Ensuring Our Goals Resonate (1-8-25)

This week we are going to kick off a series focused on goals, and we will start by reflecting on whether or not our goals resonate.

For the past few years, I’ve set a generic goal to get healthier. Getting healthier might be a goal that resonated with other people, but if I’m honest, it was never really motivating and never really connected with me. It was too abstract of an idea. Over the past few months, I’ve lifted weights on a more consistent basis and I’m discovering how much I enjoy that. This year, instead of having a generic goal of getting healthier, I have a goal of building more strength. More specifically, I want to increase the amount of weight I lift on a weekly basis by 15-20% by the end of the year.

I understand that ultimately the idea of building strength is connected to the idea of getting healthier. However, the goal of building strength is so much more motivating to me. I enjoy lifting weights. I love the simplicity of knowing if I’m making progress or not on any given day. I get excited about making improvements whether it’s adding in a few extra reps or increasing how much I’m lifting at any given time. Building strength is a goal that resonates with me. It’s a goal I can rally behind and execute against. I don’t have that same passion for the generic goal of get healthier.

Let’s make some connections. Have you ever had a goal that didn’t resonate with you? Did you pursue that goal with the same zest as you did for something that truly connected with you? Think about common work goals. They include things like, drive sales, hit quota, decrease costs, improve market share, increase customer satisfaction, and deliver more value. These goals aren’t necessarily wrong. At the same time, they may not resonate with us. Maybe the goals are too abstract or maybe they are something that don’t exactly connect to what we value. We have to find a way to translate and create goals that connect with us. I’ve said for years my main goal at work is to deliver magic, which means doing the impossible. That idea may not make sense to anybody, but it gets me out of bed in the morning. It gives me something that I am excited about pursuing and delivering. It gives me fuel that sustains me throughout the year.

The challenge: What are your goals? Do they truly resonate with you?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Electric Currents, Parenting, Leadership, and Burn Out (1-10-24)

As we start off the year and begin to dive back into the craziness, I think we can all agree that we want to make sure that throughout the year we are taking care of each other in order to avoid exhaustion and burn out. With this in mind, I want us to reflect on electrical current, parenting, leadership, and burn out. If you’re in an official leadership position, I hope you read this and seriously consider the themes and implications. Side note, I’m in an official leadership position, and I’m writing this as a reminder to myself more than anything.

Let’s pretend for a minute that I took a lot of heavy power using appliances and plugged all of them into the same surge protector. It might look something like this picture. I’d assume that you’re thinking, “Why would you do that? That is not smart at all. Even though it’s a surge protector, it is not designed to handle that amount of electrical current. You’re going to burn something down.”

Now let’s think of parenting. Imagine that I have an overwhelming list of demands for my kids, and I expect everything on my to-do list to be done perfectly, and this occurs over months. My kids struggle with this workload. When I notice them struggling, I tell them, “You just need to practice some self-care. Take a rest.” However, the workload and expectations stay the same. At this point, I’d assume/hope you’re thinking something like, “You’re being a bad dad. You’re giving them an impossible task that is beating them down, and instead of doing something that could help them you are telling them to fix it themselves. They don’t have the power to fix it themselves, because they don’t control the expectations you are putting on them. You need to do something.”

What does this have to do with anything? The overloaded surge protector that would start a fire was MY responsibility because I chose to route too much power through it. When my kids were struggling and couldn’t fix it by practicing self-care, it was MY responsibility, because I controlled the list of demands and expectations. Why don’t we more consistently apply this same thinking when we think about employee burn out? Most things I read and hear about burn out put the responsibility on the individual employee. We tell them to practice self-care, go for a walk, and get plenty of rest. Why don’t we more consistently look at the leader and hold them responsible for creating an environment that is a huge contributing factor to burnout? The fact is, even if the individual practices the best self-care ever, it doesn’t matter if their work environment is always crushing them into the ground. The individual can have some responsibility, but not all. Leaders have a large portion of responsibility with regards to burn out, because their actions or inactions are the ones that create environments where burn out has a higher or lower chance of being a negative force for employees.

Think about it for a minute. If a leader doesn’t have a clear vision, then all the additional energy trying to navigate the swirl is extra burden on the team. If the leader doesn’t have clear priorities about what work needs to be done, the quality it needs to be delivered in, and the effort it should require, then all of the extra work done on things that isn’t needed puts extra burden on the team. If the leader is not actively driving a culture where people feel heard and valued, then all the extra energy people put in to survive that culture is extra burden on the team. Have you ever been on the receiving ends of any of those situations? I have. I’ve found that once you add up all that extra burden ON TOP of already largely out of reach goals and expectations, you have the perfect recipe for burnout. Have you ever been the leader who hasn’t done those things well? I have. What did you notice? I notice when I don’t do those things well, it puts a tremendous burden on folks that shouldn’t be there, and it sucks their souls.

The challenge: As a leader, what are you doing to create an environment that minimizes the potential of burnout? Asked another way, as a leader are your actions increasing or decreasing the chances of people experiencing burn out?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Setting Expectations Relative to Your Reality and Blowing Fuses (1-18-23)

Happy Wednesday,

This is the last one in our series about protecting energy. Last week was about protecting your energy and blowing fuses. This week we will continue to think about blowing fuses as it relates to setting expectations relative to your reality.

Back in November, Cam played Legos with a friend in the garage. Cam got me and said, “The power went off in the garage.” I see that Cam and his friend have their socks and shoes off and are wearing t-shirts. I’m confused because the garage isn’t heated, and Cam explains, “We didn’t want to have to wear coats and stuff as we played so we turned on both space heaters (in the same outlet).” This blew the fuse. I reset everything and then turned to the kids. “I get that you don’t want to wear coats or anything and that the extra layers might get in the way when playing Legos. Running two space heaters is not good for the electrical system. We aren’t building a fire to warm you up. You need to put your socks, shoes, and coat on if you want to keep playing in the garage.

What does this have to do with anything? This is a story about how their original vision and expectations led to blowing a fuse. They wanted to be warm and barefoot like summertime, so they tried to do that with the space heaters, and it didn’t end well. Their expectations did NOT match the reality of the situation (it was cold 😉). How many times has this happened to you at work? It often looks something like this, “This project is critical, and it needs to be perfect,” but you look around and realize you don’t have the financial or people resources to make it happen. You also quickly realize that you aren’t going to be given more time, energy, money, or people. You still try to deliver that perfection anyway, and before you know it you have burned yourself and other people out. Does this sound familiar? I spent a fair amount of 2022 in that space, which is why I’m so focused on not ending up back there.

When Cam and his friend realized that the reality was different from their expectations, they had a CHOICE about how to proceed. They could stop playing Legos (stop the project). They could find other ways to heat up the area (get more resources). They could adjust their expectations and behaviors to match their reality. In their case this meant putting on coats. In our case at work, it might be admitting that the “perfect” deliverable is NOT possible with our current resourcing and being okay with delivering something less than perfect. The struggle to let go of perfection is real, knowing that I won’t hit the standards I hold for myself and likely will upset/disappoint others. These aren’t easy choices to make. They are necessary choices if you want to protect your energy.

The challenge: How can you set better more realistic expectations in order to protect your energy and the energy of others?

Direct bonus thoughts that might hit a little hard: As leaders we have the burden/responsibility to set the parameters and realistic expectations that enable people to protect their energy. This is especially important if you are in an official leadership position, because your actions will naturally carry extra weight. Below are a few situations where I’ve seen leaders handle situations in a way that communicated to me that they weren’t aware of or didn’t care about burning people out. I’ve seen these things, and I’ve been the leader in these situations. Have you? Something to think about.

If there is a legitimate issue with the project, and the leader tells the group they will just have to figure it out without giving them more time, people, money, or taking things off their plate through automation or prioritization, then there is a good chance that the leader’s actions are communicating, “I’m okay with you burning yourself out to make this happen.” (My new go-to move is to ask, “What do you NEED to make X happen? Do you need time, people, to take things off your plate, or something else?”)

If there is an issue and the leader responds with, “You will just have to prioritize” without being able to say what they are able let go of completely or where you they comfortable with the team giving less effort, their actions are likely communicating, “I’m okay with you burning yourself out, because everything is important and everything needs to be done.” (My new go-to move is to start by asking, “What do you NEED to make X happen?” Then, I reclarify priorities. “Here are the 2 or 3 things where we need A effort. Here are the things we need B effort. I don’t even want to talk about Q, R, and S because they aren’t important. If we have to let go of Q, R, and S, we will just have to deal with it.)

If a leader is not consistently celebrating and recognizing people who prioritize (by either saying no to work, choosing to delay unimportant work, or giving less effort to unimportant work) or are comfortable giving less effort to things that don’t matter as much), then the leader is sending a message that you don’t truly value prioritization. (I’m working hard to recognize folks here.)

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Screen Time, Value, and Prioritization (3-17-21)

Last week was about identifying your cultural pillars. This week is about parenting, screen time, value, and prioritization.

One of our rules is that the girls get limited screen time each day. During this time they have the option to do different things. They can watch cartoons, play video games, or do something on the ipad. Whatever they choose to do, they still get the same amount of time. The other day the girls had their normal amount of screen time. They chose to watch a cartoon on the main TV. At the end of the episode, I told them it was time to turn everything off. They asked for more screen time. I told them no. They got upset, because they said they didn’t want to watch cartoons, and they had really wanted to play video games. I reminded them that they knew they had limited amounts of screen time and that they chose to watch cartoons. I also explained In the future they would need to be more thoughtful about how to spend that screen time if they were disappointed.

What does this have to do with anything? The girls don’t realize it yet, but we are essentially teaching them a sneaky lesson in prioritization and understanding what you value and want. They have a set amount of screen time, and they have a few different ways they could spend that time. How should they spend it? It all depends. Out of their options, which one(s) would give them the most value? In a similar way, we all have a limited number of hours each week to fit in everything we need to do as it relates to our holistic health, our relationships, and work. How often have you looked back at the day or week and said to yourself, “Whoa, I don’t think I did any of the things I really wanted to do. I wish I could have done X, Y, and Z instead.” I know this happens to me sometimes. There’s no way to go back in time, but I can do a better job of ensuring I know what I value and then making sure I focus my efforts on those things. Sometimes, this means making sure I’m prioritizing and staying focused on important work. Sometimes, this means that I step away from that important work and spend time connecting with others and myself to ensure I’m meeting my other needs. It all depends on what I value and need.

The challenge: What do you value? Are you CHOOSING to prioritize your time to reflect what you value?

Bonus thoughts: When it comes to prioritizing work I tend look at 3 variables: impact to the business, quality of the deliverable, and amount of effort. I try to focus on the things that have the most impact. From there, I’m constantly balancing quality and effort. If the work needs to be A quality, then it requires a lot of effort. This means, I can only do a limited amount of A quality things at a time. However, if the quality required is only a B or C, then that requires less effort and I can produce more work. My opinion is that most stuff really just needs to be a B, because it’s not going to be perfect before it hits the market anyway. Being honest about the quality helps me make sure I put the right amount of effort towards the right things. There is no point putting maximum effort toward something that needs to be a B.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Restaurants, Serving, and Sprinting (6-24-20)

Last week was about embracing new foods and stepping outside of your comfort zone. This week is about restaurants, being a server, speed, and thinking.

Back in college I was a waiter at an O’Charley’s. In case you’ve never been to an O’Charley’s it is like an Applebee’s. The main difference is that O’Charley’s has some AMAZING rolls. Anyway, when I first started my job as a waiter, I found myself running around constantly back and forth between the kitchen and my tables. I would go get refills for one table, then get to another table and realize they needed refills, so I would have to go back and get them refills. By the end of the night I was exhausted from running back and forth. Over time, I began to realize that I was working very hard, but I wasn’t working very smart. Instead of only thinking about one table at a time, I began looking at multiple tables. Instead, of making individual trips back to the kitchen, I would go back to the kitchen and take care of the needs for multiple tables. Taking a few extra seconds to look around to see who needed refills, more rolls, checked on, etc. enabled me to save steps and avoid sprinting back and forth throughout the night. This led to me being more efficient and effective, which eventually led to me receiving better tips.

You might be wondering where this server story is going. I don’t know about you, but from time to time I get sucked into the frenzy of work where I sprint from project to project and place to place. By the end of the day I feel exhausted. Have you ever felt this way? When you felt like this, how productive were you? If you’re anything like me, during these times you weren’t as productive as you could be. I’ve realized over time that whenever I feel like I’m sprinting out of control I need to pause for a moment. Just like my server days, I need to stop for a moment to look around and figure out what is going on. Rather than sprinting, I need to pause, survey the situation, and figure out a plan. Taking a few minutes to think through things usually results in me figuring out ways to avoid pitfalls and eliminate extra steps. At the end of the day, spending a few minutes to pause and think, saves me hours of running around.

The challenge: Will you take a few moments to pause and plan vs. running around?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Investments and Returns (6-3-20)

Last week was about diversifying how you spend your time to help you be a better human, and Friday’s bonus entry was about investing time and effort in becoming more anti-racist. This is our final entry in the series about investments and it is about investments and returns.

Let’s pretend for a moment I’m a financial advisor. I explain that you can choose to invest in fund A or B. How would you decide to invest your money? I bet that before you did anything, you would want to better understand funds A and B and their rate of returns. After you understood that, then you could evaluate the tradeoffs and decide how to invest.

