Obstacles and Celebrating Progress/Small Wins (10-15-25)

Last week was about embracing the grimy path to success. This week is about failed rope climbs, conquered warped walls, and celebrating progress and small wins.

I failed the warped wall 3 times at Frontline OCR back in May, which resulted in some nasty friction burns on my leg. With that in mind, I came into the recent Midwest OCR looking for redemption. The first obstacle I ran into was the rope climb. I did not complete this obstacle. HOWEVER, I’m so excited, because for the first time in my life, I actually hooked my feet correctly. I got further than I’ve ever made it. Then, when I got to the warped wall, I finally beat that thing! I latched onto the rope and knew I wasn’t letting go until I had finished climbing the wall. I had so much adrenaline running through my body after completing the wall that I thought I might pass out.

What does this have to do with anything? It would have been easy for me to call my race a failure. I failed obstacles. I was slower than I wanted to be. I didn’t win. However, I view it a success because of the progress and small wins I had. Now think about work for a minute. How often do you pause to celebrate progress and small wins? Be honest. If you’re anything like me, it’s so easy to get focused on the end goal with a win/lose mentality that I don’t pause at work. Then, I find myself feeling stuck or like a failure, all because I haven’t opened my eyes to the progress that has been made. Does this sound familiar to anyone else? It doesn’t have to be this way. We can all be celebrating small wins on a more regular basis.

The challenge: How will you ensure you are celebrating progress and small wins along the way?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Embracing the Grimy Path to Success (10-8-25)

This week we are going to kick off some reflections from my recent obstacle course race at Midwest OCR. Our first topic is embracing the grimy path to success.

Here is the picture of me after my most recent obstacle course race. I’m smiling, striking a pose, looking strong, and proudly wearing my medal. This picture makes it look like I smoothly and effortlessly navigated the race in a perfect fashion. None of that is true. My race was ugly. You don’t see how I failed quite a few obstacles. You don’t see me red faced and feeling like I was dying on some of those hills. You don’t see the time I tripped and slid down a hill into a knee-deep mud bog that swallowed my legs and almost took my shoes. You don’t see the bruises I picked up along the way. Now that you know those things, does this make me any less successful? For me, just because it might have been a little ugly doesn’t take away from the fact that I was ultimately successful.

Let’s make some connections. Have you ever looked at a successful person and said, “Whoa! They have it all figured out. They just make success look so smooth and effortless. They must be perfect”? I know I have. Then the next thing I did was start comparing myself to them, which led to self-doubt. I would feel like a failure if everything I did wasn’t effortless and smooth. As I’ve got older, I’ve realized that success doesn’t come from things being flawless. Success is the result of continuing to persevere, especially when things are grimy and ugly.

The challenge: Will you embrace that success doesn’t have to be pristine? Will you embrace that the path to success is often grimy and ugly?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Night Obstacle Course Racing, Headlamps, and Moving Forward (5-24-23)

Last week I concluded a series about lifting by sharing a story from a recent nighttime obstacle course race. Lindsey Caruthers reached out to me and suggested there was more to tell. That got me thinking, and now this week is about running a night obstacle course race, headlamps, and moving forward.

A few days before the race, I got my hands on the course map. I could see that it was going to be around 4 miles, mainly running through woods. I knew there was going to be a lot of mud. I saw the names of the obstacles, so I had an idea of what was going to come my way. When I started the race, the sun was still out, so for the first 30 minutes I could see quite a bit in front of me, including the obstacles. Then, it got dark. That’s when everyone turned on their headlamps. Now, instead of being able to see out in the distance, I was only able to see the few feet in front of me. While this may have slowed me down a bit, it didn’t stop me. While I couldn’t see as much as I once could, I could still see enough in front of me to keep going. I could still see the marked trail. I could see the obstacles as I approached them. I could remember the obstacles on the map to estimate where I was on my journey. I was able to stay focused on taking the steps in front of me over and over again, until finally I reached the finish line.

How does this connect to anything? I’d argue that organizational change management efforts or leading projects is a lot like running an obstacle course race in the dark. It would be so much easier if we always had a goal AND a clearly outlined path we could easily follow to get to that goal. However, it doesn’t work that way. You might have a general idea of where you are trying to go, but you like don’t have a clear line of sight to get there. The path isn’t going to be easy either. It’s going to be filled with mud and obstacles like resource demands, difficult stakeholders, last minute pivots, etc. It’s easy to freeze and become paralyzed when things aren’t 100% clear. The thing to remember though, is you don’t have to be able to see every step on the path clearly. All you really need is a good head lamp in the form of a clear milestone or next step to take. As long as you have this headlamp, you can keep moving forward, even if things are a little dark and tough.

The challenge: How can you keep your headlamp focused on the immediate next step, so you can keep going?

Bonus thought: I can’t remember where I saw this, but it’s always stuck with me. I saw a presentation about how to successfully drive organizational change management. They said you needed 3 things: A clear vision of where you’re going, a clear why that people can rally around, and an IMMEDIATE next step the audience can take toward that vision. If folks get stuck, it’s because you don’t have those 3 things.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Stress Fracture, Setbacks, and Bouncing Back (9-7-22)

Happy Wednesday,

Last week was about taking time to find stillness. This week is about setbacks and bouncing back.

When the doctor told me I had a stress fracture I was happy to know what was going on with my leg, but I was also bummed because I knew this would be a setback for me. had been training for some races during spring/summer that I was excited about. Those goals were now out the window. After that sunk in, I looked at the doctor and said, “Okay, well the fracture kind of stinks. I want to be able to be mobile and ideally, I want to be able to get back to running and doing races. How do I get back to that?” At that point, he walked me through his plan to help me recover and ease my way back into running. I agreed to his plan and followed it. After a few months I had made nice strides in my recovery, and I recently completed my first obstacle course race since the stress fracture. The race was a lot of fun and I and was proud of my performance. I found a good rhythm and most importantly, had no pain throughout the event. It was the first milestone of the comeback, and I have a few more races set up before the end of the year. (Side note, why haven’t I quit my job yet to become a race model? I mean, look at that pic! 😉)

What does this have to do with anything? Whether at work or in life, we’ve all had setbacks. What matters is what happens after we have the setbacks. Do you get stuck where you fell, or do you find a path forward? I do both. Sometimes when the setback comes, I fall and get lost in that failure. I get trapped in a cycle of self-doubt and believing it won’t get better. I lose sight of my goals and purpose, so I struggle finding a path forward. Do you ever feel this way? Other times, I find a way to bounce back. I believe the key to bouncing back is to first allow yourself to full experience the setback, because that’s where the learning comes. Then, you must reorient yourself and refocus on your goals. If you can do that. If you can say, “Yeah, this setback/failure stinks, AND I still have a vision for where I want to go” then your body will find a path forward.

The challenge: How will you respond to setbacks?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Running YOUR Race and the Permission to not be Perfect (2-2-22)

This week I want to kick-off a series inspired by obstacle course racing hobby. We’ll start with giving people permission to not be perfect and running YOUR race.

This past weekend I completed the Abominable Snow Race. I did the Yeti Challenge consisting of 2 laps of the course which equals 11.6 miles of running/hiking through snowy forests with a lot of hills, 48 obstacles, cold temps (3 degrees at the start and a high of 20), and about 5 hours for me to complete. This is the longest obstacle course race I had ever done, so I was nervous leading up to it. Alice, my wise 9 year old daughter, gave me a pep talk. She said, “This isn’t about winning, dad. This isn’t about getting every obstacle right. You just have to do your race at your pace. That’s all you got to do.” I had never had any delusions of winning. Still, I was putting pressure on myself to have the perfect race, to ace every obstacle, to be fast, and to put in an awesome performance. Alice’s words were exactly what I needed. They gave me permission to not be perfect. They were a reminder that this wasn’t about anyone else. This was about me and my growth. As I did the race, I failed 8 obstacles, was so much slower than I wanted to be, and dang was it ugly. BUT, I ran my race and I FINISHED! While I’m still sore, I’m also incredibly proud of myself because I couldn’t have done this a few months ago. My effort and my growth is what matters, not perfection.

How does this connect with work? I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get concerned with being perfect. I become obsessed with this idea that a mistake or a flaw will negate everything I do. These thoughts paralyze me. Do you ever feel that way? Throughout my life, I’ve realized I don’t need to be perfect. I just have to be willing to try. I have to be willing to keep moving, even if the journey if filled with mistakes. Vulnerability moment. I’m trying to figure out my newish role, especially in the midst of business units merging together. There are new processes, changes, and problems popping up from every direction. I started to feel a bit like a failure, because I wasn’t perfect with all these things. The other day I spoke to my boss and said, “Am I doing okay? I just feel like there’s all this stuff right now that I don’t have a handle on. Should I? It just feels like I’m messing stuff up, like I’m not good.” Similar to Alice, my boss more or less said, “You’re doing fine. You can’t expect to be perfect right now with all this stuff popping up. You’re good. Keep moving forward.” It was permission to not be perfect. It was permission to not have everything figured out, and that made all the difference. It was a reminder to keep moving forward. It was a reminder to focus on my effort and my growth, because those are the things that will get me to where I want to go and help me become who I want to be.

The challenge: Are you giving yourself permission to not be perfect? Are you giving other people permission to not be perfect? Are you running YOUR race?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry