There’s a lot of talk about “balance” and “boundaries” and all sorts of phrases like that. I’m always interested when I hear this in Christian circles because the men and women of the New Testament were incredibly out of balance and the very reason Christianity spread was because it refused to have boundaries.

But I digress. Back to the present-day.

Just an observation. Two kinds of people seem to talk about work-life balance.

1. People who are already financially successful. There’s something about a person with passive income from their investments and ideas that makes them a bit preachy about work-life balance to people who aren’t quite in their tax bracket.
2. People who have legit 9-5 jobs. OK, I admit it, I’m jealous of you. I gave up my 9-5 gig in 2002 and small parts of me have regretted it. (Like the parts of me that got the direct deposit and did countdowns until I got 4 weeks vacation instead of 3.) But yeah, if you have a job that you can completely contain into your work day, awesome.

That leaves a whole lot of schmucks just like me. People on the pathway to achieving some measure of success in the work they are passionate about.

So here’s what I’m learning when it comes to work-life balance. And here’s the obstacle that I’m learning to overcome.

The work-life balance people above? They don’t know what they are talking about. 

When life is going way too fast, when you have too much on your plate, and when your instinct and those work-life voices are screaming in your ear about balance?

Give them a wink and hit the gas real hard.

Seriously.

It’s your instinct to slow down that is killing you. That’s what is keeping it a one-man show or a 10 person shop when it can become a whole lot bigger than you. You’ve got to go a lot faster than what you think you can handle in order to really start to grow.

To grow you have to get past the current capacity you have and define a whole new capacity.

And you won’t discover that new capacity for that organization until you go real fast!

Photo credit: Mario Pleitez via Flickr (Creative Commons)

I can’t speak for you. But for me– there are some giants on my radar to slay. 

I could be introspective and talk about the giants I overcome in the inches between my ears. But if I’m honest, there are some very real giants out there for me to slay. Big, ugly, hairy, scary ones who have an addiction to anabolic steroids.

It’s not for everyone

I’ve been on this giant slaying journey for a long time. And I’ve won some pretty good battles. And I’ve met some other slayers along the way.

One thing that’s been a lesson for me is that there are some folks out there that wear giant slayer t-shirts but are just locker room giant slayers. They talk a big game until the giant looks at them.

Those people have romanticized giant slaying. They don’t have the skills for fighting nor the stomach for killing. Worse yet, they are paralyzed by a fear of losing.

They are fans of giant slaying.

To the victor goes the spoils

It’s championship time in college basketball. And during this time a fascinating phenomenon is observed. In a close game the final shot goes up. If it goes in there is pandemonium on one side of the bench. If it doesn’t, the other side goes bizerk.

Have you ever noticed how fast the losing team exits the floor? The winner sticks around and enjoys the moment. But the losing team? They dash for the locker room.

That’s they way it is in real life, too. Winners survive to play another day. And losers go to the locker room and talk about shoulda, coulda, woulda, and next time.

American Airlines, once the largest airline in the United States, declared bankruptcy. This is not surprising news for the beleaguered airline industry; what is different is what is emerging from the wreckage. Gerard J. Arpey, American’s chief executive officer and chairman, resigned and stepped away with no severance package and nearly worthless stock holdings. He split with his employer of 30 years out of a belief that bankruptcy was morally wrong, and that he could not, in good conscience, lead an organization that followed this familiar path.

Read the rest

Trying to think of the right word for Gerald Arpey’s choice… hmmm… oh yeah… Morals.

Remember when those in power were known for their high moral standards? Remember when the person at the top represented the organizations highest standards of excellence and character.

Maybe we should  get back to that? Maybe we should ask organizations to hire people who will uphold the values of the organization above the profits of the organization?

We should celebrate Mr. Arpey’s choice. He upheld the moral high ground that the company should pay its debtors and retiree benefits while the rest of the board made the immoral decision to file for bankruptcy as an easy way out “because everyone else is doing it.”

I also found it interesting that American Airlines is calling it a retirement while the New York Times is reporting it as resigning because he thought the board was morally wrong. I wonder which is the truth?

Hint: The company who declared bankruptcy in order to get away from paying their debts might just be protecting their behind from Wall Street while the guy who quit because he thought that was wrong is likely telling the truth.

On top of that– Arpey didn’t hold the board hostage by taking a massive golden parachute. (In fairness, I have no doubt that with 30 years of service and having made $14.34 million in the last 5 years, that Mr. Arpey is hitting the bread line any time soon.) He just said… “You know what? If you make this move you are making it without me.”

I like that in a leader. 

In sports, playing up is a core skill to improving your game. 

I remember as a student at Moody Bible Institute, watching scrub players play pick-up basketball with visiting NBA players. The scrub played better basketball because of the NBA players. They made shots they didn’t normally make. They played better defense. They saw the court better. When playing with 2 NBA players on their team they looked like a Division 1 ball player.

A few years ago I volunteered at a PGA Tour event. I kept score for the Pro-Am and watched a single PGA Tour player make the rest of his foursome better. (One guy went -8, 64!) They drained putts from 30 feet. They made smart decisions when their ball ended up in trouble. And they all were surprised by their scores. The PGA Tour player pulled the guy who shot 64 and told him to try to qualify for the Tour.

Even as a high school coach I always wanted my freshmen and JV players to play up against the varsity any time I could. And we intentionally pitted our league champion golf team against the best teams in the state knowing they would likely get beat. Why? Because even if they lost it would make them better players.

When you play with better competition your own game will always elevate.

Rise and shine

Here’s the deal. It doesn’t matter what you do for a living– you need to play up to improve your game. 

I learned the power of this a long time ago and it’s paid of for me over and over again.

Want to be a better writer? Play up.

Want to be a better designer? Play up.

Want to be a better speaker? Play up.

Want to be a better husband? Er, don’t play up there. Love your wife.

In 1995, I got a job running some machinery on nights and weekends for a large health care company. I was a college student and it was a perfect job for me.

• It was boring and I could do my homework. 
• I had free reign to the 29th floor of a Chicago skyscraper until 6:00 AM. 
• It paid $15.00 per hour, as many hours as I wanted to work.

The people who trained me were meticulous is telling me “this is how things are done.” In truth, their system took a fairly simple task and made it really complicated. They spent most of their day waiting for something to load onto the computer or setting up the machinery.

And when I’d point out that if you did things in a different order, the whole process ran a lot faster, I was sharply told, “Don’t mess with the order. This is how we were trained to do it. This is how things are done.”

And I did. Until they left. And then I did things my own way.

This went on for months. The day staff would do 10% of the work and in 5-6 hours I’d come in and knock out the other 90% using my own techniques. And the day staff started to hate me. They’d leave me “encouraging notes” all the time about how I was making them look bad.

One night, about 10 o’clock, the door of my room swung open unexpectedly. I was blasting the Newsboys, reading Hodge’s Systematic Theology, and the machine was running like a champ even though I was barely looking at it. To my horror I had missed that my bosses, bosses, bosses, boss– the VP of the department– had stayed really late to work. As she had heard my music and wanted to say goodbye before she left.

I stood up suddenly, convinced I was about to be fired for breaking like 6 rules.

“Adam, I want to ask you some questions!” Crap. Dangit. How did I let this happen?

It turns out that she had actually left at five and come back just to see me. She explained to me that she heard in a meeting that I was somehow doing more, cheaper, and faster than other employees who had 10 years experience on me. And no one knew why… so she had come to figure it out.

By the time I was done explaining my process to her she had two questions for me:

1. Could I teach other people how to do this?
2. How soon could I start as the supervisor of that area?

“This is how things are done.“

As an idea guy, there are rarely more offensive words spoken.

In my mind, there are lots of ways to do everything and the way that you’ve always done them has lead you to the results that you know. So, if you have the absolute best results/product/organization on the planet, and it can’t possibly get any better than it is, yes… I suppose this is how you do it.

But for everything else– This is how you do it to get the results you already have. 

• This is our service order
• This is our product cycle
• This is our traditional calendar
• This is our fundraiser
• On and on

“This is how things are done” is fools gold. Because of the law of diminishing returns, “this is how things are done” will only lead you into doing less, earning less, and reaching less– instead of more.

What’s interesting about being around people who believe in this? They think that it leads to greater efficiency and better results. And when results aren’t what they’d hoped they would be it’s not the system that is broken, it’s that you didn’t do things the right way, in the right order, or with the right people.

You see, “this is how we do things” works. At least it does for  them. “This is how things are done” is comfortable, predictable, and easy.

But as a long-term strategy? It only leads to failure. Long term, systemic failure.

Sadly, because the law of diminishing returns is gradual you don’t even recognize that your systems are, like the frog in the pot, killing you.

Until one day you wake up and realize:

• My church is way smaller than it used to be even though we’re working harder.
• Kids aren’t coming to my retreats anymore even though I’m promoting it like crazy.
• I’m selling fewer cars than I need to in order to survive and prices have never been better.
• I’m making far fewer widgets than I need to be in order to make a profit.
• I can’t make payroll, much less a profit.

What’s the solution?

Start some new mantras. “How can we do more with less?”

Create a culture that rewards soft innovation.

Ask your frontline workers.

Reward your frontliners and they’ll keep you on the bleeding edge.

REVOLT: The systems that got you here will not be the systems that lead you where you want to go.

Myth: It matters who you know.

I couldn’t be more of a nobody. When I showed up as a 17 year old kid on the campus of Moody Bible Institute I couldn’t have been more aware that I’d stepped into a world I knew nothing about, knew not a soul, and had no claim to anything.

As I met people, they referenced relationships to people I’d never heard of. Famous pastors. Famous parents. Famous books. Famous and important allegiances that would take them far in life.

Years later I learned that some of my early ministry job references were telling people that my biggest obstacle to a ministry career was that I didn’t come from a ministry family. “He’s a nice guy, but didn’t grow up in a ministry setting, so he can’t possibly ever be that effective.”

Huh…. Really? 

17 years later I can look up many of those people on Facebook and quickly learn that knowing all the right people and kissing all of the right rings hasn’t gotten them very far in life.

Why is that? Because it doesn’t really matter who you know. That’s just a lie told by people in power to make you think you’re a nothing. 

Your Secret to Success

The Trampoline Effect: Who you don’t know isn’t nearly as important as what you do with who you do know.

Give me a handful of friends who want to help one another and we’ll do 10000% more in a month than a pile of well-connected, entitlement fat, whiners who think the world owes them their next paycheck.

It’s simple physics. 

Potential Energy = 0 Impact

If you’re a nobody like me. If you’re like me and your family lineage looks more like a bush than a tree. If your track record includes some famous failures. If you have dreams bigger than your budget or zip code. If you woke up this morning and realized that you have no more tricks in your bag.

Than the Trampoline Effect is good news to you. Having the right friends is nice. But it isn’t the difference between success and failure! I’m living proof.

Get together with a couple friends and show the world what you can do. 

Kinetic Energy = Massive Impact

Every commuter in Chicago is familiar with the Hillside Strangler. Prior to the early 2000s, this section of interstate where two major 6-lanes of highway merged onto a 3-lane onramp to a 5-lane city-bound highway doubled the commute of everyone. 11 lanes of traffic don’t merge into 5 lanes very well.

The Hillside Strangler was a bottleneck. Everyone had to go through the bottle neck to get work done. Truckers. Commuters. Tourists. School busses. All of the pressure of the cities west side was placed on that 3-lane onramp each morning.

People left an hour earlier just to sit and listen to the radio and sip coffee while they waited their turn.

Conversely, on the ride home everyone hated rubberneckers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in traffic for up to an additional hour just so people in front of me could slow down and watch AAA change a tire or watch two people who got into a fender-bender fill out paperwork.

Both are aggravating and all-too-common for commuters.

And both are aggravating and all-too-common in organizations.

Organizationally, bottlenecks are people, teams, or systems that slow things down at the point of decision making. While a legitimate part of the bureaucratic process they are frustrating to deal with for those who like to (or need to) take action quickly. For people on the front lines bottlenecks always take too long and  the mantra “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission” takes over. Which is why those who are the bottlenecks describe their job as herding cats.

Likewise, within every organization there are rubberneckers or gawkers. These are people who like to talk about and look at things more than they like to do them. Sure, they claim it’s all human nature to want to talk about what is going on. But in the meantime they slow everything down.

Every organization I’ve ever worked in has these two problems which slow everything down. Bottlenecks of decision or execution and rubberneckers who slow down to talk. (Or study, or hire a consultant, or pray, or wait for the board to meet, etc.) In many ways these are just the ebbs and flows of work life as you try to balance going about your everyday balance while trying to push forward to grow.

Some organizations solve this by dispersing their teams

Plenty of companies, some Fortune 500, are dispersing their staffs and closing offices to remove rubbernecking while dealing with the obvious issues of bottlenecks, internally. Working remotely, while once laughed at, has become en vogue as a way to keep people working and happy by eliminating the commute and office life altogether.

Would this work in the church? Absolutely. Most church staff members I know look at their offices as more a liability towards reaching their community than an asset. No one went into ministry to be a desk jockey… but that’s most of what we do.

Why aren’t we doing it? Perceptions and trust.

Back in college I had a job managing a group of machine operators. Part of my job was to make sure that the materials for the equipment were easily available to my team so that they could keep the machines running as much as possible. I taught my team to think of the machine as a cash register. When it stopped running the company stopped making money. With that simple mindset we were extremely efficient.

Our materials came from various sources around the world, I purchased in bulk through a series of middle men, then stored the materials in our warehouse. In our department, we kept a small quantity and I would order replacement items on a regular basis and a different department would go get what I needed and bring it near our area of the warehouse and we would put stuff away.

Typically, this was a smooth operation. But sometimes, like on a weekend or over a holiday, I would have to go out into the warehouse and get my own materials.

Our stuff was densely heavy. So, I would take apart skids of materials on their shelves and put what I needed onto a very heavy hand cart one item at a time. Then I’d push as much as 1 ton of materials and put them away in our room.

This cart was really cool in it’s simplicity. It had big steel wheels, heavy wood, and a massive steel bar for pushing or pulling.

You know what was interesting about that cart? I could put thousands of pounds of materials on it, give it a big shove, and then walk along with it along the smooth concrete exerting very little effort. It took way more energy to stop it and start it than it did to just keep it going in a straight line.

To keep that cart under control you had to find the right speed and apply an even amount of force. If you did that it was fine. If you didn’t apply enough force consistently you ended up working way too hard. But if you got going too fast… you would be out of control and you might not actually be able to stop it.

I always feared that someone would walk out in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to stop the cart before it hit them. That never happened. But one of my co-workers did hit a very large steel post (buried in concrete) and bent it severely.

That is physics in action. A giant mass doesn’t need to go very fast to apply a large amount of force against a stationary object.

It is also a lesson in how momentum works. In order to keep moving with the least amount of effort, you have to apply a steady amount of force.

I think the cart taught me a lesson way back that is easily applied to stuff I do today.

Moving a lot of mass involves the right amount of force

When I reflect on things that are out of control in my life… maybe I’m misapplying force? Maybe I’m going too slow and working to hard as a result? Maybe I’m going too fast and changing directions is just too difficult? And maybe I’m just not patient/disciplined enough to walk at the right pace or applying the right level of direction?

Accelerate safely

Too often, I have an attitude that I can do everything at once RIGHT NOW and all the time. And that means that things sometimes get out of control. Sadly, it also means that sometimes people get hurt.

The role of friction

The key to the cart working in the warehouse is that there’s very little friction between the steel wheels and the smooth concrete. That’s why its so important to keep the floor of a warehouse clean. Outside of the warehouse, friction is the variable in the equation that is not always under my control. In order to maintain momentum, I need to constantly monitor and deal with sources friction.

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” ~ William Arthur Ward

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” ~ Sir Winston Churchill

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” ~ Steve Jobs

I don’t pretend to know what today’s problems are for you.

But this much I do know–

• The best ideas comes from those on the front lines. That’s the great joy of innovation. Today’s heroes count their riches while tomorrows heroes work all night.
• Avoiding failure is a failure in itself. The trick to creating new stuff is to fail fast. Risk isn’t the enemy, comfort is.
• Celebrate every milestone. A step towards your ultimate goal is still a step forward. Plus, moving forward will gain you momentum.
• Every person has a creative mind. Don’t sell anyone short. Rarely are the best things innovated alone. Your best idea might come from listening to another person talk about the same problem.
• Look at your problem from every angle. The best putters in golf walk all the way around their shot.

The team meeting.

It’s one of those necessary evils of most organizations.

No one truly enjoys them but it’s also critical for teammates to get an idea of where you are at regularly. Whether you are a start-up with 3 employees or a conglomerate with thousands of employees across multiple offices and departments, this is one of those ubiquitous things you do.

For as long as I’ve had these meetings I’ve heard people complain about them. But the simple truth is I don’t know of a better alternative. How else are you going to know who is doing what, what needs to  get done, and how we are doing as a team?

Forms of team meetings

I break it down into two distinct styles:

1. The sit down – Get the coffee, even the shortest version of this is an hour.
2. The stand up – Get the coffee, but we aren’t going to sit so it’ll only last 10-15 minutes.

Style of team meetings

I break it down into three types:

1. Report to the boss - Everything is presented to or directed at the boss, who responds and digs deeper as needed.
2. Catch up with the team - Everything is directed at the team, those who need to ask more questions do so.
3. Hybrid - Most team meetings are this, there’s a little bit of reporting to the boss, and hopes of collaboration.

Adam’s rules for team meetings

1. Be prepared – Typically these happen weekly. If you don’t show up ready you don’t take your job seriously.
2. It’s a briefing, keep it brief – When I show up I want to have my facts handy, I try to stay on point, and I want to plainly communicate the whole truth. Facts, numbers, problems.
3. Don’t hide failures - I like to make sure I communicate where I’m struggling, where my problems are, etc. Hiding that only leads to bad things.
4. Open to questions – Even when I screw up, I make sure to ask if anyone has any follow-up questions.
5. If you aren’t the team lead, don’t take over - I don’t like it when someone dominates this meeting that isn’t in charge of the meeting.
6. If you are the team lead, moderate well – When I’m running these meetings I make sure I keep them moving. I’m never afraid to interrupt and say, “That’s a sidebar, let’s meet later.” Or “it would be better if you two just talked about that and reported back next time.“
7. The meter is running - In my mind, I calculate the hourly rate of these types of meetings. If there are 10 people who average $30/hour, are we getting $300/hour worth of benefit here?

What about you? What are your rules for team meetings?