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

Centrifugal Force, Merry-Go-Rounds, and Slowing Life Down (3-27-19)

Last week was about Newton’s laws of motion and moving people. This week we will stick with motion and reflect on centrifugal force, merry-go-rounds, and slowing life down.

I’m assuming that at one-point in all of our lives we have ridden on a merry-go-round or some kind of ride that spins you around in circles. Before the ride begins, we are stationary. As the ride starts to spin slowly, we initially don’t move too much from the center of the ride. However, as the ride picks up more speed, a force acts on us pushing us away from the center of the merry-go-round/ride and to the edges of the ride. The force that acts on us is centrifugal force. The bottom line is that the faster the thing is spinning the more the force works to push you to the outside, away from the center. If you want to get to the center, you need to find a way to slow things down.

You might be wondering where this is going. In many ways we spend our lives on an invisible merry-go-round balancing work, life, and everything that comes our way. Much like a merry-go-round, we have a center, where we are balanced, focused, and plugged into the things that matter most. The tricky thing is that unlike a merry-go-round, life never stops spinning (while we are living). This means that we always have some force pushing us away from our center. As life spins faster, we get further away from our center and lose focus.

What we often fail to realize is that we have the power to speed life up or slow life down. Have you ever been around a person who took something small and turned it into a huge deal spinning everything out of control? Have you ever been that person? I have. This is an example of taking something and speeding it up, further pushing us away from our center and making life difficult. On the opposite end, there are times when life has been going really fast and I’ve been able to say, “Does all of this actually matter? Is all of this really important?” (The answer is that 95% of things aren’t important.) Pausing to breathe and ask those questions has a powerful impact on slowing life down enough to where you can get closer to your center.

The challenge: On the merry-go-round of life, will you take the time to slow things down to get back to center?

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

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

Checkers, Jumps, and Sacrifices (4-1-18)

This week I’d like to start a series inspired by board games. Hopefully it doesn’t leave you bored (<-see what I did there?). We’ll begin by thinking about checkers, jumps, trade-offs, and making sacrifices.

Recently, I taught Alice, who turned 6 yesterday, how to play checkers. It’s a great game, because it has strategy and it’s still fairly simple to play. In case you’ve never played, the objective is to capture all of the other team’s pieces. Essentially, when an opponent’s piece is in front of your piece you make your piece jump over it, and you remove the opponent’s piece from the board. When Alice plays, she loves jumping other pieces, but she HATES having her pieces jumped. She’ll do everything in her power to avoid being jumped, which often leads to her losing games. She loses games, because sometimes the best move on the board is to sacrifice one of her own pieces in order to set herself up in a more powerful position. Slowly, she is learning that sometimes the best move is a sacrifice. Sometimes the best move to make is to allow me to jump one of her pieces, so she can do a double jump and take away two of mine.

You might be wondering where this is going. I would argue that life and work are games of strategy. They are games of moves and countermoves, games about anticipating things and reacting. Much like Alice, it’s easy to become obsessed with jumping, constant activity, conquering, and going after everything that looks like an opportunity. However, sometimes, it doesn’t make sense to do that. Do you ever run yourself ragged trying to make every “jump” only to realize it’s left you in a weaker position? I know I have. Over time I’ve learned that sometimes I need to be willing to give certain things up. Over time, I’ve come to accept that sometimes I need to sacrifice something in order to be in the strongest position.

Now if we look at work, think about marketing as an example. Marketing is a game of strategic trade-offs. Working in research, I have access to reports and things that reveal all kinds of weaknesses and opportunities at any given moment. Essentially, there are always tons of jumps we could make. However, if you try to make every jump you lose. Instead, you have to sacrifice some things. Sometimes, you have to allow your competitors to have certain things, so you can stay focused on your strengths. Sometimes you have to refrain from spending time, energy, and effort in one area, so you can focus all of those things in a another area that will help you be victorious.

The challenge: Are you always going after every opportunity or are you intentionally making trade-offs?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry