The Magic of Vulnerability (9-16-26)

Last week we kicked off a series focused on things that inspired me during our insights summit. We focused on learning how to solve problems like a magician. This week, we will look at the magic of vulnerability. (See how smooth that transition was 😉)

Prentice Stovall is a Sr VP in Immunology, and one of the leaders who spoke during our conference. He had a fireside chat moderated by Bob Draper, Immunology Market Research leader. During the chat, Prentice shared all kinds of nuggets that filled my cup as an insights professional. He talked about how our insights organization has the ability to influence all of Lilly. He discussed the importance of integrated insights across data and teams, so we don’t send the business in the wrong direction. He shared how our judgment and ability to tell stories with data are critical to the success of the organization. I was definitely feeling the love.

He was also vulnerable in a way that made those points resonate more. Prentice talked about how his time working in market research has shaped a lot of how he operates. The questions he asks, the way he thinks about data, all of this was shaped by his time in research. He took this further and shared a story of being early in his career and he received feedback along the lines of, “Prentice, you seem to find a way to make data even more complex.” He talked about how he had to work on this skill and how he approaches things now. When he admitted this out loud, the entire audience chuckled, because we all had been there and made the exact same mistake. We also smiled, because this tale of his showcased how this storytelling skill he values so much, isn’t always easy. Having a CMO share a moment like this wasn’t on my bingo card for the day, but it made everything else he said that much more powerful and that much more human.

Let’s connect some dots. When was the last time you saw a leader be vulnerable and human about something? What impact did that have on you? When was the last time YOU were vulnerable and human about something? What impact did that have on you and the people you work with?

In a world of AI and emerging technologies, I believe we are all looking for something or someone a little more human. We are looking for the connection. We are looking for the person who can talk about a failure with a smile, because we’ve all been there. We don’t have to look for these people. We can BE these people. Whether you’re a leader on stage or with colleagues, you have the chance to show something real.

The challenge: How will you model vulnerability and authenticity?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Just Checking In (9-2-26)

We are going on a slight detour from our normal blog stuff this week. I’m going to keep it 100% real. I feel that virtually everyone I’ve spoken with lately is going through something tough. Maybe, it’s change and uncertainty at work. Maybe, it’s being crushed by the avalanche of requests coming from everywhere. Maybe, it’s family illness and being a caretaker when your energy is all but spent. With all that said, I just wanted to pause to check in. I think this is the letter the universe wants me to write, so I hope this meets you wherever you are.

Happy Wednesday,

I know you’re going through a lot right now. It probably feels like you’re getting the crap kicked out of you from all angles with a few sucker punches thrown in for good measure.

I feel you, and because I care about you, I want to meet you where you are. If you’re in the mud, I can sit in the mud beside you and agree that this is gross, squishy, and just sticking to us in all the worst ways. If you’re in the dark, I can be beside you too and agree that it’s a bit scary when you can’t see where you’re going. If you’re in a storm, I can be there too and agree that it’s cold and the claps of thunder and lightning are startling.

Wherever you are, I’ll be there. And when you’re ready to move, I’ll walk beside you. I’ll remind you that multiple things can be true at the same time. It’s totally true that this sucks. This is hard. This is exhausting. This hurts. It’s also true that you have years under your belt of persevering. You are able to rest without giving up. You are strong enough to push forward without losing yourself. It’s also true that in spite of all of these things or maybe because of all of these things, you still have kindness in your heart. At the end of the day, you’re human and loved.

My challenges for us this week

If you can, sit beside a friend in the mud/dark/storm. Don’t fix. Just be there.
Be kind to yourself. You don’t need to beat yourself up when the world is trying to do that already 😉

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Failure and Bounce Back Plans (8-25-26)

Last week was about choosing how to use failure. This week is about failure and having bounce back plans.

I have an important presentation to give later today. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous. As good as I am and as confident as I am in my skills, I know that there is a 100% chance that I’m going to fall short somewhere. I am 100% confident that someone will make a comment or ask a question that I won’t necessarily have the best answer for. It’s inevitable.

On one hand, this is scary. On the other hand, this clarity gives me something. It gives me the ability to focus on having a bounce back plan. Bounce back plans are things I put in place to help when things go sideways. In this case, the bounce back plan will likely look something like: “Clarify the question. Share current perspective. Acknowledge the gap. Align on follow-up plan to close the gap. Pivot back to the key objectives of the presentation and move forward.” I have drilled this in my head over and over and over again, so when I do stumble, this will take over and I’ll bounce back like muscle memory.

Let’s connect some dots. We talk about embracing failure a lot. We talk about dusting ourselves off after failure a lot. We often don’t talk about HOW we get back up after failure. We don’t talk about what dusting yourself off looks like. We don’t talk about the actions we take to reorient situations when they go sideways. Since we don’t talk or think about these, it’s easy to get caught flat footed when failure occurs. By spending a little time anticipating that failure will occur and having a plan to help you bounce back, we can spend less time knocked down and more time getting up and moving again.

The challenge: What is your bounce back plan for failure?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Choosing How to Use Failure (8-19-26)

Last week was about failure, perspective, and avoiding downward spirals. We are going to build on that by reflecting on how we choose to use failure.

I lifted weights this past weekend. I had a goal number of reps I was trying to hit for each exercise. Things were going great, until they weren’t. Suddenly, I couldn’t hit my rep goals anymore, and I fell short on my last few exercises. At this point, I had failed, and I could use this failure in two different ways. I could take this failure and use it as conclusive proof that I was a weak sauce loser. The other option would be to use the failure as fuel, admit I had missed today, and come back ready to triumph. I chose the latter. As I left the workout, I was proud of everything I had accomplished AND fired up to push myself harder.

Let’s make some connections to work. No one is perfect. If you are setting a high bar for yourself then falling short is inevitable. I’ve shared before that my high bar for my role is to deliver magic, to crush all my goals and make it look effortless. There are some places where I’ve delivered this level of magic. There are others where I’ve fallen short of my goals. In those shortcomings I can see how I could have done things differently or better. I could use these failures and shortcomings in two different ways. I could use these as evidence that I’m a horrible at my job and should give up. (I’ve been down that rabbit hole. Have you? It’s not fun.) I can also use these failures and shortcomings as learnings and as motivation to do things differently and do better.

Now take a moment to think about your work. The last time you made a mistake, did you allow it to eat you alive, or did you use it as fuel? No matter who you are failure is inevitable. How we choose to use that failure is up to each of us.

The challenge: How will you choose to use failure?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Failure, Perspective, and Avoiding Downward Spirals (8-12-26)

Last week was about harvesting failure. This week is about failure, perspective, and avoiding downward spirals.

I remember that I had someone I was mentoring reach out to me about a colossal failure they had. They needed help. We sat down and they started talking about how huge of a mistake this was and how big of a deal it was. I asked them what happened. They explained the situation, beating themselves up for doing something so stupid.

When they stopped talking, I asked them what else happened. They stared at me confused. At this point I said something like, “You said it was a colossal failure. I’m waiting for the colossal part. What happened next?” Then, they told me that was all they had to share. At that point I looked at them and said, “Oh! You are really beating yourself up. You’re right, you missed on that one. You whiffed. That’s not a colossal failure though. Everyone has done that. I’ve done something like that a few times. In fact, if you don’t get your butt kicked once or twice a year you aren’t pushing hard enough.” We chuckled, and the outside perspective made them see things differently.

Let’s connect some dots. Does the situation above sound familiar? I’m guessing most of us have been in both roles. We’ve been the mentee, spiraling hard after a simple mistake. We’ve also been the outside observer, realizing that in the grand scheme of things this isn’t such a big deal. We talk a lot about embracing failure and moving on. One important part of this is putting failure into context. In the grand scheme of things, most of our mistakes and failures will be small stumbling blocks that we can later build with. Let’s treat them that way, as opposed to viewing them as colossal mistakes we will never recover from.

The challenge: How will you keep failure in perspective and avoid downward spirals?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Harvesting Failure (8-5-26)

Happy Wednesday,

Last week was about failures and premortems. This week is about harvesting failure.

Pretend for a minute that you are a farmer. Pretend that you were supposed to plant a field full of corn. The crops start growing you and notice something interesting. You have a lot of corn, but you also have potatoes. You weren’t trying to grow potatoes. They just showed up.

At this point, you’ve failed to plant a field full of corn. With that said, when it’s harvest time what will you do? Will you only harvest the corn, leaving the potatoes to rot and fall apart? Will you harvest the potatoes too and see what you can do with them? Will you spend time analyzing the soil to see what happened?

What does this have to do with failure? This week’s analogy is all about learning from and making the most of what happened. I would hope that even though you didn’t plant the potatoes, you’d still harvest them and do something with them. I hope you would spend time analyzing the soil to see what happened.

We talk all the time about being okay with failure. We say how we should fail forward and that we should celebrate failure. What we don’t spend enough time thinking about is how we should harvest failure. Rather than failing and trying to forget it, what learnings can we bring forward with us? I’m not happy that I failed in various points in my career, but I am thankful for what I’ve taken from that to make me better.

The challenge: What will you harvest from failure?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Failure and Premortems (7-29-26)

This week I want to kick off a new series focused on failure, and we will start by thinking about why we will fail and premortems.

I have a lot on my plate. (Does that sound familiar?) In order to try to manage this, I keep a Word document with all my key workstreams and anything that requires a significant part of my time. I then prioritize those workstreams and update them on a regular basis.

This week I took an additional step. I fed my priority sheet to Claude, and asked it to deliver the top 10 reasons why I would fail delivering these things based on what Claude knew about my workload and me. It pulled out some great reasons why I might fail including things like, “I will become the connection point and bottleneck for too many things simultaneously.” “The important non-urgent thinking tasks will be put in the background to deal with urgent feeling fires.” “You don’t protect enough unstructured thinking time.” From there, I asked it to give me 3 tangible things I could action on to prevent this and did those.

Let’s make some connections. Most of the time, when we analyze failure, we analyze it once it has already happened. This is useful, however, it’s too late. Instead of doing a postmortem, I did a premortem. I realized I was overwhelmed and the chances of failure were higher than usual. Instead of letting this happen, I attacked it. I asked what would cause me to fail. I defined the problem and then started acting on it. I can’t guarantee this will eliminate failure, but I can say it will increase my chances of success.

The challenge: Will you conduct premortems to identify failure points before they happen?

Bonus- This is the grid I fill out with my workstreams. It’s been pretty helpful.

Workstream	Biz Impact (H,M,L)	Deliverable Grade	Effort Needed (H, M, L)	Priority (A, B, C)	Notes
Insert project/workstream	What is the business impact?	What “grade” does this have to be?	How much effort do you need to put in?	What is the final priority	Insert any relevant notes to explain what this workstream is about and why it might be high priority or why it might take a certain amount of effort

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Taking Time to Soak It All In (7-20-26)

This is a bonus blog about taking time to soak in where you are and what you’ve done.

Last Friday, my boss sent me some recognition about something I recently delivered. Within a few seconds I had read the email, thought “that’s nice”, sent a quick reply, filed it away into a folder where I keep the recognition I get, and started to move to the next thing. The email was already sorted into the folder when I paused for a second. I decided to stop rushing to the next thing. I sat there for a moment and let myself absorb what I had delivered, the feedback, and the recognition I had received. I allowed myself to feel proud and accomplished. I slowed down and spent a few seconds taking it all in and felt all the better for it. Then, and only then, did I move to the next task.

Let’s connect dots. Has anything like this ever happened to you? Have you ever been so lost in the grind that you just keep moving from thing to thing? Are you ever so lost in the grind that you don’t let the achievement and recognition sink in?

If this has happened to you before, I’m sure you can also attest to how exhausting and mentally draining this is. It’s so easy to get lost in all of this. Sometimes, we just need to slow down. Sometimes, we need to take a deep breath, look around, and be proud of where we are and how we got here.

The challenge: Will you take a moment to soak in what you’ve achieved and what you’ve done?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Enabling Trade-offs (7-15-26)

Last week was about making trade-offs in order to avoid burnout. This week is about enabling trade-offs.

The other day my boss did something that was very simple and very effective. I was on an email chain with my boss and someone else. My boss wrote something along the lines of, “You should connect with Andrew on this. Andrew will be wrapped up this week and next week on X.” It was a simple two sentences. It drove home that this was important. It also gave me air cover that he didn’t expect me to move on it right away. He was enabling me to make a trade-off to focus on X, and get to this at a later date. It was a simple two sentences that were powerful and appreciated. Have you ever had a leader give you air cover? How did it feel?

Let’s connect the dots. How often do you hear leaders talk about how we need to make trade-off decisions? I feel this is a constant talking point at most townhalls. Now, how often do leaders enable you to actually make trade-off decisions? How often do they proactively give you the air cover to not do all the things all the time at the same time? This is where things tend to fall apart. It’s easy to say the right things, and much harder to do the right things.

Something I’m trying to do a better job of is ensuring there is more comfort, clarity, and alignment around what can move slow in comparison. The conversation usually goes like this, “The top priorities are A, B, and C. I see you are also trying to move X, Y, and Z. If X, Y, and Z ever threaten A, B, and C, then I want you to know I’m okay with X, Y, and Z moving slower. I’m comfortable with you pausing that work and making that trade-off, so we can nail A, B, and C.” You can have conversations like this if you are officially in a leadership position and even if you are an individual contributor partnering with cross-functional teams.

The challenges: How are you giving your people air cover to make trade-off decisions?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Trade Offs and Burn Out (7-7-26)

This week I want us to pause for a moment to think about the rest of the year, trade-offs, and burn out.

I was off last week, enjoying our summer shutdown. During this time, I made a few decisions about things that would be non-negotiable for the week. For example, I decided that I would get 7k-10k steps in every day. Nothing was going to get in the way of this. Maybe I would trade off sleeping in, so I could wake up and walk first thing. Maybe I’d trade off sitting on the coach relaxing for walking. I was intentional about my decision, and I was intentional about making trade-offs to reach that goal.

Then, work started up again. We are basically 1 week into the back half of the year. Over the past few days I’ve heard people say things like, “We’re already back to the races,” “Back on the treadmill,” “It’s already so busy.” Do you feel this way? I know I do. All of a sudden, achieving those goals became more complicated, because a lot more was on my plate.

Let’s connect some dots. In my time away, I was able and willing to do things for the house, my family, and myself. This filled my cup and made me a better human. As we start up the second half of the year, I can already see that there is more work than I’ll ever be able to do. If I try to do it all, I know I’ll burn myself out. When I burn myself out, I won’t be good for my family, myself, or my work colleagues.

I’m realizing that if I’m not intentional about my goals and the trade-offs I’m willing to make I won’t be successful. If I’m not intentional, I might spend too much time on X project and not enough on Y, when Y is what really counts. If I’m not intentional, I might trade-off my health or my time with my family for getting lost in the daily grind.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry