100 Business Days Out: Day 24 - Outside In

What has been very interesting to me has been the extra attention I am getting because I am now on the outside looking in. The question I have been trying to answer is what is the definition of "outside" vs. "in". It appears that because I am not actively pursuing other opportunities that it gives me an "outsider status" that brings with it unique credibility. What I find fascinating about this is that I don't see my perspective or vantage point any differently than before. But, what happens is that others see you as totally unbiased and objective. Objectivity is potentially very valuable for those who evaluate investments or depend on their own instincts/knowledge to make decisions. It will be interesting to see if when I start to commit to ventures if that objective credbility falls off. What I do like, while I have it, is the ability to evaluate and opine on lots of subjects and business opportunities. What I also enjoy is that people are reaching out to talk about themselves, their careers and get advice. Helping remains a part of the fun of this outside looking in period.

100 Business Days Out: Day 23 - 21 Years

Today I was back in New Orleans (twice in two weeks…three times in the last decade…weird timing) to speak to the senior HR Team of Cigna Insurance. I was invited by John Murabito, the EVP of HR to come speak to his team. Nearly 21 years ago John and I met and we grew up together within the Frito-Lay HR organization. We both parted PepsiCo around the same time, he to Monsanto, me to EA. We both did well and he is now the senior HR executive in one of the largest corporations in the US. And here we were in New Orleans, him leading his senior meeting and me coming in as a guest keynote speaker and someone that these young HR team were looking up to as what they should be aspiring. How does the time fly that we end up being the people that we once admired and wished we could someday be? It is even more striking when after all of these years you can sit and talk about those that were ahead of us and we still put them on their pedestal. And now we inherit the roles and we take on the responsibility of being the generation ahead. We have become the ones to be replaced. What a great lesson that 21 years taught me today. We all have our time, our moment, and when we get the chance we must pass it to the next generation and then let them carry the torch. For me, tonight was a passing moment and I am thankful and proud that John chose me to help him develop and bring his team along. That in itself is part of the legacy that one can leave behind. And without the years in the bank and the jobs successfully done, there would be nothing to pass along. I feel tonight as that is part of the journey I am on, to pass along to others what little I have learned and even smaller the amount that I might mastered.

100 Business Days Out: Day 21 - Objectivity Mirror

Today a challenge was thrown out to me by an acquaintance who is becoming a friend. I have a number of people who I feel aligned to in one way or another who I meet with regularly once a month. I call it scheduled collaboration. It's a term that Hank Stringer and I coined back in the early 2000’s when we were working on our book together. Well, today, during one of these scheduled collaborations, my friend challenged me by asking, “are you looking at your skills sets like you look at others and use the same criteria to help yourself figure out what you should do as what you tell others to do?” What a great question and great challenge, because the fact of the matter is that it so much harder to look at yourself objectively than it is to look at others. Something about, “don’t worry about the splinter in another’s eye when you have that log in yours”? I am sitting with this challenge and need to find a way to look within the objectivity mirror to find an honest answer for myself. Why is that so hard?

100 Business Days Out: Day 22 - No Watch

I realized today that for the first time in a month I haven’t had my watch on my wrist. It’s in my briefcase, when I decide to carry it. I wondered to myself today why I haven’t been wearing my watch. What I realized is that I have been scheduling meetings and events with ample time to get to them early (my quote: “There is no stress in being early”) and then plenty of leisure time between so no rush if I run over. It’s pretty liberating actually. I always thought that back-to back was the way to go…get lots jammed in and don’t have downtime as that would be wasted. I was fascinated that Bill Clinton, when President, was scheduled every 5 minutes and I figured that a back-to-back schedule was the way to go. Now in hindsight I realize that when you are back-to-back what you are really doing is not finishing meetings well. In fact, you are finishing them poorly because you start to think 15 minutes before they end on how to wrap up this one and get to the next one on time. And then if you are late, well you know how that feels. I will not mention a CEO who I worked with once who would run so far behind that he would carry over meetings into the next day. That was a nightmare for all involved and made people feel very disrespected. I was more than once on the receiving end of waiting until 7:00pm for a 4:00pm meeting to start only to be told that it was rescheduled for the next morning at 7:00AM. I never wanted to be like that so I worked hard to get done on time, but I now realize that to truly be present and respectful I should have left time between meetings so that I could be fully in the moment for an entire meeting and then have the downtime between meetings to get in the moment for the next one. Not to mention, I wouldn’t have to wear a watch.

Vintage Style Power

I just returned from the 134th running of The Kentucky Derby. I have lost track of how many times I have attended the Derby. I think it is somewhere close to 25 but I do know that this was my 16th year in a row. I am always easy to find on the first Saturday of May: Section 116 Box D05. The Kentucky Derby is all about tradition and pageantry. Since 1875 when Aristides crossed the finish line under the shadows of the famed twin spires, each year up to 160,000 people make the journey to the same place to partake in this most spectacular event. Each year we dress to the nines on Saturday and in recent years men have begun to don their favorite hat like the women have done traditionally. This year I decided to bring out of the closet a vintage straw hat originally owned by Clay Powell of Richmond, KY. His wife Grace (Granny Powell to me) gave it to me when Clay died. I was in high school and while most high schoolers can’t imagine the future value of something like this, I did and I stored it in the Stetson box that she gave me with the hat. The straw boater was made by Wright Straw Hats and best I can place its’ circa it was made somewhere in the early 1900's. Wright Hats are based in London and i don't know how Clay would have gotten one back then but maybe he traveled to London at one time. As you can see from the pictures, the hat fits me as well as it probably could without it being made for my head. Typically hats this old do not fit men of today as our heads are larger now. I get this on authority as I did take the hat to a high-end hat store and the owner was quite impressed with the quality and condition of the hat. She was also surprised by how well the hat did fit me. So, I decided that this would be the hat for me on May 3rd, 2008. Throughout the day I was complimented numerous times on the hat and as I showed those who cared how old it was and let them hold it, the threads of tradition flowed through the hat itself. For me, it was beyond what I could imagine. As I stood on my chair before the post parade of the Derby horses and sang my Old Kentucky Home, what I felt was the tingle of being a Kentuckian, born in Richmond, Kentucky in 1962, wearing a hat given to me by another Kentuckian born 60 plus years earlier than me. Clay was a Pontiac car dealer. I never knew if he owned his lot or just had worked there, but by the time I was old enough to know him he had already retired. He loved his hats, his beer and he loved me like a son he never had. Clay and Grace are like Patti and me that with no children you wonder whatever will happen with those items that you cherished? Will someone care enough to keep them or will they just get tossed away, sold in a garage sale, or left to be cleaned away with the sale of a house. I wish there was a way to send a message to Clay that his prized straw boater was the hit of the Derby this year. It’s not every day that vintage has a name and a story. This straw hat does.

100 Business Days Out: Day 20 - Vacation Day

It was 1993 on the Friday before the first Saturday in May. I had just been promoted to Director at Frito-Lay. Back then, and for someone my age, that was a big deal. With the promotion, my boss Dave Zemelman (another one of the great bosses), had given me full-access to our new CEO, Steve Reinemund (who went on to become CEO/Chairman of PepsiCo and now is the Dean of the Wake Forest Business School) and Dave had asked for me to work directly with Steve on a number of items. One of them was that I managed the open position requisition process and once a week I had to take all of the open jobs in the company in front of Steve and defend which ones I thought should be filled and which ones shouldn’t. He had final say and approval but I was the process guy to make it happen. The people in the field or hiring managers counted on me to keep the process flowing and to get those approvals as fast as I could. So, that demanded of me to keep my calendar fluid and to be ready to meet with Steve once a week when he could. I didn’t want to miss a week for many reasons. Well, on this week in 1993, he couldn’t meet with me in person at all and we needed to do a phone call to at least talk about a few of the critical open jobs. His assistant Ramona set me up to talk to him at 1:30PM CST. On that Friday, at that time, I was in Louisville at Churchill Downs for Oaks Day, the day before the Kentucky Derby. Now, you need to know that in those early days with Steve at the helm, we didn’t really know how he thought about certain things and how those things would relate to how he thought about you as a person. What I personally didn’t know was how Steve thought about horseracing; how that fit into his value set and more importantly, how might that influence how he thought about me. Funny now all these years later that I was concerned about this, but back then, it was a big deal for this young turk trying to work my way up. Well, I will tell you that I was sweating bullets because the only place I could get to a phone was right under the public address announcement speaker. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if while I was on the phone the bugler would play the call to post or Mike Battaglia would be calling a race. I was sweating bullets. I got lucky, we were on and off the phone in a matter of minutes, it was between races, and he never asked where I was on that beautiful Friday in Louisville. Over the years since, I have done many a work call from Churchill Downs including one year when we had an EA Compensation Committee call on that Friday…I promised I wasn’t betting the company money. J More than one candidate has been offered positions or closed while I was standing in Section 116 Row D and last year, I was up at 6:00AM EST on the Friday before Derby doing a webinar off of my laptop with an IP headset and microphone while I was sitting in a stairwell of our hotel. But this year I went into the Derby weekend with the only calls expected being those of friends who might want me to place a bet for them. No conference calls, meetings, outgoing calls to be made, just The Derby. For me, this is might be the first pure vacation day I can remember and what better day to make that mark than the Friday before the first Saturday in May.

100 Business Days Out: Day 19 - Linus Syndrome

Today we flew to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby and today was the first time since I can remember that had I chosen, I would have been able to go out of town without my briefcase and my laptop. Every since 1991 when I got my first laptop, I have lugged around one on every trip whether for business or leisure. The good news about this is that since 1991 they have dropped in poundage from 20lbs to less than 3 lbs. Good thing too that I was younger when that Dell was 20 lbs. So, last night, I went through my briefcase (a MountainSmith Office Backpack) and took out all of the stuff I didn’t need for the trip to the Derby. The one thing left on the desk was my laptop. I sat and stared at my laptop for at least 10 minutes weighing the pros and cons of leaving my laptop behind. In actuality, I really didn’t need it. All of my emails could be reviewed and responded to on my phone. And if I was going to do any serious writing (like keeping up my Bolts of Thinking Blog) I could handwrite and post on Sunday when I get back. Even if I needed to reference my calendar or the internet I could do so in other ways. But as I stared there and looked at the laptop, I could hear it saying to me, “yeah but, what about all of the time you are going to have on the plane…four hours each way…don’t you want to use me for something during that time...we always go on trips together…all around the world…don’t you love me anymore....you can’t leave me”! I succumbed. My laptop is like an appendage. I swear sometimes I think it wants to graft to the top of my thighs. It wants to be there for me. Leaving it at home would feel like losing my wallet or leaving my phone. I packed it in my briefcase but gave it a sharp warning that the next trip it should be prepared to stay home in its’ docking station. But I know me, and it knows me too. Come my next trip, I will start to think about what could be done and how much time I would lose out on if I missed the chance to do some “work”. And there it will be, snugly tucked in between my accessory pouch and the magazines and books that while I want to read, I probably won’t get to. The Linus Syndrome is real…I keep my little D420 Dell Latitude security blanket right here with me at all times.

100 Business Days Out: Day 18 - No Boss

Yesterday afternoon I met with Erick Hachenburg, who I worked with at EA. He is now the CEO of MetaCafe. As we were sitting at Tamarine in Palo Alto he said something that stuck with me. He said, “You have no boss to answer to”. While in my status, that is blatantly obvious, the implications are profound when you allow the statement to sink in. It is true, I have no earthly boss (I have to make the distinction about earthly because I always like to think that I have a heavenly boss) right now and because I have no boss, it is that fact that ultimately leads to the freedom that you experience when not working. I have worked for great people. At SNOCAP I had a good Board and an awesome Chairman in Jeff Mallett. Serving a Board is different than having one boss, but the same feeling of accountability, need to communicate, and being responsive, was there just as when I had one singular boss. Larry Probst at EA was a great boss. His way of managing let me set an agenda for him and then he expected me to deliver that agenda with lots of latitude to do so. And he was great about never micromanaging and he set the boundaries between work and life as well as anyone I have ever seen. As such, he didn’t impose lots of stress or demands on me. But what I have been finding out about myself is that it never was a boss, the company, a board, peers or subordinates who brought on the stress. It was me who self-imposed all of it. The realization of “no boss” for me is the realization that the worst boss I have ever worked for is me. It has been me who has made me feel as though I was falling behind or not keeping up. It was me who laid the guilt trip on me when I wasn’t in the office by 7:30AM. It was me who caused me to worry about whether or not the project would go flawlessly and then criticize when it wasn’t perfect. It was me who demanded that the email inbox be always below 100 messages or I couldn’t go home at night. Why I couldn’t objectively see this before is beyond me. I have always been a “driver” and Type-AAA worker and I would shrug my shoulders and tell others that I am just the way I am, but down deep inside a lot of what drove me was the need to please and prove myself to others. So, when all is said and done, it is me who I needed to let loose of as the boss to get to where Erick said, “You have no boss to answer to”. In all honesty, that is going to take some time….

100 Business Days Out: Day 17 - Conditioning

A common question I am getting now is “are you running/working out a lot in all of your free time”? The answer, by the way, is yes. But, what I find fascinating about the question is that there seems to be a built-in expectation that when someone doesn’t have to go to work everyday that they should be in the gym a couple of hours a day and that this must be the period that you get in the best shape of your life. What I have found is that the question usually is rooted in the person who is asking and projecting themselves and their desires on you when they pose the query. It’s almost like if you were to answer, “Not really, in fact I am spending most of my extra time drinking and eating and I’m gaining lots of weight”, that you would be doubly failing. Failing yourself and failing them. There are lots of stories of first time marathons, triathlons, mountain climbs, etc., coming from those who are on “sabbatical”. I will admit that the same thoughts have gone through my own mind. At least in me some of that has to do with the need for goals and objectives to strive for, reach and exceed. And at the same time, get into better and better shape, so that when you see someone for the first time since you quit working that you get., “wow, you look great…10 years younger…all that exercise and sleep is treating you well”. Didn’t I write about self-worth once before? :)

100 Business Days Out: Day 16 - Three Square Meals

Let me start with this statement - I am not an eater. For me, food has always been about eating to live not living to eat. In fact, I would say that I have skipped way more meals than I have eaten in my lifetime with many a work day where dinner was the only meal of the day. Breakfast was always too hard to coordinate and the morning too rushed and full to stop and eat. Lunchtime was reserved for a run or working out. I might grab a Cliff Bar or maybe a salad occasionally and eat them back at my desk. I was also not a big fan of eating meetings. If I could avoid a business dinner I would. When I did lots of recruiting I always avoided eating with an interview. One never wants to be locked into a full meal with someone who might not want to spend that much time with. All of this rambling leads me to the fact that right now, I am meeting over meals more than I have ever done or want to do. It seems that that the natural time for most people to get together is breakfast or lunch so every day I find myself with a breakfast or lunch meeting and going from place to place to do so. I am learning how to eat lightly a number of times a day, which according to all of the nutrition books is what you are supposed to do anyway. I am also learning to look forward to these meetings and enjoying the time with someone over food. A restaurant executive once told me that sharing food with someone was the second most intimate thing we do with other human beings. Since I put sleeping in the same bed with someone pretty intimate too, I would say it is the third most intimate thing, but I do agree that if you don’t take for granted the time and the experience, the lunch meeting can actually be something special.