Day 29 - Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Y'all!

Wishing you a Merry Christmas!

Day 28 - Value

I had the opportunity to inspect a 200 year old barn today with a timber frame expert.  For 98% of the world, the barn was a tear down - meaning no one in their right mind would try to save it.  Most of the siding was gone and one of the corner posts and supporting structures had been ripped away.  There were holes in the floor and decaying wood everywhere.  My expert guide fell in love with the structure.  He pointed out that most of the important parts of the building were in great shape and declared it a building worthy of salvage.

All of the beams were hand hewn out of white oak, a highly rot resistant and strong North American hardwood.  As we walked through and around the building, he noted that many of the beams would have taken 30 to 40 man hours to prepare.  With probably 50 to 75 beams in the barn, it became quickly obvious how much human effort went into felling trees and preparing the wood for structure that would ultimately become a barn. 

Somewhere along the way, the barn ceased to be valuable to the landowners and was left to fall into disrepair.  It is slated for demolition in the next few weeks unless an organization that I am affiliated with takes steps to save it.

Time marches on and despite the incredible investment of human capital in this barn, unless we come up with another suitable use for the structure, it will become part of a landfill.  Reminds me of many businesses today and even more to come tomorrow as the information age gains speeds and makes many businesses and professions, which relied on scarcity of information to make them valuable, obsolete in the face of the frictionless flow of information.

Day 27 - Find Your Tribe

I spent three days with Seth Godin and a bunch of really smart folks last week.  Seth talked a lot about his vision for the future and what we will all need to do in order to continue to be successful.  Central to his thinking is finding something at which to best "the best in the world" and then building a tribe who values this contribution.

I spent a few hours this afternoon with the father of one of my son's friends.  The father runs a small retail business in a highly competitive industry.  That being said, he is extraordinarily knowledgeable about his industry and products and has a lot to offer a certain discerning group of people.  Since he opened the store, he has been torn between catering to the masses, and fighting the battle of price and selection, and focusing on a more select clientele.  He understands that he can't compete with the local superstores but is scared to use his expertise as the "headline" for why people should shop at his store.

The only thing remarkable about his store is him and his knowledge.  I think he got that point tonight and wanted to follow up after the holidays to figure out how to better build his tribe. 

Day 26 - Pattern Recognition

Patterns can tell us a great deal about how to do things.  In some cases, the patterns are obvious and in others it takes a great deal of work to ferret them out.  The obvious ones are easy and unfortunately all too infrequent.  With more obscure patterns, both the challenge and reward become much greater.

The key is to lay out the data.  Whether you are looking at sales patterns, a successful formula for cold calling or trying to pick the best user interface, going to the charts will usually give you an answer.  The trick is knowing what to chart.  Sometimes the data doesn’t tell you anything because you haven’t organized it in way where it become information as opposed to just a bunch of points on a graph.

If the picture doesn’t tell a thousand words, you may not have drawn it correctly.

Day 25 - When to Quit

I spent an hour on the phone yesterday with a couple of entrepreneurs.  They have worked for two years trying to create a "tribe" in a relatively competitive internet sector.  On the plus side, they own a premium URL and have developed a decent looking website for not too much money.  On the minus side, they haven't gotten any real traction. 

They are tired and are hoping to get a quick cash hit by selling the business.

The URL is the most valuable asset of the business, but won't fetch too much money in today's market.  They really don't have a business so I am pretty confident that no one is going to swoop in and offer them any real value for their hard work.  What to do?

The catch-22 of their situation is that the business isn't valuable unless it has a tribe and it won't have a tribe until it is valuable.  My entrepreneurs have not figured out their market nor how to satisfy it.  Until they do, I think they will be either forced to take crumbs for the URL or face the prospect of shutting the business down.  I sent them back to look at their market and start testing to figure out what is drawing traffic.

Day 24 - Paying a Price for Integrity

I found out last Friday that I lost an important piece of business.  We competed with one other firm and went into the selection process reasonably well-positioned.  I made the decision to disclose to my potential client that we might be making some changes in the composition of the firm over the period of the contract.  I was very confident that no changes would affect our ability to perform the desired services.

When the CEO called last week, he told me that my disclosure had swayed them in favor of the other service provider.  Over a couple of back channel conversations that followed, everyone acknowledged the irony that I had acted in a way that they all appreciated and would hope that a service provider in that position would behave.  They punished my firm anyway.

The stronger message is that we did not distinguish ourselves sufficiently to overcome a relatively mild potential obstacle.  We are looking a lot more like a commodity than I would like and that is something I need to fix immediately if we are going to continue to provide these services.

Day 23 - Limitations

Argue for your limitations and they're yours!

from Illusions by Richard Bach

I have always loved this quote.  It has made me think twice before saying "I can't do" anything.

No one wants to lose any more than most people want to acknowledge what it actually takes to win.  It is scarier to completely commit and fail than to go through sufficient motions to demonstrate socially acceptable valiant effort.  Although widely misquoted, we know that Edison committed to making a working light bulb and viewed each unsuccessful attempt as a step in the right direction.

Sometimes the cost of success gets too high, but that looks a lot more like a choice than a valiant failed effort.

Day 22 - Jack of All Trades

I read an interesting post yesterday from Seth Godin (here) about the value of being sharp rather than "well rounded."  Today's conventional wisdom teaches our kids that they need to excel at academics, athletics, some form of art and socially to gain acceptance into a top college and have success in life.  Seth's point is that no one cares if a heart surgeon is well rounded, the patient simply wants him to be the best heart surgeon in the world.

I understand the point and offer two considerations.  First, being the best in the world at anything requires a world view that only comes from foray's into other fields.  A heart surgeon vying for the title of "greatest"  needs technical skills and know-how and a deep reservoir of understanding of what it means to be a human being.  The latter isn't taught in medical school and I would personally love it if my heart surgeon was an accomplished watchmaker in his spare time.  A watch is a fine place to practice.

Second, excellence in activities tends to cross-pollinate.  Creative writing has little in common with being a lawyer, but precision in language is imperative in both.  Sailing and flying are thoroughly intertwined even though they occur in completely different media.  Each activity becomes a story of pattern recognition as similarities and differences emerge.

Jack of all trades can mean master of none or might lead to a level of mastery of many and nuance that can not be developed over 10,000 hours in a practice room.
 

Day 21 - Its a Wrap

The Medicine Ball Sessions wrapped today.

I feel privileged to have been a participant.

We will return to our regularly scheduled program tomorrow.

Day 20 - Day 2 of The Medicine Ball

One great quote from the day:

"Are you a wandering generality or a meaningful specific?"  paraphrase from Zig Ziglar.

Day 19 - Day One of The Medicine Ball Sessions

I am off to Seth Godin's Medicine Ball Sessions for the next three days.  The link for the sessions is here.  From the participant list, it looks like an amazingly talented group of people.  Depending on how you look at it, it is either the best or the worst crowd in which to practice authenticity.  These guys look like they will smell b.s. from a mile away.

Someone once told me it is easier to tell the truth than a lie 'cause you only have to remember one story ;-)

P.S.  I am betting on the best!

Day 18 - Polishing

"A gem can not be polished without friction, nor a man without trials" - Chinese proverb

I used to fly competitive aerobatics in a Pitts Special, a tiny biplane with a big motor.  After every flight, I would grab a rag and a bottle of spray polish and clean the airplane.  One of the airport mechanics would consistently tease me "you are going to polish the paint off the machine."  I would poke back with a comment about being "vain."  My airplane was always clean and most of the time spotlessly so.

Pitts Specials generally have beautiful finishes.  Until recently, they were painted with a product known as butyrate dope, relatively ancient technology that with lots of preparation and effort, will produce a deep, glossy finish.  It takes twenty or thirty coats of paint, with careful sanding in between each coat, to obtain the desired effect.  The result is spectacular.

I love the look of a well-polished Pitts.  A part of my motivation for polishing was aesthetic.  My main motivation, though, was that a careful polish required that I touch every part of the airplane.  I would start methodically from the right side of the engine and proceed around the entire machine.  By the time I was finished, I would have found and replaced a few missing screws.  Sometimes, I noticed and fixed other problems as well.  When I then placed the airplane back in its hangar, I knew that every part on the exterior of the machine, from paint to tires, was as it is should be.  My next flight would be a little safer as a result of these efforts and the airplane looked beautiful to boot!

I still prefer flying a polished Pitts.

Day 17 - The Doldrums

The "doldrums" or "stuck in the doldrums" is an old sailing term or expression that refers to sailing where there is little to no wind.  With no wind to whip up waves, seas in the doldrums are calm to glass smooth and sailing ships stop dead in the water.  In parts of the Pacific, the doldrums can last for days or even weeks.  In the days before ships had engines, the doldrums were a dreaded condition.

Most of us still dread the doldrums, although we aren't plying the seas in sail only powered vessels.  The modern doldrums are periods in our lives where there is no forward motion.  I imagine the frustration of a ship captain and his men, as supplies began to dwindle and day after day brought clear skies and no winds.  It must have been a helpless feeling.  Modern day doldrums can inspire similar feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.  Like the sailors of old, we must remember that the winds will pick up again.  In the meantime, there are ropes to braid and sails to mend.

Day 16 - Flexibility

Yesterday, I awoke as usual, around 5:15 am.  Usually, I am free at that hour to feed the dog, eat breakfast and write.  Yesterday, though, my wife got up early with me because she is the chairman of an annual event at our children's school and needed to be at school by 6:30 to ensure that the program ran as planned.  We enjoyed breakfast and a lovely conversation together and by the time she left at 6:10, my daughter had come downstairs as well.  So much for writing.

The day had been planned and was to be a crazy one.  My daughter attends music school on the weekends in NYC and being 11, needs a ride and a chaperone every Saturday.  My wife and I tend to alternate weekends.  At first, we thought the trip would be a chore, but it has turned into a coveted Saturday activity because our daughter is great company for the two plus hour roundtrip and the adult gets a six hour block of unconnected time to read, write or contemplate one's navel, a rare period of stillness in an otherwise hectic life.

With my wife busy with the kids' school event, I was the designated chaperone yesterday.  Problem was, I am also on the Board of Directors (and Treasurer) of a not-for-profit and we had our annual meeting yesterday as well.  My wife and I exhausted our list of babysitters and friends and finally decided that I would drop my daughter off in Manhattan early, return to my Board meeting and then return to Manhattan to pick her up by 4.  The timing was tight, there was lots of driving and the potential for horrible holiday traffic, but this was the best of the available options.

We had discussed the plan briefly with my daughter the night before and she was apprehensive about being left in NYC by herself, even within the safe confines of her school.  When she awoke yesterday morning, she was upset by the prospect and asking to skip school.  What to do?  I had responsibilities to my family and to an organization that relies on me for guidance.  Given my daughter's age and distress, it became quickly apparent what needed to be done. 

My daughter and I got ready for school, dropped my slightly later sleeping son off with my wife around 8 am and headed to Manhattan.  Our Board president was fantastic and I was able to participate in the meeting via phone.  My daughter and I had a great visit into NYC and I was able to help her review music theory for a midterm.  Technology worked and I was able to participate and contribute well to the Board meeting.  I supported my wife, via texts, as she pulled off a very successful fundraising event for the school.  My son had a great day too with just a scrape on his chin as evidence of a slightly unsupervised, appropriately rambunctious day with his best buddies.

My family went to bed last night exhausted but happy.  Each of us had a very productive day with only a modicum of stress.  At 6:45 am, it was hard to conceive of such a wonderful outcome.  I am always amazed that when I choose to do the right thing in the face of chaos, I usually find a paved path.

Day 15 - Cloud Busting

In light airplanes, a pilot loses most of his visual perspective a few hundred feet after takeoff.  As the ground recedes, so does the primary reference point to judge relative motion.  Because light airplanes do not typically travel very fast, the world begins to slow down, and other than radio chatter and the noise of the engine, forward progress and motion happen at a very relaxed pace.

Clouds are highly respected in aviation. Thunderstorms or "thunder boomers" pack tremendous force and can literally break even the strongest of airplanes.  All pilots give thunderstorms wide berth and light airplane pilots in particular, because dangerous conditions, including turbulence and hail, can be found many miles away from the actual cloud.  Twenty miles is often mentioned as the rule of thumb for safe separation and it can be more with severe weather systems.

There are also clouds that appear on clear, sunny days, often as wispy translucent cotton balls.  Sometimes, they congregate in an organized or unorganized pack across the sky and speak to anyone who cares to listen about upcoming changes in the weather.  Other days, just a handful of shy clouds make their appearance and disappear almost as fast as they come.  Unlike their big brother cumulonimbus (thunderstorm) clouds, these cumulus clouds contain no malice and solely mark a bit of moisture in an otherwise dry sky.

Through training and FAA mandates, pilots generally keep away from all clouds, even the thin, wispy ones. Sometimes, though, on a clear day, with a few translucent clouds, that little mischievous voice that resides in all of us pops up with the suggestion to "bust" a little cloud.  With limited perception of speed and motion and a small cloud, it is surprisingly easy to miss.  After identifying a target and aiming the aircraft,  nothing seems to happen for what can be a very long time depending on how far away the pilot starts the process.  There is no noticeable growth or any other indication that the distance between cloud and airplane is shrinking.  Altitude is equally hard to judge.  So the pilot tools along, making minor corrections to try to center the cloud in front of the airplane, and waits.

You make your money in the last four of five seconds of the game.  The transition from none to complete perception happens with astonishing rapidity.  One second, the pilot senses no motion and observes a small puffy cloud in his windscreen.  In the next instant, the pilot perceives that he is hurtling through the air at 150 mph and about to crash into the stationary object that is rapidly dominating his view.  Body and brain tense, knowledge fighting perception.  A quick flash of white, maybe a small bump and then there is no motion again, only the drone of an engine and a clear blue sky.

Day 14 - Steam Bending

I like to make wooden furniture, continuous windsor arm chairs in particular.  One of the skills that a novice chairmaker has to master is steam bending wood.  On a continuous arm windsor, the distinctive arm bow is typically fashioned of white oak, a very strong species of North American hardwood, bent around a form and dried.

To bend white oak, a chairmaker forms an arm bow out of a green, undried piece of wood.  The green arm bow is then placed in a steam box.  Steam boxes are not available commercially to my knowledge, so part of the process of becoming a chairmaker involves designing and building your own steambox.  Mine is an ugly plywood box powered by a wallpaper steamer.  It looks bad but works great.

After cooking the arm bow in a steambox for about 40 minutes, the chairmaker removes the arm bow and places it in a form for bending.  This is the most critical part of the creation process.  The task is to smoothly apply sufficient force to the arm bow, I am guessing 15 to 20 lbs, to pull the bow into an arc without breaking it.  A key to success is supporting the point of bend throughout the pulling process. Pull too fast or without sufficient support and the arm bow will crack and turn its highest use into firewood.

Such is the process of life transitions as well.  Heat, a little sweat, force and hopefully lots of support.  We don't want to go breaking any arm bows.

Day 13 - Whose Lot are You Weeding?

When I was about ten, I was tasked with the project of weeding the beds of my dad's office.  It was hot, dirty and boring work.  This was pre-Walkman, so I had nothing to keep me occupied other than the task at hand and the musings of my 10 year old brain.  For about three weeks, I rode my bicycle 2 miles to his office and sweated in the beds under a hot Texas sun until I had removed every last weed. I got paid and went home.

My dad told me that hard work was good for me.  My ten year old brain struggled mightily with this assertion.  I was a good student and unchallenged but diligent in my schoolwork.  I was also an avid skateboarder, bicyclist and model builder.  All of these activities required focus, dedication and effort -  ingredients I understood to be elements of "hard work."  Somehow weeding beds seemed to have a different character.

The protestant work ethos under which I was raised preached that hard work was reward enough in itself.  Sustained, difficult effort was believed to be a balm for the soul and a key to a successful life.  Pain, whether physical or mental, would bless the activity with heightened spiritual benefit.  At 46, this lesson appears more nuanced than first explained.

As a father, I wrestle both with the concept and how to teach it.  I believe that I know that one element of success is the ability to focus and apply full faculties towards accomplishing a goal.  In my mind, this concept is self-discipline coupled with presence because I want to see more than unfocused hard work, even if the work is well-done.  The challenge comes when presence or self-awareness introduces into the dialog a strong sense of dislike of the underlying activity.  At that point, we are forced, as decision makers for ourselves or our children, to scrutinize the underlying rationale for the activity.

As adults, we do things for a variety of reasons, although for many, the underlying drive is unexamined.  Like soldiers after boot camp, we "take the hill" if instructed to do so by bosses, spouses, parents, politicians or a whole host of other influence peddlers.  In our consumption patterns, marketers have developed a science around getting people to take unexamined action and as Americans, we consume wantonly.

We don't stop to ask the question because we have been taught not to.  For most children, parents and teachers and other role models instill "inner drive" by repetition and control.  Remember that father knows best.  My children do not like to brush their teeth and would eat three solid meals of junk food a day if my wife and I so permitted.  It is clearly in both of their interests to learn good physical hygiene and eating habits and so we remind them, several times a day, to brush their teeth and remove the junk food temptation by not having it around.  Other choices, which involve less direct correlation between actor and benefit, are more difficult.

Once we have grown up and learned good study habits, self-discipline and control, we are free to set off into the world to makes choices and write the script of our life.  Left to natural development with thoughtful guidance, cause and effect will teach a child these lessons and also develop a strong sense of personal goals and desires.  If these lessons are over-taught, however, the process produces adults who make unexamined choices based on an imposed rather than developed belief system.

My dad, as owner of a commercial building, had a strong desire to present a well-coiffed environment.  Whose lot are you weeding?

Day 12 - Tires & Horses

When I was about 12 years old, I worked for a summer as a stable hand at a horse trainer in New Braunfels, Texas.  I lived with the owners of the stable and they treated me, in the good way, like family.  Central Texas summers are a hot affair so we would wake up at 5 am every morning except Sunday, eat breakfast and get to work before the heat made activity dangerous for both man and horse.  Typically, I would clean stalls for about an hour and then exercise horses.  We would train, wash, cool and feed and be finished for the day by about 1:30 pm.   

Exercising a horse, or "lunging" occurs in a small pen, constructed of railroad ties set on ends into the ground, one touching the next in a circle about forty feet in diameter.  I would bring a horse into the exercise pen, remove its lead rope and then make it move around the circular pen, alternating directions and speed, for about twenty minutes.  I would deliver the "warmed up" horse to be saddled and trained by Lee, the owner, or Harold, his assistant.

After I finished with my cleaning and exercising chores, I would typically watch Lee and Harold work horses in the larger training arena.  I had been riding horses since I was very young and knew how to ride, but these guys were the real deal, knowledgeable and generous with their experience.  I learned a lot, including how to rope, but that will be the subject of another post.  Once finished with a day's lessons, I would often get to ride to cool the horse down.

One horse at the stable was particularly difficult.  She was about two years old, of fine pedigree but nasty disposition.  We could not allow her to be near any other horses because she would lay her ears back and lung at the other animals.  She was not much better with humans and I learned quickly to keep her on a short rope and stay alert lest she do something nasty.  She was at the stable to be "broken".

In old western movies, "breaking" horses was a wild affair with ropes and bucking and swearing.  For many animals, the word breaking was an apt description of the event, because the domination by man over beast would break the horse's spirit as well.  Good cowboys observed that a more gentle approach to this event, started when the horse was very young, was beneficial to both horse and the cowboy's long term physical well-being.

Lee was very gentle with the animals.  There was no yelling or screaming or bucking for the most part.  As he explained to me, he believed in "training" horses, not breaking them.  By the time I arrived that summer, the difficult young mare had been at the stable for three months and Lee had made little progress with her.  She had thrown him several times.  She had also thrown Harold, who was a good trainer in his own right and a practicing rodeo cowboy on the weekends.

One morning, I sat on the corral fence and watched as Lee and Harold worked with the young mare.  Lee had saddled her and then tied a lead rope tightly to the saddle of an older, quiet horse ridden by Harold.  Harold and his horse were leading the young mare, with Lee atop the saddle, around the arena.  Things looked calm, and but for an occasional attempt by the mare to bite the other horse or Harold's leg, she was doing pretty well. After ten or fifteen minutes of this, Lee told Harold to remove the lead rope.

Although the arena was filled with deep, sandy soil and a pretty soft spot to get tossed, I saw Lee pull his hat down tight and prepare for the worse.  Once released, the mare continued walking for ten or fifteen feet and then all hell broke loose.  The mare started bucking and jumping and doing everything short of rolling over to rid herself of Lee and the saddle.  The rodeo continued for what seemed like a long time, but what in actuality was probably about thirty seconds. I saw the mare go down on her front legs and begin to roll.  Being rolled on by a thousand plus pounds of horse is a great way to get killed and Lee was having none of it.  I don't know how he did it, but by the time the horse finished her roll, Lee was standing beside her calming her down.

Lee barked a couple of orders to Harold and then told me to bring him an old tire that was laying outside of the arena under an tree.  Harold rode his horse back near the stable, tied her up and returned from the tack room a few minutes later with an old saddle and a piece of heavy rope.  I watched as the two of them swapped the young mare's saddle and then Lee tied the heavy rope around the horn and gullet.  He then tied the tire to the other end of the rope, with about two feet of slack between saddle and tire.

Lee told Harold to ride his horse to the other end of the arena and for me to assume my position atop the fence.  Once everyone was in position, Lee led the young mare to the center of the arena and did his best cowboy "woop".  The young mare startled and starting bucking.  The tire, hanging loosely at about stirrup level on the horse, began to swing from one side of the mare to the other. The harder she bucked, the harder the tire hit her.  At first, the swinging tire seemed to firm her resolve, but a minute or so later, the young mare was standing motionless in the center of the arena, huffing and puffing and trying to catch her breath.  Lee wasted no time removing the rope and tire and mounting up.  His ride lasted about thirty minutes without any further hysterics by the young mare.

Have you ever woken up in the morning with the realization that the life blows you are experiencing are coming from your own hand?  Do you stop and take a different approach?

Day 11 - Bob

I started my career as corporate attorney at a small law firm in NYC.  My first deal was the acquisition of a small injection molded plastics company that was being purchased from heirs following the death of the founder.  Our client was a new private equity firm run by a former consultant named "Bob."

From the moment I first met Bob at a "kickoff" meeting for the acquisition, it was apparent that he would be a difficult client.  I would come to understand that Bob's fund was new and that he had been given one year by his investors to close a first transaction.  When we started on the project, we had less than four months until the first year anniversary of the fund.  Bob needed to close the plastics acquisition by Christmas or lose the opportunity.

The 100 or so days following the kickoff meeting were complete chaos.  The seller and their attorneys, somehow sensing the desperate state of our client, were completely unreasonable.  Bob, in his state of distress, insisted on daily update meetings to review a master "to do" list and personally reviewing every document that left our firm.  Bob took the concept of "control freak" to a new level.

To make matters worse, Bob's interpersonal skills were nonexistent.  Whether intentional or unaware, Bob had decided that the secret to unleashing the best performance out of staff and hired hands was to berate them constantly.  A spelling mistake on page 47 of a 60 page document was cause for an extended verbal lashing.  Yelling, or maybe more aptly screaming, although contrary to accepted standards of professional behavior, was acceptable behavior as long as Bob was the perpetrator.

We closed the transaction on December 24th at about 11:00 am.  I caught a flight home to Texas at 3 pm, exhausted but happy that the ordeal was over.  The firm I was working for had done nothing to control Bob and the three or four associates that had worked on the transaction were scarred by the experience.  With a first successful transaction under his belt, Bob's fund was secure.  Although it would be easy to expect that Bob's behavior would improve once the pressure of losing his fund had been removed, the opposite was in fact the case.  Bob became convinced that he was one of the firm's "most important clients" and his demands became even more unreasonable.

Reconciling Bob and the firm's misbehavior is not easy.  Somehow,  misbehavior is excused when the goal is making money.  At the time, I rationalized that Karma would have her way with Bob and the Firm at some point in the future. In the case of the Firm, they burned through a host of associates and ended up being swallowed up by a larger firm.  The partners made a lot of money but left behind the charred remains of failed marriages, bodies broken by stress and general unhappiness.

I haven't kept up with Bob.  Last I heard, he too had made a whole lot of money.  In my travels, I have met alumnus of Bob's firm and the universal sense seems to be that he is in top running for worst boss of the last two decades.  If money is the only way you keep score, then Bob's approach has been extremely successful, otherwise it looks like he has created a small piece of hell on earth.  Wealthy or not, I can't imagine that is a nice place to live.

Day 10 - Fly the Airplane!

"Fly the airplane!" Charlie would exclaim and then take the controls and aggressively yet graceful save my botched approach in a simulated emergency landing.  "You could have made it" he would say and then advance the throttle and we'd head off to try again.

One of the first principles I was taught when I started taking flying lessons was to "fly the airplane."  My instructor Charlie told me time and time again to make the airplane do what I wanted it to do.  Flying wasn't about cajoling, it was about complete domination of the machine.  It sounded harsh.

The rationale for his approach became apparent as we started to practice various emergency scenarios and in particular, emergency landings.  If the engine quits in a light airplane, the pilot has moments (depending on altitude) to pick a spot to land and get the airplane configured and oriented to land on that spot.  With only one chance, close does not cut it.  The pilot must fly the airplane on a real-time conceived flight path to a touchdown at a chosen spot.  With the adrenaline of the situation (even in simulation) and a ton of variables (weather, altitude, weight of airplane, availability of landing sites, etc.), executing an "off-field" landing is not an easy task.

When I set off on a new adventure, it is easy to get mired in the variables and get a case of "analysis paralysis".   Charlie's words travel with me and I focus on isolating the one or two really critical activities and then doing them well.  Like magic, everything else seems to fall in place.

Day 9 - Showing Up

How do you keep taking action when the inspiration goes, because it will?  

Doing anything well requires a great deal of effort. Typically, we set goals for ourselves, perhaps out of impulse or maybe in a moment of clarity and set off to accomplish them.  At the moment of initiation, inspiration and visions of success are sufficient motivation to prompt action.  Days or weeks later, mired in the slog that is a necessary stage of all accomplishment, the doubts and voices raise their heads in unison.  

Successful people have a reserve of will that kicks in at this moment of low tide.  Instead of having a pity party about how hard a particular goal is to accomplish, these folks seem to plow right through the difficult terrain.  What is that will?  For me, it is knowledge of accomplishments past.  Success builds on success.  In my moments of doubt, I turn to things that I know I do well and I do them.  I usually get enough of a recharge to set off with renewed vigor on my new adventure.

This morning, I am heading to the shop to make things.

Day 8 - Transitions

In the early days of aviation, airports were open fields.  Airplanes were small and light and with few passengers, there was no need for all-weather accommodations or operations. Airfields, as they were known, were maintained with frequent grass trimming and heavy rollers to smooth their surfaces.  Ensuring the smoothness of a large field was and is a daunting task and the surface of these fields could be quite rough at times.  This operating environment heavily influenced early airplane design.

If you were to pick up a picture book of early aviation, you might notice that the overwhelming majority of airplanes had two main wheels, typically built into the fuselage near the junction of the wing and a skid or wheel positioned under the tail of the machine.  This design is known as "conventional gear" or more commonly as a "taildragger."  A few early airplanes replaced the tailskid or tailwheel with a single wheel positioned at the front of the airplane, a design which came to be known as "tricycle gear."  I will skip the physics explanation, but in a nutshell, it is much easier to design and build a tailwheel or tailskid to manage rough surfaces than it is to build a similarly robust tricycle gear.  Even modern science and metallurgy have not altered these conclusions and most new "bush planes", which are designed to operate in undeveloped areas and rough fields, have conventional gear.

In the post-WWII aviation boom, airfields became airports and hard surface runways became the norm.  Airplanes grew larger and tricycle landing gear became the design standard for modern airplanes in all but a few specialized areas including bushplanes and aerobatic mounts.  In the air, taildraggers and tricycle gear airplanes fly pretty much the same.  On the ground, though, they are two completely different animals.  Enough so, that the FAA requires modern pilots to get specialized instruction and receive a "tailwheel endorsement" before soloing in a conventional gear aircraft.  

Picture a tailwheel airplane for a moment.  Imagine that there must be more weight behind the front wheels than in front of them, otherwise the airplane would topple forward and come to rest on its propeller.  Now, imagine an arrow.  In a traditional, stone tipped arrow, the vast majority of weight is in the arrowhead.  If you were to take that arrow and find the center point along its shaft, the balance point would be well front of the measured center of the arrow. Now imagine shooting an arrow backwards, with the arrowhead facing rearward and the nock and feathers forward..  The arrow might fly for a while with the arrowhead trailing, but eventually, it would swap ends.  Although there are more accurate scientific terms to describe the effect, I think of it as "mass leads."

Let's return to taildraggers.  We've already established that there is more mass behind the front wheels than in front of them.  Now imagine that same airplane, traveling forty or fifty miles an hour down a runway.  During takeoff, with the engine at full power and the propeller clawing at the air to accelerate the machine, a pilot doesn't feel the mass difference. In landing configuration, with the engine idling and the airplane coasting in to land, this mass leading principle becomes more evident and commands that the pilot pay attention.  Like our backwards arrow, the airplane wants to swap ends and have "mass lead."  This event, known as a "ground loop" in pilot speak, can be dramatic and often results in bent wings, propellers and egos.  Those of us who fly conventional landing gear airplanes say that there "are those who have and those who will."  One of my mentors use to admonish me that the landing is finished when the "airplane is back in the hangar."

The most critical part of landing a taildragger is right after the machine touches down and it begins the transition from airplane to land vehicle.  At that point, with the airplane close to flying speed, the airplane's control surfaces are still very effective and the airplane is flying down the runway almost as much as it is riding on its wheels.  As land vehicles, taildraggers are pretty unstable, suffering from the scientific fact that mass "wants" to lead and that speed magnifies every control input.  In aerobatic airplanes, which have relatively high landing speeds, this effect is very pronounced.  Aerobatic pilots "dance" on the rudder pedals to keep the airplane heading straight down the runway.  As an airplane slows, either because the pilot is braking or as a result of drag, the machine becomes less and less sensitive to control inputs and more forgiving of inattentiveness or clumsiness on the part of the pilot.  By the time the airplane has decelerated to 20 mph or so, the transition to land vehicle has been largely accomplished and the rules that apply to its operation well understood.

If one chooses to live an examined life, then much like a pilot who chooses to fly a conventional gear aircraft, transitions will become a regular part of the life experience.  One nice thing about flying is that as pilots, we know that the transition at landing is from aircraft to landcraft. With life transitions, the new steady state isn't always so obvious.  I try to remember to stay focused and aware of the inputs and outputs and keep dancing on the rudder pedals until I have the machine put back safely in the hangar.

   

Day 7 - Happy Thanksgiving

When I was in college in Texas, I spent weekends in November, December and January helping my dad at a hunting lease in the Hill Country of Texas.  My dad ran a beer distributor and one of the perqs for his customers was an annual hunting trip.  Over time, I became a guide, arriving early on Friday to help the cook prepare the camp and getting things set up for the hunters, who would typically arrive around 8 pm in a company van, sauced and hungry.  They were an amiable lot, by and large, so there was great energy and I have many fond memories.

The typical routine for hunting was to get up around 4 to help the cook began meal preparation.   We would typically have 8 to 10 hunters and our goal was to get them situated in their hunting blinds at least 30 minutes before day break, usually around 6 am.  After breakfast, we would have a quick safety briefing, put everyone in open jeeps and then split up to drop them off at the various blinds.  Usually my dad and I would be the drivers and once finished dropping all of the hunters off, we would return to camp to chat with the cook and take a snooze, depending on how festive the previous night's festivities had been.  We would typically pick the hunters back up around 9:30 am.  The group would hang out around the camp until 2 or so and then we would start the process again.

One morning, I was driving back to the camp after picking up the last of my four hunters.  The lease was 9000 acres or about 15 miles across, so the drive, on unpaved dirt trails, was a long one.  One of our safety rules was that all guns had to be unloaded and stored while in the vehicles.  That being said, there was a gun rack mounted to the front dashboard that allowed the driver or guide to safely carry a rifle and I was.  As we came over the crest of a hill, I noticed a flock of turkeys about 250 yards ahead of us at the bottom of the hill.  Turkeys in this part of Texas were a rarity so we were all excited to see them.  I immediately stopped and we watched as the flock moved slowly across the road and began to disappear in the underbrush.

I commented offhand to the group that the only place to shoot a turkey was in the head because otherwise the bullet would destroy too much of the meat.  This comment immediately prompted a challenge from the smart-aleck of our group to "show me how its done." Although we were in the midst of the hunting season and turkeys were legal game, I had decided before his comment to let the birds go unmolested because the shot was too far and, given turkeys' skittishness, we would never get within better range.  Of course the comment got my 20-something competitive spirits going and I pulled the rifle out of the rack and proceeded to load it.  The gun was a 22-250 calibre, which has tremendous range, and so the shot was well within the capabilities of the gun, but a stretch for even the best marksman.

I stepped out of the jeep and my tormentor suggested that rather than use any part of the vehicle to steady the shot, I should shoot freehand.  I am no Daniel Boone, but I had grown up around the shooting sports and was very comfortable with all firearms.  Practically, though, I had a problem.  My mission was to hit the head of a moving turkey, which at best is the size of a 3 inch circle, from 250 yards away, freehand.  As part of a guide's job is to ensure that the clients have a great time, I had pretty much resolved myself to the endless ribbing that would come when I missed, but I was going to go down with a valiant effort.

In reality, the dialog and the thought processes happened in seconds because the birds were disappearing into the brush.  I raised the rifle, took a deep breath and started to select my target, which was the second or third to last bird in the group.  My unlucky target stopped for a split second in the middle of the path, I quieted my mind and body and waited for the shot to squeeze off.  Crack! barked the 22-250. To my complete surprise, and the surprise of everyone in the jeep, the turkey jumped straight into the air about three feet and fell in a clump to the ground.  My tormentor went silent and the rest of the crowd went wild.  I chuckled, unloaded the rifle and put it back in the rack, started the jeep and began the drive to pick up my prize.

250 yards is a long way to shoot, but not a very long way to drive.  As the terrain was not perfectly sloped, we could see the crumpled turkey for parts of the drive and as we drew nearer, could no longer see anything.  When we finally arrived at the spot of the crumpled bird, there was nothing.  No bird, no blood, no feathers, no nothing.  Everyone got out and started looking around.  There was no turkey.  I went back to the spot where I thought the bird and had fallen and looked more closely.  Sure enough, in the dirt, was a small piece, about 3/8 of an inch, of what appeared to be turkey waddle.  I smiled again and loaded up my troops.

My dad always told me that close is only good in horseshoes, hand grenades and dancing.  I think he is right.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 6 - No Wind

One of the more challenging aspects of learning to fly is the landing.  In light airplanes, the goal is to bring together the ground, a "stall speed" at which the airplane will no longer fly and zero sink rate at precisely the same time.  If you arrive at the stall speed too early, the airplane "drops in" which means it falls from whatever altitude you occupy at that precise moment.  If the plane is 10 feet off the ground, down it comes with a predictable, bone jarring crash.  Airplanes must survive "drop tests" in the FAA certification process, which are what they sound like, and will take such drops with minimal protest except in the most extreme cases.  If the pilot misjudges on the other side, meaning she finds the ground before arresting the sink rate and hitting the stall speed, the plane bounces like a bouncy ball.  These landings can get very exciting if subsequent control inputs aren't handled correctly.

A  favorite pastime of pilots and airport visitors is to watch pilots perform their landings.  On a nice Saturday at a busy small airport, you often find folks, milling around, watching the landing pattern and critiquing every approach and landing.  If a pilot possesses any vanity and practices landings on these days, the added pressure of an audience can make even the most seasoned veteran lose his mojo.  The nicer the day, the bigger the crowd and the bigger the number of performers.  It can be a circus.

Clear skies, unlimited visibility and no wind are like the Bat Signal for pilots to head to the airport.  Student and novice pilots, in particular, respond strongly to the call.  In part, flying in clear blue skies touches the very nerves that make most of us learn to fly.  As I imagine that dolphins are filled with joy as they swim, so too are pilots as they move effortlessly through the three dimensions. The other part, though, is a bit of fear of the conditions that make flying more challenging, particularly wind as it affects landings.

A funny thing about wind, airplanes and landing.  As students pilots (and too many experienced pilots as well), we fear the wind.  Wind conspires to give us just a few more feet of altitude at the exactly wrong moment or threatens to blow us off the side of the runway and ruin an otherwise perfect landing.  The greater the wind, the bigger the challenge and the bigger the fear.  When there is no wind, pilots think to themselves "ahh, this will be easy."  But in fact, it is quite hard to land an airplane in "zero" wind conditions.  There is nothing to push back against.  We relax in the face of calm and most often the result is a submarginal performance.

Update:
1.  I had several conversations yesterday, including my informational interview and I learned a lot.  I am very thankful to have a wonderful roster of advisers.
2.  I worked on my workspace for about 2 hours.
3.  I did no work on website copy.

Today's Goals
1.  Work on workspace.
2.  Work on website copy.
3.  Work on samples.

Day 5 - The Edge of the Envelope

You might have heard or used the expression “pushing the envelope.”  It is a flying/engineering term that refers to the performance envelope of an airplane.  The envelope is an area of a performance chart, prepared by engineers and test pilots that covers typical operating parameters of an airplane such as speed, load carrying capacity or how much stress the airplane is capable of handling without breaking apart.  Imagine a stock market chart covering a few years and then put a box around any few year period of the chart with its highs and lows.  The box is the envelope and the chart allows a pilot to look up, in advance, a set of flying conditions and have a pretty good idea of whether the flight can be made safely.  

We are taught as pilots that safety lies within those bounds.  When we get near the edge or even go a bit beyond it, we are “pushing the envelope.”  Fortunately for the pilots of the world, the engineers are by and large a conservative lot and they build in cushion or a “fudge factor” to make sure the wings don’t come off when the pilot goes a little over the edge.  The engineers know pilots well.

We all have different capacities when it comes to risk tolerance but I think this is both born and learned. My daughter is mostly fearless about new things and consistently performs good calculus on risks.  She doesn’t take unnecessary chances, even after she has mastered an activity, but she does push herself to grow.  My son approaches things much more cautiously.  Once comfortable with a basic level of skill, he proceeds to expand his comfort zone or performance envelope until he scares himself sufficiently to know that he found an edge.  For him, however, the edge is not a static line and he returns again and again until he gets comfortable at or even beyond the edge.  If he is successful beyond it, he pushes outward until some opposite force intervenes to push back toward activity that better balances his skills and the conditions in which he is operating.

Staying within the envelope when flying makes great sense.  The cost of an error is simply too high to justify voluntarily exceeding the limits.  You may push your personal limits as a pilot with safe margins for error but not the structural integrity of the machine.  Emergencies sometimes produce events that require pilots to wildly exceed performance limits.  Whether its the fudge factor, materials performing better than designed or divine intervention, pilots and airplanes often blow through performance envelopes and survive, albeit sometimes bent and broken.  You often hear pilots say, "if you can walk away from the flight, it was successful."

So what about risk and the rest of your life? Seth Godin, in his book Poke the Box, writes about failure.  In a nutshell, he concludes that if you aren't failing, you aren't pushing hard enough.  An intriguing concept, particularly given that I have long prided myself on never failing at anything.  Of course I have failed. Post-mortem, though, I look more like Sancho Panza in these events than a failed conquistador on a personal quest.

Update from Day 4 Goals.

1.  I selected a website host with one-click WordPress installation.  The site is up, but not built.

2.  I selected a web designer.  I owe him copy, photographs and a list of desired features.

3.  My interview got postponed until today or tomorrow.

4.  No progress on workspace.

Goals for Day 5.

1.  Write first draft of copy for website.

2   Spend 1 hour in workspace.

Day 4 - The Patrick Box

When I was a very small child, I believe around 2, my father and grandfather built me a box.  The box was a rectangle about 6 x 6 x 14 inches long, constructed of 3/4 inch pine boards nailed together.  Both the bottom and the top of the box were hinged with huge, reasonably modern strap hinges, like you might find on a barn or shed door.  As I would come to know the story, my dad and grandfather built the box and then went to a local hardware store and purchased one of every type of latching mechanism that they could find on the shelves.  There were barrel latches and hook clasps and padlock brackets and screen hooks and other mechanisms the names of which I don't know. They painted the box green, undoubtedly with left over paint that my Depression era grandfather had used on some other project and then stuffed into a recess of his workshop because "it might be useful someday", installed the latches and hinges and called the project a success.

The finished box weighed in at about ten pounds, with a nice assortment of sharp, metal objects jutting from the edges and heavy doors that would slam closed if handled improperly. I am pretty sure that the Consumer Product Safety Commission might have had a few things to say about the design and toddlers.  Nevertheless, it was the 60's and my dad and grandfather gave me the box, perhaps for my birthday, and we, that box and the little me, became inseparable.

As family lore has it, I sat on the floor with the box and its latches until I had mastered every single operation.  Apparently, the box was my only focus in the world.  Of course my dad and grandfather were thrilled that I was so interested in this little creation of theirs.  "Tenacity, focus, mechanical ability, problem solving skills" are words that have been used throughout my life to recount this interaction between me and this little box of latches.  Someone decided to call it the "Patrick Box" and so it was.

Forty some odd years later, all I want to do is play with the adult version of the Patrick Box.

Today's Goals:

1.  Call one web designer from Freelancer.com to discuss proposal.
2.  Call a friend/web designer to get up to speed on website platforms.
3.  Have an informational interview with an industry veteran to discuss my project
4.  Work on samples and my workspace for some period late this afternoon or early evening.

Day 3

Even Sisyphus got Sunday's off.

Day 2 - Solo

Earning a pilot’s license is a life changing experience.  From the introductory flight to a private pilot check ride with an FAA examiner, student pilots are challenged to master tomes of information and for many, undergo a personality change to become a highly detail oriented and procedures based thinker. 

One of the more memorable points of my journey was the first solo flight.  After what seemed like not very many hours of instruction, my instructor told me to stop on the taxiway by the runway and let him out. As he exited the Piper Tomahawk (affectionately known as a “Traumahawk”), he told me to do three takeoffs and landings and come back and pick him up.  You might know the feeling, right after you signed for a car loan or mortgage, when it sinks in that the step just taken is not easily undone. Taking an airplane into the air, by yourself, leaves exactly one person in the world who can get the whole operation back to the ground in one piece.  Tag you are it.

Alone in the cockpit, I felt giddy, focused and a little sick to my stomach.  Intellectually, I was prepared for the moment, having taken every preflight step required to all but eliminate those risks capable of mitigation and having gained the confidence of a highly experienced instructor for whom a bad outcome would either end his instructing career or worse.  In reality, the stakes are pretty high. 

My solo went great – as we say in the trades, I “greased” all three landings and returned to pick up Charlie, who was all smiles and strutting like a peacock.  The Navy and the major airlines have proven time and again in studies that pilots fall back on trained procedures in high stress situations.  I can’t really recall any details of the flight, but I do know that Charlie’s voice was in my head, telling me exactly what to do at each step.  I was a complete novice, but I had tens of thousands of hours of flying experience in that cockpit with me.

I woke up this morning a little more sick to my stomach than giddy.  Tag you are it.  I still have Charlie’s voice in my head but I also have a chorus of voices representing a compendium of every life experience, positive and negative, that I have ever had. From Madison Avenue, to teachers, family members, friends, colleagues and bosses, individuals and organizations have each held up a mirror and told me what I look like and often what it would look like for me to be successful.  Many bumps and bruises later, I now see that some of these mirrors reflected crisp images but many were distorted by agendas and personalities and a whole host of other maladies that contribute to the human condition.  The trick is observing these voices, and figuring out where my voice is in the mix.

Today’s Goals

I have family obligations that leave me very little time to accomplish much today, so my goals are rather modest.

1.     Work on marketing materials.

2.     Review new website design proposals.

3.     Spend one hour at my new workspace continuing the organization process.

Day 1 - PM

I first saw The Graduate when I was a teen in the late 70's and it quickly became my favorite movie.  From the moment he comes on screen, I identified with Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman's character).  As a teenager, I think the identification was mainly with the coming of age aspects of the character and the story.  Thirty plus years later, Benjamin represents a guy, albeit young, who decides to throw caution to the wind and live life on his own terms.  I love Ben's face, at the very end of the movie, as he and Elaine "escape" from her wedding on the bus.  I would call his look the intersection of hubris and terror.  It is one thing to understand that you are completely free to make choices, it is another thing to actually make them.

I am thinking that I had the Ben Braddock smirk for much of today.

I did reasonably well on my goals. 

1.  My new workspace is coming along nicely.  I think I should be completely set up in another 4 to 6 hours.

2.  I reviewed the proposals today that I received from Freelancer.com.  I was not impressed enough to select one.  I am teetering on the edge of just building the site myself using CafePress.  This is  a bad idea because, while I have some programming skills, it will take me many hours to build a simple website.  I received additional proposals this evening so I will probably keep looking for the right shop to build the site.

3.  I did very little work on my samples today other than to define what I need. This will get bumped forward on the list.

4.  I was fortunate enough to discuss my project with two potential employees today.  I think either would be a good fit in the short run and both were interested in what I am doing.  I am checking this box until I need to make a hire.

5.  I was very busy for about half the day with my existing consulting business and made good progress towards wrapping up a couple of projects.

I think it was a fine start.

100 Days to Launch a Company

A good friend and mentor would respond to my career complaints with:  "sometimes you are the boot and sometimes you are the ass."  I used to laugh.  He would also admonish me to do what I love and the rest would follow.  I "got it" intellectually and thought it made good sense, but somehow convinced myself that the things I love would not provide me with the kind of living I was seeking.

As I reflect on the last twenty or so years of my professional career, I am amazed to realize how much of it has been spent in a state of dread.  I became pretty adept (but not completely because no one is) at faking it.  As they would say in my native Texas, "suck it up boy, put your boots on and get on it."   I have done too much of that.  During this period, in spite of myself, I was presented with serendipitous opportunities to pursue many passions and thankfully have.

Today I am launching a new venture and this blog will chronicle my daily activities for the next 100 days.  I am going to be somewhat loose in the format, but each day will include a list of things I intend to accomplish.  I will report back at the end of the day with how I did.

11/18  To Do's:
1.  Organize new workspace
2.  Review website designer proposals
3.  Work on samples
4.  Interview potential employee - #1
5.  Tie up loose ends on existing business venture.

Oh, and what I am I starting you ask?  I am tempted to pull out a cheesy "Ernest & Julio Gallo" slogan from the 70's, but I will refrain.  I promise you will be the first to see the launch.