Going Through the Emotional Journey of a Writing Retreat

In July, I took a week by myself to write in Tulum, Mexico.  That’s right - write.  I have been wanting to write an online course to teach small businesses how to use empathy to build a brand for about 2 years.  I have THOUGHT about doing it for over 2 years, y’all! That’s a lot of thinking.  Oh wait, I did a lot of research about it, too.  I researched others who were doing it, I bought several online courses.  I brainstormed about the type of content it would need, but I didn’t actually start DOING anything about it until this spring.  This spring I started acting on it.  Even then, my actions swirled around everything BUT the writing of the course.  Actually getting something, anything on paper (well, computer) was the missing part in my whole process.   

It’s fascinating, because get what my #1 strength on Strengthfinders is?  Activator. Seriously???? That strength has been the backbone of my business – I am typically really good at acting on what I need to do.  So, I have had to ask myself recently, why have I struggled so much with acting on this project I really want to do?  There I am again, going back to the questions, the thoughts, the analysis. “Stop and act, April”, I would say to myself.  And still, I watched distractions grab at me every turn, especially when I had taken out time to write. I knew I had to eliminate as many as possible to give myself the time and space to write.  

So, 3 things occurred simultaneously as I was telling myself it was time to act:

1. My mom at the last minute asked if she could take Autumn for a week

2. A research project got cancelled

3. I had a random conversation with a friend about Tulum, Mexico,

In a moment, I made a snap decision to book a flight to Cancun, get a car to Tulum by myself and spend the week writing on the beach. 

Sounds wonderful, eh?  I was giddy proud of myself for this “action” as I settled into my cute, bohemian boutique hotel.  This blog, however, is not about the glamour of this week to myself, it is about the painful mind journey that happened AFTER deciding to book the trip.

By the end of the week, I definitely had clarity on the battle that goes on in my brain.  I realized I didn’t know how crazy I was until I was alone with my thoughts, trying to do something totally new for several days. 

So, that brings me to Tulum. 

I learned that “getting away” is only part of the hurdle when it comes to having a specific goal of writing.  I wasn’t fully aware of how much resistance I have to writing and how the self-talk prevents me from doing the 1 thing I want to do most.  I had to ask myself, “why is this so hard?” and I think it’s this:  my brain is more comfortable consuming information than it is creating it. You see, I love to read, and the more I read, the more I know.  But transferring knowledge into something that’s meaningful is a completely different story.  I have read 2 of Steven Pressfield’s books, which are incredible:  The War of Art and Do The Work.  And they sum up quite nicely what he talks about as Resistance.  I experienced it in full force that week.  The battle in my mind went something like this:

1. This is fun, I’m excited and nervous.

2. WTF am I doing?

3. Hmmm…this hotel is nice but I really wish it had air conditioning. I’m definitely not going to be able to write in a non-A/C’d room.

4. Where is the perfect place to write? There is no perfect place to write.

5. The beach would be good but I’ll get sand in my computer; the hammock would be good but how am I going to type while I'm swinging.

6. How can I see the ocean while I’m writing – that will definitely help.

7. I’m pretty sure this is a dumb idea.

8. It’s for sure a dumb idea.

9. I’m not safe, someone’s going to kill or rape me down here.

10. When can I let myself have a margarita?

11. I love myself.

12. I can do this.

13. How can I make myself do this?

14. Ok, I’ve figured it out. I’m going to make it a game and give myself a treat for every module I write.

15. I made a checklist, now I’m pumped.

16. Are we there yet?

17. I rocked the 1st module, I’m a badass.

18. 5 more to go, this is definitely a dumb idea.

19. Why can’t I just be normal and let myself have/be fun?

20. You’re a bad ass, brave woman…do it.

21. I should be laying on the beach, that’s how I can get more creative.

22. If I lay on a beach, I’m just going to want to read, drink margaritas and fall asleep, not necessarily in that order.

23. Why are people bothering me on email and text? Don’t they know I’m trying to do something important?

24. I definitely think laying on the beach is a good idea.

That was all during the morning of Day 1.  And Day 1 wasn’t the only battle, Day 3’s battle was different because it involved other people….

I had told a few friends that I was going, ones who I knew would be super supportive, and thank God their positive energy held me up.  Something triggered me to reach out to another friend on Day 2 evening.  I’ve known her for a long time, and after a couple of texts, I ended up texting her about what I was doing this and asked her to send me good vibes and for grace for myself as I was working through it.  Her text reply was something like “Good luck - that sounds horrible.”   That triggered Day 3’s battle – the battle of “needing other’s approval.”  When I got that text back, I was pissed because it certainly didn’t feel supportive.  However, after exploring my feelings further, I realized that me expecting others to approve or love what I’m doing is unrealistic.  I have typically (up until now) sought love from everyone around me but this week, it became clear that the more I could be kind to myself and love myself through it regardless of what anyone thought, the easier the process would be.  The more I “beat myself up” for not doing things good or perfect enough, the harder the process was.

By the end, I realized 2 things that were extremely valuable, and I wish I had learned them long ago.

1. Work and Play can co-exist: Having fun and doing the hard word do not have to be mutually exclusive. Once I made the “work” of writing a game, and started “playing” with the idea of what time I could lay on the beach and have a margarita, I actually started having fun writing. I learned that when I made the choice that it would be fun, it was. It was fun because I chose doing something hard over thinking too much. In fact, even thought it was still a terrible first draft, I was “playing” with words for the first time in a really long time.

2. Activating before Hesitating is the Key. The longer I sat around and thought about it, analyzed it, mulled it over, the harder it was to begin each day. When I just “started” moving my fingers over the keys, without letting my thoughts and distractions over take me, my brain followed my body. The words started to flow, and I wrote quite a bit more than I thought I would.

The irony of the whole deal, is that the battle is not over.  I got back and was sharing with someone else about the process I went through and the first thing they said was, “So, what’s your plan now for finishing it out?”  And I thought to myself, “Shit, now I have to more…” 

Will it get easier?  I hope.  I do know one thing.  It’s starting to take on a life of its own.  It’s like no matter what comes of it, I have to finish it, primarily because I don’t want all of that experience to be wasted.  But, now I'm ready for a REAL beach vacation.  I can’t wait to get back to the beach…and just lay around and read.  Maybe I’ll book one when I complete the course!

How to Make this Valentine's Day One to Remember

When we decided to write a blog for Valentine’s Day, my first thought was “how are we going to talk about love in a way that’s interesting, non-cliché and meaningful? 

Then, I asked myself: “what would I want to read?”  I want to read bullet points, ideas that are easy to act on, or could bring about a shift in my thinking. On a day where there is so much expectation about love, I wanted to write something that could go beyond a “significant other”.

So, the more questions I asked, the more I realized this blog should really be about key questions to ask on Valentine’s Day.  And as a researcher, this just felt better anyway!  So, here goes my list of Valentine’s Day questions as food for thought – along with some resources that helped me answer my questions!!

1. What would happen if I smiled at everyone I saw today?  
2. How would I feel if I complimented someone I admire?  
3. Why is there so much talk about “self-love” being a precursor to loving others? 
4. What are the things that make my heart happy? 
5. How can I be more kind to people who really irk me? 
6. How can I find time in my crazy schedule to spend more time with people I love? 
7. What can I do to love more and stress less? Thank you, my dear fellow Texan, Brene Brown, for your poignant quote, downloadable here. 
8. What can help give me an immediate lift of joy?

Using a Guide to Pass Through the Analytics Wilderness Safely

Let’s face it, “Analytics” is a confusing term. Whenever I try to tell people what I do, they get confused. To simplify this, I like to use the analogy of cutting a trail through the wilderness. “Analytics”, after all, is more about the questions you ask than the data itself. So, let’s talk about what works

Every wilderness adventure needs a good guide, and that's exactly what an analytics partner is: a translator and guide.  One who seeks to understand what the nature of the business problem is first, before jumping to what the technical solution could be.

A good partner is one that sits in the middle ground of business and technology. They get and understand technology, and can develop solutions themselves if the tools are put in front of them. However, they approach problems, not by telling other people what to do, but instead, listening to the problem to help create the most effective approach. 

There are all kinds of "analytics" techniques, and they all involve navigating a new path with data. It’s easy to get lost in the different definitions to gather, organize, and analyze data because the methods are vast: from machine learning, statistical analysis, data transformation, to data visualization. Analytics is a blanket term that includes all these things; so, when people ask me “what is analytics”, they often cite one of these ways and say, “is that what you mean?” 

Yes, but not really.

Effective questions

An “analytics partner” is not someone you hire just for their technical expertise. The ability to do the job with precision and accuracy is a baseline expectation. You hire them because of the way they pose effective questions, which save you from going down the wrong trails.

Many times, consultants will suggest that you build a freeway through your data wilderness, or put an expensive solution in place that doesn’t really play well with your environment or culture. You don’t want to build a house in a location that doesn’t make sense.

Rapid approach

“Design Thinking” is a term that better describes good analytics than does much of the analytics terminology because the active verbs in the process are similar: “Empathize”, “Ideate” and “Prototype”. Whereas analytics speaks in more conceptual techniques which sound complicated and mysterious...confusing. In an attempt to sound impressive, it alienates non-experts from understanding it.

For example, in the Design Thinking process, "Ideation" and "Prototyping" are key steps to help create a workable solution quickly.  The first idea is rarely the best one, so by testing and re-building it a few times, it's more likely to produce results that move an organization forward.  This is different than the traditional IT approach to solutioning, where precise “requirements” are needed first to build a more static solution. This is often at the heart of why solutions take so long to build but often miss the mark of what’s really needed.

Travel light

Analytics partners are hired because business owners don’t have the resources on their team, or their team is fully committed on other things. The last thing they want is to have a partner come in and require their folks work 25% harder. They need a partner who has the experience to understand the right upfront questions – what are you trying to accomplish? Where is your data? What is the quality of your data? – and then is gone. Not burdening at every step or bogging down because things aren’t clearly defined.

When all this comes together, the experience with an analytics partner can be transformative. More than just a technical solution provider, because they serve as a translator and guide to carve a beautiful, new path through the data wilderness for you. They don’t seek to tame the forest or build a highway through it, because the right next solution may not be in the part of the forest you think.

Passion: The Job To Be Done

Jobs to Be Done

One of my clients first introduced me to Jobs To Be Done theory, and since then, we have used it as one of the tools to help uncover consumer needs states in certain situations, in order to better understand “white space gaps and opportunities.” 

What I appreciate about this theory is that it starts from a place of “need or desire” rather than a place of “what’s missing” or lack? Many traditional methods for understanding wants and needs is looks at filling the gap to produce products - starting from a place of what's missing. People can typically comment or think about how to do something better than what it is.  When starting from a place of lack, one cannot help but stay in a place of lack. 

But when one starts from a place of desire, suddenly everything shifts. Let me give you an example, For years I've been trying to figure out how to change things in my company that are frustrating to me – the feeling of never having enough time, wearing too many hats,wanting to create new ideas or better systems but feeling buried in the work we currently have.  From that mindset, I've been evaluating what's missing, what's not quite right, what I would do different as a starting place for trying to solve the problem.  And I haven’t gotten very far.

A Trip to Austin

So, I took a few days just to myself, thanks to my wonderful husband (who I think was secretly ecstatic for a few days alone and my mom, who took my daughter for a “cousin camp”).  I went down to Lake Austin Spa to spend time with… me.  I did this thinking I would come back with a new purpose, life planned out, with dramatic shifts along with a strategy.  Instead, I came back with something different.

This may have been the only few days I’ve lived without an agenda as an adult.

I took a step back and I slept, walked, read and journaled.  And then on my 2nd day, I started flipping through magazines, pulled out every image that attracted me, or emotionally drawn to, then labeled, and created a collage .  Suddenly, I was in research mode, and knew what to do – this time I was researching myself!  I started looking and what resulted was a really specific “Job to be Done.”

Turning it on Myself

I decided to start from a place of desire. I started asking myself why do I feel the urge to change? why is finding my passion so important to me? I have a great family and I'm doing work that I love and feels interesting to me so what's missing? I also asked myself the question what do I most love? 

Looking at my collage, I realized I needed to develop some patterns or themes. So, my second step was to create definition around the pictures, looking for similarities and differences. When I finished, I had discovered that a lot of what I had passion for was already in my life! In the discovery of trying to find my passion I found that I already had it. What a concept!

Here’s how I translated my “vision collage” into a Job to Be Done.  I’ve wanted to buy or design a “creative, innovation space” for awhile but I have been rejecting in my mind that it’s a viable option…due to all of the negative self-talk rattling around in my mind.  But this process allowed me to open up to the “why” of how this is important to me,...here’s how I organized the picture and post-it data using the JBTD theory.

·      Note: the sentence structure we use for our research, I slightly changed.  Instead of “I use”, I replaced with “I need”

I need (what)

-       to create a beautiful space where light, water, nature and creativity connect

-       an innovative, transformative space for me and others to create

-       space to breathe - to feel, to be, to love, to give thanks

When (the situation)

-       I’m in my current state of desiring a life that’s true for me

I want to (what motivates me)

-       create vibrant ways for people to come together for fun, cozy connection

-       help others find their joy and facilitate groups growing together

So I can (the outcome I want)

-       set myself free and surrender to loving what's important to me

-       explore into the unknown with a spirit of adventure

-       let go of what doesn’t serve me

In the end, what came up for me was unexpected. What I discovered is that I was not spending enough time implementing experiences into my life which gives me joy. So suddenly these themes that emerged allowed me to start taking action on some small steps and over the hump of feeling like I had to make some huge life change in order to find my passion or make things better. And in turn, it has brought newfound passion for fulfilling this dream!

Being Present Through A Lens

When folks say “follow your passion”, what often comes to mind are big ideas. Major dreams, many times ones we believe are unattainable. Things like starting a business, writing a book, or climbing an 8,000-meter peak. But sometimes following your passion is a series of small things, an activity that you find a way to weave into your typical day. Even if we struggle between passion and exhaustion in the job we choose, we can inject passion by taking small moments to do things we enjoy just for the sake of doing them. And in that doing, unpredicted benefits arise. For me, that’s photography. 

Like a lot of people my age who invest in photography, my interest started with back in high school where I learned to shoot black and white film on a manual camera. I enjoyed that tremendously, but It’s come and gone over the years without really sticking. I wasn’t willing to dedicate the time and money I felt was needed. Digital came on, but I wasn’t excited about the quality or expense – why spend a lot of money on a tool that may be out of date within two years, when you’re not even doing it that often to begin with?

Over the years my life became more complex. Having a child, juggling two careers (1 helping my wife’s business + a corporate gig), which has now have morphed into one, making room for family, friends, two dogs and a Shasta trailer. In keeping up with all that, there became less and less time to pursue hobbies. About four years ago, I acquired two items that used to be passions of mine as a teenager – an electric guitar and a digital camera. That guitar has not seen much action, but the camera took off. It was something I could carry with me to the events of my life, and was especially encouraged if I was aiming at my now 6-year-old daughter. Perfect!

Noble winner, Daniel Kahneman has said there are 20,000 moments in every day. They are all different and your brain remembers them them in slices. When we recall a favorite moment in the past, we are often brought back to one of these slices that were especially meaningful to us. This is where our brain recorded that moment as the one that captured the feeling best.

Photography trains you to be better aware of those moments. My daughter likes to take photographs now, too, on her waterproof/shockproof camera. This of course makes me very proud. Although she always likes looking at the pictures I’ve taken of her, she sometimes gets annoyed when I point the lens at her. To help her accept it, I told her that I am “collecting butterflies”. She asked me what that meant so I said, “memories are like butterflies that come in and then flutter away. I am trying to catch the pretty ones in my net so I can look at them later”.

Have I followed my passion by becoming a National Geographic photographer for a living? Not so much.

Have I followed it by weaving photography into the life I already have, and adding a layer of joy and appreciation to it? Yes, definitely.

What is that thing that you love to do for the sake of doing, that could maybe find a way back into your routine? You may be surprised by what it brings.

How to Build Data That's Useful

Analytics and Stroller Pushing

One of the best analytical lessons I ever learned was nowhere near my computer. My wife and I were gearing up to have our first child. We were shopping for a baby stroller. If you have done this, you know the choices are paralyzing. There are at least 20 options that are rated on multiple qualities. After hours of debating what should have been painless choice, we stopped ourselves and asked, “what is the most important feature here”. After thinking about it, my wife said, “I want to be able to reach down with one hand (because the other will be holding the baby) and pick it up so it collapses, then toss it in the back of the RAV4 in one motion.” Suddenly, 20 options went down to 2 or 3, and we made a decision a minute after that.

Good data insight development follows this approach. It is not an attempt to build the Encyclopedia Britannica, it’s an agreement on what piece of currently unavailable information would make the most difference to the people who actually run the business. Here is a fun little video of me talking about this.

Back in 2011 I took a leap of faith. I left the stability of Pepsico to lead an analytics group in a much smaller Energy company. At that time, I was introduced to a new software called Tableau. It seemed pretty cool, and was easy to learn if you were a strong excel user. So off I went with my team to build reports from the database of company information we had put together.

One of the first and certainly most notorious reports we developed was for a “very eager” and attention-challenged marketing manager. The good news is that he loved data and believed in not making decisions without it. The bad news is that there was no end to the data that he felt he needed to look at.

My team went on to develop the report exactly the way that he wanted it, with all the different possible views and filters he could think of.  With this one report, he would be able to see everything, and answer every question that his directors could pose.

This is an example of what it looked like. My team gave it a name: “Filters Gone Wild.” No one else in the company could stand to use this report for more than two minutes without needing a glass of scotch.

So why to people do this? Isn’t it a noble intention, after all, to want to see more data? The reason is because complexity creates its own burden, As it turns out, consuming data is a lot like purchasing jam - more isn’t always better.  Not only is there a point of diminishing returns in how satisfied we are, but our ability to act is reduced significantly as well.

That was a really interesting role for me, and I’m glad I took it. Not only did I learn a lot of new, useful skills, but more importantly I got to see the gamut of “clients” and how they wanted data. The better ones understood this concept of simplification.

Around the same time, there was an article released by MIT, which put some science to what I was learning. They surveyed a few thousand people at multiple companies and determined that top performers were five times more likely to use analytics than lower performers. No surprise there, but what was more interesting was how the top companies approached data.  It wasn’t about budgets or sophistication of software; the lower performers cited development process and managerial issues as a major contributor to blocking progress. What - people are getting in the way?!?

A recent client experience motivated me to write this blog. The team had purchased all the software it needed to bang out good reporting. They had a small army of internal folks and contractors who could wrangle and structure the data as good as anyone. But when the six-month check-in time on a nine-month project came, they discovered that only rudimentary reporting had been developed, and that the internal clients were disappointed to the point of considering pulling the funding for the expensive software they purchased.

Why? Because the IT developers who were in charge of it had treated it as a requirements fulfillment exercise.

One of the key points of the MIT article was a concept they called “start in the middle”. In their findings, they saw a trend in the approach of effective teams where they would simplify the issue to discover the most relevant information to move the needle the most, and then iterate against that until they honed it to a useful state.

It’s a conversation between business people, that happens to use technology as a tool to make it come to life. There is no requirement to gather, because it’s never really known completely what is needed until the discovery begins. It’s not a conversation with executives, it’s with the frontline managers and directors who make the business happen. Once they start becoming successful, peers start taking notice and the path to a data-driven culture organically grows.

Road Stories on how Married Couples go into Business Together Lesson #3

Working for my wife has its challenges. In my last blog I talked about how it’s particularly fun when you quickly discover that your new role involves knowing the subtleties of what and how your wife likes her coffee. You will be getting a lot of that for her until you figure out how to bring in some bacon.

What’s positive about being married and working together is the flexibility. Although things get crazy at times and the ride is much less predictable, there is more flexibility in scheduling time off. Gone are the days when I had to disappoint her with the response that I can’t take an opportunistic four-day weekend, because I’ve used my corporate accrual allotment of vacation year-to-date. Like a lot of corporate terms, it’s hard to know what that means exactly but it’s safe to say that you’re screwed.   

I’m learning to be more grateful for the times that we can sneak away.

So, in this post I wanted to simply make that point, and share some photos I took of our trip we took to Cancun for her “birthday week”. Thank you, Marriott reward points!

Enjoy!

Boy that water is a pretty blue.

And the sunsets are stunning above the sea

April was pretty darn relaxed

And able to spend quality time with Autumn

My daughter thinks she is Moana

And did her happy dance every day of the trip

April’s perspective:

When can I go back?

No Nonsense Essential Oils

Over the years, we’ve learned the hard way how important it is to take care of ourselves, especially when we need to travel for a project and during seasons of long research days. April introduced us to using health-promoting botanicals in the form of essential oils as a more natural approach to enhancing our general wellness by:

• Inspiring a positive emotional state

• Enhancing physical wellness

• Enhancing spiritual awareness

• Purifying the air

Since then, we’ve read more about how we can better use essential oils at work. In our continuous quest to lead a healthy life and create better moods during projects with clients, we’ve listed our favorite oils/blends brands and their uses:

• Peppermint by doTerra – to remove headaches, revive energy, freshens breath

• InTune by doTerra – to enhance the senses and sustain focus

• Digestzen by doTerra – for indigestion

• Stress Away by Young Living – to combat stress

• Thieves by Young Living – to purify

• Lavender by doTerra – for relaxation (and sleep)

• Lemon by doTerra – to cleanse

• Frankincense by doTerra – helps boost immunity

• Melaleuca by doTerra – fights bacteria and fungus

• Oregano by doTerra – helps relieve common seasonal threats

We keep a stash of these oils in the office and our travel bag together with a diffuser so we can diffuse away (e.g. Peppermint during intense research days) or apply topically (e.g. Stress Away during concept work sessions) when we most need them.

Recently, April shared with us an article that talks about becoming aware of our basic tendencies so we can make better choices to support the harmony in body and mind.  And this article which tells the story about how choosing nourishing smells will awaken the mind’s innate healing powers and experience a natural vitality and wholeness based on our dosha. What is dosha, you ask?  Dosha is a person’s “mind-body” type and there are 3 primary types: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Are you curious what your dosha is?  Well, you can take a quiz here to find out! Briefly, these are what the doshas mean:

• Vata: Movement and Change

  • Tends to be always on the go with an energetic and creative mind

• Pitta: Transformation and Metabolism

  • Enjoy a strong appetite and ability to digest food, information, and experiences

• Kapha: Structure and Fluidity

  • Solid, reliable, contented souls

Based on your mind-body type (dosha), there are certain aromas (essential oils) that can help evoke states of well-being:

• Vata: floral, fruity, warm, sweet, and sour smells

  • Basil, Orange, Geranium, Clove, Vanilla, Patchouli

• Pitta: cooling and sweet smells

  • Sandalwood, Mint, Rose, Jasmine, Ylang-Ylang, Lavender

• Kapha: stimulating and spicy smells

  • Eucalyptus, Camphor, Juniper, Clove, Marjoram, Rosemary

We’re looking forward to taking the dosha quiz to understand which essential oils can support our goal of leading healthier lives!

Are you KIDding me: Designing a Kids Sensory Project

Last summer, one of our favorite clients commissioned us for a project where they needed reactions from both kids AND parents!

The problem we’ve found in the past is that kid’s reactions are somewhat biased by their parents (and sometimes, although not always), some parents want to influence their child’s reactions.  However, we needed to have parents’ perspective to get a holistic view.

Our goal is to design research as “efficiently” as possible so we worked side by side with our client partner to create research that would allow reactions from BOTH parents & children separately in the same group.

So we designed a process that will ensure the project will be a success: 

• The Problem: How do you design a kid’s research where you are able to get uninfluenced responses from both the kids AND their parents? Did I forget to mention that apart from talking to kids, we also wanted to get their parents’ reactions and inputs?
• The Solution: Create an environment where both the kids and parents would feel comfortable being separated in some parts of the research. Trust me, it’s not a logistical nightmare!
  • Set-up a movie room for kids
  • Explain logistics and timing to parents
  • Coordinate amongst ourselves when kids would be in and out of the focus group discussion

As soon as we figured out the rhythm to the process after the first group, everything was smooth sailing and we were able to implement our research design:

• Get kids’ taste preference while parents watched in the back room.
• Get parents’ interpretation of their kids’ food ratings.
• Understand how both the parent and kid come to an agreement and decide what to order.
• How to effectively get learnings/reactions/inputs with just 8 focus groups.

In the end, we were able to successfully conduct the research. And the bonus was we all had fun with the kids!

Road Stories on how Married People go into Business Together

After telling some of our close friends over the holidays about our plan for Lloyd to join the business, and seeing their wide-eyed worried expressions, we decided we should probably talk about how we might work together…and stay married! 

April’s perspective: I approached our “vision of how we will work together” in the same way I plan any other work project. Thinking about: “What do we want to accomplish?”  “What are the tools we could use to help the discussion flow?”  “What does success look like?”  “What is the agenda?”

We packed ourselves up and headed to a location away from home with all of our materials – flip charts, post-its, magazines and markers.  Our objective was to create a shared vision for the company and what our roles would be. 

Over the years, I’ve discovered several sources to help with vision/strategy planning; all of them are great in different ways. The first exercise was to review each and come back together to align on the best approach. Some of the sources we had available were:

1. 90 Day Year by Todd Herman

2. Lara Casey’s Powersheets

3. Self-Authoring  

4. Marie Forleo

5. Lululemon’s Vision Worksheet

I was excited and optimistic when we got back together. Books and materials were all over the table, and I could tell this was going to be a good conversation. Lloyd started first.  He said “so what I’ve discovered is that our word for the year should be ‘intentionality’ and I’ve identified two main areas that we need to focus on to be more productive.” All the air went out of my sails, and I sat there for several long seconds trying to grasp at how I would respond, because he clearly did not stick to the plan of aligning on the best approach but instead, jumped to a conclusion!

We had to stray from the agenda for about 10 minutes to work through this style difference, but we made it to the other side.

After getting past my initial reaction, I knew what he said was exactly what was needed for the business - he’s very proficient at coming to solid conclusions quickly, and doesn’t feel the need to review every angle before deciding. This is exactly the skill we need … although it wasn’t what I expected from an exploratory vision exercise.

Lloyd’s perspective: It didn't take long to see that there were similar patterns in these different methodologies, so let’s just cut to the chase here and identify the big levers that are going to move the needle for us most. Boom, done!

Married Couple working together lesson #1: we need to be open-minded toward the other person’s way of thinking. We have different strengths, and our approaches are not the same but can be complimentary when we have patience.

Stay Tuned….more lessons to come…