Sharpening Your Tools to Improve Your Craft (8-11-21)

Happy Wednesday,

This is the last in the series about mastering your craft. This week is about sharpening your tools and your skills.

One of the most important tools a chef can have is a great set of knives. The sharp blades lead to better slicing and dicing, and the sharper the blade the more precise a chef can cut with them. This precision leads to making a better meal. Over time, knives will eventually become dull as they are used over and over and over again. When this happens, a chef will take the time to sharpen them. Doing so restores the blade and its edge, helping the tool become a better asset to the chef using it.

What does this have to do with anything? In our crafts we don’t necessarily use knives, but we do leverage various skills, frameworks, and tools. How do you go about sharpening them? I primarily rely on feedback and reflection. First, I rely on feedback about my performance on a given task that helps me understand where I wasn’t as crisp as I wanted to be. This helps identify those areas I need to go back and work on. Second, I spend a lot of time reflecting. I reflect on books I’m reading, podcasts I’ve listened to, major projects I’m working on, and the small day to day stuff that sticks out to me. I reflect to initially capture lessons, and then I go back and revisit those lessons to continue to glean new insights. I especially do this whenever I’m doing a task I’ve done before. For example, when I do customer planning I’ll go back and look at my previous reflections on customer planning over the year to identify learnings to carry forward and watchouts to avoid. Doing this keeps me sharp, and helps me slice through things like a hot knife through butter (oh snap!)

The challenge: How will you sharpen your skills, frameworks, and tools?

I stand in solidarity against injustice and in support of humanity.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

An Open Letter to 2020

Dear 2020 | bedroomsoliloquies - YouTube Happy Wednesday,

The year is coming to a close and I find myself in a reflective mood. Below is my open letter to 2020.

Dear 2020,

I have so many feelings right now as you come to a close. Scratch that. I have so many conflicting feelings that I’m still sorting out. I wonder who you have shaped me to become.

I have never cherished health and loved ones as much as I do now. Thank you for that.
I feel blessed I had another year with my family. My daughters are growing up, and I’m so happy to see their imaginations are still wild and free. My wife is closer to normal. These women are my sunshine, and you solidified that for me this year.
I feel blessed, because in the grand scheme of things, I’ve been fortunate enough to not have my entire life destroyed by a pandemic.
I feel guilty that somehow I have a life that was inconvenienced by COVID while others live a life that became broken. I’m not more special than the people whose lives were destroyed.
I feel angry. You brought health problems to my wife and those are months I lost and won’t ever get back. I’m still not over that or the worry she might never fully get to 100%
I can’t decide if I’m proud or disappointed about work this year. There is pride in great work and there is pride in sometimes just managing to keep moving forward through the challenges even when the result isn’t perfect. At the same time, I sometimes feel like a failure because I didn’t hit the goals I set for myself.
I feel exhausted. At the end of 2019 I said, “There is no way that 2020 could be crazier.” #wrong. There were more obstacles than I could count I’m tired of it, all of it, and pray I can gain energy back.
I don’t know if I’m better at forgiving myself and giving myself grace, but you gave me more practice than I’ve ever had. One day that will turn into something.
I feel stronger, because you didn’t break me. The pandemic didn’t break me. My wife in the hospital, while I tried to balance taking care of her, loving my girls, and doing work didn’t break me. The constant obstacles at work didn’t break me. The exhaustion didn’t break me. Feeling disconnected from others didn’t break me. I am bruised, not broken. I was weak and continually fell short. I embraced the fact that I’m human, and am coming out of this loving others harder than I have before.
Even though I feel stronger, I’m still not at peace. The strength came at a great cost, and one that I didn’t pay as much as others. I still don’t know how to feel about all of this.
I feel loved by so many people, and I can’t be thankful enough for that.
You were so many things that I can’t really figure out what you were and how to feel about you yet. I only hope I take whatever I learned from you into a 2021 filled with new possibilities.

Those are some of the thoughts that continue to swim around in my head. Some of yours might be similar and some of them might be radically different. Whatever you are feeling is okay.

The challenge: If you haven’t taken the time, take a few moments to reflect on 2020 and the lessons and emotions it gave to you this year. How will these shape you moving forward?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Zooming in on Flowers and Our Lives (8-12-20)

This week I want to kick off a series inspired by plants. We’ll start by reflecting on zooming in on flowers and our lives.

It started as a joke. One day I came home from a run and noticed the flowers my wife had planted. I got close to them, pulled out my iphone, zoomed in as close as I could, and did my best to take an overly artistic photo. I thought it would be funny, because I don’t have photography skills. Then, I looked at the picture. It’s not that I had great skills, but there was something about zooming in and seeing a flower for the first time like that. It made me pause and appreciate how beautiful it was. Since then, from time to time I like to take zoomed in pictures of flowers to see what I can capture. Check out the picture above and tell me that isn’t amazing.

You might be wondering where this is going. My wife has planted flowers for years, and I never fully appreciated them until I stopped one day to admire their beauty. Since then, I’ve seen flowers in an entirely different light. In a similar way, all too often we are in too much of a rush to realize the beauty in our life that surrounds us. However, if we are lucky enough to pause from time to time and examine our lives, we often can find something hidden away. We can find something small, beautiful, and powerful if we are willing to zoom in and look a little closer. Once you see that one piece of beauty in your life, you’ll continue to find more and more beauty around you.

The challenge: Are you taking the time to slow down and zoom in on the life you are living?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

An Open Letter to 2019 (12-11-19)

The year is coming to a close and I often find myself in a reflective mood. I spend the hours hanging out on my couch, basking in the glow of my Christmas tree, thinking about everything that’s happened this past year. With this in mind, this entry will be a little different. It’s an open letter to 2019.

Dear 2019,

I don’t exactly know where to start with you. If I described you in a word I could use humbling, complicated, roller-coaster, intriguing, or challenging. The more I think about it the more I realize the word that best sums you up “needed”. You were all the lessons I needed, but didn’t know I wanted.

You gave my wife a new job, and proved to me that some people are put on this earth for specific reasons. It’s beautiful to see the stars align in this way and to see her this way.
You gave me another year with two daughters filled with belly hurting laughs, gentle smiles, the softest of strong hugs, movie watching snuggles, skinned knees, new journeys as a parent, and reminded me that my world is my family.
You constantly showed me that sickness is real, and that having my health and the health of my family is precious.
You reminded me that despite my efforts and my previous successes in life, I am still in fact human. I am weak, flawed, breakable, mistake prone, and there is deep power in embracing this.
You knocked me down and at times made life an ugly run in a 95 degree hail storm. You also reminded me that I’ll find a way to get back up and if I believe hard enough my legs will keep going.
And I know that a 95 degree hail storm doesn’t make sense, but 2019 you didn’t always make sense either, which taught me sometimes patience is the only thing that will help you see what you’ve been given.
You blessed with me a great team and tough challenges, just so we could see the amazing hearts we have inside of each other.
You were humbling, complicated, a roller-coaster, challenging, joyous, chaotic, growth-inducing, filled with love and every other emotion, and you gave me all the things I needed and never asked for. Thank you.

Kind of corny, but 100% true. The challenge: If you haven’t taken the time, take a few moments to reflect on 2019 and the lessons it taught you that you never asked for. If you look deep enough, you might find a little magic.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Dusting Off Shelves and Skills (9-6-17)

Last week was about taking out the trash and letting go. This week we will reflect on dusting, and taking the time to brush off your skills (and your shoulders if you are Jay-Z). By the way, this week is dedicated to Hannah Short, because she is the one who said we need to do something on dusting.

You may not know this about me, but I’m a cleaner. I’m not obsessive about cleaning, but I do enjoy keeping everything relatively clean, which means I am definitely someone who dusts. I dust in order to keep things clean, tidy, and functioning. Not only do I dust, but where I come from, there are two kinds of dusting (#dustingsnob). There is feather dusting, which is a relatively quick exercise, where you use the feather dusting to brush off things where they are. It takes minimal time and effort, and is best suited as something that is done between serious cleaning. Feather dusting keeps things from getting too dirty. Then, there is real dusting where you bust out some pledge, take EVERYTHING off the shelves, and go after dust bunnies like you were a fox. This is more labor intensive, but it also helps you achieve a deeper clean and isn’t that what everyone wants in life? It’s not that one kind of dusting is necessarily better than the other, but each one has different purposes and uses.

So what does this have to do with work? It’s really easy to avoid dusting. Then, all of a sudden when you do look at stuff you realize there are dust bunnies, gunk, and grime covering everything and messing stuff up. I feel the same can be said about work. It’s really easy to get so lost in the day to day stuff that we ignore the dirt and grime that find a way to bog down our skills and capabilities. When we ignore dusting, we ignore ourselves, and we take away our chance to get better. Seriously, how often do you stop and take a few moments to think about you and brushing off your skills? Just like at home, I feel that there are a couple of different ways of dusting things off at work. You can feather dust, which to me is taking a few minutes to stop and reflect on something you’ve recently experienced, read, watched, etc. You can also roll up your sleeves and do some deep cleaning, whether that is going to workshops, deep diving with a trusted mentor/coach/colleague, or some other activity that requires you to go to a deeper level.

The challenge: Are you taking the time to dust? Do you have a specific skill or competency you want to dust off?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Holding up a Mirror (4-8-15)

Last week was about sharing your reflection. This week is about holding up a mirror to help people reflect. Overall, it’s a story about a mistake I made and how someone coached me to think about why I do what I do.

Imagine that we are working together and I’m doing pretty good work. Then, one day I send you something and say, “This is rough, but give me your thoughts.” You quickly see that it is complete garbage. You ask yourself, “How could he be so far off? I’ve never seen him do stuff that is so bad.” You give me a suggestion to go in another direction. Then I come back to you with something that’s really good. You’re left wondering, “Why did he go from sending me crap to sending me something really good? How does he miss so badly and then turn around and get it right?”

Fast forward. I’m sitting down with a co-worker and asking for some feedback. She highlights a few good things and then tells me the above story. Her fear is that I might do this with other folks, and they’ll be left asking themselves the same questions. A lesser coach would have just pointed it out and told me to fix it. Instead, she holds up a mirror to me and says, “Can you help me understand why you do this?”

I think and realize that I’m not communicating my intent well. What is happening in these situations is that I’m trying to figure out which of two problems I need to address. Problem 1 is that it is a good idea, but I’m having problems executing it. Problem 2 is that the idea isn’t good, so I need to change course altogether. The way I move forward really depends on what the problem is. Our email exchange told me I was dealing with Problem 2, so I switched to a different idea and that’s why the work was better. Now she knows my thought process and why I did what I did. She says that this makes sense, but without this rationale it just looks like I missed the boat by a mile and half.

Here’s the thing. I’ve made this mistake before. I’ve made it with peers and higher up folks including VPs. If she would have just pointed this out and told me to fix it, then nothing would have changed. I would have fixed it once, but probably made the same mistake over and over again. However, since she asked the question and held the mirror up to help me reflect, I am more cognizant of what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and how I can be better in the future.

Are you holding up a mirror to help others reflect or are you just pointing everything out?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Sharing your Reflection (4-1-15)

I don’t meant to brag, but I’m at least a 9.5 on a scale from 1 to 10 when it comes to attractiveness, because of my beard, beautiful hair, and a physique so chiseled people call me David (sculpture reference, what?) Luckily, I don’t really think of myself that way. As we’ve been talking about reflecting, it’s also important to take the time to share the way you see yourself with others to make sure that other people see a lion and not a kitten like the photo on the right.

Recently I set up time and talked to someone about how I’m perceived. We talked about strengths (my beard, which is the only thing we could come up with) and my improvement areas (knowing when to flex my style and pull back a little bit, coming across as brash/obnoxious/silly, etc.) After I shared I shut my mouth, listened, and only asked questions to better understand her perspective. I learned some important nuggets that day from her.

When it came to my strengths, she agreed with what I shared, but she also talked to me about other things I do well that I just took for granted. She helped me see how these are unique things I can leverage in the future. Without her help, I wouldn’t have realized that other people were seeing these things in me and how important those things I are for my current and future success.

When it came to areas of improvement, she told me that she found me annoying when we first worked together because we clashed, there was bad communication, and we were put in a difficult situation. I almost hugged her. Yes, you read that right. I wanted to hug her, because she cared enough about me to be that honest. By the way, I agree and totally saw how I came across that way. Anyway, she also told me about something I do that I wasn’t aware of. Sometimes when I’m working with folks and I have an idea or a question that’s a little different I’ll preface things with, “Weird comment/question for you…” The people who know me laugh, and chime in with something like, “Big surprise.” However, she explained that the people who don’t know me could take this as me apologizing for being different. It gives them an opportunity to hold the uniqueness against me. Instead of making the joke, I could just go in with, “I’m looking at this from a different perspective. Here’s my thought…” I walked away from that conversation after learning a few more things about myself and reaffirming that there is another person who cares enough about me to be really honest. You can imagine how much more I think of her now.

Anyway, since I’ve shared a bit of my reflection consider this an open invitation. If you ever have feedback for me you think I should know, send it my way. On the flip side, if you ever want to share your reflection with someone and gather feedback, I’ll be happy to do that too.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry