager, who was a newly minted and first-time manager, started posting public and snarky retorts in reply. And even though the Manager was clearly in the right, by mirroring the employee’s poor behaviour, it reflected even more poorly on him than his employee. It reflected poorly because we expect more from our leaders. We hold them to a higher bar. And that feels appropriate; a leader should be held to higher standards.

  • Find someone worth handing it off to

    Like most people, I started my career in a junior individual contributor role. Initially, everything was new and hard. I struggled through tasks as I built my competency. But over time, like all things new and uncomfortable, I learned and improved. Eventually, I began to master those tasks and skills, which lead me to receive new assignments and to restart the learning cycle.

    One of the unexpected challenges of taking on a new role or responsibility set is it means you often must (and should) give up many of those same tasks you’ve become an expert at. I’ve always found this to be initially uncomfortable. If it’s a mundane task or something you dislike doing, it can be a great feeling. But when it’s something you enjoy and are excellent at, it can become surprisingly difficult to hand off. Particularly the first time, when you’re handing it off to someone who is going to do a much worse job at it. Of course, this is part of the process and as you were at the start, this new individual must struggle through so they can learn.

    What I’ve described is a very common pattern people experience as they progress in their career. It’s a commonly referenced topic. But there’s one aspect of this pattern that I haven’t seen referenced often, and that is how much easier it is to hand off an accountability to someone you believe can not only own the task as well as you, but eventually do it better than you. I believe finding those individuals and filtering for that criteria is key to: a) identifying a potential successor, and b) finding leaders who will ultimately give you more leverage.

    I know now if after a reasonable amount of coaching and training, I’m still uncomfortable handing a task off, it’s usually a concern worth taking note of. And when I can quickly establish complete trust with handing something off, it’s also a sign I’ve found someone worth investing heavily in.

  • Anonymoose Trolling

    With the growing prevalence of virtual meetings over the last five years, I’ve had the debate many times on whether anonymous Q&A should be provided. I’ve had this debate at Avanti and with other companies and leadership teams. Providing an anonymous submission option can surface a lot of Q’s. Leadership teams are generally hesitant or explicitly uncomfortable with anonymous Q&A because they worry the anonymity will lead to people trying to throw “gotcha’s” in, or even blatantly trolling the presenter or company. And those concerns are warranted. We’ve been offering anonymous Q&A during virtual townhalls and company wide meetings for years and we’ve had some pretty gnarly and aggressive loaded questions come through. Not always and not consistently but on multiple occasions.

    Despite that, I am adamant in my belief that it’s always worth providing the option for anonymous Q&A. My rationale is if someone is willing to submit a trolling question in the Q&A, they are almost certainly willing to say that same comment behind closed doors to their peers and colleagues. I’d prefer the opportunity to address a harsh comment publicly and provide my own position on the topic, even if it’s uncomfortable, then allow it to circulate privately.

    Over time, I’ve come to believe there are two approaches to take when someone puts a loaded question in that has the obvious intent of being hurtful or insinuating something negative. Either you ignore the clearly cynical intent and address the comment head on without becoming disturbed by it OR you must be aggressive in defending whatever topic, objective, or team is clearly being attacked. Anything in between comes off poorly. I’ve only taken the “defend aggressively” approach once and consider it a tool for a particularly offensive question.

    To use an example, let’s say someone makes a comment clearly intended to discredit a specific team and the work they are doing. Perhaps one team has an important goal, is working exceptionally hard, but hasn’t made as much public progress as you would like. And someone says something like “is it even realistic to believe team A achieves their goal by the end of this quarter?” You know the whole company knows the answer to the question so it’s probably not coming from a place of curiosity but a desire to highlight the team’s miss. I would accept the concern and speak to the situation transparently, acknowledge the shortfall, discuss why you believe it occurred, and what steps you believe can fix it (e.g., “No. I don’t think the team will accomplish their goal by the end of the quarter. With the benefit of hindsight, we set the wrong goal. Here’s why. Here’s what we’re doing about it”).

  • Share your thinking

    Over the past 5 years, I shifted to working in an almost exclusively virtual environment. One of my observations is that people (myself included) tend to share less of the ‘why’ behind their decision making and thinking than they might otherwise do when in person. It is easier for most people to explain something verbally than it is to communicate it in writing. This has a cost.

    One of the critical ways employees learn from their colleagues and bosses is by understanding the thinking that goes into decisions. It’s harder to develop mental models and expertise without understanding the frameworks and rationale people use to make conclusions. This applies to simple and daily tactical questions (e.g., how should we price this project? Should we accept this job or not? Is that person the right candidate for the role?), as well as strategic ones.

    When responding to a question in Teams/Slack, it’s much easier to give direction or the answer and takes a more deliberate and intentional effort to add in something like “and here’s how I came to that decision” or “this is the rationale I’m basing my choice on”. I’ve started to make a better effort to include that and have noticed an immediate positive impact.

    It’s not only for the benefit of employees who are learning and developing. It also aids in discussion among peers and within the team. If you explain your rationale, it opens the door for reactions and counter-points or considerations you may not have thought of. You’re going to come to better decisions with input from others and you’re going to receive better input if you create the circumstance that invites it.

    And here’s the best part: I’ve noticed if you CAN make it a point to include your rationale in writing, the discussion is often even better than it would be verbally in person. Putting it in writing forces you to be more articulate, it creates a record to refer to, and it gives the recipient(s) additional time to contemplate and respond, which they may be unable to do if it’s occurring real-time during a verbal conversation.

  • Book Outlet

    Years ago, Amin recommended ordering books from a site called Book Outlet, which sells books that publishers have overproduced at heavily discounted prices. I was chatting with a few friends recently who I was surprised hadn’t heard of it. It’s where I buy most of my books. Sometimes a bit of treasure hunting is required since they don’t carry all titles, but I generally can find what I need, particularly for non-fiction.

    I thought I’d share the suggestion for those who might still enjoy reading physical paper books as much as I do and want a cheaper alternative to Amazon.

  • The Power of Enthusiasm

    An underrated and often overlooked leadership quality is enthusiasm. When you have a manager or leader who regularly presents themselves as melancholy, cynical, or worse: sarcastic, it’s incredibly hard to get excited about projects, objectives or key initiatives your team is working on. Nothing will rob you of your excitement faster than having your leader roll their eyes at a new project you are excited about. Not only can it rob you of excitement, but when a leader isn’t genuinely enthusiastic about their work, it can often lead to insecurity on the team; I’m much less likely to share an update I’m passionate about if I think my team or leader won’t care. It also negatively sets the tone and culture for the rest of the team; I will subconsciously be less excited about my peer’s projects if it’s clear the leader isn’t. When a leader makes it cool not to care, those who do will hide it.

    Conversely, it’s exceptionally contagious when a leader is enthusiastic about chasing a hard goal, accomplishing an objective, or discussing a project. How you show up as the leader matters and sets the tone for the rest of the team. When the leader is fired up, the team gets fired up.

    And the reality is sometimes you need to channel your enthusiasm even when you might be having a bad day, which we all have, and may not feel particularly enthusiastic. I’m not suggesting ever acting disingenuously, but I am talking about showing up for your team when they need it, and that might mean in attitude as well as physical or virtual presence.

  • Celebrate with authenticity

    I tend to naturally gravitate towards, and sometimes obsess over, what’s not working well. As a result, I can forget to celebrate wins and recognize people for successful projects or work. Over time, I’ve become more deliberate and intentional about recognizing great efforts from teams or individuals and making sure to celebrate and re-enforce those behaviors. That’s not shocking or novel: I think most people believe it’s important to highlight positive behaviors and celebrate your wins, sometimes even the small ones.

    But one thing I’ve reflected on lately is whether that sentiment can go too far, and the not so nice to say but belief I have is yes, it can. When EVERYTHING is celebrated, even the most basic expectations, it dilutes the celebration of the real wins. For example, if everything is a wonderful, amazing, exceptional accomplishment… well then nothing is.

    People tend to have different stylistic preferences for recognition, but everyone values knowing whether they are doing a good job or not. Even the best performers want their achievements to be celebrated; however, nothing is worse than watering down their accomplishments by celebrating insignificant events. And the team members who require a celebration for performing the basic routine elements of their job may not be the team members you want on your team long term.

    Let’s say you’re the quality manager for a manufacturing plant that produces steel parts for a major auto OEM. You have a team of three associates and are onboarding a new fourth team member. Part of the job requires you to review finished parts coming off the line and identify pieces with deficiencies. In the first week, the new member spots a deficiency, so the manager makes a point of celebrating it during the end of week wrap up… that’s awesome! It may be routine, but it’s a new task and this person is onboarding, so it feels good to be recognized for learning. But if six months later, the quality manager is making a point of celebrating an identified deficiency at the end of the week, it may not feel as good, when that is a routine element of the job all members are expected to perform. When disconnected from the effort required, overcelebration can become inauthentic, forced, or even demotivating.

    It’s important to be deliberate about celebrating the wins, but make sure you only do it when it’s genuine.

  • If I’m being honest

    I previously wrote about the overuse of pleasantries in conversation. Recently, I’ve noticed a heightened use of another common set of colloquial phrases that seem to send an unintended message, which is to begin a sentence by using some version of the following phrase: “If I’m being honest”; or “in full transparency”; or “To be candid”. If I have to explicitly start a phrase with “if I’m being honest”, does that imply that the other times I speak, I’m being dishonest? If you’re only speaking transparently part of the time, are you hiding things the rest of the time?

    Obviously, that’s not the intent and I understand it is a commonly used colloquial phrase. But hopefully you’re always speaking honestly and if that’s the case, with a little intention, you can drop the disclaimer.

    …and if I’m being honest, I’m guilty of doing this much more often than I would like to admit!

  • The Battlefield

    Generals, I’ve established a war room. Quickly, gather your X1 Carbon Lenovo’s, refill your branded waterbottles from the San Pelligrino tap, and meet me in the glass board room overlooking the city. I’ll have my assistant cater kale salads, and together, we’ll defeat the axis of evil aka new procurement agency that is coming after our pricing. And if we don’t make it, well, it will have been an honour to serve with you all.

    War metaphors are often used in business. We have the war room (meeting room). We are in the trenches (mostly excel). We are in a knife fight (for better packaging). We must protect the front lines (of service agents). We are going nuclear (with bright colour branding).

    And I must admit, these analogies are actually pretty helpful and commonly understood, so they are useful in conveying a message. But sometimes I like to remind myself that the repercussions of being wrong in my war room are different than being wrong in a real one. That’s not to say my work or corporate work in general is unimportant, but it is good to recognize the relative significance of it. And not to take it too seriously.

  • What’s more important? Being liked or being respected?

    Over time, leaders tend to make different decisions based on what they care more about: being liked or being respected. It took years and many lived experiences, not all positive, for me to operate more intentionally with respect as the objective. The reality of managing to be respected over being liked is much harder than the concept. At some level, I believe every person – and professional – has a desire to be liked. For some people that desire is naturally very strong and for others it’s more modest. But I believe it’s present in all.

    Here are several examples of situations I’ve lived through or have seen firsthand where the desire to be liked can conflict with being respected.

    1. You have a direct report that is excellent at their job. You get along with them great. They haven’t yet mastered the role, but they believe they have. They want to be promoted and have made that clear. You really want to support them, even though deep down you know they aren’t ready for a promotion. You promote them anyway. Initially, they are thrilled. Unfortunately, they are set up to fail and you ultimately end up having to fire them, or they become uncomfortable enough and dissatisfied from struggling in the position that they quit. This whole scenario erodes the cultural trust in the organization’s promotions because it’s apparent to others they weren’t ready.
    2. Your direct report is fantastic at most things but horrible at public speaking. You’ve built a strong relationship, and they’ve reported to you for years. They are a very sensitive individual. You always give them praise when they do a great job… but you never tell them how bad they are at public speaking. You’re worried it will hurt their feelings. In the short-run, that’s great – no hurt – but over time, their career is limited because they don’t have an opportunity to improve.
    3. You have a new, junior employee on your team. They’ve taken the initiative to put together a plan for one of the team’s key initiatives: reducing your product’s shipping times. They are incredibly enthusiastic, and you’re thrilled they are going above and beyond expectations. When they present the plan… it’s awful. It makes no sense and completely misses the mark. You don’t want to dampen their enthusiasm, so you tell them it’s not bad, just needs a few tweaks. Unfortunately, they have the wrong impression and continue working on it despite you knowing it will never be used.

    Often, making respect the goal leads to harder conversations and choices in the short-term, but benefits the individual, team, and company in the long run.

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