What does this have to do with anything? In the above example, you would want to understand the potential return, so you could assess the trade-offs and make the right decision. I see two applications of this idea. The first application comes to the work we do. We all have more work than we can handle, so we must make decisions on where to INVEST our time. How often do you pause to think about the RETURN you could get for your effort and then invest your time accordingly? I don’t always do this. Sometimes I just start doing the things on my to-do list without thinking about what is important. Other times, I get lost trying to make something perfect, and all the extra hours I put in didn’t give me much return.

The other connection is about investing in each other. The other day my wife walked into our makeshift office, and she saw me writing an email with a meme telling the person they were awesome. My wife asked me how much time I spend recognizing others and helping them feel valued. I laughed, because I don’t look at that as spending time. I look at this act as INVESTING time. Furthermore, it’s the best and smartest investment I can make out of all the things I do. I’d argue the same would be true for you. Here’s why. I want to have a positive impact on the people we serve. I’m not smart enough or talented enough to do that on my own. Also, the work I do is so complicated that I can’t do it on my own, so I need help to reach my goal. As a result, I invest in people. I give them my energy, effort, compassion, and words of appreciation. In return, I gain teammates and friends. These teammates and friends share their brainpower and skills. Together, we do incredible things, ultimately delivering the impact I want to deliver in the world, which makes me feel fulfilled. The only way I can reach my goals is by investing in others.

Challenge 1: Will you be more aware of how you invest your time and what returns you will get (for both projects and people)?

Challenge 2: Spend a few minutes investing in someone else today with a few words of recognition or something else.

Sending peace and love,

Andrew Embry

Juggling and Giving Yourself Grace (4-2-20)

Link to a poem about this week’s topic. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew-embry-979831b7_juggling-whatreallymatters-activity-6651501699951394816-LnEh

I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve been having lately about feeling overwhelmed. If you’re feeling this way, just know you aren’t alone.

I’ve felt overwhelmed to varying degrees over the past few weeks. I’ve felt off, tired, sluggish, behind, out of it, stressed, anxious, etc. As I’ve talked with different folks one of the common themes is that it feels like we are all juggling so much right now. If you’re anything like me, you’ve felt pressure to keep all of the balls up in the air, and you’ve been anxious about letting things drop. I was talking to a friend about this and I remembered advice someone gave me. They said it’s okay to feel like you’re juggling. The important thing is to understand which balls are made of rubber and which ones are made of glass. There are some things that will bounce if you drop them and some things that will shatter. The trick is to know which is which. This understanding has changed the way I’ve approached things over the past few days, and helped me give others and more importantly myself, the grace and love we deserve.

The challenge: Do you know which balls are rubber, which ones are glass, and which ones can you just stop juggling?

Special shout out to my teammates and all the other awesome people out there filling my bucket and other people’s buckets.

Peace, health, and love,

Andrew Embry

Tetris and Building the Right Foundation (1-8-20)

I hope that you enjoyed your holidays and your time off. During my break I had the chance to play some video games, so video games will be the inspiration behind our series to start the year. We will start with Tetris and the importance of building correctly from the beginning.

I have always loved Tetris and used to play it with my mom when I was a kid. In case you’ve never played, Tetris is a game where different sized blocks descend from the top. Your job is to stack those blocks in neat rows. If you stack them neatly and complete a full horizontal line, that row of blocks disappears and you get points. The longer you play, the faster the blocks descend, and sooner or later everything is moving so fast you are unable to stack things correctly. Once the blocks have been stacked incorrectly and reach the top of the screen, you lose. If you look at the picture on the right, you can see that things aren’t going so well for our player.

What if I told you Tetris and life are basically the same thing? Tetris and life are about building correctly AND intentionally. Both are about ensuring you build the right foundation, in the right way, so you can adjust as blocks (or life’s challenges) come at you faster and faster and faster. In Tetris and life the difference between surviving the onslaught of challenges and losing all comes down to how well you built when you started. This could refer to building relationships, marketing strategies, brands, finances, and anything else in life.

Looking back at 2019, I’m proud of what I accomplished at work. With that said, I know there’s room for improvement. As I look back I realize that if I would have spent the time to build some of the right foundations, some of the challenges I faced would have been easier to overcome. If I would have done a better job of pausing to look ahead, I could have seen those obstacles before they came crashing down on me. Seeing these obstacles would have given me time to grab them, pivot them, and place them like Tetris blocks instead of them getting slammed into the middle of my world messing stuff up. Did any of you feel this way about last year?

The challenge: Are you building the right foundation to handle life as it throws pieces at you faster and faster?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

The Best Pizza and Decision Criteria (10-9-19)

This week we are going to start a series about the lessons you can learn from pizza. We’ll start by looking at the “best “pizza and decision criteria.

Let’s start with a simple, yet important question 😉 What is the best pizza? Why is it the best pizza? What criteria did you use? Did you base it on price, fresh vs. frozen, New York vs. Chicago style, the sauce, the availability of toppings, how good of a leftover it makes, the cheese, the best deals, dine in vs. carry-out, or some other criteria? I’d assume that if I asked you the question using different criteria you’d give me different answers about which pizza is the best. For example, my favorite deep dish pizza, Roselli’s, is different from my favorite frozen cheese pizza, Home Run Inn.

Now assume that your team needs to decide what the “best” pizza is and you’ll have to defend that decision to others. How do you make that decision? Would you leave it wide open or would you try to establish some kind of decision criteria? I’d imagine that you’d have to discuss and align on the key variables that you’re going to consider. Having this decision criteria makes the decision more objective, focused, and easier to make.

What does a series of questions about the “best” pizza have to do with anything? This story isn’t about pizza, it’s about how to try make an objective decision. When I first asked you, “What is the best pizza?” you used your own criteria to determine what best is. This is fine, UNTIL you have to align as a team. Then, the team needs more clarity around the decision criteria to help focus the conversation and drive a decision.

Maybe your teams don’t make decisions about pizza on a regular basis (maybe they should). However, they probably make other decisions like: What is the best HCP campaign? What should the Payer value message be? Which concept is best for Consumers? How successful is ____ tactic? These decisions don’t have clear cut obvious answers. How often have you been involved in decisions about these types of things that swirled and swirled and swirled, because the group didn’t have clear decision criteria? I know I’ve been there. When there aren’t clear decision criteria then any opinion can be “good”, so there’s no way to judge one thought vs. another. In these cases it is often the person with the most seniority, the person who talks the most/loudest, or the person who won’t stop talking or listen to other viewpoints that eventually “wins”. That’s not a good way to make a decision. However, once you finally have clear decision criteria, then you have something you can measure against. This removes a lot of the subjectivity, so the group can have a more objective conversation. In my experience, I’ve found that the more clarity you have around decision criteria, the easier it is to make a decision.

The challenge: Are you establishing AND communicating the decision criteria you’ll use to make a decision?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Lessons from Being a Dad Part 4 Small, Medium, or Big Deal (5-29-19)

This week we will build on what matters and perspective by looking at my very advanced scientifically based parenting classification system of small deal, medium deal, and big deal. I was in the kitchen eating my breakfast when Alice started yelling. I asked her, “What is going on?” She explained to me that she had lost her bracelet toy thing. I then looked at her and said, “Is that a small deal, a medium deal, or a big deal?” She replied that it was a small deal, so my next question was, “When are we allowed to freak out?” She replied, “When it’s a big deal.” Finally, I said, “So should you be freaking out now? Take a breath and go solve your problem.” She looked in her room and found the bracelet 10 seconds later.

This classifying of small, medium, or big is a common thing at my house. Small deals are minor annoyances that shouldn’t even phase you. Big deals are when someone is badly hurt or likely to get badly hurt. Big deals usually require a grown-up to help resolve. Everything else is a medium deal, which can often be frustrating, but can be resolved without freaking out. I’ve been a parent for 7 years and only encountered a handful of big deal moments.

I see two connections to work. First, reflect on some of the stressful situations you’ve faced at work. Now ask yourself, “Was that situation that caused you stress a small deal, a medium deal, or a big deal?” I don’t know about you, but I very rarely have ever had to deal with a big deal moment at work. Most of the time I deal with small deals or medium deals, and it just so happens that they get blown up to be more than they really are. Sometimes, it’s the organization that blows them up. Sometimes, it’s a leader. Sometimes, it’s all on me, getting caught up in the frenzy and losing perspective.

The other connection is that as a dad, I’m one of the co-leaders of the household. As the leader, it is my job to deescalate things, and help my daughters see that the thing they are freaking out about is really a medium deal and everything will be fine. As a leader, you have tremendous power and responsibility. If you allow and/or enable small and medium deals to become big deals, you create unnecessary stress and pain for everyone else you work with. If you are able to help people keep things in perspective, you give your team the ability to focus on the things that truly matter.

The challenge: Are you taking the time to pause and decide if it is a small, medium, or big deal? Are you setting the tone of what is a small, medium, or big deal with your teams?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry