Lead Like the Great Conductors

Contact Hitter

I've been thinking a lot about baseball recently. More accurately, I've noticed myself using a lot of baseball metaphors. I think it started a few weeks back when I took a swing for the fences and ended up hitting a run-like-hell-and-barely-beat-the-throw-to-second double. Since then I've been working out some ideas on impact, progress and change. My conclusion is that real change only happens one single (one bunt?) at a time.

When it comes to lasting change - in an individual or in an organization - there is no such thing as a home run. One swing can certainly determine the final outcome of a ballgame but it's all the pitches, catches, strikeouts, walks, steals, tags, slides, rundowns, pop-flys, groundouts, hits and errors taken together that make it a complete game. You don't get the chance to end it unless you've gone through everything that must come before. And, sometimes, just when you think it's about to end it just keeps on going (witness Yankees v. Angels in Game 2) and you need to find yet another way to bring it to a close.

Unlike a ballgame, however, for each of us and for any organization that is "built to last" there is no final out. Our ballgame is about sustainable results over time. Trying to accomplish that with one big swing is just poor strategy, a recipe for short term growth and long term decline.

My new mantra is to "hit for contact." To develop as I hope to and to influence change in my company, I am focused on each distinct opportunity, each conversation and interaction. How can I advance this runner? Wha's the best way to get on base in this situation? How can I just put the bat on the ball in this moment?

Post script: baseball actually is the best example...just think of what's become of Bonds, McGwire and Canseco.

Falling Down

I fell down yesterday. Seriously. Literally. Fell right on my rear end. And, this was no minor, stub-your-toe-and-stumble-to-the-ground kind of fall. This was a late-night-sketch-comedy-worthy, prat-fall of the highest order. I don't want to brag, but Will Ferrell and his ilk can only dream of falling this well.

The beauty of this fall is not only how dramatic it was and how long it lasted but, of course, where and when it occurred. I had just finished presenting to the 50 leaders of my company. The group had moved into conversations at their tables and in my efforts to roam around the room and listen-in to the conversations I backed right into two banquet chairs. What ensued was a backward motion, cartwheeling-arms-flailing, center-of-gravity-defying, two-chair-tumbling, feeling I just might be able to pull out of it, tailspin of certain ruin. It was big. Fortunately, I only scraped up my leg a little bit and, once on the ground, certainly aware that I had gotten most of the room's attention I yelled out "I'm OK!" as loudly as I could. Laughter followed disbelief. (One just doesn't expect this sort of thing.) And, ego slightly bruised, I got back to the business at hand.

Did I mention that I had just presented to the leadership of my company? Senior team, Vp's, directors. The whole lot of them. This is relevant because what I was feeling at the time of the fall was a biting sense of disappointment in myself. I had big plans for this talk - plans to show up authentically, to relate some stories, to really engage the group. And, I didn't. I operated from fear.

During my talk I was describing the difference between employees who "just get the job done" and those who are creative and truly engaged in the work. I used a music metaphor to describe the difference: one is just playing the notes while the other is really making music. There I was, after my talk, roaming about the room, thinking to myself, I played the right notes but I didn't make music. And then I fell on my ass.

I am told that Freud once said "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." So, maybe the fall has no meaning. Maybe it had nothing to do with how I felt about the talk. And maybe the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate, a perfect but unlikely pair. One punctuating the other in a totally unexpected but highly relevant way.

I know the talk went better than I can admit. And, I know I fell pretty hard. The thing is, I also got right back up again.

I can't wait to try again.

"To Be of Use"

a poem by Marge Piercy

To Be of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a
heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things
forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

(with thanks to Kate Graham)