Building up your emotional momentum and inertia(?)

How many times have you heard people say "you just need to pick up momentum" or "we need to carry our momentum into this next project"? I think a lot of us take this to mean carrying a positive attitude or ability to get stuff done quickly/effectively; to 'be on a roll'. I think this is only half of the equation that leads to success/happiness/results...pick your synonym.The other part, the part which I can't seem to figure out a name for is the ability for you to maintain that momentum in the presence of negative external forces. An example that comes to mind for me would be my recent goal to lose weight and generally get into better shape. In the beginning months, I could work out three days in a row but if something interrupted my fourth day, I'd lose that momentum and not work out on days five or six. I still had my goal, but I lacked the ability to absorb the impacts of getting thrown off track and took some time to get going again. Now, four months later, if I miss a day due to an external force, it only affects that day and no more. On top of that, things that would have thrown me off before (like the meeting I have today from 6pm-9pm), I just take in stride and adapt my routine to account for it (working out before work so I don't miss it).

So how does this apply to the rest of my life? In a way that I don't fully understand, it seems that when I keep going towards my goals or aspirations, and the more vivid they get in my head, and the more I get up after being knocked off course, the more of this second half of the equation, this dark energy I seem to have. What's also interesting, is that this dark energy seems to express itself universally in every part of my life and I'm able to take shocks from my internal environment that would have previously thrown me off course, and on top of that, I seek out sources to keep feeding the dark energy and increasing the momentum. By building up the momentum to work out every day, and the ability to absorb the shock of external (okay, and sometimes internal) setbacks without loosing that momentum, I am applying myself harder in other areas of my life like other healthy habits, and in maintaining my environment (keeping the house clean, making sure my laundry is done), and even at work. I guess I'm starting to feel that this dark energy is what feeds your momentum and keeps you going; you just have to figure out what feeds it and then make sure it eats up!

Trusting yourself to make the right decisions; is that what being an adult means?

Growing up, I always had this half-lucid idea of what being an "adult" really  meant. Depending on how old I was and who I’d talked to recently it varied, but it still had the same main elements. First thought being an adult meant 18...then over 21. At one time I thought it meant living on your own, and then it meant getting married. After that it meant owning a house. When I was in middle school I thought it meant having a job; in college I thought it meant having career with growth opportunity and a 401(k). In high school I thought it meant being able to have enough money buy a new car, and last year it meant having enough money to put a down payment on a house. In other words, my idea of what an adult "is” has always been dynamic, but along the same basic themes. Now that I'm 27 and I've accomplished many of those aforementioned points, there aren't many days when I really feel like an adult. 

Then today it hit me that maybe being an adult isn't about those things. Maybe they are just the KPI (or key performance indicators for those who aren't up on their biz-lingo). Maybe being an adult is a state you find yourself in the realization hits that you have to make the tough choices on your own, that nobody can fill in the answer for you, and that you have to take full responsibility for the outcome associated with your choices. When we're kids, the choices that we have to make are fairly limited both in scope and possible outcomes. As we get older and older, those choices we have to make become infinitely more complex and abundant. Maybe it’s that moment when we realize and embrace that we have to make the tough choices without a safety net, and even though people might be able to give you advice, that when you make that choice to jump that it's your ass on the line and you willingly accept responsibility for everything that comes from it.

I know that I turn too much to that safety net, always afraid of making the wrong choices so I look for outside council from anyone who'll listen hoping they’ll tell me what to do. I’m afraid to have that trust in myself; trust that the decisions I’ll make will be the right ones, and that if I make the wrong choice, it’ll be because of me and nobody else. Jason Seiden in his book "Super Staying Power" describes the difference between fear and courage stating that courage feels just like fear, and it’s what you do with it that separates the two. and I think that too plays into what it means to be an adult. Being an adult means taking that fear of the outcomes of your decisions, embracing it, and having the courage and trust in yourself to make the right decision and taking the leap, knowing that if you fall, that's something that'll be on you and nobody else. But as long as you stay wrapped in fear of trusting yourself and always look for somebody to hand you the answer, no matter what KPIs life brings you, you’ll never truly feel like an adult.

...I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet!

Boston, The Matrix and Emotional/Experiential Vocabulary

I was listening to Pandora on the train heading to meet some friends after work about a year ago and "Peace of Mind" came on. I was walking down the steps of the Brown line stop at Diversey, and my heart skipped a beat, and then another, and then I got chills. I had listened to that song probably hundreds of times in my life, Boston's album Boston is one of my favorites. In all those times I'd heard it before, it had just been a good song that I could crank up in my truck while cruising through the Pourdre Canyon outside of Fort Collins. Though I had heard the words, I hadn't lived the experiences that it spoke about and so it was just a song. That day getting off the train, all the sudden I could empathize with the emotions; I knew what they were talking about. I could relate with the lyrics of feeling stuck and uncertain where to go next, wanting to run but staying where I was at. The lyrics reached out and slapped me because I’d finally had gained experience in life. Remember that phrase from The Matrix where Morpheus says to Neo “Unfortunately, no one can be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself”? When I was younger and I heard that line, it just seemed bad-ass. Later it seemed cliché in the sense that somebody was telling me I was too dumb to understand a concept (that was back when I was 21 and I was the smartest guy in the room with a 2.8 GPA to prove it!). Now I look back at that line and I get the same feeling as I did that day at the Diversey Brown Line. Not in the sense that I’m just a copper top powering my machine overlords (…okay, maybe just a little…); no in the sense that there is so much in this world that nobody can tell you about, you have to experience it, live it, touch it, feel it. It’s almost like you have to build an emotional/experiential vocabulary.

Just as an infant builds its vocabulary, she’s able to interact with the people around her more and learn more quickly as a result, maybe us young adults need to work on building our emotional/experiential vocabulary so that we can gain more knowledge from those around us. This is where I might again agree with LINCHPIN where it states that the US Education system is teaching us wrong. We focus so much of our learning years on reading, writing, math, spelling, derivatives, and the like. Then a few of us take art classes or music classes as electives. All those core classes, although critically important to build the necessary fundamental skills doesn’t give us the chance to learn how to cultivate our emotional/experiential vocabulary. We may read a book like The Invisible Man and explain to us why it’s emotional, and we might think we understand, but I’d bet you that just like me listening to “Peace of Mind” with the experiential vocabulary to understand it more, if we could be taught how to find that vocabulary, it would mean so much more. That’s where art comes in; it teaches you to get in touch with that emotional being inside of you.

Additionally, people like me get into the workplace and start trying to master everything and expect to go to the next level as soon as we’ve master the functional aspect, because that’s how we were taught. You took a class, you passed, you moved on. That’s the functional part of the job though. What about the emotional/experiential side? Do we even think about that part of our work? Does anybody even know how to explain what that is? It seems like such an amorphous concept, so perhaps that’s why so few people ever take the time to grasp it, play with it and understand it. I know that I have neglected it to date, but luckily I’m young and can attempt to see the matrix for myself!

I'm about half way through LINCHPIN by Seth Godin, and though I don't agree necessarily with a lot of the book's message, he has hit on some points that have made me question myself. More specifically, he's made me question the way in which I've approached situations. As an analyst at Accenture, whenever I finish a project it is my responsibility to try to find that next role that will help both advance my career and be in a position where I can rely on my skill set that I've developed on my previous projects. Though its not exactly like finding a new job, it is not too dissimilar. Just as you should find a new job, I must rely on the network that I should have created while with the company, I should have an updated and accurate resume spelling out my past project experience, developed skills and aptitudes, and if I find a project that interests me that I do not have a network contact to leverage, contact that project proactively to at least get myself out there. 


What I learned though on one of my previous projects where I was assisting with the onboarding process, is that with so many candidates coming through, and with limited time and resources to do screenings, each candidate was boiled down to their key words, years of experience, and bill rate. 

With the proliferation of massive candidate repositories which are driven off of key words, years of experience, and other metadata factors (think radius from work location, date of last resume update), how can one hope to become more than their metadata? How can one express their individualism, the unique talents that can’t be expressed by a data point? The people and companies that are scouring these databases are just like you and I; they are busy, strapped for resources, and a lot of the time just looking for somebody to fill a seat and contribute at least enough to keep the project afloat. One answer is to leverage your social network to find the roles that aren’t just looking to fill a seat, but to get a key player positioned to knock the ball out of the park. But what if you don’t have a social network to use? I personally have been on projects that have had very little in common with my work stream, or I have been fully client facing, getting little opportunity to network with my Accenture peers. To me, the question now becomes how do you make yourself ‘too big’ to miss? I don’t mean to hype yourself up to anyone you talk to, or to send out emails to everyone saying “look at me!”, because both of those avenues put you right alongside everyone else in our age group. This is a question that I’m dealing with right now. My solution is to try to learn from others out there who’ve walked my same path, and hopefully to gain insight. I ask anyone reading this to share theirs with me as I plan to share mine with you. I guess the first thing that I see for setting ourselves apart from the metadata monster is to re-humanize ourselves (which it turns out is networking). Hopefully as the days and months go by, I’ll be able to share some insight with somebody it makes a difference for, or find somebody that has the insight that finally changes the way I see something and opens a new world of possibility for me. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011 has brought me a lot to be thankful for! My family has stayed healthy; I have had a good job that I've enjoyed and have been able to make good contributions to; and oh yea and I got married to the love of my life! I'm so fortunate to have such a wonderful support base here in Chicago, back in Denver with my family, and now in upstate New York with my new family. It was so wonderful to have had both our friends and families here in Chicago to celebrate with us, and Chelsea put together a day that I will never forget. I am so lucky to have found a woman who not only loves me without question and puts up with my somewhat difficult personality, but also is so talented and beautiful. I wake up every day hoping she doesn't realize how much better she could do than me! To my friends, here and across the country, thank you for sharing with me your good times and helping me celebrate my own. To my family, thank you for always pushing me to see a world beyond the obvious, and handing me the emotional support I needed to always dust myself off when things didn't go exactly right. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Was grandma's oven too small?

As we approach the holidays, I'd like to share a story that the larger than life Andre Hughes at Accenture likes to tell (and re-tell, and re-tell again) but never gets old. The whole version, when told correctly takes about 10 minutes, three unsuspecting audience members, but I'll try to do it justice.

A girl and her mom are in the kitchen preparing Thanksgiving dinner. The little girl looks up at her mom after a while and says "Mom, why do you always cut the end off the ham?", the mom replies "I don't know, that's the way my mom did it, so that's how I do it. You should ask her". So the little girl, happy to take a break from peeling potatoes went to find her grandma in the living room. "Grandma, why do you always cut the end off the ham?". The grandma looks at her, a little confused as to why the little girl is questioning her technique says "I guess because that's the way my mom always did it. You'll have to ask her". The little girl, determined to find an answer goes and finds her great grandma out on the porch. "Great grandma, why do mom and grandma always gut the ends of the hams? Grandma said it's the way you always did it". Great grandma looks at her and says bluntly "I did it because the oven was too small to fit the whole ham!!".

So how many things are we doing every day without questioning because someone we learned from did it that way? Just because something's always been done a certain way, doesn't always mean that way serves a purpose anymore. Just some food for thought!

Loyalty - an outdated concept?

The last couple of decade have brought many changes to the way we do business and 'process' transactions. Smaller mom & pop operations have been replaced by mega stores or national and global chains. For the consumer, this often lowered the cost of goods, or guaranteed consistency (think Wal-Mart or Starbucks). Over the years though, we've lost the necessity or desire for loyalty. the mom & pops literally banked on their customer's loyalty, and each loyal customer meant ensured success. But the value of loyalty of a single customer is inversely related to the number of customers. If I have just one customer, I'm out of business if they don't come back or don't believe in my product or service enough to spread the word; their loyalty to me is invaluable. As my customer base builds though, the value of any one customer's loyalty is reduced. It's still important to cultivate that loyalty, my business may take a hit if a customer leaves, but I probably won't fail. There gets to be a point though, if the company is big enough that the value associated with any one customer is worthless and there is no benefit to continuing to cultivating loyalty at the individual level.

But will this paradigm hold true? As more sites or outlets become available for the individuals to express their individual opinions to the masses (think google ratings, yelp or angie's list), one customer's opinion can now be amplified. If the corner coffee shop has grown too big to have a tangible value associated with an individual customer's loyalty makes the mistake of treating an individual customer as such, that one customer can now express their sentiment across an entire connected population. What used to mean loosing a single customer and possibly a few of that customer's friends could now with the amplification effect of social media mean the loss of customers that have no actual connection with that original customer. I think it will be interesting to see how this new paradigm changes the way companies which approach customer service and the interaction associated with individual customers.