How To Create Your Future Favorite Memories Today

In between a day of teacher conferences for my fifth grader, I was sat on campus surrounded by excited 17-year old’s attending a college application workshop. Sat in huddles, reviewing achievements, talking to college representatives, learning tricks of the process. It suddenly dawned on me.

This will be us in eight and ten years when our three daughters enter their senior years.

You can’t visit Facebook these days without a tearful post of “where has the time gone?” As someone posts a picture of a newborn puppy/baby/cat. Whether it is #TBT Throwback Thursday or Wishful Wednesday or Forlorn Friday, social media constantly reminds us of the life we had and where we are now. Many people seem to want to look backwards and mourn the time lost instead of looking forward and asking yourself, “how do I create my future favorite memories, today?”

Think about your life in Critical Chunks. What is the next significant chunk of your life and what memories will you create? - Kids just about to leave home? About to embark on an international assignment? Ready to reinvent your work life with board work? Considering life as an entrepreneur? Ready to double down on your career to get that next big promotion? Need to dial it back in your work life to give your home life top priority for some time? Whatever your next Critical Chunk, the most successful executives intentionally manage the memories they want to create and decide what is important to help achieve them.

What’s the future pictures and posts you want to share at the end of this next chunk of your life?

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

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Why It Is Important That You Intentionally Annoy People

Sometimes a great leader needs a pair of blinders and some ear plugs. Thoughtfully ruthless leaders know when to care and when to ignore their employees. How much do you care what your employees think of you?

When Don Mattrick was appointed as CEO of Xbox in 2007, Xbox was a 3,000-person organization that was starving for information, context, and inspiration, and it was fast becoming the runt of the Microsoft litter. Regardless of everyone’s desperation for information and leadership, Mattrick refused to spend any time with anyone other than his immediate leadership team, his boss, our CEO Steve Ballmer, and perhaps some engineering or creative leaders on specific initiatives.

Conventional wisdom says that during change you should speak at length—and frequently—to people impacted by the change, but the complete opposite is true. I’ll admit, I tried a few times to convince Mattrick to meet with groups of general managers to provide guidance on his insights and strategy, and to take questions. He refused. Every time. He knew, and I learned, that sometimes silence really is golden.

I realize now that Don was managing through the Intentional Annoyance Stage of rapid growth. The intentional annoyance phase is when you know there is going to be a change, but you don’t yet know what it means, or how everyone will be affected. We knew we had to make changes in Xbox to succeed, but we didn’t know what those changes were yet. We had a secretive need-to-know-only project, which was the secret that we needed the organization to rally behind, but we couldn’t go all out and talk about it broadly because Microsoft at the time was not the best at keeping secrets. So we rode out the intentional annoyance phase as Don continued to be thoughtfully ruthless with his time and energy.

I was advising a CEO last week about a concern he had within his company. I asked him, “do you have evidence that this is a pattern and a widespread concern, or is the real problem how it is being amplified across your organization?” We identified that it was a one-off situation that had been amplified excessively. Sometimes your employees will be annoyed, but you have to ascertain whether it is justifiable, something you intended, or a phase that you will tolerate for a defined period of time.

Rapid growth calls for decisions that may not make you the most likable, and sometimes silence is the best response until you have something to say. What do you need to be silent about, even though it may annoy people?

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

How To Unlock The Power Of The Right Teacher

Aprons flying everywhere, strict instructions on hand washing, and booming guidance coming over the clatter of pans, pots, and furious knife chopping. 

Have you ever watched a brilliant teacher at work? Last week 40 Chief Marketing Officers from Seattle met for the first time ahead of Evanta’s CMO Executive Summit. Usually prior to these events there is a dinner, maybe an after dinner speaker, and polite conversation. 

This time it was different. 

We were at Hot Stove Kitchen in Seattle cooking our own dinner. 

Now, if you want to learn how to make crab cakes, restaurant guru and business extraordinaire Tom Douglas is the perfect teacher. 

It occurred to me as we sat down and devoured the delicious meal that we had created, it is all about the teacher.  

If you have ever known a child to get a not so great teacher one year, you know this is true. The impact it has on the child and the whole family. Same applies at work. 

Do you know who your very best teachers are? 

Are you helping or then removing those teachers who cause more harm than good?

What do you wish your organization could learn and how can you or others best teach them? 

Tom Douglas’s cooking school was a great precursor to my opening keynote talk the next day. Sometimes it’s worth getting people to sing for their supper. 

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

P.S. I hope you enjoyed this week's VAL-uable Insights, sign up here to get them in your inbox each Monday morning: http://valwrightconsulting.com/newsletter-sign-up/