Leadership

A Mother’s Love Goes On

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A mother’s love is a gift that resounds through eternity. Bringing a new life into the world enriches the diversity of the universe. A mother’s choice for life is an act of faith, hope and love.

My Mom was the leader of the family.  She was the soul and the heart who taught us how to laugh, love and get along in the world.  I learned many lessons from my mom but here are just three with appropriate antidotes.

  1. How not to take myself so seriously!  Anyone who knows me knows that I am an intense guy.  Part of that is from my Dad who always said this or that is the greatest or the best thing ever.  And part of that is just my anal retentive self.  Mom was the opposite.  She used to loosen me and my Dad up.  Here is an anecdote.  My mom went with me to back to school day back in my junior year when we moved to Texas.  Every 15 minutes we would have to switch classes and meet the teacher.  I walked directly to class while people were trying to flag me down and say high.  My Mom in her Jersey accent would say Donn…nie, why didn’t you say hi to those cute girls that were saying hi to you!  I said something like Mom we have to get to class and I do not want us to be late.  As always, I was too focused on the mission and what was next.  My Mom tried to focus me on relationships and what was now.
  2. Sing from your heart.  My love of singing and whatever literary skills I have come from my Mom.  She loved Debbie Reynolds and old Irish songs.  I grew up with the songs “Tammy”, Irish tunes, and “Frankie and Johnnie Were Lovers” running in my mind.  She taught me to sing from your soul, from my heart.   She also was quite a writer herself as was my Mother In Law Audrey.  To this day, I can never hear the song Tammy without weeping out loud.  It was the song of my childhood and is cemented on my soul!
  3. Love, love, love to the End!   What is it with Mothers?  They love us always and to the end.  My Mom was the same way (as was the Mother of all, the blessed Mother).  Two anecdotes stand out.  I remember back in Jersey being bullied by some kids.  I was the nerdy kid.  Heck my nickname was Richie Cunningham.  My Mom one day tracked them down and chewed them out.  They never bothered me again! The second anecdote was the time in the aftermath of my Dad’s passing.  Mom was the rock that kept us all going.  She demonstrated devotion and everlasting love by staying out in the country of East Texas until the house was sold and the estate settled.  She was struggling but she continued to lift us up and get things done.

Last Thoughts.  My last memory of my Mom is the most meaningful and testament to her love.   I was sitting in the hospital in Richmond, Texas.  My mom was on a respirator and the Doctor asked me and the rest of the family if we should pull her off the respirator.  Even though she pointed to it to stop, we were struggling to give our OK.  We sat there and finally gave our OK.  But Mom had saved us.  She knew her time and had passed.  I will never forget her final act of love.  How she protected us from that decision.

In closing, there will never, ever, ever be someone as great and more deserving of your respect than your mother.  Love them!  Bless them! And, thank them for what you are and what you will be!  Not just this Mother’s Da

Stop the Negative Talk and Take A Walk

Don Grier4 Comments

Some say the key to weight loss is reducing calories while others say exercise is the key.  Both are important but for me be the key to weight loss is controlling negative thoughts.  A positive outlook and a can-do attitude works wonders on both your body and your soul.   It has in my case!  In the past three years, I have been able to shed over 170 pounds and a lot of mental baggage by doing three simple things.

1. Stop Negative Talk. The very first thing you should do when striving to lose weight and be a better leader is stop the negative talk.   You need to replace the words can’t do with can do.  Also, you need to stop the practice of “worst casting”.  This is the racing voice inside your head that blows the simplest setback into a full fledge downward spiral.  Here is an example of thoughts in my head before I learned how to tackle it.

“This project is not going well. But I am the only one that can do it.    I need to work to at least 10 PM to pull it out or it will not get done.  I am so tired.  Need some energy.  But if I take a break I will never pull it out.  And then everyone will come after me.  How can I get some energy to keep going?  Grab a cup full of peanut M&M’s and another cup of coffee and I will make it.  I am still too tired but worth a shot”.

This my friends is how I gained over 80 lbs. in less than a year.  I worst casted myself into weight gain!  I reveled in being the Iron Man that could beat Murphy and stop disaster from coming down upon us.  But in truth, Murphy’s law (Everything that may go wrong will go wrong) was not in play.  Instead, I was being both a pessimist and an arrogant leader not trusting of the collective wisdom of the team.   It was only when I had faith in myself, a clear realization of the situation, and the belief in my team that I could break the cycle of worst casting.

So here is how the sound of the voice in my head is now.  “The project is having some problems but we can tackle them.  But I am still so tired.   I will call up my team to see if they have some ideas.  Then I will take a walk and clear my head.  We will then be able to solve this tomorrow. [Don takes a walk].  I came up with three ideas that will solve this by leveraging the ideas from my team.  I am energized.  I write an email, set the plan for tomorrow and go to bed!”

See the difference.  When I let the negative talk dominate, I worst casted myself into eating M&M’s, sitting in a chair, losing sleep, and not engaging my team.  I was still able to overcome Murphy’s Law because it was not really in play!  Also, I did it by force rather than smarts.  When I stepped back and stopped the negative thoughts, I exercised, engaged my team, got some sleep, and came up with a better solution with a cleared head.  First rule to weight loss and leadership – stop the negative thoughts in your head.

2. Take a Walk. I already alluded to this in rule 1.  When your mind is raising and your feeling stressed, don’t reach for a Whataburger – take a walk!  Preferably outside.  It will do three things for you.  First, it will destress you and calm you down.  Especially if you are out in nature and you can hear birds singing and smell the flowers.  Second, it will allow you to catch up with your thoughts and put them together in coherent patterns.  One thing that really helps on this second one.  Listen to a relevant audio book.  I cannot tell you how many times I solved the latest problem or come up with a blog story.  Third, it will allow you to capture ideas in a less rushed manner.  Nearly half my blogs and many of my work solutions start the same way.  I am walking around Town Lake listening to a self-help or sometimes a philosophy book.  An idea or a solution pops in my head.  I press the button on my iPhone and say Siri Take Note.  Then I record the idea and use it when I get home.  It is a great way to solve problems and write great blogs (and often to scare the person walking beside you!).

3. Be Kind. The last thing to defeat negative talk, work inefficiency, and weight gain is KINDNESS.  Be kind to yourself.  You are doing the best you can.  Be kind to others.  Often, they are doing the best they can and if they are not, you need to help them achieve their potential.  I will not lie to you.  Kindness is something I am still working on.  It is hard to tackle 50 some years of being a driver and a bit of curmudgeon.  But more often than not, you can kill the problem with kindness.  And shed the weight by being kind to yourself as you move to a healthier you.

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Getting the Iron Out Door – Lessons from Big D for Developers

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This is the first of a series of Father’s day blogs.  The leader that I learned the most from (which is probably similar to a lot of you) was my Dad – Big D.  Yes believe it or not I am Little D or Donnie, Jr. to my family . Here is a picture of Big D and Little D.

big-d

One of my Dad’s favorite sayings was you have to “Get the Iron Out the Door”.  Coincidentally, that is the root of the title of the Quarterly Professional Services newsletter, “Getting the Iron Out the Door”.  Two of the lesson I learned from Big D relates to getting the iron the door.

What is the Iron?  Where is the Door?  The iron refers to large turbines that reside in dams to generate electricity.   Big D was a steelworker/machinist and later the manager of Turbocare in Houston, Texas.  These turbines would come in the “door” of Turbocare from all over the world (Columbia, US, India, etc.) for maintenance or emergency repair.    As soon as the turbine came in the door, it was Big D’s responsibility to drive his team to get the repair done as quickly as possible while fixing the root problem and maintaining quality.  You can imagine the pressure to get these turbines back repaired.  They powered cities like Detroit or Bogota.  Every day that the turbine spent being repaired, part of the electrical capacity powering the city was out.  A brownout could occur or even a blackout.  In addition, they could only be carried by a train or ship and for some of these places the ship or train schedules where tight.

Now “Getting the Iron Out the Door” did not mean rushing around and slapping a fix in, as Big D explained to me.   It was too costly to send a half repaired turbine out the door.  The shipping costs alone are enormous.  You first needed to physically and electronically inspect the turbine to determine the root cause of the problem which was usually a blade bent a fraction of an inch. Then and only then you could precision machine or weld the blade or rotor with the problem.  Lastly and most importantly, you needed to test the balance of the turbine to precise specification.  The whole while the clock was ticking and the ship or train was waiting.  If you made the right decisions on balancing speed with quality, the Iron went Out the Door and did not come back.  See the picture of a turbine going out the door of Turbocare below.

turbine 1

How do I take Big D’s lesson in leadership to my life as in Accenture overseeing IT engagements?  Maybe our systems in Public Service do not power cities but they help feed hungry children (SNAP), keep a family afloat in an emergency (TANF), and help care for people with urgent medical conditions (Medicaid).  Our job each day is to “Get the Program Checked In”, so we can meet the deadlines of our client.  In so doing, we cannot sacrifice quality for speed.  The “shipping costs” using our analogy are families not being served.  How do IT developers like Big D see the clock ticking but not hear it, “Get the Iron Out the Door” without it coming back in.

  1.  Do a careful analysis to find the root cause of the code problem or a careful impact analysis to perform a comprehensive design.  This is analogous to finding the blade bent by a hair or the hair line fracture in the Turbine.
  2. Next follow the design and analysis precisely.  Use precision code and tools to fix the root cause of the problem or make the new functionality first time right!
  3. Lastly, test your application to specification.  A program not to specification will be subject to warranty (come back in the door) or worst yet cause a family to miss the benefits for which they are eligible.

I miss Big D each and every day.  Let us heed his words of leadership well and Get the Iron Out the Door and not allow it back in!