Preparing to Achieve Excellence (8-29-18)

This will be the last in the series focused on excellence. We began by focusing on setting the high bar for ourselves. From there, we thought about how you can unleash your own awesomeness to achieve excellence. We then revisited high jumping with a focus on the fundamentals. Last week, we reflected on taking the time to pause to appreciate how far you’ve come and to see how close you are to your mountain top. This week I want us to think about preparing for excellence.

Imagine for a moment that you’re watching some sporting event. You go to the stadium excited about watching a good game between the Red team and the Blue team. Very quickly you begin to realize something. The Blue team hasn’t practiced. They are on the field and they don’t know their plays. They are on the field, and you can tell they haven’t been training. They are on the field, and they are not performing. The Blue team has a few really great athletes, so every now and then they make a good play, but overall the Blue team isn’t effective. Meanwhile, you can tell the Red team has put in the time and effort to prepare, so when it comes game time they kick butt.

You might be wondering where this is going. In the above analogy I talk about preparing for games. Essentially, life is really just a series of games. It’s a series of challenges that you are either prepared for or not prepared for. If you look at work, being a leader is a game. Meetings are games. Making tough decisions is a game. Giving presentations is games. Having hard conversations is a game.

If life is a game would you rather be the Red team or the Blue team? Obviously, we’d all want to be the Red team. However, how often do we have Blue team behavior, where we show up for something that we haven’t really prepared for? For example, have you ever been in a meeting where people didn’t come in prepared, so it was a waste of time? Have you ever led one of those meetings? Have you ever been in a meeting where people read slides at you, and you thought, “If they would have sent this to me as a pre-read, we could have a better discussion”? Have you ever been so busy that you weren’t able to prepare for something, and the work suffered as a result? Have you ever had a deadline approaching and realized that you didn’t spell out the right milestones to hit your deadline? Have you ever went into a presentation saying, “I’ll just wing it” and then watched as it didn’t go over well causing confusion and problems you had to address later? Have you ever tried to have a challenging conversation with the team, and realized that you all have not built up enough trust to have this conversation? I answer a resounding, “Yes!” to all of those questions. I’d imagine you do too.

In the world we live in, it’s way too easy to get lost sprinting around and never really prepare for the challenge ahead. When we don’t prepare, we will be just like the Blue team, lost without strategy. Lost without knowing which actions to take. Sure, we might get lucky from time to time and have some success, but preparation has a way of often beating out luck. As an individual, it’s up to us to not only make the time to prepare, but to figure out how to best prepare. As leaders, it’s our job to help others prepare for challenge ahead.

The challenge: Are you preparing, so you can achieve excellence?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Surrounding yourself with people who bring the excellence out in you (8-22-18)

Last week was about excellence, mountain tops, and pausing to appreciate how far you’ve come. This post is about surrounding yourself with people who bring out the excellence in you.

Last week was the National Poetry Slam competition. While I wasn’t able to go, seeing the news on my Facebook feed brought back memories of going to Nationals with my team years ago. To this day that was one of my favorite experiences. It was so awesome to be on a team that was focused on creating art that moved people. It was amazing to be on a team where the members had talents far and above my own. It was incredible to be on a team that cared about each other and the art so much that we pushed ourselves to be better than we’ve ever been. Every draft of a poem, every practice, every performance, became an opportunity for us to help each other and encourage each other to hone our crafts so we could create something that connected with people. I can honestly say that being on that team completely changed my trajectory as a poet/writer/communicator. I’m the poet/writer/communicator I am because of that team and the way we brought out the best in each other. During our time together, I learned things about myself and pushed my writing and my imagination to go places where I had never gone before.

You might be wondering what this has to do with work. Last week I had lunch with a colleague and the conversation began with her saying something like, “I love it when I’m the dumbest one in the room.” Initially this sounds like a pretty weird thing to say, but as she continued she explained that there is something about looking around and saying, “I’m surrounded by the A-team” and knowing you’re going to need to have your stuff together to hang with them and contribute. There’s something about being around people with high expectations, where you know you’ll become better just by being around them.

As I reflect on that conversation, I realize it’s the exact same way I felt about being on my poetry slam team. There is something special when a group is collectively driven by a mission and cares enough about each other to hold high standards and to raise those standards to push for excellence. As I reflect on the various jobs and roles I’ve had throughout my life I can say that there were times when I was surrounded by great people who pushed each other to be better, and being on those teams has had a lingering impact that influences me today. With that said, there have been other times when I wasn’t surrounded by people who raised the bar and brought out the best in each other. Often, the groups that didn’t push each other to be better were the ones focused on themselves vs. on the greater mission and striving to reach that mission.

What about you? Have you experienced teams that have brought out the best in you? Have you experienced teams that haven’t? What about the team you are currently on? Do you bring out the best in each other? Do you challenge each other to keep rising to the next challenge?

