I appreciated this advice from a good friend today:

I’m a big believer in what I call collaborative intelligence. I will never be the smartest guy in the room. But I know how to find, talk to, and work with people smarter than me. You have the interpersonal skills to do the same. My point here is to highlight another avenue to learn what you feel you need to know for the business but relieve some of the pressure you might feel to know everything before you act, a common pitfall.

With the weather in Atlanta so nice recently (today’s high is 68, tomorrow and Wednesday should be 72), I’ve been thinking about how temperature relates to climate. Temperature over the long-term (multiple years) helps to define the climate of a location. One specific day can be extremely hot or extremely cold. Even an entire season or year can vary wildly from the norm. However, the climate is determined by years of recorded temperatures.

Business is the same. Cycles occur and profits go up and down. One year may look bad, but the long term fundamentals should be checked. Do they make sense for the business to be profitable over the next decade?

Investing is the same. The stock market may fall in any year, but most investments for the long term will grow.

Your job is the same. Any one day may be terrible. You may hate your job for a week or a client may rake you over the coals once. But how does it fare over 5 years?

Decisions should be made based on the climate (long-term) not the current temperature (short-term.)

When you are looking for a company to work for, look for one that you can fight with instead of one that you fight against.

This opening paragraph of May’s Fast Company story, “Taming the Alpha Exec”, resonated with me:

His name is George. He’s a vice president at Cleveland’s Eaton Corp. And he’s a recovering alpha exec. It took him three years at Eaton to admit that he had a problem. It took another year for him to commit to doing something about it.

Months of professional probing and coaching later, George T. Nguyen is learning how big a jerk he has been-autocratically dispensing orders through his administrative assistant, for example-and how little loyalty he has inspired…

I believe that the author points out some positive steps that I also have been trying to do better at:

He persuaded Nguyen to start explaining decisions to subordinates and submit to some awkward situations, such as emotional “clearing the air” sessions that allowed long-festering gripes to emerge. “It gives people the license to tell me when I do something wrong and correct me,” Nguyen says.

As I wrote last week, it doesn’t pay to be an ass. Standing in line at Au bon Pain at the airport this morning, a lady realized that she was standing in a line that led to a cash-register with no employee. I offered for her to jump in line with us because she had been waiting as long as us.

It turns out that she was on our flight to Kansas City and had the seat next to mine. Good thing I wasn’t a jerk. You just never know where you’ll see someone again.

I had a unique conversation with a friend and customer in the food industry last week. She and I were talking about a new key contact at a mutual customer that we have. I haven’t met him yet but she has.

Quickly, she began describing a young man who was full of confidence and a little too full of himself. Apparently, the only ideas that he think are worthy are his own. He doesn’t really give any one else respect and in his position of controlling millions of dollars of purchasing power, he thinks everyone should bow to his great power. (Could you imagine that a few ill words were spoken in confidence about this fellow?)

Of course, being the good supplier that I am, I will tailor my interactions with this gentleman to play to his arrogant nature. That’s going to be fun…

But, life is too short to be full of yourself. And, life is too short to be an ass.

In the end, I think he will be ineffective in his dealings with others. Initially, people like the the lady I was talking to will cut him some slack because he’s knew and feeling out his new position. However, if he doesn’t change, he’ll lose all respect from those who work with him and for him. He’ll get left out of new opportunities. No team will follow him and therefore he won’t be able to leverage his talents through others. I think he’ll either need to change his ways or he’ll be gone in 36 months.

Thankfully, our team at the chicken plant has taught me this lesson. I’ve been an ass too much. Way too much. And it makes me ineffective. But even more, life is about people. Life is about relationships. Screwing up relationships by being an ass makes a short life bitter when it could be so sweet.

Two great executors (not in the persecutory sense) responded to my question: Do “Execution” and “Waiting” contradict? Rusty said, “Waiting should be completely removed from our vocabulary.” Jeffrey-Michael seemed to argue against Rusty by stating, “With all due respect to him, waiting is – and certainly should be – integral to execution. It must be an intrinsic component of any solid execution plan.”

I agree with both. Unfortunately, waiting can be forced upon us by others (baseball batter waiting for the pitcher). It can be forced upon us by circumstances (cannot vote until 18). And, it can be instigated out of our own choice (finishing college before getting married). In many business and personal situations, waiting is the critical step to let others develop and catch up to the place where we are. A proposal may take time to resonate with the team or senior leaders before it can be bought into and acted upon.

However, I do believe it is absolutely critical to follow Rusty’s advice. Waiting should only happen as a part of execution: we must choose strategically to wait. If we wait because we cannot decide which step to take next, or we are afraid of moving forward, or we are afraid of failing, or we are lazy, or for some reason other than that we’ve made a strategic decision to wait. (I think the worst excuse for not executing is not being organized. At the core, I think this is also a laziness issue.) Unless the wait is part of an execution plan, I believe we are setting ourselves up for failure.

In his book, Getting Things Done, David Allen recommends everything be put into an Inbox of some sort and a decision be made about what to do with it. Execution happens. The act may be to decide to wait and follow up with it in 6 months, but it is never simply left in the unacted upon state in the Inbox. It is acted upon strategically. (I highly recommend this book.)
Execution is critical. Waiting is often just a phase of that execution.

Tonight was one of the most difficult nights as a travelling business developer for the company. Monday night I spent in NJ. Last night and tonight (Friday) are in Houston. Weeks ago I planned to attend this conference Thursday through Saturday. Then, a last minute “have to” trip came up where I needed to be in NJ on Tuesday morning early. So, the week got booked pretty solid.

What’s the big deal? Well, I’ve got 2 friends who are more experienced and both keep telling me that they are looking for jobs with less travel. One is on the road 4-5 nights each week and the other has spent 30-40% of his time travelling. Both are reminders that life is more important that winning the business deal or collecting a bigger check on Friday.

Travelling is fun, right? No, travelling is necessary. It is important. It is critical to be face to face with customers and prospective customers. And for our business, those customers are mostly out of state.

But just because it is necessary doesn’t mean it’s fun. I’ll admit, I miss being at home on a Friday night. Tonight has been pretty hard dealing with that. My bride is at home with 3 young boys (ages 3, 1 and 2 months). My birthday is tomorrow. And my flight doesn’t have me landing home until after 7pm.

You know, it’s just that tonight I feel it. I sense it. And it’s hard. I hope that I will learn after this trip to do two things:

1. Don’t book multiple trips in the same week that require 3 nights out or more total that week.
2. Empower others to be able to assist in the customer visits so that if a “have to” comes up, the team can help relieve the stress of travel.

Tonight in Houston (picture above from my hotel room) a colleague and I ate dinner with a strategic industry partner. As we began to talk shop and the opportunities that are in front of us, I realized that the gentleman we are eating dinner with has experienced more than 30 years in the industry. His career has spanned more years than my life. For years he’s called on the same companies I do. He’s sold the same products that I will be selling.

I never got the sense that I need to halt the progress. Even if he’s been somewhere that didn’t work in the past, I think we should continue to move forward.

But, I realized that for him I need to have a sincere respect (and I do). After all, I was sitting with a guy from whom I can learn. He has put in years and years of hard work in the industry.

Respect our elders? Yes. Respect them because they’ve got a wealth of experience from which we can learn. Respect them because they’ve earned it.

After our meeting in Philadelphia today, we stopped at Valley Forge for a quick look. On the National Memorial Arch, Washington’s remarks were inscribed. I wondered if a leader in business is able to lead his team with such respect.

Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery.