Leaning Toward Wisdom

On the last Friday of the month I do Free Form Friday. It’s my version of urban rap…a’hem, no it’s not. But it is my version of talking about whatever is on my mind free-form-style. I hope you enjoy it. I know I did. Here’s the agenda for today’s episode: Malcolm Gladwell was asked a […]

Tony Beets is a gold miner in the Yukon, and a reality TV star on Discovery Channel’s Gold Rush. He was born in the Netherlands, but moved to Canada years ago to find better career opportunities. He’s as rough as he looks, but don’t let the appearance fool you. Tony is a desperate man. […]

You gotta roll with the punches. Yes, you gotta gotta roll with the punches. We encounter trouble with all sorts of things. Some of them are minor, like my Heil Sound boom arm for my main microphone. Thanks to Jerry Lynch at Heil, I’m getting a replacement. Today’s show is recorded on the second […]

Last Wednesday I see an article over at Rolling Stone’s website. It was a story about a Nashville songwriter named Travis Meadows. You know I’m a fan of singer/songwriters, but I’m not what you’d consider an avid country music fan. I mean, I listen to some country music, but I wouldn’t say I keep up […]

NOTE: Today’s show is a departure from my normal podcasting workflow. I recorded things in real-time on my iPhone. You’ll hear that recording, along with my commentary. Let me know if you think this works. Or not. Thanks for listening and reading. ————————————————————————————————– I’m in the car, driving from the pharmacy to the gym. Talk […]

Reframing the question must be an ancient art form. Maybe it was among the first instances of reverse engineering, flipping statements or questions around. “I don’t know why I can never seem to find ___________________.” Fill in the blank with whatever outcome people want. Money. Happiness. Fame. Popularity. A soul mate. Even a rank amateur […]

I grew up aware of Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie and Brian Tracy. The genre was called “self-help.” I never heard the phrase “personal development” until years later. That section of the bookstore continued to grow. And grow. For a regular bookstore junkie like me, it was noticeable. Even if I didn’t loiter in that […]

The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicators list 16 personality types. If you’ve never taken this assessment (or profile, or whatever you’d like to call it), you really should. I’ve taken it a few times, always with the same result, INFJ. Personality profiles first appeared in the 1920’s according to experts. One of the first profiles I was […]

The foggy wilderness of career loss or change

Recently, while watching a segment on 60 Minutes Sports, I realized I know people who are experiencing the same thing as retiring NFL players - THE WILDERNESS. In December, 2013 the NFL launched The Trust, an arm of the league designed to help players transition from being players to real human beings like the rest of us. According to an article published by MMQB (Monday Morning QuarterBack), a Sports Illustrated property...

Launched last month, The Trust is an arm of the NFLPA that offers free amenities to former players in areas of health and nutrition, career transition and financial education. The $22 million a year budget (which will increase by five percent annually) was procured from the 2011 collective bargaining agreement with the league. “A big part of our negotiations had little to do with dollars or the salary cap,” says Kevin Mawae, the former NFLPA president who stepped down in 2012 . “It was about benefits and post-career options. So this was a huge victory for us.”

Retired NFL players interviewed in the 60 Minutes Sports piece commonly refer to leaving their playing days behind and entering into "the wilderness." It's a place that's foreign to them. They've played football for as long as they can remember. Now, they're not playing and many of them are lost. A few - seemingly, far too few (hence the need for the creation of The Trust) - think seriously about crafting a future beyond the game while they're still playing. According to an article written last year, 78% of retired NFL players will file bankruptcy within 5 years. The article cites 5 reasons why professional athletes go broke, but there are many more. And it's not just about money. It's about sense of purpose. It's about confidence. It's about figuring things out and finding your way. Mostly, it's about finding your way out of THE WILDERNESS.

Have You Lost Your Job - Your Career?

We don't need a recession like the ginormous one that hit in 2008 to cause job losses. Jobs are lost even in good times. They're lost when employees haven't a clue, too. Jack Stack is known as the father of open-book management. In 1983, while serving as the plant manager of an International Harvester facility in Springfield, Missouri, Jack got word the plant would be closing. That meant 119 people would be out of work. The problem was, he thought they were doing well. Truth was, they were - so far as they knew. The problem was, they didn't know what they didn't know. They didn't see the big picture in the game of business. Sparked by knowing they could lose their entire plant because they didn't have the whole picture, Jack opened up the books. Literally. He shared financial information with the people. The employees began to take on a much greater sense of ownership as they could now relate their specific jobs to the overall financial welfare of the company. Productivity and profitability soared, along with Jack Stack's celebrity in business circles. Today, The Great Game of Business is not only a book that Jack wrote, but it's an entire training system conducted by SRM Holdings. They help people find their way out of the wilderness, even if they don't know they're lost. Jack is still pretty motivated to help people avoid facing the disastrous and unexpected news of plant closings, department shutdowns and other financial woes that hit the unsuspecting. Maybe you've experienced the same frustration and consternation that Jack felt back in the early 80's. Maybe you've walked out of a place where you worked for years with nothing more than a cardboard box. Welcome to THE WILDERNESS.

Have You Lost Your Identity?

People commonly talk of not knowing who they are any more. That NFL player who has known nothing other than playing football since grade school suddenly isn't playing any more. Now what? The question that rings inside his head nags at him,

Who am I?

Good is the enemy of great.”

That's how Jim Collins begins his classic business best seller, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't. Collins argues the veracity of that sentence because people settle for good and stop pursuing better leaving us with good, but not great outcomes.

I don't agree with Mr. Collins. Rather, I don't know how you can possibly achieve greatness without first being good. Let me tell you why I don't think good is the enemy of great!

The Value Of The Process On The Mountain

Mikaela Shiffrin, 2012

Mikaela Shiffrin is an 18-year-old World Cup Champion slalom skier. She was the subject of this month's 60 Minutes Sports on Showtime.

Born in Vail, Colorado to parents who are both accomplished skiers, Ms. Shiffrin attended the Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont. Skiing conditions in Vermont more closely resemble those of the European ski circuit giving students experience and training that has produced 30 Olympians since it's inception in the early 1970's.

The Shiffrins sent their daughter to Vermont for training, not because they're living vicariously through their talented daughter, but because she's driven and committed to become world-class. She clearly has championship stuff as evidenced by her recent World Cup championship runs. Mikaela is the youngest slalom World Champion in U.S. history.

Jeff Shiffrin told 60 Minutes Sports that he and wife Eileen were not trying to produce a professional athlete. They simply wanted her to learn "the process." Mr. Shiffrin talked candidly about the dance with the mountain. When you ski a good run that has five good turns in it, you immediately say, "That was fun. I want to do that again." Mikaela's parents concentrated on that dance while insuring she had fun learning the process.

The international skiing community marvels at Mikaela's focus, especially given her young age. However, when you understand how her parents and her coaches have helped her, it's apparent that they understood the value of repeating good habits. She wanted to be great so her supporters did everything possible to give her a process that would deliver consistently good results. That's why they recommended she delay her competition.

On December 14, 2010 Mikaela won her first race. She was 15 and it was only her 8th International Ski Federation race ever! While other skiers were busy competing, she was busy training. Her coaches at Burke knew that a full day of competition would result in 2 ski runs while a full day of training would result in 15. Fifteen good ski runs a day over a prolonged period of time gave Mikaela the foundation to become a great world-class competitor.

Burke Mountain Academy has an old-style ski lift where skiers straddle a single seat, remain on their skis and a cable pulls them back up to the top of the mountain. Those riding the cable back to the top are mere feet away from the course watching other skiers navigate the gates. During a full day of training the skiers are never off their skis, even when being pulled back to the top. Skiers sit in quiet, solitary reflection on the ride back up to the top. No cell phones, no conversation with friends. Each student is alone with their thoughts as they watch other students ski down the course. The coaches credit the process for providing students with good focus training.

Mikaela is a training junkie who is known to spend up to 5 hours a day in the gym, when she's not on the mountain.

When I was a J5 I did a lot of free skiing and I actually didn't like free skiing. I just thought it was a waste of time and I would've rather been training or directed free skiing. I always wanted to be thinking of something, whether it was arms forward or my parents had a saying 'knees to skis and hands in front’ – it's been drilled into my head an...