The challenges: Are you choosing to spend time with people who bring out the excellence in you? How are you raising the game of the people around you?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Excellence, Progress, and Peaks (8-15-18)

Last week was about excellence and fundamentals. This week will be about excellence, progress, and peaks. Let’s say that you and I are climbing a mountain. How would you know when we were getting close to the top? Maybe you’d use a map or you could see that the peak was in reach. How would you know we arrived at the top? Pretty dumb question, right? We know we’d be at the top, because there wouldn’t be anything higher. We’d easily be able to look out and say, “We did it!” See corny mountain top picture to the right.

You’re probably wondering what the above examples have to do with anything. In the examples above, you’d have markers to show your progress. In life you don’t always have obvious markers. You don’t always have a map that says, “You are here. You only have 3 miles to go.” In life you don’t always have a moment where the clouds part and the world announces, “You have arrived!”

I don’t know about you, but I feel lost sometimes. I get lost in the grind of the day to day work, and while I know I’m working hard and doing my best I lose track of where I am in relation to the top of the mountain I’m climbing. If you’re anything like me, when you get this way and you don’t know where you are relative to the high bar you’ve set you automatically assume that the high bar must be miles away. A friend brilliantly summarized this feeling one day when they said, “If I make mistakes, those are pretty visible. If I’m doing good things, it’s like I’m just doing my job.” Have you ever felt that way? I have. I often feel that the mistakes I make tell me when I’ve fallen, but I often don’t see or overlook indicators that I’m soaring, so it becomes easy to feel discouraged. Does that make sense? (this is the part in my blog when my anxious negative inner voice says, “These people will think you’re crazy, because they never feel this.” Then the confident voice says, “Negative voice. Shut up.”)

What I’ve learned about myself is that when I’m feeling lost and that I don’t know where the mountain top is I need to do two things. First, I need to pause and look back. Sometimes, it takes looking back to see how far you’ve come. If I look back over the past year, I can see how I’ve grown as a husband, dad, employee, etc. Second, after I’ve looked back, I can look up to see how much further I need to go, because now I have perspective and appreciation for what I’ve been through and where I’m going. While I’m far from perfect, I can confidently say I’m closer to where I want to be than I was a year ago.

Two challenges for you. 1. Can you pause to appreciate how far you’ve come and how much closer you are to your mountaintop? 2. Can you let others know that you see they are close to the top of the mountain they have been climbing?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

High Jump Revisited- Excellence and Fundamentals (8-8-18)

Last week was about excellence and leveraging your awesomeness to reach rock star status. This week we will revisit high jumping with a focus on excellence and fundamentals. This entry is partially inspired by some comments Belinda Mulhern made on the first high jumping blog.

Let’s revisit high jumping. You and I are going to compete in a high jumping competition, and we’ve set the bar 😉 If we had to high jump right now, how do you think you’d do? I would be horrible, because I don’t have the fundamentals down. How you approach, the steps you take, your leap, the way you arch your back, everything matters in the high jump. I was talking to a colleague (Joseph Robele) who used to be a high jumper and he described the approach by saying, “At the very end you have to take a violent step that shifts your running momentum into a jump that goes straight up in the air while having enough forward momentum to carry you over the bar. As you go over the bar you have to constantly adjust your body, raising and lowering parts in the right sequence, to clear the bar.” I barely understand what those sentences mean. There’s no way I could physically do that.

You might be wondering what this has to do with anything. I’m guessing that the majority of you wouldn’t be ready to participate in a high jump competition. Overall, you’re incapable of doing the correct foundational things that would enable to succeed. You probably don’t have the important techniques down to be successful, and you probably haven’t spent any time developing those skills. In order to be successful, you’d have to change, learn, and grow. You’d have to work on all of those fundamental small things that would enable you to get over the bar.

Whenever we step into a new role or experience, we show up as the person we currently are with the skillsets we currently have. This current version of ourselves isn’t immediately ready for the challenge ahead. The current version of ourselves very rarely has an understanding of and ability to execute all of the fundamental enablers that lead to success. While I don’t have to worry about my approach, footsteps, and arching my back like a high jumper, I have had to learn and adapt as a market researcher. In my world fundamental enablers are things like learning how to better understand the business, leveraging marketing frameworks, leveraging different market research methodologies to best answer a business question, synthesizing all kinds of information, defining problems, etc. Some of these are areas where I already had skills, and some of these areas are places where I had to start from scratch. I still don’t have all of these fundamental enablers down cold, so I’m always continuing to learn and work on mastering various enablers in order to reach success.

As I mentioned, this blog was inspired by Belinda’s comments. Here is what she said. “In high jump, they work on all of the little enablers – how you approach, your arch, your steps. Do, we as coaches, always work on those things? I can talk about the bar, which is the goal. But the bar is not what you do.” I think she lays out a really good challenge. As an individual, are you focused on developing the key enablers that will help you be successful? As a leader/coach are you focused on helping others develop the key enablers that will lead to their success?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Excellence, Delicious Food, and your Unique Awesomeness (8-1-18)

Last week was about excellence and setting the high bar. This week is about finding your own way to get to that high bar and will reflect on great food and your unique awesomeness.

Take a second and think about delicious food. Think about the meals you love. Here is a list of some of my favorite foods: my grandma’s homemade beef and noodles, bone-in ribeye steak, bacon cheeseburgers, my mom’s pork chops with homemade bbq sauce, Culver’s Concrete Mixers, Nancy Woolf cookies, waffle fries, Bello brownies, honey crisp apples, and anything that Emily Borders makes. (The picture to the right is me daydreaming of food. We even have a similar hairline.) Now that you have some delicious foods in your head, ask yourself what makes each one of those foods uniquely special and delicious. For me, Bello brownies are always perfectly gooey in the middle. Ribeyes always have the perfect balance of meat and fat, which leads to great flavor and I am convinced the bone makes it taste better. Honey crisp apples have the perfect amount of snap in each bite. A Culver’s Concrete Mixers with Oreo and cookie dough is a delightful blend of smooth custard and crunchy cookies.

You’re probably wondering what delicious food has to do with work. When you thought about food, you thought about great tasting food. I’m assuming that the foods you thought of weren’t all the same. For example, frozen custard is not the same as a bone-in ribeye, but both are delicious. You probably noticed that the foods you thought of each had their own unique awesomeness that propelled them to greatness. This reminds me of a conversation I had when I first joined my current team.

When I first took my role on my current team, I had a conversation with my boss about what excellence looks like as a market researcher (trying to find the high bar<-Look at that connection to last week). We talked about some of the core skills you need to have to be successful like the ability to synthesize knowledge and define the problems we are trying to solve. Consider these foundational competencies needed for success. I then asked him what it would take to reach legendary rock star status as a researcher. I asked him who were the legendary market researchers and why were they awesome. The thought behind my question is that I would need to copy and be just like them to be great. He responded along the lines of, “Sally was a rock star because of her capacity to handle a lot of work streams at one time. Susie was a rock star researcher, because of her vast knowledge of the disease and business. Bob is a rock star, because of his understanding of different market research methodologies.” He then paused and said, “You aren’t them though. You have to decide what’s special about you, and how you can use that to get to rock star status.”

That last bit of advice in bold has stuck with me ever since that conversation. Over time, I’ve come to appreciate and realize that if I’m going to be a legendary market researcher (or husband/dad/friend/etc.) one day, then I won’t get there by directly copying everyone else. It’s true that there are foundational things I will need to get good that everyone needs in order to reach success. However, I will also have to identify my awesomeness and how I can use that awesomeness in a way to reach the high bar that has been set. I’m assuming all of you are in a similar boat. Whatever legendary status is for you, you won’t get there by being a direct copy of anyone else. You’ll have to be and do you.

The challenge: What is your awesomeness and how will you use it to help you reach rock star status?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Excellence, High Jump, and Setting the Bar (7-25-18)

This week I’d like to kick off a new series focused on excellence. We’ll start by thinking about excellence as it relates to high jumping and setting the bar.

Imagine for a moment that I challenged you to a high jump competition. After getting over your shock that a kind of out of shape stocky dude with a dad bod would throw out such a ludicrous idea, what would be the first thing you’d do? I’m assuming that you’d ask how high the bar is set. From there, assuming you accept the challenge, you’d think through how you were going to reach that bar and then train to ensure you could jump over it. In fact, you’d probably train so you could jump a little higher than where I told you the bar would start, because you know the bar could raise for the next round.

You might be wondering how this connects with work and life. Life is a lot like a high jump competition. Whether we are thinking of our role as an employee, a friend, a family member, a spouse, a dad, etc. we are always striving to do better. Every day is an opportunity for us to improve and reach the next level. Now, imagine having a high jump competition where you didn’t know how high you needed to jump. You’d never do that. You’d want to make sure you knew how high you needed to jump long before you got ready to actually leave the ground.

With all the above said, how often are we pursuing things or doing our jobs without knowing where the high bar is? Think about this for a moment. When was the last time you thought about your role at work and said, “In this role, excellence looks like ________,” and then measured yourself against that bar to see how you were doing? When is the last time you said, “When being a good friend/family member/dad/spouse/human/etc., excellence looks like _________,” and then checked to see if you were rising to the challenge?

I don’t know about you, but I can easily get lost in the day to day and lose sight of what I should be striving for. I lose sight of what the bar is, and I wait for other people (a boss, friend, spouse) to tell me where the bar is and how I’m doing versus me taking a proactive approach to define excellence and measuring myself and my progress. The only way we are ever going to do great things is if we aim for greatness, and we can’t do that without taking the time to figure out what excellence looks and feels like.

The challenge: Have you established high bars in the different aspects of your life?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry