The Art of Adjusting: Our Journey from Zero to Three Kids

From the outside looking in, the transformation from a couple to parents, and then to a family of five, might seem just like a change in numbers. But the journey of adjusting to each addition, the evolving dynamics, and the never-ending learning curve is a tale unto itself. Every family has its unique narrative, and ours is filled with moments of joy, chaos, discovery, and reflection.

People often ask about our journey – perhaps out of curiosity, or maybe because they're embarking on a similar path. By sharing our story, I hope to offer some insights and perhaps provide a sense of camaraderie. Parenting, after all, is a shared experience. No matter how many children you have or plan to have, it’s beautiful and impossibly hard. I've taken this opportunity to reflect on our changes, the big and small adjustments, and the lessons we've learned along the way.

Whether you're here seeking understanding, relatability, or just a story, I invite you to join us on our journey from zero to three kids. I love talking about this because I usually learn something by being asked to reflect on it.

In each phase, we've had to fundamentally rethink our roles—as parents, partners, friends, and colleagues. Every phase has required different adjustments. I’ve shared some of our experiences here. Have yours been similar? Different?

Comparing notes with other parents is really helpful to me, so if you’re so inclined - I’d love to hear what you think in the post comments or in the comments on Facebook.

Moving from Zero to One: Schedules Became Crucial

The biggest adjustment moving from no children to one child was schedules. Oh lord, was that hard. The entire rhythm of our day changed, becoming centered around the rhythms of our son.

This was so much more than “not sleeping.” How and when we socialized radically changed. How and when we had to get home from work also saw significant shifts. The pace with which we moved through the day became much slower because we were on “baby time.”

The personal adjustments I had to make were largely centered around work. I had to set boundaries around my work schedule because of drop-off duties. If I ran late, I would miss reading Robert a story and putting him to bed. I also realized that my needs were no longer the center of the universe.

In addition to our schedule's rhythm changing, it was a significant mental and emotional adjustment (read: ego check) to let go of the flexibility and decision-authority over my time. As someone who has been independent my whole life, I grieved the loss of freedom over my time and personal autonomy—even down to when I could use the bathroom.

One thing I'm glad we didn't compromise on was our passion for travel and adventure. Travel, especially to see or spend time with family, is non-negotiable for us. That was one aspect we didn’t adjust; we continued our daytime adventures. We even took a 10-month-old to Japan, which, looking back, seems audacious, but that was non-negotiable. It was something our son had to adapt to.

Moving from One to Two: No Slack in the System

When Robyn and I had one child, we could muscle through without having to change everything drastically. But with the arrival of our second child, there was no slack left in our system. There was no longer a quiet time; someone in our household was always awake or had a need. With a second child, the opportunities for quick naps or swiftly loading the dishwasher vanished, straining our family system. It's no surprise; systems without slack tend to be fragile.

Robyn and I found ourselves adjusting and transforming many of our individual and shared habits. We had to create and refine systems. Logistical systems came into play, including semi-automated grocery lists, whiteboard calendars, and chore wheels. We delved into Eve Rodsky’s system from her book Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) even adopting her flashcards. These tools and others made us more efficient and disciplined, ensuring we still had moments to recharge individually and as a couple.

Above all, we focused on managing conflicts. We prioritized our weekly temperature checks, revisited our five-year vision regularly, and committed to addressing issues head-on, turning towards each other, especially during misunderstandings. The crux of our adjustment was nurturing the courage to speak honestly and remain emotionally present, particularly when faced with hurt.

Moving from Two to Three: Navigating Dreams and Inner Demons Amidst Chaos

Parents often quip that introducing a third child means shifting defense from "man-to-man" to "zone." Suddenly, with three kids, Robyn and I were outnumbered. Our life was a whirlwind of chaos.

This phase was more about acceptance than change. Our vision of life underwent a transformation. Dreaming of a perpetually clean house? Unrealistic. Juggling a demanding job and being a hands-on parent? A choice had to be made. Aspirations for rapid career growth had to be balanced against family time. And the home projects I'd hoped to save on by DIY-ing? Either hire a professional or set them aside.

These dreams and life yardsticks had to align with our reality. Despite being well-off and having considerable family support, realizing we couldn't "have it all" was a pivotal moment. Accepting our third child meant reimagining our dreams. Our family had tangibly, unquestionably, and irreversibly became the cornerstone of our aspirations and future vision. This shift was profound, given the pressure I had placed on career goals, community involvement, and personal achievements.

However, this chaotic phase prompted major parenting adaptations. At least one of our children always seemed to be navigating a major transition or facing emotional challenges. With three kids, there's always a storm brewing. Such turbulence often brought out the worst in me, rather than my best. I fell back into negative behavior patterns and made numerous parenting missteps. Moments arose when I'd ponder, "Am I this guy? Am I going to accept being this guy?"

This chaos demanded introspection. My internal world underwent a shift, prompting me to confront deep-seated fears, angers, and skill gaps. We sought therapy, and became a Dr. Becky Good Inside family. And slowly, we began walking the long road to change.

How We Adjust

Naturally, my reflections often circle back to the theme of adjustments. Adjustments are vital, but the process is far from trivial. So, how do we make these shifts?

Firstly, a vision is paramount. How do you envision the future? Taking time to dream, both alone and with loved ones, is essential. We need direction, and clear picture of the ideal future; without it, there's no reference point for when change is needed. The moments Robyn and I have spent articulating our dreams have been some of the most rewarding in our marriage.

Secondly, for effective adjustment, clear priorities are paramount. We all harbor grand dreams and visions, but reality doesn’t always align. The world is filled with trade-offs, constraints, and unforeseen events. Time and resources are finite, so we can’t achieve everything we desire. To navigate these challenges, we must prioritize the dimensions of our dreams. It’s these priorities that serve as a compass, guiding which adjustments to make.

For instance, faced with the demands of parenting and career, which takes precedence? Robyn and I chose to adjust our career paths to be more present for our children. While this wasn’t our initial plan, our priority of being active parents necessitated this change. Such decisions, pivotal in shaping our lives, are rooted in understanding our core priorities.

Lastly, genuine listening complements our prioritization. To assess whether we need to make adjustments we need accurate feedback. Are we veering in the wrong direction? We need information to know whether an adjustment is urgent. That information might be explicit like a bank statement or cholesterol panel, or it could be through observation of our kids’ feelings and behavior, or even information gleaned from personal reflection and discernment.

Adjusting is an art form and is ongoing, evolving with each phase of life. I'd love to hear your thoughts, whether you're a new parent or have had a decade's worth of experience. I'm sure each of you has your unique tales, moments of revelation, and personal strategies that you've leaned on. Whether you're just starting your family or have been on this journey for a while, I'd love to hear from you.

Discussion Points:

1. Journey Reflection: If you have children, what were the most significant adjustments you made with each addition?

2. Learning Moments: Were there any unexpected lessons you learned along the way?

3. Balancing Acts: How have you balanced your personal dreams and aspirations with the needs of your growing family?

Feel free to share in the comments below or reach out on Facebook. Let's continue the conversation and learn from each other's experiences.

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Key Takeaways:

• Moving from Zero to One: Adjusting to the rhythm of your child is paramount. Personal sacrifices, especially around time and autonomy, are inevitable.

• Moving from One to Two: Systems and routines become critical. External tools and relationship checks (like Fair Play) can be invaluable.

• Moving from Two to Three: Embracing chaos and re-evaluating personal dreams and professional aspirations are essential. Prioritizing family becomes a central theme.

Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

The Ball, The Boys, and Me: A Journey Back to Playfulness

Something happened to me, slowly, over years. I stopped being fun.

I was never close to being muppet-level fun, or even sitcom-level fun, but I was at least average. But this weekend, I finally realized how far I’ve fallen, and how much of a stiff I’ve become.

This realization, poetically, all started with a ball.

It’s as if it was magnetic. Within minutes of showing up at the park, a first or second grader approached Robert after noticing the ball at his feet.

“Hey, you wanna play soccer?”

And then, our Kindergartner began shedding his armor of quiet and shyness. His confidence and voice gradually returned, his personality emerging from behind his protective shield.

And for the next 40 minutes, he had a buddy. Sure, Bo came back and forth to the safety of outstretched hand. Mostly, though, he didn’t need me. The ball helped him transform - from being a little boy hurt by words and elbows on the playground, into just a little boy, running and smiling.

That’s the magic of the ball.

The magical, magnetic ball is his life preserver when he’s lost in a new place. The magic ball does the heavy work, bringing others into his world, when he’s too afraid to invite them in. The ball gives him a focus point, an entry point into friendship and being part of a group.

The magic of the ball, any ball, is that when a ball arrives, play follows. The ball is a vessel, the conduit, for the magic of play.

Play is liberation. It lets us run, skip, express, create, and be. Play is fun. It brings joy, relief, refuge, and laughter. Play is medicine. It helps us bond, repair relationships, recharge, and heal.

I also need this magic.

Bo already manifests my two biggest neuroses: the need to be perfect and the need to be affirmed by other people’s praise. I transmuted these shackles onto him because of something I’m role modeling - he’s too young to have just inherited these behaviors from the culture.

I’m not even trying to be, and I’m so damn serious all the time. I focus, plan, and do dishes in an almost militant manner. Do I ever have fun and play around? If I do, it’s when my sons are already asleep.

But how do I even play? How do I take a status meeting and make it feel a little more like play? How do I take the chore of washing dishes and make it into a game? Somewhere along the way, I became a robot that does tasks and managed a scheduled instead of a person who plays around.

