Author: Andrew Embry

If you mixed diet mountain dew, funk music, dragons, hip hop, superheroes, and lightning in a blender you’d end up with Andrew Embry. He is part wordsmith and part alchemist, able to use his Batman utility belt to turn anything and everything into a story worth telling that is equal parts insightful, memorable, inspiring, humorous, and entertaining. Andrew is comfortably creative in almost any setting, but especially when he is performing spoken word poetry. His enthusiasm for words comes from the way he loves people and the little nuances of life that make it worth living.

Lessons from Being a Dad Part 4 Art Supplies and Intentionally Creating an Environment (7-2-18)

This blog is coming early due to the 4^th of July holiday. Last week was about bicycles, training wheels, and jealousy. This week is about intentionally building a culture/environment. Let’s start by sharing some seemingly unrelated things.

During vacation we were eating at a Dave and Busters. Alice was building a sculpture using condiments, salt, pepper, and silverware. As she built the sculpture she put the salt upside down, spilling salt everywhere. I responded by saying, “We need to clean up the salt. Remember the salt comes out from the top, so you can’t put it upside down when you build.” Alice helped clean up the salt, and continued building.
We have a wall in our house where guests put their handprints, a wall covered in artwork, and art supplies always accessible.
At dinner we play the question game. It’s a metaphor game. “If your day was a ________. What would it be and why?” With my girls that blank is filled in with everything from colors, types of cats, body parts, Rescue Bot (Transformer character), sounds, food, or any other weird thing they can think of.

While these things may appear to be random, they are very much connected. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a parent is that my wife and I are in charge of creating the environment that will help our children flourish. It is our choices and actions that create this environment. Everything above is an example that shows how my wife and I value creative thinking and expression, so we make conscious efforts to create an environment where that can happen. That means, when Alice makes a mess in a restaurant when she’s building something, I don’t freak out about it. Instead, we clean up and get back to building. It means that we have art on the walls as a way to show we value it. It means that they always have access to art supplies and legos, so they can easily create. It means that we play the question game, which serves to encourage creative connection making. Doing all of these things creates an environment where creativity can flourish.

You might be wondering what this has to do with work. Think about all the time we spend talking about culture. Now ask yourself. How often do we take the necessary actions to create an environment where that culture will flourish? For example, if we want to be fast, what are we doing to create an environment where we can move fast? In my experience, we often say we want to move fast, but then get upset when things are fast but not perfect. That immediately kills speed. Another example, we talk about wanting to have open and honest debate. How often is the environment conducive to this? I’ve found that many times it isn’t. Many times we don’t have the foundation of trust and respect to have meaningful disagreement. Maybe it’s because the highest ranking person quickly shuts down ideas that are not their own. Maybe it’s because people don’t do a good job listening to other points of view. The result is, the culture of dissent is never created.

It’s up to all of us to create the environment in which we want to work. It’s up to us to surround ourselves with art supplies (the right resources). It’s up to us to hang artwork on the wall (officially recognize what we say we value). It’s up to us to help clean up the salt from a restaurant sculpture and get back to building (instead of destroying the thing we are trying to create by responding with lots of undue negativity to a mistake or messiness). It’s up to us to set the tone that creates the environment that allows a culture and people to flourish.

The challenge: How are you creating the environment you want to work in? Have a great 4^th of July!

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Lessons from Being a Dad Part 3 Bikes, Training Wheels, and Jealousy (6-27-18)

I’m back from vacation and I hope you all had a great week. Last time we talked about Alice, creative vision, and The Love Robot. This week is about bike riding and jealousy. Alice is great in a lot of different ways, but coordination is not her strong suit. She’s often anxious about riding her bike even with training wheels. A few weeks ago, her best friend began riding her bike without training wheels. When Alice saw this, she was devastated. She was angry, embarrassed, sad, and jealous. Alice kept saying things like “I’m the only one on the block who can’t ride a bike without training wheels. Everyone will think I’m stupid. Why can’t I do it? There are kids younger than me that can do it. Everyone will think I’m a baby. I’m such a loser! Everyone thinks I’m dumb!”

My wife and I tried to talk to her about this. We tried to explain that people learn things at different speeds. We talked about how everyone has strengths and weaknesses. We talked about how some people will always have it better than her and some will always have it worse than her. We talked about how she had a lot of things that made her special, but she was convinced those didn’t matter since she was unable to ride a bike without training wheels. It took a long time for Alice to get out of her emotional funk and begin to realize that jealousy wasn’t the answer and wasn’t helping. All Alice can do is try to be the best Alice she can be.

You might be wondering what this has to do with work and life. While I was in the middle of trying to talk about this with Alice, I realized that I often feel very similar. I look at people and decide that they have it “better” in some way, and I feel angry, embarrassed, sad, bitter, and jealous. Do you ever feel like this?

Here is how it often plays out in my mind.

“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do X just like Susie? I bet if I did, I’d be better off. I’m good at Y, but nobody cares about Y.”
“Sally is so much smarter than I am. I’m an idiot.”
“Why can’t I be good enough to be in Y role like Bob? People probably look at me and say, ‘If he was any good he would already be doing ABC at this point in his career. He’s not reaching his potential.’ I’m such a failure.”
“I wish I had his life. He has a better ________ (house/car/life/situation he’s in).”

It’s easy for me to get trapped in these thought circles. It’s easy to get lost in these negative spirals that convince me I’m a loser. As I was talking Alice through her feelings and the reality of the situation I realized what I told her applies to me too. Things happen at different times for different people for different reasons. Some people will just have it better and some will have it worse. Some people are going to be more talented than I am. No matter what, I have my own strengths and things that make me special. At the end of the day, the jealousy, the pain, the bitterness doesn’t help. All I can do is try to be the best Andrew I can be.

The challenge: Are you getting lost in jealousy? How can you be the best you that you can be?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Lessons from Being a Dad Part 2 Alice, Imagination, Vision, and the Love Robot (6-13-18)

Last week we kicked off a series on lessons I’ve learned from being a dad. We started with Violet, persistence, and her relentless quest for cookies. This week I want us to reflect on Alice, imagination, vision, and the creation of the Love Robot.

At my house we have an invention box. Essentially, the invention box contains stuff that could be recycled. My daughters rummage through the invention box from time to time to create things. Back in February, Alice needed to have a container for school that could hold valentines. She went over to the invention box. Most people would have seen a collection of junk. Most people would have seen an empty shoe box, caps to water bottles, leftover ribbon, and some cardboard. Alice saw those individual parts, but she also saw something greater. She saw potential. She took the time to pause and imagine until she had the vision to realize that with some paint and assembly those things could become the Love Robot. See the picture.

You might be wondering what this has to do with work. The above story is about Alice having the creative vision to see and then bring to life potential. She was able to look at things in a different way and then use them to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Kids do stuff like this all the time, and the sad part is I feel that we often lose this as we get older.

Think about our work for a moment. We have so much more potential to leverage our imaginations and vision on the things we work on every day. We also have a huge opportunity to use our imagination and vision to see the best in each other, so we can build each other up to reach greatness. While we have these opportunities, we don’t always take advantage of them. I’m not sure why we lose this imaginative vision, but we do. Maybe it’s the projects we are working on. Maybe we get too busy and lose the ability to daydream. Maybe we keep looking at the problem from the same angle over and over and over again, so we miss seeing what we COULD do, if we were willing to trying something different. Maybe we get too tired from running into walls, so we give up on imagining what we COULD do, if we pushed a little harder. Maybe we look at the people around us in the same way so often that we lose sight of who they COULD be, if they only had a little nudge of support.

Here is to being more like Alice, to being able to see beauty and potential in all people and things. Here’s to having hands that make that imaginative vision a reality. The challenge: What do you see when you look at the work and the people around you?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Lessons from Being a Dad Part 1 Violet, Persistence, and the Quest for Tasty Treats (6-6-18)

This week we will kick of a new series on lessons I’ve learned from being a dad. This week we will focus on persistence by looking at Violet’s quest for tasty treats.

Violet (4) is my tenacious negotiator. She doesn’t understand what the phrase “give up” means. I’ll share this story as an example. It was 7am on a Saturday and Violet asked if she could have a cookie. I told her no. That wouldn’t stop her. She climbs onto me, snuggles up as close as she can and says, “Daddy, I love you. Can I have a cookie please?” Now, grandparents would fall for this, especially my dad, because my girls have him wrapped around their fingers. However, I’ve learned to harden my heart. I tell her that we aren’t having cookies this early in the morning and she hasn’t even had breakfast. Violet then starts the negotiations, “I understand I need to eat breakfast to get strong muscles. After breakfast can I have a cookie?” I tell her no. This goes back and forth for a few minutes and then she decides to try a new tactic. She then asks, “How about some chocolate chips?” The answer is still no.

I think she’s finally given up, because she starts playing with Alice (6). They are throwing a surprise birthday party for BB-8 (Star Wars droid). All of a sudden, Violet runs up to me and says, “Daddy, there’s a problem. We’re planning a surprise birthday party for BB-8. He’s at the door now. We need a distraction, or he will come in and ruin the surprise.”

I respond with, “Really?” She shoots back, “I have a plan. Give me a cookie to give to him, so he doesn’t ruin the party.” I give her a an imaginary cookie. Without missing a beat Violet says, “Everyone knows that’s a fake cookie. That won’t work. I need a real one for the plan.” I look at her and say, “Violet, I know this game. If I give you the cookie you’re just going to eat it.” Violet says, “Yeah…” I then look at her and say, “You’re lucky I reward creativity and honesty,” and I give her part of a cookie. Violet struts away victorious. I’ll admit, she wore me down and I figure if someone is willing to work that hard to get a cookie they deserve something.

How does this connect to work? I don’t know about you, but I feel like there are barriers everywhere. There is always a road block, a kink in a process, a person saying, “No.” We hear some version of “No” so often that it becomes easy to become beaten down by this. It becomes easy to stop pressing forward. In Violet’s case, she has set her mind on getting a cookie. Once Violet sets her mind on something, she is relentless. She doesn’t accept no. Instead, she negotiates. When the initial negotiation fails, so she reassesses her tactics and tries again. She does this over and over and over again until she finally reaches her goals. I think we could learn a lot from her persistence, especially since our work is so much more noble than eating cookies.

The challenge: What do you do when you run into a barrier? Do you stop with the initial, “No,” or do you negotiate, renegotiate, search for different perspectives, look into different trade-offs, and find a way to reach your goal? (If you ever get too desperate you could throw a surprise birthday party for your imaginary friend as a diversion tactic. I hear that’s effective…)

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Prioritization Lessons from Market Research (5-23-18)

Last week was about urgency, finding clarity, and prioritization. Tacey also shared some great thoughts about how we are often more accustomed to fighting fires and how preventing fires requires a different set of skills and planning. With that in mind, I want to get a little more tactical this week and dive into lessons I’ve learned from market research regarding prioritization. My hope is you might be able to apply some of this to prevent some fires in your life.

In market research there are always a million questions we could answer, but that does not mean we should answer all of them. Early in my career when people had a request of me, I asked myself two things. First, do I have the ability to do that? Second, do I have the extra time to do that? My answer to both of those questions was always yes. It wasn’t a yes, because it was true. It was often a yes, because I wanted to impress people by being able to do a lot of stuff. Market research has taught me that it’s possible to do stuff and answer a business question that adds NO value to the business. In those cases, doing all the work just results in wasted energy and time.

You might be wondering where this is going. Over time, I learned that I needed to get better at prioritization. In order to do that I needed a system that would help me define the value of the question I needed to answer, because prioritization always starts with understanding what you value. This brings me to the prioritization grid below, which I stole from Challis Imes, who stole it from Karen Wurster, who stole it from a sage spouting ancient wisdom in the Himalayas.

	Confident we already know the answer	Unsure of the answer
High impact to the business	B Don’t do new work. Spend your time and effort synthesizing existing work to find new insights.	A Prioritize this work and try to spend most of your time and effort here.
Lower impact to the business	D Avoid this like the plague.	C Don’t spend much time in this bucket.

