The fear of wasting our talent; living a happy but unremarkable life

The funny thing is, I still feel this dread, even though every day I have bubbles, and even overflows, with joy.

This, decidedly, the life I chose and I wanted. “Family first” is our mantra and “It’s a good life, babe” is our refrain. We have a fairly simple life that’s fun, and fulfilling. And joyous. And meaningful. Our days, admittedly, are remarkable mostly because of their consistency.

Our kids waddle into our room, wearing their pajamas of course, at about 6 AM on most days. Robyn and I work our jobs. If it’s a school day, we go through our morning routine with the kids and “do drop off” as a family. If it’s a “home day” we all move a little slower as I prep for the work day and Robyn prepares herself for a day with the kids - mixing in walks with Riley, swim lessons, doctors appointments, snacks, and other modest mischief and adventure throughout the day. 

What anchors our day, on most days, is a free-flowing sequence of cooking dinner while the kids play, followed by a family dinner, dessert, tooth-brushing, potty, pajamas, two stories, and a lullaby before tucking them in.

Our nights and weekends waltz and sashay with different versions of roughly the same activities. We do whatever remainder of work we haven’t crunched through during the day, which luckily isn’t as pervasive, urgent, or stinging as when we both worked in public service. We have chores that never seem quite finished - dishes for me, laundry for Robyn. In the rare instance we watch television, it’s either a British detective drama like Endeavour, or a music competition like The Voice or The Masked Singer.

If it’s a weekend, our chores remain but are different (groceries don’t buy themselves, yet, at least). Our excursions outside are a little longer and a little more like a sauntering ramble than the focused, brisk walk Robyn and I take with Riley at lunchtime when we’re both working from home. 

And then there are the weekend’s mix-ins. We take Bo to soccer practice and try to go to church and participate in civic and cultural life as best we can. We do our best to see our family once a weekend and nurture friendships with our small group of close ties, our neighbors, or extended family. We both steal away an hour of exercise, as many times we can.

I try to write and chip in to the efforts of the neighborhood association and Robyn tries to explore her budding interest in photography, plans trips, and tries to support the other young moms she knows through small but deliberate acts of kindness.

The moment of the week I relish most, probably, is a short window between 8 and 10pm Friday nights. That’s the one part of the week where Robyn and I are most likely to be able to spend together, doing nothing but enjoy each other’s company. This, again, is remarkable only because of the consistency of our activity - we watch a show perhaps, open up a bottle of wine, fire up the power recline feature of our La-Z-Boy love seat, and or listen to some light music while absorbing and reflecting on the last week of our life. It is the time of week, I feel most comfortable.

This is our life. And as I said, it would otherwise be unremarkable if not for its consistency. Because it truly is unglamous, and seriously is not for everyone. Plenty of people would probably go bonkers under our roof, as we would under theirs.

But for us it works. Because as consistently unremarkable our daily grind is, the moments of laughter, joy, love, and gleefully, willing suffering & sacrifice - the moments we live for - are consistent and remarkable.

It’s hard to explain, but there’s an inexplicable ease and warmth I feel when our sons cast spells of “giant golf ball powers!” completely unannounced. Or when we have 60 minutes of struggle and yelling and tears to get out the door, only to spend an hour and a half with someone at their birthday party. Or when we get to walk outside and see the majestic 100-year old trees triumphantly changing color down our block. And there are dozens more small moments like this, which are unremarkable in isolation, but their consistency feels remarkable.

This is the life dreamed of when I was wandering through the badlands as a younger man. It’s the life Robyn and I wanted together and that we both still want, even though we have to hustle for it damn near every day. It is a happy life, made more exquisite by how challenging and sacrificing it is.

This is the life we chose, intended with each other. It is a life on purpose. Every day is a good day, truly. Our life is admittedly quite opposite of a novel, flashy life - much closer to boring than glamorous, more like monochrome than technicolor. But it’s still a thrilling adventure - healthy, prosperous, joyful, and meaningful,

And yet, I hear the echoes of my father’s stubbornly accented voice and the dream-like memory of him talking to me in the kitchen of my family home - “you are a very capable person,” he said, in a way that was straining, almost exasperated even, to make me understand how serious he was.

And then, on top of my serene and happy state of mind, the existential dread sets in.

I have been brainwashing myself to stop comparing myself to others for the better part of a decade. And I’m mostly there, I don’t feel jealously of my peers like I used to. I don’t have the addiction to keep up with the Joneses or stack up my professional resume like I used to. Instead of being acute, my inclination to social comparison and seeking the approval of others is now more of a chronic condition - something I can manage and live with, rather than having to treat intensely after a bad episode. I am more comfortable doing my own thing than I ever have, and I have a better grasp of what “doing my own thing” or “being myself” actually means, than I ever have in my whole life.

This relatively nascent state of contentment has come from looking inward. It has come from consistent, intense, reflection trying to understand my inner world and how that inner-self can integrate with the broader world. I suppose you could say, I’ve tried to put into practice an “examined life” as Socrates put it in Plato’s Apology.

But in that act of examination, I haven’t been able to help but contemplate whether I’ve lived up to my Father’s assessment of my talent, or even my own assessment of my own capabilities.

Because it’s true, I am a capable person, even if I was afraid to accept the responsibility that came with acknowledging those capabilities for most of my life. And so I wonder, have I lived up to what I’m capable of? How much of my talent and time have I squandered?

To be clear, I’m under no delusion (anymore) that given different choices, I’d be more wealthy of famous than I am now. The way I operate and think, I’ve accepted, it not attractive of fat profits or paparazzi. And, I know for sure that I’m not a once in a generation genius whose wasted talent has become a missed opportunity to bend the trajectory of humanity.

What I long for and am haunted by, however, is contribution. Meaning, lower-case “c” contribution. Like how many more people’s days could I have made by now, had I made different or better choices? And by different choices, I don’t even mean sacrificing family or my own sanity to work harder or longer hours. But maybe if I had focused differently, or made different choices on the margins, or gotten drunk on fewer weekends in my twenties, or just tapped into my talents more intentionally or earlier..

How much higher would the literacy rate be if I applied myself to it? How many fewer people in Detroit would have been shot or killed had I stayed in public service for longer or been better at my job? How many companies could I have started by now if I acted on one of the dozens of businesses that I’d thought of with my buddies that ended up becoming profitable enterprises? How many people could I have brought out of a dark place had I lived up to how capable I actually am and been more generous? What might’ve happened if I buckled down and finished this book two years ago? How might the world be a little different, and hopefully better, if I were better and contributing my gifts?

Perhaps the dread I feel is better described as remorse. I have everything I dreamed of, and it truly is enough - I feel fully happy, complete and satisfied. And yet, I feel this guilt and a lingering malaise because I know I had more in the tank to give. I know that in a different version of my life, somewhere else in the multiverse, I would’ve been able to create a cherished and charmed home life while making a greater contribution to the world outside our backyard.

And I suppose it’s true that life is long, and many people don’t hit their stride until well past middle age, some even not until their sixties or seventies. It’s just this bizarre reality where I feel confident in the choices that I made, feel blessed and complete in the life I have, but still feel the heaviness of imagining counter-factual life.

I wonder often if this must be a new phenomenon for people coming of age. Because now, for people coming of age right now, we have a much broader understanding of the world and our role in it. The amount of information we have or travel we can do or people we can interact with, gives us a difficult awareness both of who we are and how we influence others. This heaviness of imagining a counter-factual life probably wasn’t possible for nearly as many people even 30 years ago.

What I’ve tried to take relief is is that despite how informed or worldly we can be in today’s time, we still know very little of how far our actions actually travel. We don’t know the extent of the wake we’ve created for others to be cared for, to grow, to live more freely, or to thrive. Because now, the contribution and goodwill of our actions can travel much farther than they could 30 years ago. This is true because of how globalized our world is, even if most of us aren’t destined to have a litany of press clips to our name because of what we do on this earth.

What I hope for now is that even though most of the contributions that most of us are able to make are unremarkable, we just keep doing them. Over and over. If we consistently put good things out into the world, maybe just maybe it will turn to be remarkable and make an extraordinary contribution. With any luck, if we’re at least consistent in being unremarkable we’ll be towards the end of our lives and we’ll see that our talents weren’t squandered and we’d been making a remarkable contribution all along.

The bar is too low for men as parents. Enough is enough.

After four years of being a father, I’ve noticed several ways that other people treat me differently as a parent than Robyn. Here are some examples:

In the past three months, Robyn and I each took 2-3 day trips away from home. When I left Robyn alone with the kids, it wasn’t much more than a blip on the radar. Nobody we knew stressed too much about it or honestly thought much of it. 

When Robyn left me alone to solo parent for a few days, so many people offered to help in one way or another. It was a topic of some note, rather than just a passing mention. People, kindly, asked if I was scared to be home with the kids “all by myself. That was all very generous, but noticeably different than how Robyn was treated.

Robyn and I are also complimented differently as parents. Which is to say I actually receive compliments and Robyn, again, doesn’t get more than a passing mention. Robyn is an outstanding parent to our sons. I’m no slouch either, and we both love being parents so we share the load. Somehow, that leads me to get noted as an “involved dad” or “doing a great job” and Robyn gets that sort of affirmation much less, if at all.

Which, is all very kind. But it makes me feel like the often discussed example of a person of color being complimented as “articulate.” I usually feel like our culture must expect me to be some degree of uninvolved and incompetent to pay me a compliment just for being a father who isn’t a total moron.

At the same time, whether it’s school, the doctor, or even waiters at restaurants - if any person engaging in an arms length transaction needs any information about the kids’ wants and needs they almost invariably ask Robyn. Like, almost literally never am I asked about them, sometimes even by close friends and family.

It’s like the same dynamic of waiters automatically giving the man at the table the check at the end of the meal. I often feel like people assume that I’m off the hook for having any information or an opinion about our childrens’ affairs.

Finally, when in establishments that aren’t run by large corporates (like Disney World or McDonalds), it always seem like that the women’s bathroom is more likely to have a changing table than the men’s. To be sure, I don’t have hard data to back up this perception. But it’s happened enough times where the women’s restroom has a table and the men’s doesn’t that we believe it.

Net-net, in four years as a father, my experience strongly suggests that Robyn and I have different expectations as parents and are held to different standards.

To be real blunt: as a father, I have a chip on my shoulder.

Because from my vantage point, our culture is sending signals, 24/7, implying that men are beer-drinking, butt-scratching, sports-watching oafs that don’t have a clue on how to be caregivers to their own children. I feel like I’m constantly having to prove that I can be held to a higher standard than the abysmally low bar our culture sets for men as parents.

This is definitely a hyperbolic, stereotype-rooted, perhaps even ridiculous claim to make. But I feel it. Like all the damn time. It makes me bonkers that the bar is set so low.

I am not trying to get a pat on the back, or suggest that I’m some all-star father. Because honestly, I don’t deserve one. I decidedly am not.

I screw up with my kids and/or need Robyn to help me clean up a mistake I’ve made, literally daily. By all accounts, I’m a solid (but average) father, at best, with a solid performance thrown in about once every ten days. 

What I am trying to do is bring light to the fact that our culture has self-perpetuating, low expectations around men as fathers. We treat men as if they’re incompetent fathers, make fun of them when they screw up, and then lower the expectations we have. And then, we give them less responsibility, which all but assures that those men will become even less competent and confident than they already are.

This cycle is infuriating to me because a lot of men I know (myself and many friends from all parts of my life) are trying really hard to be present, competent parents. I hope that by bringing light to this cultural phenomenon it will cause at least a few people to act differently. Because I don’t think most people mean to belittle men or imply low expectations for them - it just happens because it’s the culture.

That said, I get that there’s probably an equal number of men who aren’t trying to be competent parents. But conservatively, even if only 20% of men are actually trying, we shouldn’t be setting the standard based on the 80% who aren’t. No more low expectations. The bar is too low.

And for all you fellas out there, who know exactly what I’m talking about because you’re frustrated by the same pressures I am, let’s keep on plugging away.

Maybe you disagree, but I don’t think we want or need to be celebrated as “super dads” by our friends or family, just for being a competent parent. I don’t think we need to start a social movement or get matching t-shirts with some sarcastic tag line about how we’ve been stereotyped. I don’t think we need institutional relief or recognition. I’m probably being petty even just ranting about this.

Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing, until the bar of expectations rises and this beer-drinking, butt-scratching, sports-watching oaf that’s clueless persona is a thing of the past.

Test Track

My childhood memories are sparse.

I have childhood memories, strictly speaking, but they feel so feathery and breezy, light and passing rather than vivid and concrete. I remember my childhood the same way I remember dreams, in vignettes rather than as a movie. I don’t know why that is.

One of the few vivid memories I have is when my father took me to the Test Track ride at Disney’s EPCOT Center. Because he worked for GM at the time, we got to go “backstage” into the employee lounge overlooking the ride, and had an express pass to the front of the line.

I still remember how we were escorted to a secret side door, the view of the tall-windowed overlook, and the trappings of the ride itself. I remember, too, that I had a Cherry Coke in a red paper cup. I remember my father taking out his employee badge, out of his massive leather wallet. For me, fleshy memories like these are mythical creatures, rare and special.

I remember feeling so intrigued by the whole affair, it was a glimpse into my father’s life outside our family. And I remember the rare occurrence of my father at play, relishing the speed of the ride and the freeness of the wind around us, perhaps even glowing in the humble pride that comes from getting your family a VIP treatment.

And I remember too, how the ride was a bit fast and jerky for me at that age, and that I was comforted just by my father being in the vehicle next to me, his laughter and enjoyment signaling that there was nothing to be scared of.

I wish so badly I had more memories like this - visceral and detailed - of my childhood generally, but especially with my father. I want to remember more, and more of him. I can’t understand why I don’t.

With my own sons, I want to remember so many things of our time together, too. The big stuff, yes, but also the mundane.

Like afternoons in the garden, or cleaning our house, or just having an ice cream cone on Friday nights. And I think I will. Thanks to Robyn, we are blessed to have lots of photos and lots of moments where we tell old stories - it’s like she innately knows how to preserve memories, and she does it lovingly and skillfully.

I want to remember every moment of time I can with my sons and my wife. But I too hope that our relationship is loving, strong, and cherished enough for them to want to remember time with me.

The Power of Thinking in Flywheels

There are two types of growth, generally speaking - linear growth and exponential growth. And I’m not just talking about for a corporation, but for teams, culture, families, and ourselves as individuals.

The problem with linear growth is diminishing marginal returns - once your market is saturated you have to spend more and more to get less and less. The problem with exponential growth is that it’s hard and also doesn’t last indefinitely. (Sustaining exponential growth is a topic for a different day.)

Jim Collins developed an interesting concept to make exponential growth less hard, which I find brilliant - the flywheel effect. Flywheels are basically a way of thinking about a feedback loop, deliberately. He explains it well in this podcast interview with Shane Parrish on the Knowledge Project. Some of the key takeaways for me were:

• The goal of a leader is to remove friction from the flywheel, because once you get it turning, it builds momentum and starts moving faster and faster.

• Each step of the flywheel has to be inevitable outcome of the previous step. Think: “If Step 1 happens, then Step 2 will naturally occur”

• The key to harnessing flywheels aren’t a silver bullet or Big Bang initiative, it’s a deliberate process of understanding what creates value and building momentum - slowly at first, but then accelerating. To the outside it’s an overnight breakthrough, but to the inside it was a disciplined, iterative process to understand the flywheel, and reducing friction to get it cranking

I was introduced to this concept when I read Good to Great years ago, and was reintroduced to it before the Covid pandemic. Only recently has it started to click.

I’ve found flywheels to be a transformative way of thinking, both at work and in my real life. Here are a few examples of flywheels I’ve experienced and experimented with.

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Most business types will be familiar with strategies of differentiation or cost leadership. Both are powerful, value-creating flywheels:

Flywheels are even helpful at the business-unit level. This is an example of how a Chief Data Officer might think about how to create a data-centric culture within their organization.

When experimenting with flywheel thinking, it turns out Robyn and I have been operating a flywheel of sorts within our marriage, and temperature check has been a big part of that.

This is also a good example of how flywheels need to be specific to the stakeholders involved in them. This flywheel doesn’t work for every marriage. Among just our friends, I’ve seen flywheels that are organized around faith or civic engagement.

Gun violence is an interesting example of flywheel thinking because it helps illustrate how particularly complex domains can have multiple flywheels intertwined within them. These are just two dynamics I observed when working on violence prevention initiatives.

Each flywheel has different stakeholders and explain different categories of violence: at the left it’s more about influencing perpetrators making a “business decision” to shoot, at right it’s more about influencing members of trauma-afflicted communities that tend to have simple arguments end with gunfire, usually unintentionally and without pretense.

How we manage and coach is also a classic example of a feedback loop that operates like a flywheel. It’s simplicity doesn’t make it any less powerful, or easy to do in practice.

We also have flywheels that explain our behavior as individuals. For me, this is how I specifically respond well to improve my physical fitness.

My flywheel really took off when I understood and started measuring my BMI, Body Fat%, Sleep, Blood Pressure etc. I happen to love the products from Withings because they made the flywheel much more transparent to me as it was occurring, which led to rapid and permanent changes in my behavior.

Social movements utilizing nonviolence techniques (i.e., think US Civil Rights Movement, India Independence) also seem to fit the concept, showing the breadth of flywheel thinking’s explanatory power.

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Going through this exercise of identifying flywheels in a number of domains I’m familiar with, I’d offer this practical advice for articulating flywheels in your world:

Think about what is valuable to each involved party. At its core, flywheel thinking is rooted in an understanding of what drives value for everyone. What are the things that if increased or decreased would create win-wins for everyone involved? If the flywheel doesn’t encompass value creation for everyone involved, it’s probably not quite right. Zero-sum flywheels, which create winners and losers between the flywheel’s stakeholders aren’t sustainable because someone will end up trying to sabotage it.

Mind magical thinking. The beauty of the flywheel is that each step in the process is a naturally occurring inevitability of the previous step. Which means as a flywheel detectives we have to be honest about how the world really works; the flywheel has to reflect what the parties involved will actually do in real life and what they’re actually motivated by.

Identify agglomeration. In every flywheel there’s a step where some sort of resource accumulates, and that resource is one where it’s value and impact increases exponentially the more you have of it. That resource could even be things that aren’t technologies or infrastructure (cost leadership example), like data (chief data officer example), knowledge (managing / coaching example), or moral standing (social movement example).

I didn’t use an example with a network effect, but the same idea applies. These agglomerations are all critical resources to the exponential growth unlocked by the flywheel, so if you’re not seeing evidence of that sort of resource agglomeration, the flywheel is probably not quite right.

Identify interactive feedback points. Additionally, there seems to be a step in each flywheel where there is feedback or a learning interaction between the stakeholders participating in the flywheel. Maybe it’s learning about the customer (differentiation strategy example), or maybe it’s response to a measurement (physical fitness example). If there’s not interactive feedback happening, the flywheel is probably not quite right.

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I wanted to share this post because applying flywheel thinking is a huge unlock for value creation. It helps, me at least, to get beyond linear thinking and operate at a higher level of effectiveness and purpose.

I get especially excited by how this thinking can apply across disciplines. Jim Collins, who pioneered the concept, is a business guru. But the concept applies broadly, and far beyond what I even suggested - I can imagine it being used to inform feedback loops influencing decarbonization, community development, or regional talent clustering and entrepreneurship.

But flywheel thinking can also be used for nefarious purposes. Rent-seeking and political corruption feedback loops are good examples of this. Specifically, a flywheel like this quickly comes to mind:

My bet is that the sort of people who know me and read my writing are disproportionally good people. By sharing this learning I’ve had, I suppose it’s me trying to do my part create a feedback loop for a community of practice that uses flywheel thinking to make the world a better place.

Life without her

This is the sort of thing I only think about when I’m Robyn isn’t around. I’m not capable of it at any other time.

It’s when she and the kids are already in bed, and I’ve returned to the night-owlish tendencies of my younger days, drawn to the silence of the night. Or I’m driving home from work in the winter time when dusk hits early and I can’t get comfortable with music or nobody’s around to talk on the phone. 

I’m protected from all this when I’m with her, because the thought of having to live without her seems implausible, because she’s right there. I can hold her hand, or laugh with her, or give her a peck on the cheek just because. I never end up thinking about this when I’m with her because she’s right.

Even before my father went ahead, I would think about this sometimes. But his passing made it more frequent and sharper, because now I can’t pretend like Robyn going ahead to the next world before me is an impossibility. It’s what my mom and a few of my aunts and uncles are living through now - life without their partners. It’s more likely that I’ll pass before Robyn; the numbers say average life expectancy for someone like me is shorter than for someone like her. But we can’t know either way. 

I’ve wondered, often, two things: why do I even let myself think about this, and, does anyone else let themself think about this?

Life without your partner is among the 3-5 most painful things one can think about. It’s up there with burying a child, global nuclear war, or some damning ecological catastrophe - like what plays out in the movie Interstellar. It would be more comfortable to distract myself until the thought passed, or hid behind not-actually-validated probabilities and feed myself a line like, “odds are I won’t have to worry about this for a long time.”

And yet, I still think about this. I let the thought and the pain it brings wash through me like a flu-season’s fever. I let the thoughts run their course. I let myself think about the worst case scenario - life without Robyn - because I tell myself it’s “preparation” in case it actually happens. As if thinking about it in advance and living through it in my head will actually prepare me for what would likely be the worst days of my life. I let the thought cut deep enough into my core, so that I can feel it enough and then I cry. Then I let the fever break, and my mind comes home.

Contemplating this type of “what if…” is not polite conversation. It’s not something that “comes up.”

It’s a topic that’s weirdly a cultural anathema, the most unnatural of conversations, yet perhaps one of the most “natural” of topics because death is a natural certainty. Even now, I’m squeamish, and trying to avoid actually naming “the topic” - how to deal with your spouse dying, there I said it - as if it was the dark wizard in Harry Potter’s world, not to be named.

I can’t be the only one that thinks about this. I can’t be the only one thrashed by the question that any of us living in a union face: which of us is going to go ahead first?

I wonder about this so often. Am I the only one haunted by this? How does everyone else deal with it? Do you let the fever wash through you, too? Do you talk about it with your wife? Do you write about it in a journal that’s hidden away as if it didn’t exist? Do you try to dilute and delude yourself of the thought by hiding behind shadowy probabilities as I do? Is there some other way to prepare for the pain? Is there some other way?

Late in life, my father had to move to Seattle to find engineering work. He loved it there. I always think about how he described the place. “It is cloudy or rains six days of the week, and the seventh day makes the others worth it.” My father had a great appreciation for the extremities of life - suffering and joy, peace and chaos, love and loneliness. He understood that we must confront difficult truths to truly live. 

Pain reminds us to laugh, to love, to appreciate time and not waste it, to be kind and humble, to focus our time on what matters. My father understood this and subtly reminded me throughout my life that a man who doesn’t know clouds and rain and snow, cannot possibly value the full splendor of the sun.

This to me is the silver lining of this unhealthy tendency I have to think about the painful notion of life without Robyn. She is my wife, my love, my soul’s counterpoint in the universe. When we’re apart, like we were this weekend, I really feel the gut wrenching pain of it.

And because of that pain, I am grounded enough to value the everyday, miraculous beauty of what it will be for her to walk through that door and be back in our arms again.

The dance of seeing and being seen

“Papa, watch this.”

I hear this often from Bo, our older son, and I turn my head to, well, watch. And then he will jump off a stool, flash his favorite dance move where we wiggles his knees, spin and wave a toy around, or do one of the many other things little boys do.

Little kids just want to be seen. Because in their world, it seems, seen means loved.

Perhaps our adult world is not that different.

I remember scanning bars in my early twenties, hoping not to miss my future wife, whoever she was, in case she happened to be there that night. I wanted her to see me. Or those times at work when I chimed in during a meeting with people who outranked me, to share an idea. I wanted them to see that I had something to contribute and that I was competent. Or even this blog, which I’ve been writing consistently for over 15 years now, to some degree I hope others see that I have something to say, and that it contributes something positive to their lives.

To be seen is to be loved.

And other times, we don’t want to be seen but want others to be seen. Like when we hold a memorial service for our loved ones who went ahead. When we put photos together on a memory board or a slide show, we want them to be seen and remembered. Or when we make sure everyone in the group shows up at a birthday party. We want them to feel seen. Or when a junior member of our team at work had a great insight, and we go out of our way to nudge them to speak up. We want their talent to be seen. 

Wanting someone to be seen, is wanting them to be loved.

And perhaps the most generous act of the bunch is when we ourselves see others, in full frame and depth. Like when we go to our kids’ or grandkids’ or nephews’ soccer practices and school plays, we go just to see them. Or when we all inevitably have friends in town at the last minute, we change our plan so we can see them. 

One of our dearest friends famously asks questions of the heart with incomparable sincerity, but also with piercing directness. Yesterday, when hanging out in her family’s backyard and chatting about her gift for deep conversation, she said with earnestness and unwitting grace, “it helps them feel seen.”

And tomorrow, Robyn and I have an ultrasound appointment, where we will find out whether our third child is a boy or a girl. I don’t truly have to be there, but I want to - it’s been blocked off on my calendar for weeks. And, there’s a reason why there’s always a big monitor in ultrasound examination rooms - parents get to see their children for the first time. Even if it’s through the blurry medium of an ultrasound photo, we get to see them. We move heaven and earth to see them.  

To see someone is to love them.

So much of how we act in our day-to-day lives as humans seems to be shaped by our desire to see and be seen. It plays out in family life, social life, work life, and public life. Nobody but perhaps the most enlightened and secure among us seem to be above the fray. It does not matter if one is royalty or a commoner, wealthy or poor, famous or not, political leader or everyday citizen, theist or atheist - every walk of life engages in this dance: to see and be seen, to love and to be loved.

Why? Perhaps because to be invisible - unseen and unloved - can feel like a fate as grim as death. What is a life if one questions whether he is seen and therefore loved? And to be unloved is to be in danger, because we all know how the unloved are treated in our culture, and perhaps worse, how they are ignored. 

And so it makes sense to me the lengths we go to be seen, even if it’s through mischief, foolishness, or outrage. The fear of being unseen makes people do crazy things. I know this because it has made me do crazy things: everything from doing a totally unnecessary amount of bicep curls at the gym to hootin’ and hollerin’ at the bar with my buddies to deriding myself into depression for not having a career trajectory comparable to my peers.

It seems like so much of the social struggles us center-left, center-right millennials often aspire to rehabilitate can start so simply, through this dance seeing and being seen.

Dreaming new dreams

My inner-critic-turned-coach finally, thank God, got my attention. He’s been probing me about dreams. And I finally stopped to hear him out, and he asked:

Neil, why the hell did you stop dreaming? When did it happen?

A piercing question. Before I could even answer, I started by defensively - and with futility if I’m being honest - rejecting the premise of his question. Of course I haven’t stopped dreaming. “Because I’ve got goals, dude”, I told him.

I may not be proud some of them, especially the ones about career and money, sure. Some of those goals, after all, appeal to the lesser angels of my nature I admit. But if I have goals, I means I haven’t stopped dreaming.

Right?

Okay, Neil, then tell me. What is a goal? What is a dream? Are they the same, are the different?

Goals, at their best, are specific and measurable. You either did them or you didn’t. They are linear and rational. Goals aren’t loosey-goosey, or they shouldn’t be at least. Some are ambitious, others are more attainable. Goals are SMART.

Perhaps goals are boring and drab, but by design. They are targets, and targets are meant to be hit with discipline and banshee-like intensity.

Goals are nouns which makes them tangible and real, even if they are a bit of an abstraction. They are part of our meta-life - the life we live in our heads thinking about and planning our actual lives - but that doesn’t make them any less concrete. Goals are real and strong. They are not fluff.

Dreams, it seems are different. And to call them dreams is to miss the point. The concept should be thought of as a verb: to dream or be in a state of dreaming. “Dreams” is almost a colloquialism like “the feels” that just describes where the paint lands on the blank canvas when we dream. “Dreams” are the souvenirs we get from time spent dreaming.

And when we dream, we’re almost deliberately not defining a concrete output that we want to achieve. It’s like the act of dreaming is a portal to a different world, where we imagine the world as we hope it to be. We are not the agent of the dream, we are merely observers and travelers in the dream-world around us. Dreaming is the creation of hope for a state of being or a feeling.

There’s something pure about dreaming. Unlike a goal, dreaming is not something we hope we accomplish, dreaming is traveling to a moment we hope will exist, for us as part of the larger world.

There’s a certain detachment of self that comes with dreaming, assuming one is not an egomaniac, incapable of imagining a world that goes beyond themselves. Dreaming, by its nature, feels like something that yearns to be bigger than ourselves and the bounds of what’s possible now.

It bothers me that sayings like, “a goal is a dream with a deadline” are things that are, well, sayings. It sullies the idea of what it is to dream. The magic of dreaming is that it need not be bounded by the ego, time, space, rationality, or the validation of being accomplished. Dreaming, I feel, is something that exists on a deeper spiritual plane than “goal setting.” Goals and the act of dreaming are different; we need them to be.

And, my inner-critic-turned-coach was right, I could not reject the premise of his question.

At some point in my twenties or early thirties, I did stop dreaming. Everything became a goal, something I could hold. Something that helped me to maximize the return on the investment of my time and energy and money and talent. I couldn’t just waste my precious life, I have to make sure I have something to show for it at the end.

It’s like my life became infected with the similar afflictions - the dreary desert sand of dead habit, or, narrow domestic walls - that Tagore contemplates in Where The Mind Is Without Fear. And now everything has to have a purpose, and is all about bangs for bucks and juices worth the squeezes and fitting in the plan and checking off Outlook tasks to hit deliverable deadlines and whatnot.

Good God, what the hell happened to me?

Neil, why did it happen?

What’s interesting is, even though most of my dreams are achieved now - Robyn and I have each other, a home, and children which covers the big ones - not all of them are.

I have longstanding dreams of Robyn and I as an old, bespectacled couple and going for slow strolls together, hand in wrinkly hand. I have dreams of our City and neighborhood being a clean, happy, and verdant place, where youngsters can’t believe that we ever had the levels of violence and poverty we have now. I have dreamed of a future where I the government is effective, fair, and compassionate. 

I even have dreams of being an, old, dying man and spending time with my sons, while bedridden - not anything morose, just a natural consequence of a long life full of love; something I pray for because I never was able to say goodbye at my own father’s bedside.

I dreamed dreams, yes. But they are old dreams now. I haven’t dreamed new dreams. And any dreaming that I’ve done is measured and tempered - nothing I’d consider bold and daring, all the dreaming I’ve done lately is nearly within grasp. It’s about my own family, or close friends, or my street, which is great no doubt.

But some of the luster and zeal of my youth has obviously faded. I have not been dreaming of the stars or the broader world outside of my own backyard, quite literally.

There’s a certain arrogance that one must have to dream, perhaps. It takes so much time and stillness to dream. And that time could be spent working, or doing chores, or processing email. That required largesse to dream takes arrogance, or at least ignorance, to expend on something as fleeting as dreaming.

When we dream, we have implicitly acknowledge that we’re not doing something “productive” and assert that we are bold and important enough to have that time and mental energy to spend dreaming. Dreaming is not a practical act, it’s an action undertaken with audacity.

The irony here is that I’m in the most stable, comfortable, and experienced stage of my life so far. I have a steady job, a family that loves me, a roof, no want of food or health. I have made mistakes and learned from them. This is probably the best time to dream arrogantly, because I’m lucky enough to have far more - in terms of material resources and love - than my sanity requires.

Why did I trade all my dreaming and settle for goals instead?

Am I afraid because I’ve lived through some truly terrible days of grief and sadness? Am I just loss-averse and hesitant to “risk” the life I have by daring to dream of something beyond the four walls of our happy home? 

Do I just think I need to be grateful for what we have and not insult the God and the universe by dreaming for something more? Am I afraid of disappointment or of running out of time? Am I just tired after long days of work, raising children, and the daily grind of washing dishes, mowing the lawn, and taking out the trash?

In my twenties, I correctly recognized that arrogance was probably my greatest character flaw. But by trying to purge myself of arrogance, maybe I also purged some of the helpful swag that creates the permission for a man to keep dreaming.

But if we have grown out of our youthful arrogance, we can still dream. We must still be able to dream. We need dream, even if it’s with humility instead of arrogance. It’s a dangerous thing when someone stops dreaming.

Maybe just like the afflictions, the answer of how to dream humbly also rests with Tagore in Where The Mind Is Without Fear where he invokes the mind being led forward - in his case to God - into ever-widening thought and action.

Ever-widening seems to be the challenge and the key. Dreaming humbly is dreaming with an ever-widening heart. It is dreaming with ever-widening love, expanding first beyond ourselves, and then expanding beyond our own backyard. And then expanding beyond our own time and space.

That widened heart, fills with love for what’s beyond just us, leaving no room for fear. When our ever-widening hearts become occupied with love, we have no choice but to dream. Love creates an involuntary reflex to dream again. We feel we must dream for what we love, the fear we have - and that pesky need to be goal-oriented and practical - can’t overcome that yearning to dream. For this greater good that we have come to love, a goal is simply insufficient.

We can push against the pressure and practicality of goals by opening our hearts to ever-widening love: compassion, honesty, and embrace of others. Foe those of us that have lost claim to our youthful arrogance and ignorance, the grace of loving beyond ourselves and our closely-knit ties is the inspiration and invitation we need to dream from a posture of humility.

There is hope for us yet.

Diversity: An Innovation and Leadership Imperative

The US workforce is more diverse and educated than previous decades. And it’s getting more diverse and educated. This is a fact.

This transformation toward diversity is a big challenge. Because as any parent knows, a diversity of opinions leads to deliberation and friction. Managing diverse organizations is really, really hard - whether it’s a family, a volunteer organization, or a team within a large enterprise.

I’ve seen leaders respond to diversity in one of four ways:

Tyranny is fairly common. If you don’t want to deal with diversity, a leader can just suppress it - either by making their teams more homogenous or shutting down divergent ideas. The problem here is that coercive teams can rarely sustain high performance for extended periods of time, especially when the operating environment changes. Tyrannical leaders exterminate novel ideas, so when creative ideas are needed to solve a previously unseen problem, they struggle. Tyranny is also terrible.

Conflict avoidance is also fairly common. These are the teams that have diversity but don’t utilize it. On these sorts of teams, nobody communicates with candor and so diverse perspectives are never shared and mediated - they’re ignored. As a result, decisions are made slowly or never at all because real issues are never discussed. By avoiding the friction that comes with diverse perspectives, gridlock occurs.

Another response is polarization. Environments of polarization are unmediated, just like instances of conflict avoidance. But instead of being passive situations, they are street fights. In polarized environments, everyone is a ideologue fighting for the supremacy of their perspective, and nobody is there to meditate the friction and make it productive. Similar to conflict avoidance, polarization also leads to gridlock. I don’t often see this response to diversity in companies. But it seems a common phenomenon, at present, in America’s political institutions.

What I wish was more common was productive mediation of diversity. Something magical happens when a diverse-thinking group of people gets together, focuses on a novel problem, candidly shares their perspectives, and then tries to solve it. Novel insights emerge. Divergent ideas are born. New problems are solved. A more common word for this phenomenon is “innovation”.

It seems to me a central question in leadership of organizations today, maybe THE central question of leadership today is “how to do you respond to diversity?” Because, as I mentioned and linked to above - the workforce has become more diverse and more educated. Which means the pump is primed for lots of new, weird ideas and lots of conflict within enterprises.

Leaders have to respond to this newfound diversity. And whether they respond with tyranny, conflict avoidance, polarization, or productive mediation matters a great deal.

I wanted to share this thought because I think this link is often missed. Leadership is rarely cast as a diversity and innovation-management challenge, and diversity is usually cast as an inclusion and equity issue rather than as an innovation and leadership imperative.

The types of questions asked an interviews are a good bellwether for whether enterprises have understood the nuance here:

A traditional way to assess leadership: “Tell me about a time you set a goal and led a team to accomplish it.”

A diversity and innovation-focused way to assess leadership: “Tell me about a time you brought a team with diverse perspectives together and attempted to achieve a breakthrough result.”

The person who has a good answer to question one is not necessarily someone who has a good answer to question two, or vice versa. The difference matters.

Something more compelling than fear

Twenty years is the time a newborn child needs to come of age. For children born on September 11, 2001 that day would have been yesterday. Those children have come of age.

I remember feeling a placeless and faceless fear, frequently, over the past twenty years. Fear of terrorism, the competition of globalization, or the fear of death. Or the fear of missing out. Or the fear of racial tension, polarization, and social shame. The fear of being canceled or having to stand alone.

 It seems to me, that fear was a recurring motif of the past two decades. These children have come of age in a time typified by its focus on external threats, assertion, and outrage. It gives me a weeping, grieving, sadness to think that they, those children, and we those others, have lived under twenty years of siege by a culture enmeshed with fear.

I do not want the next two decades to be a response to fear.

But how?

—

Apparently, there is a YouTube channel where classical musicians listen to K-Pop and comment on its musicality. An analytically-inclined colleague of mine told me about it when we were chit-chatting before a virtual meeting - about how she loves ballet and played the viola growing up. This YouTube channel uncannily blends three of her passions: classical music, analysis, and K-Pop.

It was one of those moments where everything feels light and elevated because you’re in the presence of someone who feels comfortable in their own skin. It was liberating to just listen to her talk about those interests of hers, because she was being her full self.

Know thy self. We have so many expressions in the western world that riff on this wisdom: having a North Star, stay true to yourself, stick to your knitting, be comfortable in your own skin, you do you, etc.

It seems to me that being confident in who we are, and what we like, and what we stand for, is the first step in getting out of a cycle of fear. Because if I have something inward to focus on, I don’t have to focus on an outward threat. It’s like knowing yourself gives us our mind and soul something better to do than look at the scary things around us.

Talking to my colleague reminded me of this important practice of knowing thy self.

But how?

—

I have told myself lies. Like, big lies that led me astray of who I am. Those lies wasted my time and talent; kept my soul and mind in chains.

By bringing these lies into the sunlight, they become less infectious. And then, knowing ourselves is more possible. And then we have something other than fear to anchor our lives in.

Reflection to disinfect the lies I tell myself

1. Make a two column table on a blank piece of paper

2. Label the first column, “Things I pretend(ed) to want or care about, but actually don’t”

3. Label the second column, “Things I pretend(ed) to NOT want, or NOT care about, but actually do”

4. Answer it honestly

5. Share with someone who knows you better than yourself. Ask them: “What am I still lying to myself about?”

6. Do something different.

Naming our holiness

My friend Nick was recently ordained as a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church, but fortunately for me, he’s been a spiritual guide to mine for a long time. He recently told me a parable he heard:

A man went to see a monk. And he asked the monk, “Brother, I have a problem and I seek your guidance. I am at a crossroads, should I become a doctor or a lawyer? What does God want me to do?”

The monk thought to himself for a quick moment and quickly replied, “God doesn’t care. Become a doctor or a lawyer, to God it doesn’t matter. But whatever you choose, be holy in it. That’s what matters to God. If you become a doctor, be a holy doctor. If you become a lawyer, be a holy lawyer.”

For me, it was providential advice. I have been focused on career in the wrong way recently. Instead of worrying about promotions and new jobs, what I should be worrying about is being holy where I am now.

But of course, that’s not easy. I do not know what it means to be holy. I am, quite frankly, not holy. And, the holy people I have seen, or met, seem like they are not quite of this world. When I think of “holy” I imagine His Holiness the Dalai Lama or Mother Theresa.

I am not holy like that. I am me, in a puddle of my imperfections and selfishness. After talking with Nick, I wondered - for me specifically, what does holy feel like and look like? What is my holiness? What is the holiest version of myself?

I found it helpful to do an exercise like this:

First, I thought of a few examples of when my attitude, mindset, and how I acted was at its peak of goodness. When I felt like my most pure and good. When I felt like something about my presence was transcendent in some way.

For me that’s when I’m dancing, when I’m lost in thought on a new idea, when what I’m writing dissolves out of my fingers like liquid lightning, or when I’ve had sublime, radically honest conversations around a campfire. There’s something about my mindset that’s been other-worldly, for brief moments at least, when doing those things.

And so I picked those moments apart. What was happening in those moments. How did I feel? What was unique about just those times?

How would I describe the way my mind was in those moments? Intense. How would I describe the way my body was in those moments? Graceful. How would I describe the way my heart and spirit were in those moments? Joyous.

Joyous, graceful, intensity (The Ballet Mindset) is my holiness. That is its name.

I am a mortal man. Dealing with the reality that I will indeed die one day, has been one of the major pillars of my writing and reflection over the past 5 years. Which is why I need so dearly to name this holiness.

I am not perfect. I cannot meditate or think my way into holiness. I also cannot just mimic somebody else. Because I am not capable of being perfectly selfless or loving, I cannot just jump straight to absolute holiness. I have to struggle for it. And yet, holiness eludes me.

Which is why I think it’s so important to try to name our holiness. Like, give it something concrete to rest upon using adjectives of this world. Adjectives that regular people can be for at least a few minutes at a time. Something that we can know if we’ve found it.

I am not perfect enough to just be holy, I have to tag it with words. Most of us cannot be saints or prophets. But the rest of us can be specific.

We can put words to the embers of ourselves and our souls, capable of reaching transcendental states. We can give ourselves a few words to remember - joy, grace, intensity for me - so that when we’re in the throes of everyday life, dealing with difficult children or bosses, or stuck in traffic, or dealing with death and illness whatever, we can remember those words to help us remember what our holiness feels like.

If we can name it, we can get back to that holiness with practice. And maybe someday we will be holy enough to really feel worthy of our best moments. Until then, we keep at it, trying to be the holiness we named.

How to camp with young kids

My wife and I took two kids across the country to camp at North Cascades National Park - and survived! Kidding aside, the trip was hard but it was terrific, special, and full of life-long memories - which you can read about in a companion post here: Moments from North Cascades.

Don’t be afraid to go camping with kids. It was well worth the challenge. Here are some things we learned that we wanted to share with other families like us. I’ve organized our lessons into four categories:

• Tips for when you’re planning your trip

• Tips for when you’re preparing / packing for your trip

• Tips for when you’re on your trip

• Tips for after you return home

Thanks to my wife, Robyn, for adding her reflections into this post!

Our situation and trip

Here’s some context on who we are and the trip we took. Of course, apply our tips with care based on your circumstances.

We’re a family of four and a half. My wife and I, Bo (age 3.5) and Myles (1.5). At the time of our trip my wife was about a trimester into her first pregnancy (hence the “half” kid). We unfortunately had to leave our pup at the kennel. This trip was the first time our boys ever went overnight camping.

Between us, Robyn and I are pretty experienced backcountry campers, we’ve been on two backcountry hikes together and I’ve been on several trips with friends. I don’t think you have to be “experienced’ to have a great trip, we just happen to have a lot of “light” backcountry equipment from trips we took when we didn’t have kids.

For our trip we flew from Detroit to Seattle and then drove to North Cascades National Park in northern Washington. We intended to spend a few days in Seattle before heading to the park, but had to cut our trip short because of logistical reasons. Instead, after landing at SEA-TAC we had a spot of lunch, bought some supplies (camping fuel, food, etc.), and drove straight to the park.

Tips for when you’re planning your trip

The first step is picking a park and making a reservation. Most of this is very easy to research from the comfort of your couch. Here are a few filters to consider when googling and some helpful tools.

• Proximity to a city / airport - we wanted to be within 2-4 hours of a major city for two reasons, we didn’t want to fly across the country and camp for two nights and come home. Since our kids aren’t old enough to be in a tent for a week, we looked for national parks near cities. Luckily, there are plenty. Take a look at a map to get your bearings or google “National Parks within 3 hours of a city” to find blog posts like this one.

• Time of year - with two young kids you want to minimize uncertainty and risk as you’ll have your hands full just taking care of them. Look at the weather for the park at the time of your trip to get an idea of the likely weather. Again, a simple search like, “best time of year to visit North Cascades National Park” or “Weather for North Cascades National Park in August” can help you get some quick tips from fellow travelers.

• “Kid friendly” - Again googling to read posts and reviews is great here. Googling “kid-friendly national parks” or “Kid-friendly activities at North Cascades National Park” will get you plenty of great posts from other adventurous families.

• Recreation.gov - Recreation.gov is a terrific clearing house for all the national parks, forests, lakeshores, etc. If you search for a park on this site, it’ll take you to the appropriate website at the National Park Service or other governmental websites. Each park has a well curated list of activities, travel warnings (like if there are wildfires or other issues going on) and usually have a list of family-friendly activities. Recreation.gov is also how you search for campsites and make actual reservations online. Recreation.gov also has a pretty decent app which you can use to make your search a little more user-friendly. I didn’t realize this until just now, but the National Park Service also has some spify trip planning tools at FindYourPark.com, they even have a neat quiz to help find parks that you might like!

• Finding a reservation - Campsites are reserved quickly at most national parks during peak season, especially at the popular ones. I almost pulled my hair out finding a campsite that worked for us - but you don’t have to! One of my colleagues at work told me about a site that scans for campsite openings / cancellations based on criteria you specify and sends you an SMS alert when an opening is found. He said it worked well for their family and the fee was reasonable (plans start at $10). Check out CampNab for more information. Alternatively, you can google “Underrated National Parks” to minimize your competition for a campsite. Campsites at National Parks can be booked 6 months in advance so plan ahead.

Tips for when you’re preparing / Packing for your trip

• Shop at an outfitter for the big stuff - we have been members at REI for a long time. And we love it. There are plenty of team members at the store that can answer questions (and they don’t make you feel dumb) and everyone there I’ve talked to gives their personal reviews of the equipment available for purchase. Go there, and ask questions to people who do it for a living. As an example, there are a million websites talking about the minimum age for using a sleeping bag and I was confused and scared. Once I got to the store and asked someone, they advised to just wrap our little guy up in blankets or a sleep sack and put him on a sleeping pad to stay warm. Problem solved. We got the easy stuff on REI.com and Amazon.

• Involve the kids when shopping - It would’ve been easier for me to buy everything online or head to REI by myself. But we’re glad we took the kids with us, because our big kid had a blast. He picked out his own socks and some of his clothes and just though REI was the coolest place ever. By being there he started to get excited for the trip and feel invested in the process.

• What to buy - If you’re a seasoned camper, you probably have a solid gear list. If you’re not a huge camper, knowing what you need can be pretty overwhelming. To start, here’s a link to our gear list for our trip. Be sure to also look at the National Park Service website to learn about any special equipment you may need (bear canisters, water management supplies, etc.) for specific parks. And of course, google is your friend.

• Damn this stuff is expensive - Yes, camping gear can be really expensive, especially for your first outing. Two tips of advice here: 1) ask a friend and 2) the stuff lasts for a long time. You know who your friends are who camp. We’re kind of annoying about it, because of how much we love to talk about camping. Ask them for advice (you can also do a lot of googling obviously) and most camping people are more than happy to lend you their gear and show you how to use it. It’s just kind of an unwritten ethos amongst people who camp - we spread the gospel, so to speak. And most of the durable equipment you buy will be built to last, so think of it as a capital investment into equipment with a long useful life.

• Do a dress rehearsal - Our kids slept in a tent for the first time on this trip. We practiced pitching the tent in our backyard which was great to get them used to the idea of a tent and getting comfortable inside it. And, I had to check it was in good working order, anyway. By the time we were done with our “test run” both our boys were so excited about camping. If you have the time, you could also do one night at a nearby state or county park to really do a more realistic dress rehearsal. At a minimum, you can find some trails near your home and go for a long walk to break in the kids’ new gear and get them used to long walks outside.

Tips for when you’re on your trip

• Getting there - A lot of the basics apply here. Pack light. Buy as much as you can locally (food, liquids that can’t be legally carried on planes). Don’t put knives in your carry on. Plan extra time because kids are slow. Pack extra clothes for potty accidents. What really was complicated was how much luggage we had - don’t try to be a pack mule or a hero. Weigh your bags at the house to make sure you don’t have to shuffle supplies across bags. We also rented car seats instead of carrying our own, which was a game changer. In retrospect, I should’ve sprung for a luggage cart at the airport because I had to haul so much stuff and was exhausted before we even got to the park. Make the transit part of your trip simple so you’re not stressed when you’re actually camping.

• Sleep - if you can conquer sleeping in a tent, everything else is easy. Our first night was rough, but here are some techniques that worked:

  • Tent Expectations - Our second night, Robyn had the master stroke of proactively setting expectations for sleeping in the tent. The second night went much better than the first, mostly for that reason. Our kids just needed some calmly communicated structure.

  • Infant warmth - Myles (our 1.5 year old) was too small to have his sleeping bag. It would’ve been a suffocation hazard to put him in one. In lieu of blankets, we put him in a large sleep sack that we had for crib sleep. It kept him warm enough when paired with a sleeping pad underneath him. Don’t skimp on the sleeping pad for anyone - at just about any park the ground will sap heat from you overnight.

  • Separating the kids - At first we thought we’d put the kids between us in the tent: big mistake. Separate them if you can so they don’t egg each other on or have as much of an audience. By a stroke of luck, our oldest had to go potty after about 30 minutes of chaos in the tent, which gave me a chance to rock the baby down without any distractions. Upon Robyn and Bo’s return, Bo realized he lost his audience and was relatively quiet until he fell sleep. Divide and conquer if you need to.

  • Parental bladder management - make sure you hydrate and pee well before bedtime and go one extra time just in case. It is seriously the worst when you have to pee at four in the morning but are afraid to unzip the tent and wake up the kids that you worked so hard to get to bed!

• Potty time - Pack extra clothes, for the trip and in your day pack, for blow outs or accidents. Also, hit the potty at the trailhead (if there is one) before and after every hike. We had to turn around just before we hit the waterfall at the end of a trail because our oldest said, “hey mommy, I need to go potty.” We were so close to the end, too!

• Options for activities - Do your homework in advance and find all the options for short “easy” hikes you can. You know your kids best, so choose the distance and elevation change that makes sense to your family. Be sure to visit the Visitor’s Center and ask the Park Rangers for advice when you arrive. We found it helpful to print off a whole bunch of guides and trail reviews from blog posts we found when searching “family friendly hikes north cascades”, the official NPS website for the park, and from AllTrails.com. We spent breakfast planning the day based on the forecast, what were feeling like doing, and how fatigued everyone was. It helped to have a paper list at hand with 10-20 options to choose from.

• Calorie and water management - When you’re outside, you have to drink and eat a lot more just to be healthy, obviously. I made the mistake of letting the kids drink from a common water bottle, which was a problem because I couldn’t make sure they were hydrating enough. Having their own water bottles would’ve been smarter. Keep a close watch on exactly how much the kids are eating and drinking, because it’s much harder for them to know how much extra they need to consume and for them to verbalize what their body is feeling like. And if they’re not hydrated enough, it can cause crankiness, or worse, cause their behavior to become erratic, which can be dangerous out on the trail. Also, buy lots of trail mix!

• Be brave enough to turn around - We were on a trail, late in the afternoon and the kids didn’t nap well that day. It was hot, and as it turned out, the trail we were on was all uphill. It had a beautiful vista at the end, so we really pushed hard. About halfway up, our kids started to fade. We pressed on for a few minutes, and I quicklyrealized that was a mistake. So we turned around immediately. I was frustrated, but it was the right decision and we wished we had done it sooner. Unlike adults, kids totally shut down when they are sore or tired, instead of just getting cranky and pressing on. Rest and breaks also don’t help them as much. In retrospect that’s obvious, but I forgot. Be brave enough to turn around, even if it means missing the great view at the summit. Because you need to get the kids safely back down to the trailhead, and that’s dangerous if they’re delirious on the trail. Turn around before they meltdown, not after.

• Cooling off - They’re so much excitement and energy and fatigue on a camping trip, which can get kids to a pretty boisterous state of mind. Taking a loop around the campsite 1-1 with a parent was a great strategy that Robyn thought of on the fly. If you need a child to cool off and calm down, taking a lap with them is a great tactic.

• Backup plans - In retrospect, I wish I would’ve had a backup plan, including nearby hotels (in case sleeping in a tent was a big failure), restaurants, supply stores, and medical facilities. Especially with Robyn expecting, it would’ve given me piece of mind to have thought of a plan for “if shit hit the fan.”

• Gear management - Camping requires a lot of stuff, and when you have kids it grows. Have plenty of extra stuff sacks and triage as you go. We found it helpful to separate everyone’s different clothes and laundry in different bags. That made it much easier to keep everything organized and have ready access to what we needed. Our approach was to have two large backpacks with lots of little bags for organization (just like a backpacking trip). We used a large laundry bag / duffel bag and put our tent and sleeping pads inside there with a backpack for the plane, which also helps to keep the gear safe through baggage claim.

Tips for after you return home

• Family Photo / Souvenirs - We took a family photo on our trip and we’re glad we did. We immediately printed a photo upon our return, and it’s already hanging in a frame on our wall. We all get to relive the trip just a little every time we see it. I feel so happy and proud every time I pass it to go upstairs. It could be something other than a photo, like a Christmas ornament, pin, map, or other souvenir. But a tactile or visual reminder made a much bigger emotional connection than I expected. And, it reminds us that we’re adventurers!

• Storytelling - We used the drive back to Seattle to debrief on the trip and ask our sons how they enjoyed it. It was so wonderful to hear how excited our kids were, 10 minutes out of the park our big guy already wanted to come back. We also made it a point to let the kids talk about the trip with friends and family (instead of us just speaking for them). Talking about the trip gave them a sense of pride, and hopefully helps them remember our time there.

• Cleanup - I tried to involve our kids when unpacking from the trip. It gave them another chance to talk about our awesome trip, and it was actually nice having some little hands to help out. And, it was a nice way to introduce them to taking care of gear which is a very important skill for any camper - junior or senior.

• Start planning the next one! - Of course, the trip was really hard but it was so worth it. The time when you’re most excited is when you’re still riding the high of a successful trip. So starting planning right away, and go find your park! You’ll be so glad you did.

Moments from North Cascades

If you get a chance to visit a National Park - even if you’ve never camped before - I really recommend it. Here’s a series of reflections from our recent trip to North Cascades National Park.

If you’ve spent any amount of time hiking and camping these will probably feel familiar to you. If you haven’t been outdoors much before, I hope you find something in these vignettes that will make you want to plan a trip.

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I am angrier now than when we started the day. 

After all the difficulty in getting here - canceling the first few days of our trip because of a Covid exposure, the early flight, the late night packing, and all the frustration I’m already holding in my shoulders because of our daily grind - I wanted to be on the road out of the city already. And yet, the camping store doesn’t have fuel for my backpacking stove. And I feel like I’ve taken every left turn in Seattle to go three blocks. The kids are jet lagged and haven’t napped.

I have spent weeks anticipating the familiar, friendly feeling of hiking boots laced up around my feet, and having my breath taken away by the mountains, lakes, and forests I’ve been reading about. And we’re still hours away.

The drive was more spectacular than I even expected. This is one of my favorite parts of any trip to our country’s National Parks - the approach. I remember the desolate, exhilarating, trek across the Mojave into Death Valley. And the winding approach past Moab, ducking and dodging the towering rock faces into Canyonlands. And my favorite, the most beautiful drive I’ve ever done, through barely touched wilderness into Denali. Getting there is part of the dance, the adventure. It is a chase and a tease, building anticipation the further you go. And as we traverse each mile, the booming mountains and the songs of the whistling trees and lyrical creeks draw us in, luring us more deeply into the Cascades.

It is later than I hoped, but we are here. The tent we tested in our backyard just yesterday is ready for a crisp overnight sleep. We are dressed and have our supplies in the bright green day pack we usually only take to Palmer Park, Belle Isle, or Mayberry State Park, Bo is wearing the bright pink socks he picked out at REI for the trip. Myles is on my back in the baby carrier he’s almost too big for now. We are on foot, trying to salvage our evening with a short hike before dinner. I’m desperate to settle the itch for the trail I’ve had all day. We heard there was a short hike with a vista near the visitors’ center so that’s where we go.

And as we turn the last bend of the boardwalk, we see it - it’s the Pickett Range. Robyn and I see the boys - right as we get the same feeling of awe and wonder ourselves - experience the majesty and beauty of nature for the first time. We all exhale and soak in the full frame we have in front of us. I am starting to cry while I write down this memory, just as I did when we lived it a few days ago.

We just survived our first night in the tent with two kids, barely. We are on the trail for a morning adventure before nap time. I ask Robyn if I can take her picture. I want to remember being here together. I am thinking back to our honeymoon, when we spent 2 days - just us and the trail - at Mammoth Cave National Park before continuing to Nashville. I am grateful for our marriage, our family, and how we’re spreading our love of outdoor adventures to another generation. I always feel whole when we are together, but my cup is especially full as I snap the photo of her.

I did not grow up with siblings. But even though I forget it sometimes, our boys are brothers. I see it with my own eyes, vividly, as they scamper together down the trail hand in hand. I remember back a few days earlier, when Bo asked Myles: “Will you be my best friend?” We will have many moments during our few precious days here, to remind me of something important: this was worth it. All the setbacks, all the discomfort of travel, all the preparation - all of it was worth it for the three days we had. The chance to visit a National Park - the rare gems of our truly beautiful country - is always worth it.

For the first time since we arrived, we turn left out of the campground into State Road 20 - we are heading home. Robyn and I are holding hands as we weave west back to Seattle alongside the Skagit River. Myles points out the window and says his new favorite word, “mountain”. As we talk to Bo about the past 3 days and how we can plan another trip soon, he asks us, “Can we come back to Cascades National Park?” 

Robyn and I smile at each other and I remember something she said a day earlier, after we descended after only making it halfway up the Thunder Knob trail - “we’ll be telling stories about this trip for years.” In that moment I have an uncommon amount of gratitude - for nature, for our family, for our marriage, and for the National Park Service - because I know deeply in my bones that she’s right.

Adult Bullying

There are four basic responses to being bullied: confront, ignore, retreat, and assimilate. Being bullied is a terrible thing, so basically everyone responds to it in one way or another.

Confronting a bully is what most of us aspire to do, like in the movies. In a moment of glory, we resist the bully’s actions and once we stand-up to them, they stop. This is hard, especially if you have no support or real power.

Ignoring a bully is also hard. When choosing this response we just keep doing what we’re doing and don’t give the bully the satisfaction of a response, despite the harm they’re inflicting on us. Eventually, they move on to a more participatory target.

Retreating is when we fold back into our crew and go back to our circle of support. Retreating is not necessarily “weak”, it’s simply a strategy of avoidance and getting back to a community where we’re protected. Strength in numbers, I suppose.

Assimilating is the, “if you can beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach. If the beefy football player is your bully, become an even beefier football player. If the bully is cruel and wicked toward the weak, assimilate to also become cruel and wicked. In this scenario you get out of being bullied by becoming a bully.

What I’ve just tried to invoke are the feelings we had in middle and high school, when basically all of us were either a bully to someone, bullied by someone, or both. Adolescence is where we see explicit bullying, at least in America. 

But I don’t think we leave bullying behind once we graduate high school. Even if it’s not as overt, I’ve come to see that there is adult bullying.

How is talking about a colleague’s flaws and failings when they’re not around that different from trashing how someone was dressed at the Homecoming dance? Put downs are put downs, no matter how old we are when it happens.

How is flashing images of an expensive house or expensive hobbies that different from lifting weights to get big biceps and wearing a varsity jacket (literally everywhere)? Asserting dominance is asserting dominance, no matter how old we are when it happens.

How is yelling at a customer service rep on the phone that different than picking on the “unpopular kid” in the cafeteria? Verbal abuse is verbal abuse, no matter how old we are when it happens.

How is humble bragging about the big promotion we got, that different than humble bragging about who we made out with over the weekend? A pissing contest is a pissing contest, no matter how old we are when it happens.

I used to think that the reason why I’ve been obsessed with career trajectory, my resume, Google self-search results, and all that stuff is because of social comparison and this basic human need to keep up with the Joneses or something. I thought it was just “psychology.”

But I’m wondering now if it’s just a response to adult bullying. Like, maybe I feel bullied by what other people are saying and doing and I’m trying to make the pain stop by getting a promotion of my own.

Thinking of my existential angst about career as an assimilation response to bullying instead of an inevitability of human psychology is a very different ball game. 

Because if I’m intentional about it, I can choose to respond to adult bullying in someone other way than striving to become an adult bully myself. I can choose to respond differently.

The Ballet Mindset

Training as a dancer, particularly in ballet, influenced how I move through the world. The way I’d describe it is a “joyful and graceful intensity.”

Ballet cultivates this mindset in a dancer because…

Ballet is emotional. In ballet you are expressing, through movement and the body, deep emotions. Ballets tell moving and powerful stories, that dance on the boundaries of human experience. Telling those stories takes a special type emotional labor, because expressing emotion and telling stories without dialogue is a unique challenge.

Ballet is technical. Dancers don’t seem to float, soar, and spin effortlessly because they’re “just born with it”. It’s practiced and drilled. As a ballet dancer, I spent almost half of all my classes at the barre, developing technique. And during a ballet class the first skill you practice, over and over, is learning is to plié - which is literally just learning how to bend your knees. Seriously, as a ballet dancer you spend a remarkable amount of time learning something as simple as bending your knees properly. And from there it builds: it’s technique around pointing toes, posture, moving arms, jumping, landing from a jump, body positioning, body lines, turning, and so on.

Ballet is athletic. Miss Luba, my Ukrainian ballet teacher, used to say that as a dancer you could be doing the hardest jump, lift, or arabesque, but to the audience it always has to look easy. To do that takes tremendous strength, power, body control, and endurance. Ballet is so hard on the body. Of all the sports I ever played, a really tough ballet class was a special kind of physical and mental beatdown. If you don’t believe me try it. Stand on your toes on one foot, hold your arms out from your shoulders, or just jump continuously and see how long you can do this without stopping or grunting in anguish. There’s a reason why ballet dancers are jacked.

Trying to be emotional, technical, and athletic all at the same time takes intense focus, To boot, ballet dancers cannot just go through the motions or rage uncontrolled through a recital. They must perform: physically, mentally, emotionally, artistically, and technically. And the ballet dancer’s craft shapes their mindset into one of joyful and graceful intensity.

As Americans, our culture often emphasizes winning, aggression, strength, dominance, and power. At extremes, I wonder if that encourages, bullying, hostility, and violence.

Being king of the hill isn’t the only way to live and make a unique contribution. It’s one of many choices.

For me moving through life with a ballet mindset, rather than one of dominance, is a contribution in itself. Because acting joyful and graceful intensity is what brings beauty into this world.

I’m grateful to my teachers and dance peers. Because of them, I know that a seemingly paradoxical orientation of joy, grace, and intensity is even possible.

Reactions Make Culture

Typically, at work…

When a project goes “red” the team is usually made to feel embarrassed. What if the executive sponsor thanked them for raising the problem quickly instead?

When someone is promoted there’s often a department wide email talking about their accomplishments and new role. What if we celebrated their mentors just as vigorously?

When someone goes out on vacation they usually leave an out of office message. What if the email administrator turned off their email access while they were away as a matter of protocol, too?

Email signatures usually include a job title. What if that line was instead used a sentence about the team’s purpose or why the sender is personally invested in the organization’s mission?

Project meetings often start with some version of a status update. What if they started with, “what’s something important we learned this week” instead?

Maybe it’s not always clear whether it’s better to light a candle or curse the darkness. But the lesson remains: how we react shapes, defines, and amplifies the culture.

And not just at work, but in families, churches, book clubs, soccer leagues, marriages, and political discourse too.

Surplus and Defining “Enough”

The idea of surplus is simple, you compare what you have to what you need. If you have more than you need, surplus exists. The concept of surplus is often linked to money or material resources, but I think of it in terms of time and energy.

I’ve thought about the question, “What am I doing with my surplus?” before. But I’m realizing that I’ve missed a more fundamental question: “How much do I need? How much is enough?”

To a large degree, how much we need is a choice.

If I wanted to live by myself and grow my own food off the grid for the rest of my life, I could probably retire tomorrow. If I didn’t want to grow in my job, I probably wouldn’t have to work as hard as I do - I could coast a bit and do the minimum to avoid being fired. If I didn’t care about the health of my marriage or raising our children, I probably wouldn’t have to put as much energy in as I do. If I didn’t have such a big ego, I probably would spend less effort trying to gain social standing. You get the picture.

Defining the minimum standard - after which everything else is gravy - is what creates the construct of surplus in the first place. Because if what I “need” only requires I work a job for 25 hours a week, I now have created 15 additional hours of surplus, for example. If it’s unclear what my bar is, it’s hard to know if I’ve cleared it. Until I define that bar, I have no basis for measurement. Defining what “enough” is is half of the surplus equation.

And I want to know if I’ve cleared bar. Because once I have, then I can use that surplus for things I care about - like traveling, leisure, writing, serving, prayer, time with friends and family, gardening, learning something new, exercising, whatever.

I’m realizing my problem is that I haven’t really defined my minimum standard, so I don’t really know if I have enough. And because I don’t know if I have enough, I am stuck in this cycle of grinding and grinding to get more even though I may not want or need to.

This uncertainly leads to waste. If I do have enough, but don’t know it, I might be wasting my time and energy working for something I don’t want or need. If I don’t have enough, but don’t know it, I am probably misdirecting my time and energy on things that aren’t high priorities.

Either way, if I’m not clear on what I need and how much is enough, I’m likely wasting the most precious resources I have - my time and energy.

For so long I’ve blamed the culture for my anxiety around career and keeping up with the Joneses. I figured that it was things like social media and societal pressures that made me engage in this relentless pursuit of more. But maybe it’s really just on me.

Maybe what I could’ve been doing differently all along is get specific about how much is enough. Maybe instead of feeling like I have no choice but to be on this accelerating cultural treadmill, I could really just turn down the speed or get off all together.

These are some of the questions I haven’t asked myself but probably should:

• How much money do we really want to have saved and by when?

• What is the highest job title I really need to have?

• How respected do I really need to be in my community? What “community” is that, even?

• How much do I want to learn and grow? In what ways do I really care about being a better person?

• What level of health do I really want? What’s just vanity?

• What creature comforts and status symbols really matter to me?

• At what point do I say, “I’m good” with each domain of my life? What’s the point at which I can choose to put my surplus into pursuits of my own choosing?

Only after defining enough does it make sense to think about the question of “what should I do with my surplus?” Because until I define “enough”, whether or not I have surplus time and energy isn’t clear. And if it’s not clear, I’m probably wasting it. And surplus is a terrible thing to waste.

What sin will end with me?

As your father, I worry about the sins I will pass to you kids. And maybe sin is the wrong word. Perhaps by “sin” I mean a combination of bad habits, character flaws, insecurities, and underlying sinful tendencies. I don’t want you to deal with my failings as a man and a father. I’ve come to terms that I will not fully succeed in this, but it still haunts me, in the deepest crevices of my intellect.

Unfortunately, the passing of tragic flaws is part of what it means to be a father.

I never spoke with him about it directly, but I know my father - your Dada who you will never meet in this life - contemplated this challenge and was motivated by it. There were certain sins he did not want to pass to me, and he worked exceptionally hard to make good on that intention.

I still am in awe of the impact he had on changing the trajectory of my life and yours, and honestly for all of his progeny. In a single generation, he outworked the poverty and struggle of his youth, emigrated to the world’s most prosperous nation, and succeeded in creating a life where his family and me, his only child, could flourish.

Even though by his standards, his outward success was only average, the impact he made on our family’s future generations cannot possibly be reproduced. I wonder often if I can do something in my life - for you kids, your mother, or for society - that is substantially good and pathbreaking enough to escape his legacy.

And yet, despite the size of the shadow cast by his love and accomplishments, he still passed intergenerational flaws to me. Even great men, of which your Dada certainly was, are still mortal men. All we mortal men can hope for, and I as a mortal man can hope for is to have the generations that follow us be modestly and measurably better people than we were.

And so I’ve been thinking. Obsessing, really, and meditating deeply; if I only have one shot to take at this, what is the one sin that I’m absolutely determined not to pass on? What am I going to wrestle with and take to the grave with me, so that it ends with me and never passes on to you kids, your kids, and their kids after? What sin will end with me?

The unmeasured life

The way I think has been a bit of a trap, at least historically.

I have a lot of angst, shame even, that I am not as professionally successful as my peers. No matter how hard I try, even on vacation, I can’t get away from thinking about whether I measure up - either to my peers, or even to the career trajectory I thought I would be on.

Which is all foolish, by the way, because I don’t even care that much about career. Where I intend focus most of my energy is family, community, and character. And yet, because I have been trained in the realm of organizations, business, management, and leadership I am always going back to that foolishness of measuring myself up. 

Because that’s what many of us who are professionals by training - whether in business, law, public service, health, athletics, or anything else - do. We measure things and maximize them, because in our professions the result is what matters.

Again, for me this thinking is a trap. It’s the relentless pursuit of more, and my ego wants me to be cooler, professionally speaking, than I am. And if I use my peers (and my own egotistical visions) as a yardstick, I don’t measure up to that expectation. 

And so I try to cope, probably in a way that’s irrational. Because I try to cope with the fact that I don’t measure up professionally, by counting the ways I think I measure up in other domains. I always think - “I have a loving marriage and family. We have a dog. We have a home we like. I get along with my parents. I have a BMI that stays at a healthy level. We have kids with good hearts. I may not have a fast-track career, but I measure up. I measure up. I measure up.”

And that is the trap. Measuring my non-professional life is the trap. Because what I’ve realized is that, my life is not an enterprise judged by it’s measurable results. My family is not a business unit. It isn’t in the nature of a soul to be benchmarked, standardized, or process-mapped to ensure it has optimal peacefulness.

And by trying to “measure” my non-professional life, I’m propagating this pernicious, unsustainable mindset that my life must be measured. I’m locking myself into a mindset that keeps me anxious and makes me live in a constant state of needing to quench my egotistical desires.

The whole mistake I’ve been making is to try applying the principles and methods of my profession (i.e., focusing on measurable results) to my life. I can’t live at peace with my own thoughts if I try to replace the measurable career results I’m not achieving with an attempt to measure love, family life, children, happiness, faith, peace, experiences, stories, or moments of ordinary joy. Doing what I’m doing locks me into a place where I’m always on the verge of a stomach ache. What I need to do instead is let go of measuring my life.

Because life is something, I think, that cannot be measured.

The problem is, I want so desperately to be able to grab hold of something. My lesser self wants some morsel of incremental progress to remind me that I’m not wasting my life. Some mile marker along this long walk that makes concrete the messy path of life I have ahead and the road I have already traversed. Some interim report card that shows I am doing well at living out the life and that I won’t fail the final exam on my deathbed.

And this is the trap. It’s akin to the plight of Sisyphus. He was rolling a rock up a hill that could never be summited, and I trying to measure my life - something that is not only immeasurable, but that defies measurement.

But after all these years of acculturation and training - how do I resist the near-natural urge of measurement, and instead live an unmeasured life?

I admit now that I should not try to look for mile markers, or anything that charts progress along a fixed path toward a final destination. Because after all, my life has no fixed destination, duration, distance, or pace. Life defies measurement.

But perhaps there is some consolation.

If we know how to look for them, there seem to be where God gives us a window into our inner-compass, to remind us whether we are heading north toward home, or whether we have veered from the righteous path. 

The other day, I had one of these moments. Myles got into a spat with his older brother. He, as a 1.5 year old occasionally bruises his nearly four year old brother. And Bo was sad. And we said, “Myles, that was not nice. It is not kind to hit your brother. You need to say sorry.” And he pondered for a minute. Bo gave Myles a glance back, unsure whether Myles was heading in his direction for reconciliation or to continue the bruising.

But there Myles went, arms outstretched, toward his brother. And it was, without any words or babbles, as sincere of an embrace as I’ve ever seen between two people. It was a moment where my soul reminded my body that it was still in there. It was a moment where God gave me a look at my inner-compass, and it reminded me I was on the right path. 

I never know when those moments are going to come, and sometimes they’re reminders that I’ve veered. But when those moments happens, I am consoled. Because even though they aren’t the mile markers of progress that my egotistical self craves, they are reminders that I am on the right path, heading toward home.

And as much as I would like to, I can’t put moments like that into some sort of scorecard or graph. Those sorts of moments,  where God shares the light see my compass, and reminds me to look, defy measurement. There are so random and nuanced, they can’t be counted or formed into a pattern.

But at least those glimpses are there, consolations to help orient us in a life we want to measure but can’t. It’s still so hard. Because we, who were once young men, are trying so hard not to waste this life, and trying so hard to put one foot in front of the other and eventually reach home. All I want to do is measure something to prove I’m not failing, but what I’m realizing I’m left with is unexpected trail markers which signal whether I’ve veered from the right path or not.

Because at the end of the day, life defies measurement.

Rotation of Powers

Separation of powers is a brilliant idea.

Managing power in organizations and institutions is a huge problem. Because when power is concentrated and left unchecked, tyranny happens. Separation of powers (and checks and balances) solves this problem brilliantly in the US constitution. By turning power against itself, it keeps any one part of government from dominating the others. The US Constitution is a gold standard case study in the management of power to prevent tyranny.

To me, preventing tyranny is among the most important organizational problems there are. Because under tyranny, people waste their talents and do not flourish. Because under tyranny, people suffer and have their basic human rights violated. Because under tyranny, culture decays rather than grows. Preventing tyranny is a huge deal.

In this essay, I offer Rotation of Powers - an alternative approach to managing power in organizations. I offer this idea in addition to separation of powers, not as a replacement to it, for two reasons. One, the challenge of preventing tyranny is so important we ought to be working on many solutions to this difficult problem - diversity and redundancy create long-term resilience. Two, because of information technology and advances in our understanding of management, the alternative of rotation of powers is possible in ways that were not even conceivable 10-15 years ago.

What is Rotation of Powers?

In hierarchical organizations, leadership and power is role-based. Power lies in the principal and senior executives of an organization. The idea of rotation of powers is that the people in power go into their reign expecting that they will rotate in and out of their role as “leader”. I take a turn, then you take a turn, then our colleague takes a turn being the “boss”. And then eventually, I know I’ll have to take a turn again. And we rotate, on and on, and let others join and leave the rotation as we go.

So unlike separation of powers, where the idea is to split up the power into different branches that can check each other, the idea of rotation of powers is to not let anyone stay in power long enough to become entrenched, and, to make them them feel the externalities of their decisions - both because they’ll be under the power of someone else soon, and, if they leave someone else a mess it’ll come back around. Instead of checks and balances, the operating principle of Rotation of Powers is “incentivize positive reciprocity”.

Here’s an example of how this might actually work.

I’m on team at work. Let’s call them the Knights. And without going to to too many details, the Knights try to improve our processes so that our customers are happier. It’s a team that formed from the “bottom-up”, so to speak, and operate using the principles of agile software development, more or less.

At the beginning, there were about 3 people who operated as Scrum-Masters for the team, which we call “Lance-a-lots”. The role of the Lance-a-lot is to facilitate our sprint planning sessions, and elicit input from the Knights to determine which projects folks think are important. Knights then self-select onto project teams for the 6-week sprint and the Lance-a-lot leading that particular rotation checks-in on teams to make sure progress is happening.

The group of Lance-a-lots meets weekly and consults with each other on how things are going, and how to manage the team more effectively. Anyone who wants to be a Lance-a-lot is free to join the rotation, and the Lance-a-lot group has grown from 3 to 5 in the 6 months this team has been around.

Right from the beginning, we rotated the role of the person serving as Lance-a-lot. Which means, in practice, that the person running the meeting and responsible for ensuring forward motion changed every 6 weeks.

The success of the Knights remains to be seen. It’s a nascent team, and kind of like a startup we’re trying to lock-in to a value proposition that works. But that said, it’s an incredibly uncommon organizational form and the culture of the team feels different than the traditional, corporate, hum-drum, hierarchical working group. It feels less top-down and tyrannical, more equal and democratic. Relatively speaking, at least.

Why might Rotation of Powers work?

What you’ll notice about the Knights example I gave above, is that rotation happens in two ways. One, the “Lance-a-lot” rotates every 6 weeks. Second, people move in and out of being part of the Lance-a-lot rotation. That creates an interesting dynamic that prevents power concentration.

First, no one person has the title of “leader” of the team. Nobody can lay claim to it. Nobody is burdened with an ongoing responsibility or could even lay claim to holding power if they tried. And, the role of Lance-a-lot is wide open because anyone who wants to can opt-in to the rotation. So, in practice, it feels like an organization that has leadership, but doesn’t have an absolute leader. And a sort of selection effect occurs as a result of this, anyone who is driven by the prestige of being an exclusive, role-based leader and having power wouldn’t want to opt into the rotation, because they’d never be the absolute leader of the team.

Second, at meetings of Lance-a-lots you really have a positive pressure to make good, collaborative decisions. Because Lance-a-lots have opted-in, their reputations amongst the team are especially on the line for doing a good job. And, because you know you’ll be the Lance-a-lot in a few rotations it pushes you to make a contribution and get your ideas out now - you don’t ever want the team to be in bad shape, so when it’s your turn you can make progress.

The dynamic of Rotation of Powers makes two things very clear: one, that power will, by definition, take turns so there’s no reason to be an ego-maniacal jerk about it. And two, that if you do right by the team and others you’re going to reap the benefits, and that if you leave a mess you’re shitting where you eat, so to speak.

What are the operational implications of Rotation of Powers?

Of course, this approach has trade-offs and operational challenges. Here are a few “must-haves” that I would assume have to be in place for a scheme of Rotation of Powers to work.

• A compelling, clear mission - Rotation of Powers doesn’t have the benefit of glory and spotlight. So for anyone to opt-in to the leadership rotation, they have to really care about the mission. Defining a clear and compelling mission is not easy, and would have to explicit and well understood, I think, for Rotation of Powers to work. Otherwise, nobody would opt-in to the rotation.

• Knowledge Management - For Rotation of Powers to work, the rotation has to happen quickly enough so that any one person cannot entrench themselves in power and seek rents. Transition is not easy. And in a scheme of Rotation of Powers, there would have to be good systems of knowledge and decision management to ensure transitions happened smoothly. If not, the organization would always be in a cycle of onboarding, and never have forward momentum.

• Trust and Collaboration - Similarly, if rotation is happening there has to be strong trust and collaboration among the rotating leadership team so that the direction of the team is one that has enrollment. A team would fail if with each rotation the particular leader during that rotation took the team in a whole new direction. The people in the rotation have to be on the same page for Rotation of Powers to work.

• Transparency and openness - A big challenge would preventing the people in the rotation from becoming insular and eventually self-aggrandizing. So, the leadership rotation would have to have transparency and openness to ensure what they were doing was appropriate. And, the people in the rotation would have to change over time so that the same old people don’t end up losing touch with what’s happening on the front line.

And so this approach maybe doesn’t work well in all contexts. Maybe it’s especially suited for mission-driven organizations (I happen to believe that all organizations should be mission-driven, but that’s a different blog post). And maybe it doesn’t work well in an environment where there’s a lot of specialized knowledge that’s accumulated over time, or ones where compliance to rules and protocol is really important.

But I could see something like this working for cooperatives, B-Corps, and maybe even larger public or social sector organizations. Additionally, it’s an approach that could be used within large corporations, in functions where innovation and dynamism is needed and more democratic styles of management which allow for experimentation are a strategic advantage.

Why now?

Like I said before, having more tools in our toolbox for managing power to prevent tyranny seems like a good idea because the stakes are so high. But this idea of Rotation of Power seems much more feasible than it did even 10 years ago. 50 years ago, this approach to organization design probably wasn’t even possible. Here are a few reasons why:

• Information Technology - the sort of transparency and knowledge management needed for Rotation of Powers simply was not possible before advances in information technology. Doing things like recording decisions, meetings, and real-time, cross-location, communication simply wasn’t possible because it would be administratively overwhelming. Now we have all these tools to collaborate and manage knowledge decisions, and expertise, which mitigates one of the most difficult operational implications I listed above.

• Understanding of Bureaucracy - The bureaucratic form of organization and management of large enterprises is a relatively discipline. We now know much more about how to manage organizations and establish missions and purpose, it’s actually something we can start to teach. So, now we actually know better how to create purpose-driven organizations, which again, mitigates a key operational challenge I mentioned earlier.

• Upskilling of Talent - Lots more people have higher levels of education and leadership experience. And if you have to rotate, the talent level of the team has to be sufficiently high and skills need to be sufficiently developed. A lot more people probably have those skills than they did 50 years ago. And honestly, rotating power probably accelerates that upskilling because more people get more reps leading teams.

• Emerging Technology - I’m intrigued by the use of blockchain technology and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Using software-based rules could automate some of the management of new forms of organizations (including Rotations of Power) that reduce administrative burden, and ensure that rotations are fair and that the tracking and tracing of decision rights can be effectively managed. I’m not a blockchain expert, but these sorts of ideas make the idea of experimenting with Rotations of Power seem more realistic.

Conclusions

Overall, I acknowledge that this is really a thought experiment. But I think it’s an interesting one that’s worth doing - as the world changes we need more ways to manage power and prevent tyranny, because separation of powers might not work forever. Our freedom and welfare is too important to depend on what will eventually become an old idea.

And, yes, the criticism of “that’s a cool idea, but it would never work in real life” is a valid criticism because I don’t know that it would work, especially at scale. But I would argue that we probably didn’t realize if separation of powers would work at the beginning, and we evolved it as we went. The same has been and would be true of any organizational form.

At a minimum, I hope this thought experiment validated that there are alternatives to separation of powers, to solve the problem of unchecked power and tyranny. It’s a big problem that’s worth thinking about and experimenting with.

When men dream bigger

As a man in America, I feel like I operate in a bit of a no-man’s land between the cultures of men and women.

On the one hand, there’s the culture of men. It’s the culture of ambition, being the king of the hill, and dominating others. It’s the culture predicated on the notion of “might makes right.” Some people call it patriarchy, some call it locker room culture, some call it toxic masculinity. 

I don’t really care to call it anything, I just know that I am alienated by it. I’m not particularly “macho”. I tried to fake it for awhile when I was younger, but as time passed I’ve realized that I don’t want to partake in that particular culture that groups of men tend to devolve into. Even though I often feel like I have to fit that mold of a man to be respected and rewarded for my efforts, especially in professional settings, I don’t want to be like “one of the guys.”

At the same time, the community of women is not a haven for me either - I don’t fit in there, even though it’s fairly inclusive and I’d like to. 

But even though I feel solidarity with thinkers and organizations like Brene Brown, Melinda Gates, the US Women’s National Team, Mary Barra, Michele Obama, and Reese Witherspoon’s Book club - and if I’m being honest, look to them as role models - I just never feel quite like I can belong there, even if the issue is my own mindset. For example, if I participate in something that’s by-women, for women (like a Women’s Leadership Development group event at work) I personally feel like I must participate as an advocate / ally, rather than as a beneficiary - even though I feel alienated by the patriarchy and limited by the glass ceiling, too. Even if it’s in my own head, I just can’t be part of that tribe.

Between those two spaces is where I feel like I operate - I don’t want to be part of the dominant men’s culture, but don’t feel like I belong in cultures by women, and for women, either. That place of invisibility is my no-man’s land. I don’t have any empirical evidence of this yet, but my intuition is that a growing number of us men feel like we are in this invisible, voiceless, no-man’s land too. That bothers me.

—

I can think of two ways to make this no-man’s land into a place that feels more like home.

The first path I can think of is diversity. I’ve noticed that when I’m among a diverse group of men (in any and every sense of the word) the dominant male culture feels tempered. It’s like the pressure to compete is off if the dudes around you aren’t even trying to fill the same niche you are. 

I think my closest high-school guy-friends are a good example of this dynamic. We run the gamut of professions, life experiences, politics, religiosity and interests. Between us we have: a corporate drone (me), a bar manager, a federal public servant, a software developer, a quant, a show-businesses tech, and a priest. We cover three different races, most of the political spectrum, and live in four different states now. 

When we’re together, I feel almost none of that dominant male culture. We have no reason do anything but celebrate and support each other because we’re not trying to be the king of the same hill.

The other path out of this no-man’s land (that I can think of, at least) is dreaming bigger. 

I was lucky to get to know one of the OGs of Detroit - I’ll call him Mr. B here, when I was working for the Detroit Police Department. He was one of our close community partners, and he would often speak at community events associated with the gang violence prevention program I worked on. He had endless energy, motivation, and wisdom. One of his ideas that I’ll never forget is that, “it’s a dangerous thing when a man stops dreaming.” I’ve reflected on this idea for years now.

If we, as men, dreamed bigger and more generously I feel like we might be able to create a different culture for ourselves. Because when you are dreaming of bigger things that raise up ourselves, our communities, and our world - we realize that the same-old hill we’ve been trying to become a king of, is small-minded. When we set our sights on a compelling vision that’s generous, virtuous, and benefits others we have a reason to stop thinking about one-upping other people and trying to get to the top of that same imaginary, one-dimensional hill. The dream expands our horizons and gives us the chance to transcend our our personal egos. 

When we, as men, dream bigger, we have better things to do than be assholes that behave aggressively and try to dominate others - because any time that’s not spent on reaching that big, difficult dream is wasted. It’s just a whole different dynamic when we’re dreaming big (assuming that dream is not selfish or ego-driven) because instead of fighting over the same hill, we realize that the world is a big place, there are hills for all of us, and that we can help each other on the climb.

For me at least, the challenge of a big dream gives me a reason to break the boundaries and chains of the culture I’m in and an implied permission to create a new culture. Which is why I think (and hope) it’s a path out of this no-man’s land.

I feel this tension and alienation from the dominant male culture damn near every day of my life. It’s grueling and exhausting. Some days I want to just give up and let myself fade into that dominant male culture. But I just can’t. We just can’t. We will get out of this no-man’s land if we stick with it.