Yesterday was M-day: Moving home day. Wow, it is great to be home… finally.

This morning, when Jack woke, he came to our room and jumped in the bed with Meghan and I. Shortly thereafter, he asked, “Mom, did you miss Winnie?” Winnie lives next door and is only 3 years older than Jack. He adores her.

This morning, we had the great experience of eating Dunkin Donuts on the front porch because we have no eating tables yet. We had the biggest laugh because every time Harry took a bite, he put the entire Munchkin (doughnut hole) in his mouth. I think he ate 6 one big bite at a time.

Here are two pictures to enjoy from bed-time last night:

Jack and Papa in Jack’s New Bunk Bed

Harry in His New “Big Boy” Bed

Here’s what I learned today:

• Clients don’t need to be clients or customers. They need to be friends. Not like you’ll go out on Friday night, but so that you are on each other’s side, working for each others mutual best interests.
• Disclosing a little more than you might “have to” can be risky, but it’s critical to building trust.
• Teams are good. Working together can pay huge dividends.
• Missouri is nice in April.
• Although the drive can be tough, saving $700 dollars per ticket by flying into another city is worth it. Every penny counts.

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.

Writing thoughts and ideas and then disclosing them for any and every one else to read is scary. Someone is bound to disect what’s happening, challenge me, and even possibly use it against me.

The reward is worth the risk.

Just tonight a good friend sat down on the back porch and challenged me to think about the need to maintain current business and product lines. I talk a lot about innovation and moving forward and breaking out of “commodity cycles”. However, those commodities are critical to many businesses, his and mine included.

They are often run in high volumes with low margins, but they pay the bills. They pave the road for innovation, new product development, and new business. Overhead is covered, salaries are paid, and support center costs (like IT and accounting) are tremendously reduced simply due to the volume.

Toss out your idea to someone but be ready to embrace the response. As hard as it may be to receive, it will always be worth it. (And keep the volume running in the commodity channels while you develop the new business channels.)

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.

I must have heard the “Old-Timers” say it a hundred times. “I remember when times were tough, when we didn’t make any money, when we needed to deposit a check the same day as payroll in order to not bounce any checks.” Those may be “ancient” times to the millenial’s ears, but they need to be remembered.

LAD: Listen to those Old-Timers. Take heed to their warnings. Listen to their stories and tales to pick up on trends and pitfalls of the past.

Two more things I’ve learned:

1. When the times are really good (at the crest of the cycle), don’t spend all the money you make.
2. Whether times are good or bad, spend on your future. Invest in the innovation and customer development pipeline.

Finally, a bit of good news. The cycle may be bottoming out. As one respected friend said, “The fundamentals of the business haven’t changed.” Couple that with a reduction in supply and we should see a return to the safe part of the cycle between the crest and the trough.

Food for thought on the industry situation: The USDA intends to purchase up to $32.5 million worth of chicken leg quarters. Think about it… with the published market at $0.16/lb, the government is about to purchase over 200,000,000 lbs of leg quarters. Will it help? Not Sylvest, who filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday.

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.