I’ve found that putting things into this grid makes me do two things. First, it makes me spend time really thinking about the questions I’m being asked to answer and their potential value. Second, it gives me a framework to have a conversation about prioritizing things with stakeholders. Once I’ve plotted the questions I can go back to the team and say, “Here is how I view the world. Here is where everything fits for X, Y, and Z reasons. Do you feel differently? If so, what is your argument for making something an A priority?” These are great conversations, because it forces us to find alignment. Usually one of two things happens. We either realize we know more than we think we do, so we can deprioritize stuff, or I learn some context I didn’t have before, which gives me a better understanding of why something is important.

As I continue to work on developing my prioritization skills, I’ve taken the grid concept and applied it to other things in life. While the axes on the grid might change, it always gives me the structure I need to clearly define the value of things.

The challenge: How are you going about prioritizing things?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Prioritization and Clarity on what you Value (5-16-18)

Last week was about prioritization, oil changes, and taking care of ourselves. This week is about prioritization and clarity on what we value.

Let’s pretend that you wake up on Saturday morning. You look at your to-do list and you need to mow, get groceries, sort out your finances, hang out with friends, and run other errands. Which thing do you make sure you have to get done? Which things might you let slide? How do you decide which one to do first? Let’s pretend we are in the exact same situation with the exact same

to- do list. Now let’s add a twist. Your house is on fire. What action do you prioritize? I imagine that you grab your family and get out of the house as fast as you can. Having your house on fire, gives you instant clarity on what you need to do.

You might be wondering where this is going. I believe that prioritization challenges arise when we are not clear on what we value. In the above example, you started with a to do list and no sense of what you valued. When your house was on fire it quickly caused you to realize that you value the life of yourself and your family and that everything else is secondary. This is a pretty dramatic example, but it is a way of crystallizing what you value so you can take action.

Think about life for a moment. What do you value? Are you clear on that? Now, here is the hard question. How closely does your life reflect what you claim you value? If you aren’t clear on what you value, then you can’t prioritize things in your life, because you don’t have a starting point. I’ve found that the more my life reflects my priorities, the things I claim to value, the better life is for me.

When it comes to deciding what I value in life, I do it in two ways. First, I think about the roles I play and which ones are the most important. My goal is to be a great person, husband, dad, friend, and employee in that order. The second way I crystallize what I value might sound a little hokey, but it’s something that has had an impact on my life. My senior year of college I had the legendary Professor Skinner and she had us go through an exercise where we wrote our own mission statement. She then laminated these and gave them to us. I’ve kept mine in my wallet ever since. I feel that when I live this life is good. I bring all of this up to say that the exercise has helped me find clarity on my purpose and what is important to me, which has helped me prioritize things in life. If you haven’t ever done anything like this, I’d encourage you to reflect and even put your mission statement on paper. If you want some more food for thought you can check out this website https://www.andyandrews.com/personal-mission-statement/

The challenge: Are you clear on what you value and how that impacts the way you prioritize things?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Prioritization and Oil Changes (5-9-18)

This week I’d like to start a new series that encourages us to think about prioritization in different ways. This week we will start off by thinking about prioritization and oil changes.

What I’m about to tell you is a completely true story. My younger brother’s first car was a mustang convertible. He got an awesome deal on the car, because the guy was in a rush to get rid of it (long story). Now here is where the story goes downhill. My younger brother absolutely ruined his first car. Right about now, you’re probably assuming that he got into some kind of accident. That’s not true. He had the car for over 3 years, drove thousands of miles, and he NEVER changed the oil. NEVER. Eventually the engine just stopped working. Without oil, it basically locked up and couldn’t move. A family friend who has worked on race cards and demolition derby cars said it was the worst engine he had ever seen. My brother had the means and the opportunity to change the oil, but he never made taking care of his car a priority. Tell me this isn’t one of the dumbest things you’ve ever heard in your life.

You’re probably wondering where this is going. Sometimes, I treat myself the same way my brother treated his mustang convertible. Sometimes, I get so wrapped up in work, kids, and life, that I don’t make taking care of myself a priority. During these times I don’t eat well. I don’t exercise. I don’t go to the doctor like I should. I don’t rest and relax. I don’t do the things I need to do to take care of me. Do you ever fall into this trap? Have you ever went a few weeks or a month and looked back to say, “Whoa, I’m not treating myself very well right now”?

