David

  • Is it for you? Or them?

    Running is one of my favourite forms of exercise. It’s a great physical and mental outlet. We live near the Bow River in Calgary and I’m fortunate to have excellent access to amazing running routes. I can practically run indefinitely East or West along the Bow. When I’m in Toronto, I typically stay with my parents and also have great access to running routes in the Cedarvale ravine and along the Kay Gardner Beltline. Both these routes are typically quite busy with other runners, people walking, and some cyclists.

    There’s a generally followed, unspoken rule of running etiquette, which is that when you pass by another runner, you give them a short nod and/or a smile and a small wave.* It’s a nicety, for sure. I am definitely a regular ‘waver’ along the trail. So, what do you do when you give someone a polite small and wave… and they completely ignore you. Direct eye contact was made for sure. But they just keep on going. As insane as this sounds, this used to piss me off. My self talk would be something along the lines of… “what is fucking wrong with this person? They can’t wave back?”.

    One day, after getting no response to a smile and wave, I was reminded of an important principle: you can’t control someone else’s actions. You can only control your own. Am I waving at someone because I need a wave back? Or because it feels like a nice thing to do when I’m out for a run? Is the wave for me? Or is it for them? Once I remembered the wave is for me, I stopped caring about whether I got a return wave or not.

    This is a micro-example of an important theme. A lot of time and mental energy can be exhausted worrying about someone else’s response or actions, which you can’t control. Sometimes it helps to ask yourself: are you doing it for you? Or are you doing it for them? So long as you feel good about your own actions, you can feel less emotionally invested in the response (or lack thereof).

    Here are a few other common, perhaps more relatable, examples: You send out a well thought out note on a topic you care about. No one responds. You make a post online. No on ‘likes’ it. You give someone advice or feedback. They ignore it. You request a meeting with someone. They decline. In each case, you can choose to be upset with the response (or lack of), or you can be satisfied with your own actions.

    *Amusingly, in Calgary, this occurs probably 75% of the time based on my non-scientific anecdotal observations. In Toronto, that number is probably closer to 50% or maybe a bit below.

  • Sending Signals

    A blessing and curse of holding a leadership position is the ability to both intentionally (blessing) and unintentionally (curse) send a strong signal or message via small actions. The more senior your role or perceived responsibility, the more significant this impact is likely to be, and it’s particularly pronounced for members of the senior leadership or executive leadership team.  

    As a leader, your words carry substantial weight. Once you’re aware of this, you can absolutely use it as a tool. It can help you enforce messaging and desired behaviors. Small actions like what topics you ask questions about and what agenda items you consistently discuss can help re-enforce your messaging on priorities. Your actions can be used to signal organizational priorities.

    To use an example (intentional). Let’s say a critical priority for your organization this year is Sales and you really want to enforce that. Simple acts like making it a perpetual agenda topic at team meetings, referencing it at big company events, talking about it in 1-2-1s with your team, with your colleagues, and with anyone you interact with in the organization, will re-enforce its importance.

    To use an example (unintentional). You meet with a client and they ask you when a particularly bespoke product feature is going to be available in the software. For the next six months, you routinely check in with your product team on the status of this feature. Without really meaning to, you elevate its importance and find it’s been pulled forward in the priority list, even though you probably wouldn’t have made that choice if it was laid out in front of you.

    Once you’re aware of signal sending, you’ll realize that sometimes you need to take action even when you don’t really feel like it or want to. Maybe you’ve told the team that this year, it’s critical to be present at the major conferences in your industry. But you also had a newborn 6 months ago, and you haven’t taken much vacation lately, and these conferences are spread all across the country. Regardless, you show up and attend because your actions speak louder than words. Your actions send the signal and re-enforce the message: these conferences are important.

    Sometimes you can use hyperbolic or exaggerated versions of actions to really send a strong signal. There is a famous story of a customer returning tires to Home Depot’s customer service desk… at a time when Home Depot didn’t even sell tires. The Chief Merchandising Officer at the time accepted the tires and gave the customer a refund in full. Then he chained those tires above the customer service desk to exaggerate the point “the customer is always right here”. The cost to Home Depot was small, but the value in sending that type of a signal, which became cultural lore, was extremely high.

    *I heard the Home Depot story several years ago and it may not be literally accurate but the spirit of it is intact.

  • Welcome to 2024!

    The last week of December is one of my favourite times of the year. For me, it’s often spent with family and close friends, enjoying big meals, and lots of time to relax. Work usually crawls to a standstill. There’s something special about everything feeling a little bit slower; less traffic, less email, less of the typical daily routine. There’s a symbolic feeling with it being the last week of the year, like the closing of a chapter. It often serves as a good time for reflection and looking ahead to 2024. As one chapter closes another one begins. Regardless if 2023 was your best year yet or if it was a tough year, there’s an opportunity to look forward and start anew.

    I’ve never been a huge fan of New Years Resolutions, which generally feel a bit rigid to me. I am, however, a big fan of jotting down some reflections from the past year, and some priorities or things I’d like to focus on next year, the next three years, and the next ten years. I never spend too much time on this or overthink it too much; I’ll typically sit down for ~30 minutes and jot down the key themes that come to mind. I’ll also flip through my calendar, which helps serve as a reminder for the bigger milestones and events from the past year. I’ve been doing this since 2019 and it’s fun to look back and re-read what’s been written as time goes on. It’s amazing how much of my behavior and actions have loosely followed the themes of what I’ve written.

    I also love the first week of January. It’s a bit like that first week following Labour-day weekend. Everyone is back in action, the pace of work and life picks up. People get back into their routine. There’s a bit of a buzz going around. There’s a bit of overwhelm and chaos.

    However you spent the end of 2023, I hope you found at least a few moments of joy. Cheers to 2024… hopefully the best year yet.