Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Saying Goodbye


My latest "Straight Talk from Real Dads" article for the Operation Us newsletter is out.  This one talks about helping your children say goodbye to loved ones as they face the end of their life on earth.  I wrote it based on my experience saying goodbye to my mother in her final hours.

You can read it at this link: Saying Goodbye

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Thank God for Problems


As a manager, a leader, a mother or father, you may tire of the continual problems that come along with the job.  Some days it seems that that is all you hear about; how this organization (or family) has changed for the worse, and all the problems we are facing.  At the end of the day it can be exhausting.

In some ways this is the curse of leadership.  Think about it; in a reasonably well-run organization, there are not enough hours in the day to report on everything that is going right.  "Fuel arrived on time today."  "We didn't hear any employee grievances today."  "Twenty-seven bids came in under budget today."   These are statements that you will not hear, and you probably really don't want to spend time with.

By default, in your job or leadership role you are only going to hear about exceptions, inconsistencies.  There is no need to spend your time dwelling on the unexceptional examples of great performance that abound around you.

The more people you have working with you in an organization, the worse this problem becomes.  As your responsibilities increase, you will spend more and more time dealing with increasingly bigger exceptions, inconsistencies, and problems.  You should thank God for this.  The fact that the problems are being identified is a good thing; without that you could not begin to work on them or improve them.  Now you can use your intellect to find solutions:  organizational structural improvements, procedural improvements, and seeking changes in people's skills and the ever-elusive cultural change.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Dad Advice posted - from Home Movies to Moving Out

We have shot home movies of our kids for years. And for years we haven't been watching them.

You know how it is. Your kids are small, growing up, and you're busy with basketball games and PTA meetings and scouting and running errands and doctor appointments and playing with the dog and every now and then if you do get a little free time you discover that the way you'd really like to spend it is to sleep! But there is definitely no time for watching old videos of your kids. Plus, who likes to see themselves in those things? No one, that's who. My voice sounds weird! I look fat! Is my bald spot REALLY that big? The camera must be lying.

But put those videos away for ten or twenty years, and they take on a new, almost magical quality. Now I know why we took them. So they could make us humble. So they could inspire us. So they could remind us of how small our problems are today, how good we have it now, and how hard it was then when we were raising four little ones. Someone was always screaming! Someone was always crying! And we all looked so young and virile.

Read the rest of this article on the Operation Us website.  See it here (click link).


For the parents of young adults, there are two types of moving-away-from-home events: the sad-beginning, and the happy-ending. The sad-beginning occurs when the youth leaves home for the first time. Lots of tears and anxiety accompany this departure. After a few weeks the parents realize that they can function without the young adult and the young adult thinks ditto. This event precedes the happy-ending moving-away event, which may not occur for several years. This is when the parents decide that the youth has established their own household and can finally take responsibility for all that stuff they left behind. And that is the event that my wife and I are celebrating this weekend. When I was young I couldn't understand the look on my parents' faces when they visited my house one afternoon with a carload of my former junk from their basement. They were beaming with joy. "Here is your stuff," they declared. Wait a minute, I thought, I don't have room for all this stuff. Can't you just keep it for a while longer? Don't you have plenty of room in that big house of yours?

Read the rest of this article on the Operation Us website.  You can see it here (click link).