How could I have let this happen? To be sure, I consider myself a lucky man. My life has a lot of comfort, joy, meaning, and love. But what happened to fun? Somehow, fun is something I used to be. Play is something I used to do.

I don’t want to live like this. How did we let ourselves live like this? When did it happen? How do I get out of these chains of drudgery and seriousness?

One answer, it seems, is right in front of me. I have to be more like them. I have three sons, and they play all the time. For some part of the day, I need to put my serious face away and just mimic them. I need them to be my role models, instead of me trying to be theirs.

They are the vessel; they are my conduit. They, my sons, are my magic ball. Through them, I can find the part of me that is fun again. They, if I let them, can be the liberators of the bondage of seriousness I didn’t even know I had.

Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash

When shit isn’t working: Mountains vs. Plateaus

Sometimes, shit just isn’t working. We’ve all had slumps where we feel like this.

It could be on a project at work, as a parent, in marriage, when solving a social problem, or when working on a creative project.

The first lesson that most of us learn is what they say about insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is insanity. So most of us learn not to be insane.

When shit just isn’t working, step one is to do something different. Most of us generally know this, even if we don’t act upon it right away.

But there’s a subtlety that matters, when shit just isn’t working. What we have to assess is whether we’re fundamentally on a mountain or a plateau, because how you conquer a mountain and a plateau is fundamentally different.

Mountains vs. Plateaus

The problem with mountains is that they are big and steep. But what’s great about mountains is that there’s no way to go but up. Mountain problems are an incremental challenge.

So to get over a mountain, what you do differently is just lean in harder. You spend more time, spend more money, or throw people at the problem. Basically, if shit isn’t working and you’re on a mountain - we just have to put one foot in front of the other, and just climb harder and climb higher. Eventually, you know you’re going to get to the top, you just have to add effort and survive the climb.

Cleaning a dirty house before a party is a mountain problem - you just hunker down, and ask a friend to help you if it needs to happen faster.

The problem with plateaus is that they are flat. Which means running harder doesn’t get you anywhere - you’re stuck on the plateau at the same flat elevation with nowhere else to go, no matter how fast or hard you run.

The even bigger problem with plateaus is that the only way off is to jump off of it.

If the situation you’re in is being stuck on a plateau, you have to rock the boat and do something radical. Plateau problems require a phase shift to get unstuck.

Reducing my mile splits and body fat % in advance of a half marathon has been a plateau problem.

After a few weeks of training, running longer distances once a week wasn’t getting me in better shape. I wasn’t getting strong enough to be durable for long distances nor were my splits getting any faster.

Instead, I had to jump off a cliff and try an entirely new training method: interval speed runs.

Interval speed runs are where you run at a faster pace for a short burst, and then have a short rest. A speed run might end up being the same time and distance as a regular training run, but running short intervals fast, is fundamentally different on the body than a distance run at a moderate pace.

Once I jumped, and tried something entirely new (interval speed runs) - my half marathon training started popping. My legs got noticeably more durable, and my muscle mass started rising while my mile splits started falling. It was nuts how big of a difference it made.

We need to assess where we are

When shit isn’t working, the right answer isn’t always turnkey. Before acting, we have to determine whether we’re on a mountain requiring more of the same, or, if we’re on a plateau that requires a radical phase shift.

As people who take responsibility for making things better, it’s critical to pause. If we don’t get a lay of the land, we might not ever get things working again.

So, the next time you find yourself stuck, take a step back and ask: Is this a mountain to climb or a plateau to leap from? Your answer might just be the breakthrough you need.

Photo Credit: Morgan Alicia on Unsplash

The Dynamic Leader: Parenting Lessons for Growing a Team

In both life and work, change isn't just inevitable; it is a vital metric for assessing growth. My experiences as a parent have led me to a deeper understanding of this concept, offering insights that are readily applicable in a leadership role.

Children Grow Unapologetically

As a parent, it’s now obvious to me that children are constantly evolving, forging paths into the unknown with a defiance that seems to fuel their growth. Despite a parent’s natural instinct to shield them, children have a way of pushing boundaries, a clear indicator that change is underway. This undying curiosity and defiance not only foster growth but necessitate a constant evolution in parenting styles.

Today, my youngest is venturing into the world as a wobbly walker, necessitating a shift in my approach to offer more freedom and encouragement, but with a ready stance to help our toddler the most dangerous falls. Meanwhile, my older sons are becoming more socially independent, which requires me to step back and allow them to resolve their disputes over toys themselves. It's evident; as they grow, my parenting style needs to adapt, setting a cycle of growth and adaptation in motion.

The Echo in Leadership

In reflecting on this, I couldn't help but notice the clear parallel to leadership in a corporate setting. A leader's adaptability to the changing dynamics of the team and the operating environment is critical in fostering a team's growth. If a leadership style remains static, it likely signals a team stuck on a plateau, not achieving its potential.

A stagnant leadership style not only hampers growth but fails the team. It is thus imperative for us as leaders to continually reassess and tweak their approach to leadership, ensuring alignment with the team's developmental stage and the broader organizational context.

This brings me to a critical question: how often should a leader change their style? While a high frequency of change can create instability, a leadership style untouched for years is a recipe for failure. A quarterly review strikes a reasonable balance, encouraging regular adjustments to foster growth without plunging the team into a state of constant flux.

Conclusion: The Dynamic Dimension of Leadership

In the evolving landscapes of parenting and leadership alike, adaptability emerges not just as a virtue but as a vital gauge of growth and effectiveness. Thanks to my kids, I was able to internalize this pivotal point of view: understanding the dynamic or static nature of one's approach is central to assessing leadership prowess.

For leaders eager to foster growth, the practice of self-assessment can be straightforward and significantly revealing. It is as simple as taking a moment during your team's quarterly goal reviews to ask, "How has the team grown this quarter?" and "How should my leadership style evolve to support our growth in the upcoming period?"

By making this practice a routine, we can ensure that our leadership styles remain dynamic, evolving hand in hand with our teams' developmental trajectories, promoting sustained growth and productivity.

Photo by Julián Amé on Unsplash

From Standing Ovations to Silent Smiles: How My Daydreams Changed

What I visualize has changed over the years, and I can’t figure out why.

When I was younger, I always used to visualize myself being applauded.

In those days, I regularly imagined myself being sworn in as a U.S. Senator, or perhaps being elevated to CEO of a publicly traded company. Sometimes, I wouldn’t even just imagine myself giving a TED talk, I imagined myself watching a video of myself giving a TED talk.

This is objectively vain and narcissistic stuff. These delusions fueled my motivation and ambition. I craved moments of being “awesome” or being “ the guy” and that’s a large part of why I worked hard and tried to achieve success in my education and professional life.

Somewhere along the way that changed.

To be clear, I still have moments where I imagine myself winning something, succeeding, or receiving some sort of promotion. But it’s not only that anymore. Sometimes, now, I visualize others experiencing joy.

Sometimes, for example, I imagine Robyn and I being older and we’re making pizza and chocolate chip cookies with our giggling grandchildren. Or maybe we’re holding hands at church, seeing families of five hugging each other in the pew in front of us, and we feel remember our own joy because we see theirs.

Other times, I imagine our adult sons, joking and laughing with each other, while we’re all having a beer around a campfire. Sometimes, I imagine a time when the world is kinder and more verdant, and I am walking through the park, breathing clean air and passing by birthday parties with loads of youngsters singing and eating cake. They are all strangers and I don’t talk to them, I just notice their glee and I am smiling as I stroll past.

Sometimes, too, I imagine some of the former gang members I met at community meetings dropping their kids off at school or cooking a Friday night dinner, being attentive and loving fathers. Sometimes, I imagine some of the people who buy La-Z-Boy furniture just sitting, and catching their breath in moments of ease.

Again, I’m still self-centered, I’m just not solely that anymore. Now, I imagine others’ joyous moments sometimes too.

The problem is, I don’t know what caused this change to happen.

Was it gratitude journaling or prayer? Was it marriage and kids? Was it losing my father? Was it travel to places, like India, where I witnessed slums with unimaginable poverty? Was it just something that happened because I lived more life? What was it that caused my visualizations to change?

This post doesn’t have a solution, only a question for those of y’all who made it this far. Has this change in perspective happened to you? What do you think did it?

It’s something that I would love to understand enough to recreate on purpose. If I can pinpoint what sparked this shift in me, perhaps we all can learn to intentionally foster a more outwardly compassionate perspective.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

We should honor all children

I never thought brushing my teeth in a campground bathroom would lead to a perspective-shifting conversation about how we view children. But there I was, face-to-face with a jovial stranger hearing a profound message.

I met this stranger while brushing my teeth this weekend, in the Cades Cove Campground bathroom at Great Smokey Mountain National Park. People camping at National Parks are generally friendly, probably because choosing to sleep outside where your main recreation is strenuously walking, without creature comforts like showers or a fully-functioning kitchen takes someone with a unique kind of frustration tolerance. That frustration tolerance is probably part of the reason why camping people are willing to take the risk of talking candidly with people they’ve never met.

I thought my new friend was probably German given his accent and shoulder length blonde hair. Turns out, he was.

He and his wife turned out to be our nearest campsite neighbor and they were both recently retired from their careers in Hamburg, Germany. When we left the park today we got to actually talking, as we offered our extra firewood to them just before we departed in hopes they’d get some use out of it.

Even though I had met him, literally while brushing teeth at 9:30pm at night only 36 hours earlier, our conversation turned to parenting.

He was a young grandparent and he commented on how he was grateful that the German system made deliberate choices to support children and tried to make parenting an attractive proposition. He added how hard it was, even in the German system, for his son and daughter-in-law to tend to their young son, and balance the demands of parenting with that of their jobs. It was so confusing, he thought, that in America we would undermine children, parents, and families by not even allowing simple supports like parental leave.

I agreed with him, but so far what he said was relatively unsurprising. After all, it’s no surprise that parenting today is extremely tough and it’s no secret that our level of support in America for children, parents, and families is something to be laughed at and not lauded, especially in comparison to other developed nations.

But then, he said something that really pushed the conversation beyond polite talking points:

“We should honor our children. They are our future.”

That word, honor, is fundamentally different than how we usually talk about children in America.

We talk about “taking care” of children or “giving opportunities” to children. We don’t take the posture of honoring children.

To honor children is a fundamentally different conception of the role of children in society. When comparing the words, taking care and giving opportunities feels so transactional whereas honoring children elevates their societal standing and implies that we owe them a debt of reverence or gratitude.

Honestly, we probably do. We shouldn’t think about children as people to take care of or give opportunities to. We should think about children as people to honor.

Today, I was thinking a lot about what my new friend said. Especially because our oldest son starts Kindergarten this week. My role as a father is changing in a hurry and I’ve been thinking about what it will mean, not just to be a father to my sons, but what it will mean to be a father in a school community.

Upon reflection, the idea of honoring children is most interesting to me because of how inclusive it feels.

My friend from Hamburg implied that he was talking about honoring all children. I could tell he loves his own children and believes they are special - I saw the spark in him that dads get when they talk about their kids…the same one I do.

But he was thinking beyond his own kids. I could tell that he believed that all children deserved parents who could spend time with them. He believed that all children should live in a safe and loving community. He believed that all children should be able to learn and grow. He believed that we should honor all children in our community, not just our own children.

And what would it mean, I thought, if I tried to honor all children?

It would be paying extra into the pot to subsidize child care, even after my kids are grown. It would mean being supportive of anyone I work with and helping them manage their workload so they can be parents and caregivers. It would mean loving my own kids dearly, but also being loving, honest, and nurturing of all children - whether that’s as a member of our school’s Dads’ Club, or a soccer coach, or a volunteer writing tutor, or summer party host in our backyard. It would mean paying attention to the neighborhood kids on the block and being a watchful eye for their safety and to step in if their shenanigans surpass what I know their parents would tolerate.

This will be such a hard believe to actually walk the walk on, I know already.

On the one hand, I love my kids so dearly. They matter so much to me. They are special kids, because they are my kids. These three are my sons. They need me to love them so much, and to put them ahead of others. I know that as their father, it’s my job to love and sacrifice for them. If I don’t put them first, who will?

And yet, it’s true that all children, collectively, are indeed our future.

All our children will take care of us in old age. And they will inherit the world we leave. And for goodness sake, we’re talking about children - doing the best we can is just the right thing to do instinctively. That’s all obvious.

But beyond that, all our children are my childrens’ future, too.

All our children will be inter-connected in the future. Your kids will go to college with my kids someday. Your kids will be lifelong friends with my kids someday. Our kids will go to bars and to basketball games down at the arena someday, and even if they don’t know each other, they’ll be in the same room, over and over, without even knowing it. They will share the same roads, the same airports, the same parks, and the same grocery stories. They will be colleagues and business partners someday.

At the end of the day, all y’all’s kids will affect mine and mine will affect yours.

It’s the right thing to do to honor all children, but if I really get down to it it’s in my selfish interest too. If my kids are going to be intertwined and inter-dependent with your kids, it is stupid not to make sure all kids are healthy, happy, and loved. I don’t want my kids to be stuck living in a world full of broken adults, and neither do you. Nobody does.

And yet, I know it will be so tempting to me when the choice arises to give my kid every advantage and opportunity even if it screws over someone else’s kid. But I need to think twice about that. The long-term future we all want is a world where all kids are honored, and that means I need to contribute to that dream by honoring all children instead of free-riding on everyone else’s grace and generosity.

This will be hard, and that’s the part of the reason why I’m writing about this publicly. Now it’s possible to shame me if I make choices that are nakedly self-interested toward my kids’ benefit at the cost of yours. That’s pressure and risk I’m willing to bear. If our political system and public policy are going to create a framework and incentive structure that encourages me to advocate for my children even if it means screwing yours over, I need every possible support I can to buck the trend.

Because, damn, what a world it would be if we could get to a place of honoring all children rather than than just loving, supporting, and nurturing our own. It would probably lead all children to be better off, including our own. If all kids rise, so will mine.

It’s astounding to me that a major belief of mine - on the role of children in society - has been so disproportionally influenced by a stranger I talked to for a total of 15 minutes, over the course of 36 hours because we were neighbors at a National Park.

And yet here I am, putting this out into the world, with a full heart: we should not just take care of or give opportunities to our own children, we should honor all children.

If you’re a parent, or even just around kids a lot, I think you should dig deep on this one. I’d ask you to look within and really decide - is it your own children that you’re solely focused on, or do you also believe that we should aspire to honor all children?

Photo by note thanun on Unsplash

It is what it isn’t: surfacing struggles as a key leadership responsibility

When we all use phrases like “it is what it is” or “I’m just tired” - portraying that we’re doing fine while masking our struggle.

And honestly, that actually seems rational. Talking about struggles is really hard! And most of the time, we don’t know if the person we’re talking to actually cares or is just interested in making small talk.

And so we use a phrase like, “it is what it is” and move on.

In our culture, we have lots of phrases like these, which have a double meaning - where we’re trying to suggest that we’re doing fine enough but are actually feeling the weight of something difficult.

But just because it’s rational, doesn’t mean we should use phrases like these and just move on - letting the struggle remain hidden.

And if we’re taking the responsibility to lead, whether at work or at home, surfacing and resolving struggles is part of our responsibility as leaders.

The difficult question is how. That’s what I’ve been reflecting on and what this post is about: how do we surface and help resolve struggles when it’s rational to mask them?

Surfacing Struggles

Luckily, we often use consistent turns of phrases when we are surfacing struggles. If we listen for those tells, we have a chance to double down when we hear them and try to learn more.

I asked a question on facebook this week to try generating a list of these phrases which create a subtle and believable facade. Thank you to anyone who shared their two cents, these were the examples folks shared:

• “Living the dream.”

• “I’m fine.”

• “It’s going.”

• “I am okay.”

• “I’m hanging in there.”

• “That’s life.”

• “I’m here.”

• “Another day in paradise.”

• “Eff it.” (Used causally)

If we hear someone use phrases like these (or we say them ourselves) we can use it as a trigger to pause and explore, rather than as a cue to move on.

Surfacing Struggles With Kids

Kids are less obfuscating with their struggles, they come right out and share their little hearts out. They just struggle with being specific about their woes when then say or do stuff like:

• “I can’t do this!”

• “I’ll never figure this out!”

• “This is too hard!”

• [Screams and foot stomps]!

• [Pterodactyl noises with hands over ears]!

• “Poo-poo, poo-poo, POO-POO!”

• “I forgot how to walk!” (My personal favorite from our kids)

With kids, these can be cues to pause, gather our patience and saddle up to emotional coach through some big feelings.

Surfacing Struggles At Work

At work, we’re more opaque, deftly deflecting and misdirecting with our words to make our inner struggles seem like obstacles outside our control. How often have you heard phrases like this?:

• “We don’t have the resources.”

• “We’re too busy.”

• “It’s not our job.”

• “We’ll just CYA and keep it moving.”

• “We need to run this by the executive team first.” (or replace executive team with “legal”, “audit”, or “HR”)

• “We’re breaking the guidelines set out in [insert name of esoteric poorly defined policy that’s only tangentially related to the issue at hand].”

At work, it’s so easy to take these phrases at face value and assume that there’s nothing to explore. But there usually is.

Once I started listening for them, I found that these phrases of deflection came up at home and at work, all the time.

Resolving Struggles

When others use subtle but believable facades to avoid or deflect from their struggles, the key is to decipher what they would actually be saying if they felt like they could be honest and vulnerable.

If we can figure that out, we can meet the person in front of us (or ourselves in the mirror) where they are, understand their true needs, and then help them deal with their struggles.

When someone uses a subtle but believable deflection, they usually, deep down, mean something like this:

• “I’m overwhelmed. There’s so much happening and I can’t even figure out where to start.”

• “I’m scared. Things are not going well and I don’t know whether the future will be better.”

• “I don’t trust you. I need you to give me reasons to put my faith in you.”

• “I’m stuck. I’ve been trying to make this better but nothing seems to make a difference. I need help.”

• “I feel alone. I don’t feel the support of other people on this very difficult thing we’re going through.”

• “I don’t believe in myself. I need convincing that you won’t let me fail.”

• “I don’t care. To keep going, I need to feel like what we’re doing actually matters.”

• “I don’t trust our group. I’ve been let down before and I don’t want to be hurt again.”

• “I’m confused. I don’t know what to do or what’s expected of me.”

• “I’m ashamed. I need to feel included and that my behaviors don’t make my worth conditional.”

• “I feel guilty. I need encouragement and guidance that I can do better.”

• “I feel like I’m in danger. I need you to help me feel safe.”

If we discover the real root feeling or struggle, the posture we need to take is relatively straightforward. It’s rarely an easy struggle, but if we know what the person in front of us is actually dealing with, we actually have a chance to be helpful to them. If we don’t understand, we definitely won’t be helpful, even if we’re well-intentioned and try really hard.

Practical Skills Matter: Listening, Integrity, Compassion

The practical lesson that I’ve learned is twofold.

First, we need to listen very carefully for these very subtle deflections and instead of being fooled by them, we need to sharpen our focus. We need to pause and graciously lean in. These deflections are really tells that the person in front of us, or ourselves if we say them out loud, are actually struggling.

Second, we need to find a way to hear precisely what the person in front of us is having a hard time saying. That can happen in one of two ways. We either have to listen and observe very carefully, or, we need to show integrity and compassion so unflinchingly and consistently that the person in front of us feels safe enough to tell the truth.

Conclusions

Beyond the practical tools around how to surface and resolve struggles, there’s a broader point that’s important to make: we have a choice to make.

On the one hand, one could completely reject my point of view. Someone could say, “I’m not responsible for helping every person in front of me with every single one of their struggles. They need to suck it up, they need to figure some of this out on their own. They need to take responsibility for their own struggles, that’s not fully on me.”

Maybe that’s true, at least to some degree. In my life, I’ve found it impossible to help someone who’s not enrolled in the journey of finding a better way. And, it’s also true that we have practical limits. We as individuals can’t possibly do this all ourselves - there’s not enough time or energy available to us to take every struggle of the people we care about onto our shoulders alone.

But at the same time, I believe we need to try because we owe it to each other. We have all struggled. We have all needed someone to help us surface and resolve our struggles. We all have been helped, by someone, at some time. Nobody in this world has done it alone.

And if we want to move forward - whether it’s with our kids at home or with our colleagues at work - someone has to be responsible for it.

So when someone in our orbit next says something like, “it is what it is” or “I’m just tired” I hope we all choose to say something like, “oh really, what do you mean?” Instead of letting the conversation pass as if nothing happened.

That’s the choice we have ahead of us. Let’s choose to listen deeply.

Photo by Christina Spiliotopoulou on Unsplash

My Dream: Bringing CX to State and Local Government

My number one mission for my professional life is to help government organizations become high performing. If every government were high performing, I think it would change the trajectory of human history for the better in a big way.

One way to do that is to bring customer experience (CX) principles pioneered in the private sector and some forward thinking places (like the US Federal Government, the UK Government, or the Government of Estonia) and bring them to State and Local Government.

It is my dream to create CX capabilities in City and State Government in Michigan and have our state be a model for how CX can work at the State and Local level across the country.

Dreams don’t come true unless you talk about them. So I’m talking about it.

If you have the same mission or the same dream, I want to meet you. If you have friends or colleagues who have similar missions or dream, I want to meet them too. We who care about high performing, citizen-centric government want to make this happen. I want to play the role that I can play to bring CX to State and Local Government and I want to help you on your journey. Full stop.

I have so much more to say about what this could be, but I had to start somewhere. I had ChatGPT help me take some thoughts in my head and convert them into a Team Charter and a Job Description for the head of that team.

What do you think? Have you seen this? What would work? What’s missing? Maybe we can make something happen together, which is exactly why I’m putting a tiny morsel of this idea out there for those who care to react to.

The country and world are already moving to more responsive, networked, citizen-centric models of how government can work. Let’s hasten that transformation by bringing CX principles to the work our City and State Governments do every day.

I can’t wait to hear from you.

-Neil

—

Team Charter for Customer Experience (CX) Improvement in City or State Government

Purpose (Why?)

To transform and enhance the quality of government services and citizens’ daily life through CX methodologies. High impact domains include touchpoints with significant impact for the citizens who are engaged (e.g., support for impoverished families obtaining benefits) and those touchpoints affecting all citizens (e.g., tax payments, vehicular transportation), and touchpoints with high community interest.

Objectives (What Result Are We Trying to Create?)

• Increase citizen satisfaction

• Strengthen trust in government

• Elevate the quality of life for residents, visitors, and businesses

Scope (What?)

This initiative will focus on the top 5-7 stakeholders personas driving the most value to start:

• Improve how citizens experience government services, daily life, and vital community aspects

• Drive change cross-functionally and at scale across interaction channels

• Foster tangible improvements in the quality of life

• Create and align KPIs with community priorities and establish ways to measure and communicate success

Activities (How?)

• Segment residents, visitors, businesses, and identify top personas and touchpoints

• Develop customer personas, journey maps, and choose highest-value problem areas to focus on for each persona

• Prioritize and create an improvement roadmap

• Partner with various stakeholders to drive change

• Measure results, gather feedback, and align with community priorities

• Share progress regularly and communicate value to stakeholders to gain momentum and support

Team and Key Stakeholders (Who?)

• Leadership: A head with experience in leadership, CX methods, data, technology, innovation, and intrapreneurship

• Department Liaisons: Individuals driving CX within different governmental departments

• External Partners: Collaboration with other government agencies, citizen groups, foundations, the business community, and vendors

• Core Team: A mix of professionals with expertise in relationship management, digital, innovation, leadership, and related fields

Timeline and Next Steps (When?)

• 0-6 Months: Segmentation, personas, and journey mapping

• 6-12 Months: Problem analysis and a prioritized roadmap creation

• 9-18 Months: Tangible improvements and iterative changes in focus areas

• Ongoing: Continual refinement and adaptation to changing needs and priorities

—

Job Description: CX Improvement Team Leader

Position Overview:

As the CX Improvement Team Leader for City or State Government, you will drive transformative change to enhance citizens’ experience with government services and improve quality of life for citizens in this community. You will guide a cross-functional team to create innovative solutions, aligning with community priorities and creating tangible improvements in quality of life.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and inspire a diverse team to achieve objectives

• Create and align KPIs, establish methods for measurement

• Develop and execute an improvement roadmap

• Engage with stakeholders across government agencies, citizen groups, businesses, and more

• Regularly share progress and communicate the value of initiatives to gain momentum and support

• Collaborate with external partners and vendors as needed

• Foster an innovative and responsive culture within the team

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in customer experience, leadership, technology, innovation, or related fields

• Proven ability to drive change at scale across various channels

• Strong communication and relationship management skills

• Experience in government, public policy, or community engagement is preferred

• A visionary leader with a passion for improving lives and a commitment to public service

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

A practitioner’s take on goals and dreams

There is a time and a place for SMART goals.

Like when we want or have to achieve something that’s specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. (See what I did there?)

Put another way, sometimes we need to outline a goal like this: “I will publish my book in 2023, and have 1000 people download or purchase it within 6 months of publication.”

But there are times when SMART goals are precisely the wrong approach to take.

Sometimes we have to dream. And a good dream is probably the inverse of a SMART goal: A audacious, unorthodox, and slow to achieve.

Put another way, sometimes we need to put a dream out there, something like: “I dream about a day when America is a more trusting place, probably because our government is innovative and citizen centric, we have skilled leaders on every block, and our culture becomes one where everyone reflects on their own actions and is committed to developing their own character.”

Here’s what I’ve learned about both, as a real person, living a real life, trying to achieve goals and dreams for real:

First, dreams are a paradox. The most visionary dream feel too crazy to talk about - and so we often don’t talk about them. At the same time, the surest way to never achieve a dream is to keep it a secret. The only way our dreams become a reality is if we talk about them even when it feels awkward.

Second, it’s really important to know whether the situation at hand requires a goal or a dream. If the situation is well understood and we need to “get it done”…goals all day.

But if we’re trying to imagine a better future, and contemplate a new way of being, dreams are the only way.

Third, both goals and dreams are worthless if they are not specific. If the finish line is blurry, collective action grinds to a halt, especially when there’s no hierarchy to scare people into action.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, both dreams and goals require an action which deviates from the status quo. That’s why we dream and set goals in the first place, we want something to be different.

A good question is: “Do my goals and dreams require me to act differently? If so, how? If not, how do I get better goals and dreams?”

That’s there’s the unlock.

Photo by Estee Janssens on Unsplash.

I promise to not be a superhero

As a father, I am angry about something almost every day.

To be clear, I don’t like being angry. For me, constantly being angry is the hardest part of being a parent, even harder than changing diapers or staying up all night with a sick child.

Sometimes I feel angry because of something one of my sons did, say, punching me in the stomach while having a tantrum. In that case, I am angry at them and their behavior.

What I’ve realized, though, is that I am not usually angry at them as much as I think. The aftermath of a series of sibling “incidents” this weekend was a good example of this.

I realized I was angry because I’m feeling inadequate as a father right now. One of our sons is going through something painful - he wouldn’t deliberately abuse his younger brother if he wasn’t in some deep emotional spiral - and I haven’t been able to help him. He’s a good kid who needs the care of a father, and I’m failing.

It makes me angry that he throws Hot Wheel cars at his brother without provocation, sure. But I’m not angry at him, as much as being angry at myself.

I’m angry that he’s going through genuine suffering about something. I’m angry that I don’t know what it is. I’m angry that I can’t help him. I’m angry that Robyn has exhausting days at home intervening to mitigate the effects of volatile behavior, on top of her heavy work schedule.

I’m not angry at him, I’m angry at myself for letting the side down.

This seems obvious, but it has been a revelation. Practically speaking, it’s a much different parenting strategy if I’m angry at him vs. if I’m angry at myself. If I’m angry at my son, that’s a negotiation and a coaching moment. But if I’m angry at myself, I have to focus on getting my own emotional state stable.

After all, how could I help him if I’m not even sturdy? It’s the airplane principle applied to parenting: if I want my son to be calm, so he can realize it’s not kind to spit on my shirt, I have to be calm enough to help him chill out.

This weekend, while reflecting on this, my long-running feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and shame finally surfaced. When my oldest asked me, “will you love me after you die?” Is when I finally lost it.

I love these kids so much, I thought, how can I fail them so badly? How am I struggling so much, even after learning valuable skills in theraphy last year, like “special time” and emotional coaching?

He deserves better.

And yet, I know my self-flagellation is ultimately hypocritical. I’m so particular about telling my sons that, “mistakes are part of the plan, all we need to do is learn from them.” And yet, I have been reluctant to take my own advice, for months now.

I am not a perfect man. I am not a perfect husband or father. My family does suffer, on my watch. The world tells me that this is not what good men and good fathers let happen. Failing at what I care about most - being a husband and father - makes me angry, and honestly, ashamed.

And yet, we cannot allow ourselves to go down this road as fathers or as parents. We cannot be angry at ourselves for not being gods or ashamed that we aren’t superheroes. To do so would be the definition of futile and irrational, because we are not gods nor are we superheros. It is simply not possible.

What we can do is adjust. We can choose to stop being angry at ourselves. And then we can choose to examine ourselves and really listen to the kid in front of us. And honestly, I think an act of adjustment can be as simple: take a pause, do some box breathing, and then ask, “is there something that you’re having a hard time saying?”

Because even though our kids don’t come with a handbook, they, luckily, are the handbook. And then, finally, we can change our posture and try something different.

We can let all that anger, guilt, and shame go so that we can stop making ourselves into crazy people. And then, we can use the energy and clarity we’ve gained to do better.

Let’s say it together, my brothers, today and every day, “I promise not to be a superhero, but a father who listens, who learns, and who loves, even in the midst of my anger.”

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

Braving new worlds: the astronaut in all of us

There are four versions of the world. They exist for everyone and we all move between them.

The first world is my world. The world inside my head, my inner world of thoughts and fears. What I’ve learned about this world is that I can make it a peaceful and verdant place. It doesn’t have to be a MadMax sort of rugged and dystopian Outback. I can make my inner world a pleasant and nurturing place instead of a scary place if I turn my inner critic into a coach.

The second world is the world of others. I have to inhabit someone else’s world to love and understand them. And I have to inhabit their world for someone to feel loved and feel understood. What makes this hard is that everyone else’s world is different, which makes getting there hard. It’s truly like being on a different planet. I feel this acutely with my children, in their worlds of cooking tomato pancakes or caning on pirate ships in our family room.

What I’ve learned about this world is that I will never ever spend too much time here. I will always spend less time than I need to in the worlds of others. If something feels tense, heated, or frustrating, there’s one obvious strategy every single time: walk around with them, in their world. Just be there for a little while before trying anything else. Doing this is never a waste of time.

The third world is the real world. The three dimensions in front of our face where our entire lives happen. Every hug and kiss, every swing of a tennis racket, every birthday cake, every wedding vow. Every misunderstanding and every karaoke night happens here. Every family dinner and scientific discovery - it all happens here. Whether or not we’re mentally there, our life, shared with everyone else, happens in the real world.

I’ve learned two things about this real world. One, things like meditation, prayer, and yoga - that help us to focus in the moment - are so important that it is difficult to overrate them. Anything we can do so help us stay in the moment is priceless.

Two, I’ve learned that it’s important to be honest instead of delusional. We can choose to accept the world as it is, or we can lie to about what’s real. We can see what we want to see, but then our reality is distorted. Distortion, I’ve found, is like drinking: the longer you let it ride, the worse the hangover.

We all travel from world to strange, new, world, and it honestly feels as significant as the spacefarers in movies like Star Trek or Star Wars. We are all astronauts in this way. It’s hard and scary.

And as I’ve penned this post, it just makes me remember how important it is to have grace. Grace for others as they trip up and fumble their way from their world into ours, and grace for ourselves as we try, feebly, to do the same. There’s nothing trivial about this travel from world to world. To be an astronaut in this life is significant and heroic.

But alas, there is still the fourth and final world. It is the world of our dreams - the sacred place. The world of dreams is the hardest to reach, requiring hope, vision, and optimism to find. The portal to the world of dreams is like the 9-and-three-quarters platform - only the indoctrinated can see it and it feels like something from a magical world. Because to dream is to imagine and to imagine is to contemplate something that has never been. To dream about the world that ought to be is to be an explorer in everyday life: dreaming is the act of charting something in our mind’s eye, that no other astronaut has ever seen.

I learned my most important lesson about dreaming from Chief Craig and the leaders I worked for at the Detroit Police Department: we have to talk about our dreams.

For the dream to come true, what I see in my minds eye, you have to see in yours. Without doing this we cannot work toward the same dream.

To be sure, this is uncommonly hard. In our stressed out world, finding the wherewithal to dream on our own is hard. Guiding someone else to meet you there, in that holy plane, is even harder.

So if the universe or our creator blessed us enough to get to the plane of dreams, why would we do anything but dream the biggest, simplest dream we could? To dream big and simple is the most rational choice one can make.

All this inspires me. That we all traverse and inhabit these different worlds inspires. That we all have something in us that allows us to think beyond our own world inspires me. That we are all astronauts, inspires me.

We just have to find the astronaut within, and explore the have the courage to explore these new worlds.

“Dawg, I can’t afford this anymore.”

These problems matter a lot to me:

• How do I be a good guy in a stressful world?

• How do I do my part to build a marriage of mutual respect, even though I have selfish tendencies?

• How do I show unconditional love and patience as a father, even though my kids need a LOT from me?

• How do I bend society to be a more trusting place - even though I’m just one person?

• How do I make the organizations and communities I’m a part of places where there’s a virtuous cycle of growth and development - even though I’m just one person?

• How do I bend society to have fewer people die by homicide or suicide - even though I’m just one person?

This problem has caused me the most agony in my adult life:

• How do I get powerful, influential people to tell me I’m awesome?

Honestly, I was ashamed of being vain and narcissistic enough to need others to tell me I’m awesome. For a long time, I deluded myself into believing that my ambition was wholly for the benefit of my family’s standard of living or the advancement of society.

Honestly, it wasn’t.

I know I shouldn’t be too hard on myself for being vain and narcissistic - I am human. But damn, over the course of my life, this problem has been so expensive. I was probably spending 20-30% of my emotion budget worrying about whether powerful people thought I was awesome.

That’s so expensive. That’s so much of my energy and emotion budget stolen away from more important problems. I just can’t afford that.

I’ve been struggling with this for at least a decade. Then, over the course of a few hours, I listened to a book during a long car ride that presented the question properly. Then, a decade’s worth of change happened in an afternoon.

The book I listened to was The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and if you burn energy on unaffordable problems, I’d highly recommend it.

We can choose which problems in our life we give a lot of effort to. Once we have an honest catalog of what we’re spending our emotion budget on, it becomes much easier to say, “dawg, I can’t afford this anymore.”

Deregulating Parenting

Our parish’s pastor, Father Snow, is about my height. Which means that he’s far shorter than an NBA prospect, though some students at his former parish - Creighton University - were indeed NBA prospects.

Today at mass, our Father Snow gave a homily on Matthew 11: 21-25 which was today’s Gospel reading. To start, he shared an anecdote from his experience at Creighton.

An angry parishioner was lecturing Father Snow about an annulment that she thought the Church shouldn't have given. She was fuming over this application of rules. So much so that one of his giant basketball-playing parishioners stepped in. Putting his elbow on Father Snow’s shoulder, he facetiously asked, “Want me to take her down, Father?”

Father Snow could tell the story better than me, but his point was that too much focus on rules and compliance can be overwhelming. When we fixate on rules they place a heavy burden upon us, chaining us to a slew of anger and stress.

Today’s Gospel reminds us, he said, that Jesus really only had two rules, the first and second greatest commandments: Love God and Love thy neighbor. That’s it. Just two.

In contrast to the 600+ laws imposed upon the Jewish people by the Pharisees, following just two laws is a significantly lighter burden. While this lesson and Gospel reading hold theological and spiritual implications, my immediate takeaway was secular: I impose too many laws on my children.

I have so many rules that underly my parenting. I say “no” all the time, for every little thing it seems, some days at least. If I put myself into the shoes of our sons, I would feel heavy, suffocated even by the grind of the complex, nagging structure of laws I’m imposing.

Surely, a house needs rules about things like not eating ice cream three times a day or not running around naked. But if I’m saying no a hundred times a day, which I think I do sometimes, probably means I’ve gone over the top.

My secular reflection exercise from this biblical lesson - to lighten the burden of rules and laws - was to see if I could simplify my regime of parental law. I wondered, could I get my parenting principles down to two or even just three?

These three are what I came up with. These three principles - be honest, be kind, and learn from your mistakes - can govern every standard I set as a parent.

I’m not trying to advocate for these three rules to become yours if you’re a parent or caregiver, though they fit terrifically for me as a parent. If you like them, steal them.

The more important point I’d advocate is for you to try the exercise. If you’re a parent, caregiver, or even a manager to a team at work, what are the 2-3 principles that you expect others to follow that will govern every standard you set?

It’s not as important what the principles are, as long as they're thoughtful and intentional. What matters the most is that we simplify the burden of our household law to a few principles rather than hundreds.

Even just today, reducing my laws to these three principles has been liberating for me. Instead of trying to regulate every of our sons’ behaviors, I could focus on honesty, kindness, and learning from mistakes.

For example, instead of saying, “stop calling your brother stupid dummy,” I could let this question hang in the air: “It’s important to be kind. Is that language kind?” Instead of having mistakes feel like failure, I could reinforce something they learned. Today it was about how to be kind when sharing food. Tomorrow it can be something else.

I understand that changing my parenting approach will be challenging. After relying on processes and rules for 5 years to establish standards, transforming my behavior will not happen overnight. While every parent is different, I’m confident I’m not the only one who struggles with this.

We can focus on essential principles and free ourselves and our children from a long list of rules by de-regulating parenting. I know I should.

If you try to get your parenting down to a few principles, I’d love to compare notes with you. Please leave a comment or contact me if you give it a go.

—

For those interested, here’s some context for the three principles I’ve been playing with. Again, the point is not to copy the principles exactly, the point is to think about what our, unique, individual ones will be. I wanted to share for two reasons: putting my thoughts into writing helps me, and, I always find it helpful to see an example so I assume others may also find it helpful.

Boys, I have been meditating on it and I don’t want to be a parent that’s obsessed with rules and policing your behavior. One, it won’t work. Two, policing your behavior will not allow you to learn to think for yourself. Three, the level of stress, anger, arguing, and effort required - for me and for you all - having a highly regulated house will be a heavy burden.

I think I’ve come up with three principles that encapsulate the standard of what I expect from myself as a member of this family and community. These are the guiding principles I will use to raise and mentor you. I hope that by centering on three principles that get to the core, we can avoid having dozens upon dozens of rules in our house. Here is what they are.

Be honest.

Honesty is the greatest gift you can give yourself. Because if you are honest, you can have trust and confidence in your own beliefs. And that confidence that your own beliefs and observations about reality are true prevents your soul from questioning itself on what is real. There are no small lies - the uncertainty and pain that lies cause is predictable and omnipresent. One principle between me and you all is to be honest.

Be kind.

Kindness is the greatest gift, perhaps, that you can give to the world. Because if you are kind, you can have trusting relationships with other people. If you are kind, your actions are a ripple effect, making it safer for other people to be kind - and a kind world is a much more pleasant one to live in. Finally, by being kind to others, you can also learn to be kind to yourself. One principle between me and you all is to be kind.

Learn from your mistakes.

Mistakes are part of the plan. They aren’t bad. Quite the opposite - if you’re not making mistakes doing things that are hard enough to learn from or that make an impactful contribution to the world. Mistakes are a feature, not a bug. If we have this posture, it’s essential to learn from your mistakes. Because if you make mistakes and never learn from them, you’ll hurt yourself and others. If you don’t learn from smaller mistakes, you’ll eventually make catastrophic, irreversible mistakes. One principle between me and you all is to learn from your mistakes.

These three principles: be honest, be kind, and learn from your mistakes are our compact. I promise to put in tremendous effort and emotional labor to live by these words that I expect of you. I will hold you to these principles as a standard, but I also promise to help you grow, learn, and develop into them over the course of your life.

Our word is our bond, and these words, my words, are a bond between us.

The dance between expression and empathy

The game escalated real quick.

I was in the backyard gardening and weeding. Suddenly, Myles was zooming around as Gecko and deputized me as Catboy, which are both characters in PJ Masks, one of his favorite television shows.

Within minutes, we were both zooming around, in character, from end to end across the backyard. Myles quickly made the Fisher Price table the Gecko-mobile and Robyn's minivan our headquarters. For nearly 20 minutes, Myles, with a full-toothed smile, would proclaim, “to the Gecko-mobile!”, giggling every time.

About 10 minutes into the game, I realized Myles wasn’t pretending. The table was actually the Gecko-mobile and Robyn’s whip was actually our Headquarters. The world inside his head had become real. Myles had fully expressed his inner world and made it his and my outer world.

—

When disappointed, Myles lets out a sound that we call "the shriek," which resembles the yelp of a pterodactyl.

Recently, this happened when we were scrambling to get to Tortola for a family vacation that was two years in the making. The airline canceled our 6:00 AM flight at 6:00 PM the night before. So we rushed, mobilizing within 90 minutes, to rent a car so we could go to Cleveland to make a flight the next morning. But after waiting in line at Avis for an hour, we discovered that the airline only rebooked half our party. At 11pm, after hours of scrambling, we told the kids we may not be going to the beach.

The news took a minute to sink in. And then, as we started to all head back to the airport parking lot, we heard it - the shriek reverberated and echoed off the surrounding concrete. Honestly, all eleven of us wanted to shriek a little.

The shriek moment was the inverse of our afternoon playing PJ Masks in the backyard. This time, Myles internalized the realities of the outer world and his inner world transformed because of it.

—

We all face this predicament. Our inner and outer worlds are constantly in tension.. Sometimes, we want to take our inner world and impose it on our outer world - this is what we call expression.

Other times, we take the realities of the outer world and allow them to shape our inner world - this is what we call empathy.

Our day-to-day lives are a constant negotiation to bring our inner and outer worlds into balance. It’s a dance between the two worlds we all occupy.

Failing to dance and balance our inner and outer worlds has dire consequences.

If we express too much of our inner world onto the outer world, it oppresses those around us. If we don’t express enough of our inner world, we end up subduing and subjugating our own souls.

Excessive empathy and external influences can overwhelm and crush us. But if we empathize too little, we must sacrifice intimacy and human connection.

We have a choice. We can either snap from the tension between our inner and outer worlds, or we can learn to dance the dance which brings our worlds into balance.

I suppose there’s a third choice, but I think it’s the worst option of the three: suppress and numb. When the tension between our two worlds gets too strong, we can just rub some dirt on it. We can distract ourselves with substances or thrilling pleasures. We can pretend our troubles don’t exist.

Maybe suppressing and numbing is okay for a time. I do believe that nothing in the world can take the place of persistence and that sometimes we need to keep calm and carry on. But I have never met a sane person who can live like that indefinitely. Eventually we all snap - it’s just a matter of when.

In retrospect, this is exactly what happened in my early twenties: I suppressed, then numbed, and then eventually I snapped. Only after that snap did I learn to dance.

This is one of our greatest responsibilities we have as parents. Our children need us to help them learn to dance. Otherwise, the only way they will deal with the tension between their inner and outer worlds will be to suppress and numb, or snap. Luckily, as millennial parents, we have the data and research to know and do better.

I aspire to do better for my three sons, so they can navigate the balance between self-expression and empathy, without having to suppress, numb, and eventually snap. Instead, I must help them learn to dance.

Leaders must create profound silence

Imagine walking into a bustling coffee shop. The whirring of espresso machines, heated debates over the latest news, and the clatter of cups and saucers create an overwhelming din. Now, imagine if all those noises were amplified by a microphone and broadcast over a loudspeaker as you sipped your coffee.

But finally, imagine if someone in the middle of this chaos could flick a switch, transforming the noise into a hum, the hum into a whisper, and finally, the whisper into silence. Suddenly, in the quiet, you can hear the person next to you, the words of a book being read aloud, or even your own thoughts. This is the power of creating silence.

We live in a world of ceaseless noise. At work, we often find that the louder we are – the more assertive in meetings, the more vocal in lobbying for promotions, the more boisterous in attracting customers and followers – the more recognition we receive. Particularly in large organizations, there's a perceived correlation between the volume of one's voice and the likelihood of reward.

Likewise, our family and community lives are marked by volume, though less as an incentive and more as a trap. Community meetings frequently devolve into verbal contests of who can yell the loudest. As parents, we often get swept up in hectic schedules and an unending flood of information, resorting to yelling out of sheer desperation to keep things under control.

Then there's social media, which amplifies this noise to near-deafening levels. It equips everyone with a microphone, fostering an environment that rewards those who shout the loudest. I'm not criticizing influencers or social media—a trend that's fashionable to critique these days. I'm merely labeling our day-to-day American life for what it is: incredibly loud.

The usual advice is to promote listening, to foster better listeners in this noisy world. But listening, as underrated as it is, may not suffice. Amid the cacophony of voices and plethora of microphones, effective listening becomes an Everest to climb. What we need, in professional settings, at home, or within our communities, is the ability to create silence.

Creating silence differs from listening. Listening involves one person attentively comprehending and empathizing with another—a personal act. On the other hand, creating silence entails reducing the ambient noise, enabling everyone in that space to hear and listen. While listening is a two-person tango, creating silence resembles providing noise-cancelling headphones for the entire room.

So, what does 'creating silence' look like? At work, it might be the pause in a meeting that encourages thoughtful responses, allowing even the quietest person to be heard and respected. It could be a company creating a safe space for critical feedback or praise from its customers and partners. It's the breakthrough idea emerging during a moment of quiet reflection in a workshop. It's a team communicating so effectively that members eagerly anticipate meetings or even deem them unnecessary.

In our homes and communities, creating silence might be even more crucial. It happens when those in power amplify the voices of the less powerful—be it our children or marginalized groups. It's when community leaders stay calm and receptive, encouraging constructive dialogues even when faced with challenging questions. It's the genuine connection made during a family dinner where everyone feels comfortable enough to discuss their week, free from platitudes and arguments.

Creating silence requires a particular kind of swagger—not an arrogant narcissism, but a quiet confidence stemming from self-belief and humility. Only when we are secure within ourselves can we create the silence that allows others to flourish.

Creating silence isn't without challenges, though. It could be misconstrued as suppressing voices or dismissing dissent. In our quest for quiet, we might unintentionally stifle vibrant discussion or inhibit creative conflict. The genuine creation of silence isn't about muffling noise but about cultivating an environment where every voice gets a chance to be heard without being drowned out. It's about discerning when to speak, when to listen, and when to simply relish the silence.

There's also a risk of silence being associated with absence or inactivity. In our fast-paced world, we're conditioned to see quiet as wasted time or empty space needing to be filled. We must remember that silence isn't emptiness but a space full of potential. In silence, we find room to think, reflect, and connect on a deeper level.

Perhaps the concept of creating silence has never been as vital as it is now, given our world's unprecedented noise levels. And why is it so crucial? Because silence makes space for collaboration and connection. We can't collaborate or build relationships unless we hear each other. Even the best listener can't function if they can't hear. That's why we must create silence.

So, where do we start? Like most things, we start with ourselves. We begin by creating silence within our own minds. We can work to silence catchy songs, the hum of to-do lists, or our own inner critics. Whether it's through meditation, self-expression, therapy, or exercise, we need to create silence so we can listen to ourselves.

But we mustn't stop there. Our teams, families, and communities need us to create enough silence so that the shouting subsides. Then we can stop worrying about being heard and truly begin to listen.

As we learn to create this silence, let's maintain an open dialogue about what works and what doesn't. Because in a world that's becoming louder, it's not just about who can shout the loudest, but also about who can create the most profound silence.

How to build a Superteam

In today's dynamic business landscape, the concept of building high-performing teams and managing change has been extensively discussed in management and organization courses.

However, as I've gained real-world experience, I've come to realize that the messy reality we face as leaders is far different from the pristine case studies we encountered in school. Collaborating with other teams, even within high-performing organizations, presents unique challenges that demand a fresh perspective.

The Dilemma of Collaboration for High-Performing Teams

As high-performing teams, we often find ourselves operating within larger enterprises, requiring collaboration with teams from other departments and divisions. However, the reality is that not all these teams are high-performing themselves, which poses a significant challenge. Most enterprises lack the luxury of elite talent, and even the most high-performing teams can burn out if burdened with carrying the weight of others.

Over time, organizations tend to regress to the mean, losing their edge and succumbing to stagnation. If we truly aspire to change our companies, communities, markets, or even the world, simply building high-performing teams is not enough. We must contemplate the purpose of a team more broadly and ambitiously.

What we need are Superteams.

As I define it, a Superteam meets two criteria:

1. A Superteam is a high-performing team that's able to achieve difficult, aspirational goals.

2. A Superteam elevates the performance of other teams in their ecosystem (e.g., their enterprise, their community, their industry, etc.).

To be clear, I mean this stringently. Superteams not only fulfill their own objectives and deliver what they signed up for but also export their culture. Through doing their work, Superteams create a halo that elevates the performances of the people and partners they collaborate with. They don't regress to the mean; they raise the mean. Superteams, in essence, create a feedback loop of positive culture that is essential to make change at the scale of entire ecosystems.

One way to think of this is the difference between a race to the bottom and a race to the top. In a race to the bottom, the lowest-performing teams in an ecosystem become the bottlenecks. Without intervention, these low-performing teams repeatedly impede progress, wearing down even high-performing teams. Eventually, the enterprise performs to the level of that sclerotic department. This is the norm, the race to the bottom where organizations get stale and regress to the mean.

Superteams change this dynamic. They export their culture to those low-performing teams that are usually the bottlenecks in the organization, making them slightly better. This improvement gets, reinforced, and creates a transformative, positive feedback loop. As other teams achieve more, confidence in the lower-performing department grows. This is the race to the top, where raising the mean becomes possible.

The biggest beneficiary of this feedback loop, however, is not the lower-performing team—it's actually the Superteam itself. Once they elevate the teams around them, Superteams can push the boundaries even further, reinvesting their efforts in pushing the bar higher. This constant pushing of the boundary raises the mean for everyone, ultimately changing the ecosystem and the world.

How to Build a Superteam

The first step to building a Superteam is to establish a high-performing team that consistently achieves its goals. Moreover, a Superteam cannot have a toxic culture since it is difficult, unsustainable, and dangerous to export such a culture.

Scholars such as Adam Grant, who emphasizes the importance of fostering a culture of collaboration, have extensively studied how to build high-performing teams with positive cultures. Drawing from their work, particularly in positive organizational scholarship, we can further expand our understanding of Superteams.

In addition to the exceptional work of these scholars, it is essential to focus on the second criterion for a Superteam: elevating the performance of other teams in the ecosystem. How can a team work in a way that raises the performance of others they collaborate with? To achieve this, I propose four behaviors that make a significant difference.

First, a Superteam must act with positive deviance. Superteams should feel materially different from average teams in its ecosystem. Whether in composition, meeting structures, celebration of success, language, or bringing energy and fun, Superteams challenge conventions. Such explicit differences not only generate above-average results but also create a safe space for others to act differently.

Second, a Superteam must be self-reflective and constantly strive to understand and improve how it works. Holding retrospectives, conducting after-action reviews, or relentlessly measuring results and gathering customer feedback allows Superteams to make adjustments and changes with agility. This understanding of internal mechanics and the ability to transmit tacit knowledge of the culture enable every team member to become an exporter of the Superteam's culture.

Third, a Superteam walks the line between open and closed, maintaining a semi-permeable boundary. While being open and transparent is crucial for exporting the team's culture, maintaining a strong boundary is equally important. Being overly collaborative or influenced by the prevailing culture can hinder positive deviance. Striking the right balance allows Superteams to create space for exporting their culture while protecting it from easy corruption.

Finally, a Superteam must act with uncommon humility and orientation to purpose. By embracing the belief that "you can accomplish a lot more when you don't care who gets the credit," Superteams prioritize the greater purpose of raising the mean instead of seeking personal recognition. This humility allows them to make cultural improvements without expecting individual accolades, empowering others to adopt and embrace the exported culture.

Over the years, I've become skeptical of mere "culture change initiatives." True culture change requires more than rah-rah speeches and company-wide emails. Culture change demands role modeling and the deliberate cultivation of Superteams. Any team within an ecosystem can change its culture and aspire to build Superteams that export their culture, ultimately transforming the world around them for the better.

Resistance against easy

At my angriest or most exhausted especially, I question whether my effort to do the right thing makes a difference.

And then I wonder if I should be a bit more “flexible” in how I choose to act. Because…

…I could angle for a promotion by courting competing offers that I never intend to take.

…I could get my colleagues to bend to my will by shaming them a little during a team meeting, sending a nasty email, or politicking with their boss.

…I could yell more at my kids or threaten them with no more ice cream.

…I could pawn domestic responsibilities off on my wife or run to my parents to bail me out.

…I could adhere to a rule of “no new friends” and prioritize the relationships in my life based on social status or what that person can do for me.

…I could say “because I said so”, much more.

…I could make all my blog posts click bait or say things I don’t actually believe to get more popular.

…I could find reasons to take more business trips or weekends with buddies to get away.

…I could play with facts to make them more persuasive.

…I could keep my head down if I notice little problems or injustices that others don’t.

…I could stop listening or talk over quieter people so that I can be heard.

…I could just throw away the toys the kids leave all over the floor.

…I could tear down others ideas, with no viable alternatives, to gain supporters.

…I could, literally, sweep dust under the rug.

…I could do these things to make it a little easier.

Lots of people do, right?

And honestly, I for sure still fail my better angels no matter how hard I try. I’m no perfect man, especially when it it comes to that one about yelling at my kids (yikes).

But damn, if I did shit like this on purpose, what would that make me?

“But what would that make me?” is all I need to ask myself when I want to stop trying so hard. That sets me straight when I want to loosen up a little on principles.

I share all this because I’m feeling the weight of the daily grind a little extra today. And I know I’m not the only one who fights the urge to compromise on their principles, even just slightly.

We could. But what would that make us?

Thank you teachers, for being the rain

The job of a gardener, I’ve realized three years into our family’s adventure planting raised beds, is less about tending to the plants as it is tending to the soil.

Is it wet enough? Are there weeds leeching nutrients? Is it too wet? How should I rotate crops? Is it time for compost? Are insects eating the roots? As a gardener, making these decisions is core to the craft.

The plants will grow. The plants were born to grow, that’s their nature. But to thrive they require fertile soil. That’s essential. And as a home gardener, ensuring the soil’s fertility is my responsibility.

Gardening is not just a hobby I love, it’s also one of my favorite metaphors for raising children. The connection is beautifully exemplified by a German word for a group of children learning and growing: kinder garten.

The kids will grow, but they rely on us to provide them with fertile soil.

And so we do our best. We cultivate a nurturing environment, providing them with a warm and cozy bed to sleep in. We diligently weed out negative influences, ensuring their growth is not hindered. Just as we handle delicate plants and nurture the soil, we handle them with gentle care, aware of their tenderness. And of course, we try to root them in a family and community that radiates love onto them as the sun radiates sunshine

If we tend to the soil, the kids will thrive.

Well, almost. The kids will only flourish if we just add one more thing: rain.

Without rain, a garden cannot thrive. While individuals can irrigate a few plants during short periods without rainfall, gardeners like us can’t endure months or even weeks without rain. Especially under the intense conditions of summer heat and sun, our flowers and vegetables struggle to survive without rainfall. The rain is invaluable and irreplaceable.

As the rain comes and goes throughout the spring and summer, it saturates the entire garden bed, drenching the plants and the soil surrounding them. The sheer volume of rainwater is daunting to replicate through irrigation systems; attempting to match the scale of rainwater is financially burdensome. Moreover, rain possesses a gentle touch and a cooling effect. It nourishes the plants more effectively than tap water.

For all these reasons, rain is not something we merely hope for or ask for - rain is something we fervently pray for.

It's incredibly easy to overlook and take for granted the rain. It arrives and departs, quietly watering our garden when we least expect it. Rain can easily blend into the backdrop, becoming an unscheduled occurrence that simply happens as a part of nature's course.

When we harvest cherry tomatoes, basil, or bell peppers, a sense of pride and delight fills us as we revel in the fruits of our labor. The harvest brings immense satisfaction and a deep sense of pride, even if our family’s yield is modest and unassuming.

As we pick our cucumbers, pluck our spinach, or uproot our carrots, it rarely occurs to me to credit the rain. And yet, without the rain, our garden simply could not be.

In the lives of our children and within our communities, teachers serve ASC the rain. And by teachers, I mean a wide range of individuals. I mean the educators in elementary, middle, and high schools. I mean the pee-wee soccer coaches. I mean the Sunday school volunteers. I mean the college professors engaging in discussions on derivatives or the Platonic dialogues during office hours. I mean the early childhood educators who infuse dance parties into lessons on counting to ten and words beginning with the letter "A".

I mean the engineer moms, dads, aunts, and uncles who coach FIRST Robotics, or the recent English grads who dedicate their evenings to tutoring reading and writing. I mean the pastors and community outreach workers showin’ up on the block day in and day out. I mean the individuals running programs about health and nutrition out of their cars. I mean the retired neighbors on their porch who share stories of their world travels and become cherished bonus grandparents. I mean the police officers and accountants who serve as Big Brothers and Big Sisters despite having no obligation to do so.

I mean them all and more. These people, these teachers, are the rain.

They find a way to summon the skies and shower our kids with nourishing, life-giving rain. As a parent and a gardener nurturing the soil in which children are raised, I cannot replicate the rain that teachers provide. Without them, our children simply could not flourish.

Candidly, this is also a personal truth. I have greatly relied on and benefited from numerous teachers throughout my life. It has all come full circle for me as I've embraced the roles of both a parent and a gardener. Witnessing our children learn, grow, and thrive under the guidance of teachers has been a humbling revelation. I've come to realize that without teachers, my own growth and development would not have been possible. Without teachers, I simply would not be.

This time of year is brimming with graduations - whether they're from high schools, colleges, or even from Pre-K like our oldest just graduated from this weekend. Much like the bountiful harvest, it is a time for joyous celebration. Our gardens have yielded fruit, and we should take pride in our dedicated efforts.

But in this post, I also wish to honor all of the different types of teachers out there. They have been the gentle, nurturing rain - saturating the soil and fostering a fertile environment for our children to flourish.

Thank you, teachers, for everything you do and have done - for me, for our three sons, and for all children. We have all yearned for the rain to drench our gardens, and you have made it pour.

Photo by June Admiraal on Unsplash

The parenting cheat code(s)

In retrospect, it seems so obvious that sleep and paying attention are crucial. If parenting were a video game, these would be the two cheat codes.

First, there’s plenty of data out there now that affirms how important sleep is. But as parents, we already know this, intimately, from lived experience. It’s obvious. When I don’t sleep enough, I am cranky and short-tempered. When the kids don’t sleep enough they are cranky and short-tempered. When we sleep, it’s a night and day difference—our household functions so much better when we sleep.

And then there’s paying attention. Again, there’s lots of data that emphasizes the importance of intimate relationships and being deeply connected to others. As parents, we also know this so well from lived experience. How many times a day have you heard, “Watch this, Papa”, “Papa, look at me in my pirate ship”, or worst of all, “Can you stop looking at your phone, Papa?”

When kids aren’t paid attention to, they literally scream for it. They fight to be loved and paid attention to, as they should—cheat code.

And as I’ve reflected on it over the years, these seem to be cheat codes for much more than parenting. It’s as if sleep and paying attention in the moment are cheat codes for a healthy, happy, and meaningful life.

In marriage, we are better partners and more in love when we sleep and pay attention. At work - sleep and paying attention boost performance and build high-performing teams. In friendships, the cheat codes still apply. In spiritual life, it’s the same thing. Sleep and paying attention are cheat codes.

And still, I almost blew it. I messed up for the first few years of Bo’s life. I didn’t get enough sleep. And I was too obsessed with work to pay attention him, fully, when I was home. I often missed stories and tuck-ins. My mind was itching to scratch off items on my to-do list and obsessing over the man I wanted to become in the eyes of others.

And the worst part, the one that makes me want to just…retreat, and trade a limb if I could, is that I remember so little of him as a newborn. I don’t remember how he laughed and giggled at 9 months old, barely at all. I don’t remember more than a handful of games we played together, maybe just peek-a-boo and “foot phone”. Damn, I am so sad, and weeping, as I pen this. I was there, but I still missed out.

I want so badly, for the man I am now to be baby Bo’s papa. Because at some point in the past two years, with a lot of help, I figured this out. I figured out the cheat codes—but, my tears cannot take me back. I have no time machine, no flux capacitor. What’s done is done. Damn.

The only consolation I have is that it didn’t take me longer. If I had lived my whole life not sleeping or paying attention—to Robyn, to our sons, to friends and family, or even just walking in the neighborhood and appreciating the trees—I’d probably pass from this world a miserable man with irreconcilable regret and guilt.

Right now, Bo, Myles, and Emmett, you are 5, 3, and 1 years old respectively. Maybe one day you’ll come across this post. Maybe I’ll be alive when you do—I hope so. Or maybe I’ll have gone ahead already, I don’t know.

But if you’re reading this one day, I am so deeply sorry that I messed up, and it took me years to figure this out—to start using these cheat codes I guess you could say. I apologize about this, especially to you Robert. I wasn’t fully there for you in your first 2-3 years.

I hope you all can forgive me. I am not perfect, but I’ve gotten better, and I’m still trying. I hope that by sharing this with you, you can avoid the same mistakes I made.

Photo by Lucas Ortiz on Unsplash

Leadership in the Era of AI

Just as the invention of the wheel revolutionized transportation and societies thousands of years ago, we might actually stand on the brink of a new era. One where generative AI, like ChatGPT, could transform our way of life and our economy. The potential impact of AI on human societies remains uncharted, yet it could prove to be as significant as the wheel, if not more so.

Let's delve into this analogy. If you were tasked to move dirt from one place to another, initially, you would use a shovel, moving one shovelful at a time. Then, the wheel gets invented. This innovation gives birth to the wheelbarrow—a simple bucket placed atop a wheel—enabling you to carry 10 or 15 shovelfuls at once, and even transport dirt beyond your yard.

But, as we know, the wheel didn't stop at wheelbarrows. It set the stage for a myriad of transportation advancements from horse-drawn buggies, automobiles, semi-trucks, to trains. Now, we can move dirt by the millions of shovelfuls across thousands of miles. This monumental shift took thousands of years, but the exponential impact of the wheel on humanity is undeniable.

Like the wheel, generative AI could be a foundational invention. Already, people are starting to build wheelbarrow-like applications on top of generative AI, with small but impactful use cases emerging seemingly every day: like in computer programming, songwriting, or medical diagnosis.

This is only the beginning, much like the initial advent of the wheelbarrow. Just as the wheelbarrow was a precursor to larger transportation modes, these initial applications of generative AI mark the start of much more profound implications in various domains.

One area in particular where I'm excited to see this potential unfold is leadership. As we stand on the brink of this new era, we find ourselves transitioning from a leadership style that can only influence what we touch, constrained by our own time. Many of us live "meeting to meeting", unable to manage a team of more than 7-10 people directly. Even good systems can only help so much in exceeding linear growth in team performance.

However, with the advent of generative AI, we're embarking on a new journey, akin to moving from the shovel to the wheelbarrow. Tools like ChatGPT can serve as our new 'wheel', helping us leverage our leadership abilities. In my own experiments, I've seen some promising beginnings:

A project manager can use ChatGPT to create a project charter that scopes out a new project outside their primary domain of expertise. This can be done at a higher quality and in one quarter or one tenth of the usual time.

A product manager can transcribe a meeting and use ChatGPT to create user stories for an agile backlog. They could also quickly develop or refine a product vision, roadmap, and OKRs for annual planning—achieving higher quality in a fraction of the time.

A people leader can use ChatGPT as a coach to improve their ability to lead a team, relying on the tool as an executive coach to boost their people leadership skills faster and more cost-effectively than was possible before.

These are merely the wheelbarrow-phase applications of generative AI applied to leadership. Now, let's imagine the potential for '18-wheeler' level impact. Given the pace of AI development, it's plausible that this kind of 100x or 1000x impact on leadership could be realized in mere decades, or possibly even years:

Imagine a project manager using AI to manage hundreds of geographically distributed teams across the globe, all working on life-saving interventions like installing mosquito nets or sanitation systems. If an AI assistant could automatically communicate with teams by monitoring their communications, asking for updates, and creating risk-alleviating recommendations for a human to review, a project manager could focus on solving only the most complex problems, instead of 'herding cats.'

Consider a product manager who could ingest data on product usage and customer feedback. The AI could not only assist with administrative work like drafting user stories, but also identify the highest-value problems to solve for customers, brainstorm technical solutions leading to breakthrough features, create low-fidelity digital prototypes for user testing, and even actively participate in a sprint retrospective with ideas on how to improve team velocity.

Envision a people leader who could help their teams set up their own personal AI coaches. These AI coaches could observe team members and provide them with direct, unbiased feedback on their performance in real time. If all performance data were anonymized and aggregated, a company could identify strategies for improving the enterprise’s management systems and match every person people to the projects and tasks they can thrive, and are best suited for, and actually enjoy.

Nobody has invented this future, yet. But the potential is there. What if we could increase the return on investment in leadership not by 2x or 5x, but by 50x or 100x? What if the quality of leadership, across all sectors, was 50 to 100 times better than it is today?

We should be dreaming big. It's uncertain whether generative AI will be as impactful as the wheel, but imagining the possibilities is the first step towards making them a reality.

Generative AI holds the potential to revolutionize not only computer programming but also leadership. Such a revolutionary improvement in leadership could lead to a drastically improved world.

When it comes to the impact of Generative AI on leadership, the sky's the limit. Let's dream BIG.

Photo by Ēriks Irmejs on Unsplash