David J Greer's Blog

Should I or Shouldn’t I?

March 29, 2012 — djgreer

I’ve written before about how I Keep My Edge by challenging myself on the ski hill. I was recently skiing when I passed this sign marking the edge of the ski area.

In business, as in life, we all face boundaries. Those edges where the rules say we need to stay inside. Whether it is to stay within the lines when coloring or to cross the street only when the light is green.

Seeing the ski area boundary made me think of several challenges about staying within the rules:

Are you sure about the rules? I’ve noticed that in other countries, lights being red or green are merely suggestions to pedestrians as to whether to cross the road or not. Are you clear on where your organization’s rules are? Or are your organizational rules fuzzy at the best of times and completely obscure the rest of the time?

Is everyone else inside the line? In some organizations, the “rule” is to challenge the rule and cross over to the other side, although there may be a protocol about under what conditions you are to do so.

Do you know the consequences? It’s okay to ski outside ski area boundaries — if you are prepared to self rescue yourself if you get in trouble. Are you clear in your own mind about what the consequences are if you break the rules? Maybe the consequences are not what you think they are.

Can you create change without breaking the rules? By definition, change requires either breaking the rules or defining new ones that are different than the old ones and encouraging and pushing people to cross the old boundaries. If the old rules were fuzzy or missing, demonstrating the new rules and pushing right up to their edge can help lead others to change.

A ski run, a sign, and an edge. They combined to challenge me to think about where I cross the line and challenge the rules. Where do you challenge yours?

Posted in Business, Leadership. No Comments »

Aspiration

February 4, 2012 — djgreer

May I develop

Complete acceptance and openess

To all situations and emotions,

And to all people.

May I experience everything nakedly,

Completely without mental reservations or blockages

May I never withdraw from life

Or centralize onto myself.

May my heart be laid bare + open

To the fire of all that is.

Reginald A. Ray

Posted in Leadership. No Comments »

Personal Challenges

November 18, 2011 — djgreer

Annapurna At Day Break

I recently returned from a trip to Nepal where I realized a long term dream. I trekked with my wife Karalee and a group of friends through the Himalayan Mountains to the Annapurna Sanctuary where we got to get up before dawn to hike up to Annapurna Base Camp and view the early rising sun paint Annapurna, the tenth tallest mountain in the world, with light. While any fit person can do this trek, it created some personal challenges for me that are among the greatest I’ve ever overcome.

Here is what I learned from overcoming these challenges.

Have a Dream: This trip started because Karalee and I have a good friend who has led dozens of treks in Nepal. We had heard of the beauty and challenges of these treks and decided that we wanted to trek in the tallest mountains in the world.

One Step at a Time: A big goal can seem overwhelming. You can overcome this by focusing on the next step. If you can make one more step, you can get closer to your goal.

Lead from Within: I got sick, from drinking a cup of tea, and could not eat any food for two days. Dehydrated and low on energy, I had to trek to stay with our group. Rather than focus on the next step, I focused on the next ten, all that I could do without stopping. I amazed myself when after climbing over 1,000 steps, ten at a time, I arrived in camp only a half hour after the rest of our fit group.

Set an Example: I have shared these personal challenges from trekking in Annapurna with employees, colleagues, and friends. It is important that they see that when I ask them to overcome a challenge that they know that I am both willing and capable of overcoming challenges myself. This adventure challenged me to find my boundaries and go past them.

How do you challenge yourself to the next level?

Posted in Leadership, Performance. No Comments »

Where We Were On 9/11

September 11, 2011 — djgreer

Allen and Kevin Greer on the Beach At Perros-Guirec, France

All the coverage of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 has brought back many memories for me. On September 11, 2001 Karalee, Jocelyn, Kevin, Allen, and I were living in a farm house near Lanmerin, Brittany, France. We were travelling by car, visiting Northern Europe, home schooling our three kids, while getting ready to go sailing in the Mediterranean for two years.

We started the day home schooling the kids and after a full school day we drove twenty minutes to the beach. You can read about our day here. We were isolated in the farm house, none of us spoke much French, we never watched TV, and had no access to the Internet. It would be over 36 hours after the events of 9/11 that we even learned about it.

Even ten years after the event I am surprised at how unique our experience was. It was two weeks after 9/11 that I was talking to my Mother in Edmonton and she told me that she had watched live as the plane hit the second Trade Center Tower. Up to that point, I had no conception of how many people watched the second plane crash in New York live and how many times the footage was shown — over and over again. It was not until September 2004, a year after we returned from the Mediterranean, that any of the five of us saw the video footage from that day for the first time.

As I recall, English language print media coverage was not kind to the Americans. While deeply sympathetic to the people who were killed, Europeans attitude seemed to be “America has been smug about never being attacked by terrorists on their own soil. Now they know what it is like.”

We also had no knowledge of the shut down of US and Canadian air space. Or how depressed people became watching the never ending coverage of the disaster in the days and weeks afterwards. While we sporadically read newspaper and magazine coverage of 9/11, we did not follow the media day by day.

Ten years on, I am deeply grateful for being unplugged. While 9/11 is a defining moment in recent history, the five of us were spared the emotional upheaval and media barrage. Distance always gives new perspective. As Canadians living abroad and disconnected when 9/11 occurred, we had a different experience. As we all contemplate the effect of the events from that fateful day, we have different memories than those that we hear and read about. For us, that’s a good thing.

Posted in Communication. No Comments »

Changing Focus

September 6, 2011 — djgreer

In 2011, I committed to writing about Collaboration, Communication, and Business. That was during the first week of January and since then I have written two blog postings a week. My hope is that you have found the writing useful to your own career, organization, and business.

My goal was to get to 100 blog postings and while I’m close I am one or two blog postings short of that goal. As a good friend once told me:

“When a new opportunity comes along, you have to give up something you are already doing in order to fully pursue the new opportunity.”

That opportunity has come to me in the form of my new role as VP Marketing for Webtech Wireless. My creative, communication, and writing skills need to be focused on my new role. In order to do so, I’m stopping my twice a week blog postings. I am sure that I will be back, but for now other opportunities are calling me.

It is with gratitude that I thank all of you faithful readers for your time, comments, and responses. May you continue to find new ways to communicate and collaborate.

Posted in Communication, Strategy. No Comments »

Orchestrate

September 1, 2011 — djgreer

A colleague and I were discussing our career paths the other day. Both of us are musicians. He is a professional and I am a serious amateur. We were talking about the power of music to coordinate individuals and teams.

Time: Music is broken into a time signature and bars. Each bar has a given number of beats. The tempo sets the overall time for how fast the beats go. When we coordinate people, our meeting, deliverables, and other rhythms set the beat. As leaders we set the tempo for how fast we want the organization to go.

Individuals: Each line in sheet music represents a different instrument or voice. These individual lines are combined to create the overall sound that we hear. In organizations, we need to provide clarity to individuals as to what is expected of them. It is rare to provide the level of clarity that is provided by each line and note of music.

Movement: Each line of music can be going in different directions, each note can have different lengths, and the emphasis we put on individual notes can vary moment by moment. This level of precision is rarely seen in organizations, yet is often needed to deliver on complex projects.

Orchestration: When you listen to the individual parts of a score of a large group or orchestra, each can sound completely different than the finished score. A beautifully written piece of music comes together as each individual part is combined to form something greater than the sum of each part. When we get teams to perform at that level, we achieve the same thing for our organizations.

Higher performing teams know how to orchestrate themselves to bring out the best in each individual, while insuring that the complete picture is delivered in a beautifully coordinated way for customers. How do you orchestrate?

Posted in Leadership, Performance. No Comments »

Creative People

August 30, 2011 — djgreer

A recent status update from my friend Becky Robinson from Weaving Influence reminded me of the simplicity of inspiring children to be creative:

“My girls haven’t colored much this summer. Yesterday, I bought a new box of crayons. They’ve been coloring nonstop. If I had known that was all it would take, I would have bought them a new box of crayons sooner.”

Becky’s posting made me think of my children, coloring, exploring, and drawing. I could even smell the box of crayons. And what wonderful creations my children created when we gave them space, time, and tools. When dealing with adults and organizations, we seem to lose sight of these simple ideas.

Space: Do we give people enough space to color, explore, and create. Are their enough communal tables? Enough white boards? Enough screens to connect laptops to? Enough chances to collaborate together?

Time: Is everyone’s schedule so tightly booked with meetings and interactions that they never have the time to think through issues, innovate, and be creative?

Tools: Are we stingy with the tools we give people thinking that it is more important to save money that to build environments that create innovation and new ideas? Many tools cost little more than crayons and paper.

How can you give the space, time, and tools to your people today to inspire them?

Posted in Leadership, Strategy. No Comments »

For Want of a Nail

August 25, 2011 — djgreer

I once worked with technical writer Barbara Janicki. When things were coming apart, she often quoted this well known proverb:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The proverb reminds us of how everything is interrelated. When we are focused on achieving a goal, we often skip over the little things on the way to our goal. The reality is that by focusing on the little steps that lead us to where we want to go, we are more likely to get to where we want to go.

Are you missing a nail today?

Posted in Strategy. No Comments »

One Minute

August 23, 2011 — djgreer

I exercise every morning before work in order to power up for the day. I recently started a new boot camp at Vancouver’s Vanier Park. Located near Kits Beach, with views of the water and apartments in Vancouver’s West End, it is a beautiful place to exercise. The natural setting helps to energize me.

The boot camp instructor uses timed exercises that are repeated two or three times. He often gets us to do one exercise for 45 seconds, but the other morning he asked for 60 seconds. It got me thinking of just how long a minute is.

When you are holding a plank position, a minute is a very long time. Even when counting seconds in your head, the time goes by very slowly and it can seem like forever before the minute is up.

In a business context, minutes seem short. Days often fly by, especially if you are fighting fires or going from meeting to meeting. We can often gain new perspective on what we are doing by focusing on the minutes:

How many minutes does it take to read and respond to an email?
What is achieved in the first five minutes of a meeting?
How long does it take you to switch tasks?

To achieve peak productivity, we often have to break down what we are doing into the minutes. What will you achieve in the minutes you have today?

Posted in Performance. No Comments »

Hearing to Listening

August 18, 2011 — djgreer

Music is one of my hobbies and something I have had in my life from a very young age. After feeling stagnant with my music for some time, I’ve been looking at more ways to put music back into my life.

I listen to CBC Radio 2 Tonic. My passion is jazz music and Tonic is a nightly program that features two hours of jazz music. A few times lately I have been listening to Tonic when I have heard a musician that I really liked.

In the past, I would have had to stop listening, found pen and paper, and written down the musician’s name. Then later, I would need to go to the music store, search for the musician, and hope that the store carried the music (jazz selections at music stores is often limited).

The situation improved with the invention of the iStore. With the iStore it is easier to search and their catalog is much larger. But I’d still have to remember the artist’s name and later remember to go into iTunes, search, listen, and purchase the music.

I recently wrote about my experiences From the iPad to the iPhone. One of the surprising things about owning the iPhone is how I can short circuit the connection between listening to Tonic, being exciting about a song and artist that I’m listening to, and then immediately be able to browse and purchase the music on the iStore with my iPhone.

I sometimes think that the pace of the Western world celebrates immediacy at the expense of connections and relationships. In this case, I am reconnecting with new music and being inspired by new artists because the entire customer experience has made it possible for me to make the connection in the moment. I hadn’t expected that.

Posted in Customer Service. No Comments »

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