Much like my brother, I have the means and the ability to take care of myself, but sometimes I just don’t make myself a priority. Much like a car, my body is the thing that transports me around in this world, so if I don’t take care of it, everything else will suffer including my family, friends, and work. I’ve found that the only way I can truly take care of myself is if I’m extremely deliberate about doing so. For example, in order to take care of myself physically I’ve discovered I need to work toward achieving some kind of goal. Usually, I sign up to run a race, which will put me on a schedule to eat relatively healthy and work out on a scheduled basis. I need to be deliberate about taking care of myself in other ways too. I make a concentrated effort to put away my phone when I’m outside of work, so it’s out of sight and out of mind. I have to create boundaries, so I can put work down in order to enjoy some free time. If I’m not deliberate, I won’t take care of myself and sooner or later I find myself locking up like my brother’s engine.

The challenge: Are you prioritizing the time to take care of yourself?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Mistakes, Spirals of Doubt, and Perspective (5-2-18)

This blog has always been part diary, part therapy, and part random thoughts. I wanted to share all of those with you in this entry about mistakes, spirals of doubt, and gaining perspective.

I woke up yesterday and sent my normal Wednesday email on a Tuesday out of dumb early morning confusion. It was a simple mistake, sending an email at the wrong time. I’m sure we’ve all done something like that. Later on that morning in a meeting I met a new teammate and called them by the wrong name. It was a simple mistake, something we’ve all probably done at one point in our life.

You’d assume that I’d just shake off two stupid mistakes and move on with my life, but I couldn’t. I have no idea why, but this was the trigger that allowed all the voices of doubt to creep in. It’s like I was able to go from competent person to a complete incompetent hot mess in 3 seconds. Before I knew what was happening I was spending the day analyzing, over analyzing, and revisiting everything I had done wrong or maybe could have done wrong over the past few months. I thought about the meeting two weeks ago when someone asked me a question and I didn’t know the answer off the top of my head and how I had to look up the answer in the meeting and how that just showcases I’m not smart. I thought about the survey I’m building and how I’ve solicited feedback, and how if I was good I should have been able to see the weak points in the survey and corrected them preemptively without needing the feedback. I thought about the market research I’m running and how it wasn’t playing out the way I thought it was, and how that suggested I must not be very good at my job if I can’t predict these things. I became overly concerned with the questions I was being asked and whether or not I was doing good enough answering them. I just couldn’t make things click right. I replayed every mistake I’ve made in the past two months over and over and over again.

You could be wondering where I’m going with this. I’d like to take this in a few directions.

Maybe this whole experience is just something my crazy brain does, but if you’ve ever felt this way know you aren’t alone.
It’s amazing how I gave two small insignificant mistakes I made on a Tuesday morning so much power over how I felt for the rest of the day.
In order to pull out of the tailspin I had to pull my head up and get perspective. In the grand scheme of things, do any of the things I mentioned in the previous paragraph matter? No. People got my blog a day early and still sent cool responses. If anything that’s an early win. I forgot a guy’s name, and he’ll probably forget about that by tomorrow. I didn’t know the answer when I was asked something a couple of weeks ago, and if that’s the biggest screw up I make on the job that would make me the best employee my company has ever seen (In all reality, could I be the best looking employee we have? Maybe. Most talented, probably not). The survey I’m working on requires a lot of great brains, so how arrogant would it be of me to think I’m smarter than an entire team of awesome people? The market research I’m running isn’t playing out to my predictions, and that’s why we do research to actually test a hypothesis. If I was 100% sure I was right, we wouldn’t be doing research.

All in all, two stupid mistakes made on a Tuesday were a good reminder that I’m human and that as a human I can sometimes get way too overworked about insignificant things. It was a lesson in perspective without feeling real pain, so I’ll take it.

The challenge: If you feel yourself falling into the downward spiral of self-doubt, how will you find perspective to reset and move forward?

#Embrymistakes=bonusmessage #SometimesI’mahotmess #Justkeepingitreal

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Prioritization and Trade-Offs (5-30-18)

This is the last in the series about prioritization. We began by thinking about oil changes and prioritizing taking care of ourselves. Then, we reflected on what we truly value, because that is the only way we can prioritize things. Last week I shared what I’ve learned about prioritization from market research. This week we will think about prioritization and trade-offs. Once again, special shout out to Kathleen Pearson for being the inspiration behind this series.

Let’s pretend for a moment that you were planning a house party for about 10 people. You have a budget of $100. Ideally, you want to have invitations, food, drinks, party favors, and decorations. Would you dedicate $20 to each thing I just listed? Probably not. It wouldn’t make any sense for you to treat each of the 5 things like they were completely equal when they have different values. Depending on who you are and how you value those things, you would split up your money accordingly. As you spent your money you’d continue to weigh the trade-offs. As an example, every dollar spent on beverages is a dollar you can’t spend on something else. If the party was for my friends, I could spend most of my money on beverages and food, and it would be an awesome party. If the party was for my daughter’s birthday, I would allocate the money differently, and probably spend more on decorations and party favors.

You probably see where this is going. We face the above situation in work all the time. Instead of planning a party we are trying to achieve a business objective. Instead of $100 dollars we have finite resources. Instead of food, drinks, etc. we have projects, tactics, etc. to invest in. Unlike the house party situation, I feel we often fall into the trap of trying to do everything at work. As I mentioned last week, I’ve fallen into this trap because I’ve tried to impress people. Sometimes, I also fall into this trap, because I don’t think through the trade-offs we can make.

Usually, there are three main things you trade-off: speed, quality, and cost (time and/or money). It’s extremely rare to be able to have all three. If you have something fast, it’s usually going to be expensive or it’s not going to be perfect quality. If you have something of perfect quality it’s either going to take a long time to create and/or it will cost a lot. I know that we like to pretend that the world doesn’t work this way, but it does. We have to get comfortable that we live in a world of restrictions and as we face these trade-offs we need to do a better job of understanding what we are willing to sacrifice. For example, I know people always want an A+ on quality, but are there times where a B is acceptable? If it is, we can probably move faster and be cheaper. Bottom line, the better I understand the trade-offs I’m making, the more equipped I am to make better prioritization decisions.

The challenge: Do you understand the trade-offs you’re making?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Chess and Leveraging Strengths (5-1-18)

This will be the last in the series inspired by board games. We started with Checkers and making sacrifices, moved to Battleship and leveraging our knowledge, explored Chutes and Ladders and how we are playing on different boards, and last week was about Connect 4 and searching for connections. This week, I’d like us to think about chess and leveraging the strengths of the various chess pieces.

In case you’ve never played chess, the objective is to trap the opponent’s king in what is called checkmate. Each side has 16 pieces consisting of 8 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 knights, 2 bishops, 1 queen, and 1 king. For example, a bishop moves diagonally, while a knight moves in an L shape, jumping over pieces. All the pieces are different, and they all have value. If you want to be successful in chess you need to understand how the pieces move, so you can leverage their strengths.

You’re probably already seeing some of the connections already. There are all kinds of people in our lives and on our teams, and each of these individuals is gifted in different ways. If we want to capture the king and achieve our goal, we need to understand the players we have around us and leverage their strengths. To continue with the chess analogy, it doesn’t make sense to make everyone move diagonally like bishops. Maybe some people are knights, who use their knack for maneuvering to get around problems. Maybe some are pawns, who are always willing to be the first to step out front and plow the way forward. Maybe some are queens with the vision to move across the entire board. Think about yourself for a moment. How often have you been on teams where your context, experiences, skills, etc. have truly been leveraged? What was that like? I’ve been on some teams where I feel my uniqueness was valued and it made me feel incredible and as a result my work was great. I’ve also experienced the opposite and that was pretty crummy.

As we lead and work on teams, it’s up to us to figure out what others bring to the table and how we can help them be in a position to best leverage those strengths. Think of some of the people you work with. What do they bring that you can leverage to make you and the team better? Maybe it’s a skill they have, work experience, life experience, a point of view, etc. Do they know you value that in them? What are you doing to leverage this magic? (Seriously, challenge yourself to come up with a very tactical answer. If we’re being real with each other, if we can’t come up with a solid answer in like 5 seconds about what we are specifically doing to unleash the skills we all bring, we probably aren’t doing good enough in that area.)

The challenge: How are you helping people unleash and leverage their context, experiences, skills, etc.?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry