Before making a decision...

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[Before making a decision] The first thing to do – don't get worked up. For everything happens according to the nature of all things, and in a short time you'll be nobody and nowhere even as the great emperors Hadrian and Augustus are now. The next thing to do – consider carefully the task at hand for what it is, while remembering that your purpose is to be a good human being. Get straight to doing what nature requires of you, and speak as you see most just and fitting – with kindness, modesty, and sincerity.

Marcus Aurelius

In your actions, don't procrastinate (Marcus Aurelius)

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In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.

Marcus Aurelius

Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you (Marcus Aurelius).

 

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More matter with less art (Queen Gertrude in Hamlet)

Marcus Aurelius is a source for great leadership lessons throughout Meditations.

Term 1 has ended at school (finally) and this passage acts as an excellent place to pause for thought:

Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, "How unlucky that this should happen to me!" Not at all! Say instead, "How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint.

I'll be on a study break for two weeks but Marcus will be doling out wisdom until Term 2 starts.

Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham. I wonder to myself - could life ever be sane again? (The Smiths)

Seth Godin makes a great point about surprise and uncertainty:

Until just recently, a solar eclipse wasn’t a tourist event. It was the cause of real panic.

Two reasons that are worth considering:It was a surprise. They were not predicted.
They were unexplained. No one had any idea what was going on.

Eliminate surprise and explain the circumstances and panic starts to fade.

What is life (George Harrison)

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Boyle’s Law

There’s no such thing as work life balance. There’s simply life. And you spend part of your life at work.

High performing teams

Otmar Szafnauer

Recently, I caught a great quote from watching Formula 1 Drive to Survive.

The 2023 Team Principal of the Alpine team, Otmar Szafnauer said:

Species that collaborate survive, species that are selfish go extinct. High performing teams are the same. If you get it wrong it bites you.

Over the mountain watching the watcher, breaking the darkness (Pink Floyd)

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As regular readers of my bogs know, I'm a fanboy for the stoics, so this post from Seth Godin resonated with me.

It’s honest when we acknowledge that just about everything is out of our control. We can work to influence it, we can practice accepting it, but any time we’re engaging with others or with the future, we’re not completely in charge.

Control is elusive. If we accept the parts that are out of our hands, we can focus on the elements where we have leverage and influence instead.

Even that, to my mind, is illusionary. The only control I have, and I firmly believe this, is how I internally deal with the thirst to control from others.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing (Walt Disney)

I love this from Seth Godin:

Learning is about becoming incompetent on our way to getting better.

If you’re not open to the tension that is caused by knowing you could do better, it’s unlikely you’re willing to do the work to get better. As you’re doing that work, there’s the satisfaction it brings, but also the knowledge that just a moment ago, you weren’t any good.

Just like a rainbow you know you set me free, and I just can't get enough (Depeche Mode)

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James Whatley recently posited some interesting thoughts about leadership on his newsletter about trust and empowerment. He also discusses accountability and being vulnerable. 

These are important concepts and worthy of investigation, as he does in his newsletter.

I'm going to be quoting from his thoughts a lot in this post. 

The salient points:

TRUST & EMPOWERMENT

This is something that is important to helping people feel - to put it frankly - like adults. The opposite of command & control. The opposite of micromanagement.

Trust & empowerment is the demonstration of the vision and key values that you as a leader have laid out for everyone to work within. Trusting others to not simply get a job done but also do so with care and consideration of themselves and those around them. To me this is part of the overall job around motivation. You're saying: 'I trust you. I think you can do this. And I trust you to figure this out'.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

HBR defines Psychological Safety as 'a shared belief held by members of a team that it’s OK to take risks, to express their ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions, and to admit mistakes — all without fear of negative consequences'.

There's no point entrusting and empowering people if they then don't feel safe to put forward opinion, test new concepts and maybe even get things wrong.

VULNERABILITY

In Brené Brown's now legendary TED talk 'the power of vulnerability', Brown states 'Our job is to look and say, “You know what? You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”'

ACCOUNTABILITY  

Again, these things are linked. Taking ownership is a big deal. Being a leader that is able to say: 'Yes, that was my fault. I could've done that better. I wasn't clear in how I communicated that. How can I improve? How I can support you better?' - that's accountability.

A just culture means that when things go wrong you say 'What went wrong and how can we improve?' over and above 'Who did this?' which, in turn creates a culture of blame.

Blame cultures are well known for creating toxic working environments; they erode employee mental health, instill an underlying inertia in employees' ability to make decisions (due to a fear of getting the slightest thing wrong) and end up stifling, or all out killing, productivity.

My weariness amazes me, I am branded on my feet (Bob Dylan)

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Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Big Magic) on the secret to time management:

“You should know by this point in your life what time of day you’re ‘good' — like what time of day is your brain at its best. Because the reality is we all get, maybe, two good hours a day where we actually feel awake and alert.

“And the big, important question is: Who currently gets that time from you. The best time from your brain every day—who or what currently gets that? And would you be willing to take it back so that it’s yours and then give the world the ‘second-rate' version of you (which is the other 22 hours of the day)…”

My two good hours usually come early. I'm an early riser, and by the time I get to school it's about 6.45am.

From then to 8.45am I'm at my two hour peak.

By 3.oopm I'm done. I certainly can't think too well after 4.00pm.

Unfortunately, this is the time when after school meetings are  scheduled. Mondays and Fridays are the worst.

Luckily, we finish earlier on a Wednesday afternoon to allow for some professional learning. This is doable, usually.

Connection, I just can't make no connection (The Rolling Stones)

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On average, I would have a couple of on-line meetings each day Monday to Friday. 

Seth Godin makes an interesting point about the cons of on-line meetings.

• Limits options for engagement
• Engagement can be less meaningful 
• More difficult to read body language and ensure participants are engaged
• Technical difficulties can impact the quality  

His point is that it doesn't have to be this way.  As he says - If, even once, you’ve had a virtual meeting that engaged you and made you feel connected to someone else, then it’s clearly possible.

The challenge for whoever is running the meeting is to have it happen more often. Seth again - Lazy simulations of in-person meetings are not a worthy substitute.

We have to try and get a little stronger, Lord knows we do, with each and every day (War)

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Recently, Thomas Oppong posted on the benefits of using to-do lists. In fact, he advocates two to-do lists - a daily list and a master list.

Thomas: Move at most 5 things you HAVE or NEED to get done in a single workday to the daily list and focus on checking those off for the day: nothing more.

You can always add more to the daily list once they’ve been done.

The tasks on your daily list are the only thing that deserves your focus for the day — they are your high-priority or daily highlights.

These high priority items sound like urgent important tasks (as Stephen Covey labels them).

I do this and pretty much spend every day dealing with urgent important items on my list. Lately, it seems that every time I open my emails there is at least one urgent important thing for me to action. These mount up quickly.

Therefore, I often have little time for the not urgent but important items and not many people ever think their task is not important, otherwise they wouldn't send them out.

It's a dilly of a pickle.

It is the moral behaviour that determines one's success or failure (Hsing Yun)

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It is the moral behaviour that determines one's success or failure.

Ysing Yun

Success is not measured by wins and losses, but by the character and resilience of the team (Andy Reid)

Andy Reid

Time for some more of Marshall Manson's thoughts on leaders. 

"Good leaders listen. Good leaders create an environment / atmosphere where people can do their best work. Good leaders motivate.

Great leaders coach, encourage, develop, and motivate so that their people perform and achieve above their own potential."

Food for thought.

Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste (The Rolling Stones)

70% of Americans said they “never had enough time,” in 2011. It rose to 80% in 2018.  It's probably 90% in 2024.

Wednesdays, especially, have turned into a manic day for me. No one wants or needs to know how busy I am, but Wednesday's become a full-on day. Chocka.

So, I turned to Dan Rockwell for advice.

Here he is on four ways to do less but get more done. I'm keen to see if any of these will work for me on Wednesdays.

#1 Choose one important thing to do today. 

I’m talking about choosing one or two places to invest your time, energy, and talent in order to make meaningful contribution.  

This one is impossible on a Wednesday

#2. Make your own decisions.

A person who lets others run their life does what matters to others.

Don’t live to only serve yourself, but don’t let others run your life either.

Realize you chose to work where you work. If the downside of your job is heavier than the upside seek a new job.

Not a practical solution for my Wednesdays.

3. Go to bed.

What fool believes tired people get more done? You get more done by getting enough rest. Too much rest is exhausting. Too little rest is debilitating.

I'm usually exhausted by 9.00pm and usually sleep until my 4.30am alarm.

#4. Put white space on your calendar.

Back-to-back meetings indicate poor management. Get more done by realizing schedule management is self-management.

Yes, I think I need to reorder a couple of things on my Wednesday schedule.

My favourite things (Rodgers and Hammerstein)

Coltrane's famous quartet (Elvin, Jimmy and McCoy)

The benefits of collaboration are many and varied. 

I'm listening to John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy playing on Evenings at the Village Gate as I write this and they couldn't have sounded this awesome without McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass and Elvin Jones on drums.

The five musicians together form and sustain an intensely symbiotic, creative whole.

Same thing goes in sorts of other arenas. Including school.

Paradoxically - selfishly, I get a personal buzz from collaborating with others. It's great for thinking beyond the usual. Ideas can be explored beyond what I would come up with on my own.

It's a social occasion, too, therefore it's often a lot of fun - especially in my current environment.

Collaboration is all about relationships. Everybody finds their comfort zone being challenged in a collaborative environment.

Back to Coltrane Dolphy et al. Greensleeves is a favourite of mine and unbelievable on this album!! Just five people in tune with each other. 

Collaboration at its finest!

The speed of our forward motion is directly related to the velocity of the people around us (Seth Godin)

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This year, Professional Learning and Development has embraced the idea that each individual campus should work together on projects like their own learning.

Taking Seth's quote as a starting point, I would say forward motion at our campus is in very good hands. It's a safe culture here, where people can advance their thoughts and ideas in a nurturing, collaborative environment.

I wouldn't want it any other way.

Summer days that blind your face will soon be dead and gone, better get it on (Tears For Fears)

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School is back in session in the southern hemisphere and the first few weeks test your mettle. Big time.

First there's the transition from holiday relaxation to be navigated. Not easy.

There's the start of year gusto for things to be completed now. Testing.

The competing demands. Everyone wants your attention, right now. We live in a world of instant gratification that is low on patience.

Chuck in some wet weather, the fact I had to take two days off for family events, and that we remain largely a building site.

Meh! 

My staff is an extremely buoyant lot and we firmly subscribe to the view that everybody is doing the best they can.

So, while tired, there are plenty of smiles, laughs and celebrations (two birthday girls this week).

Positive close - I really like this thought from Brené Brown:

I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship. 

A sage invites wise people into their life. Fools gather with fools (Dan Rockwell)

 

Excellent piece by Dan Rockwell on the seven marks of mentors who change lives.

Do as I say

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The opposite of insubordination

“Do as I say.” That’s industrial management in four words.

If you don’t follow the instructions to the letter, you’re insubordinate. Not subordinate.

Complete subordination might have been the goal in an industrial setting. But now, it’s dangerous, expensive and inefficent. Because people close to the work know exactly what needs to be done.

The opposite of insubordination is now enrollment.

Someone who is enrolled in the journey doesn’t have to be told exactly what to do. Instead, given the goals, the tools and the culture, they will figure it out.

Seth Godin

The plants grow themselves

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Kash’s garden

She doesn’t grow plants.

The plants grow themselves.

Her job is to create conditions for the plants to grow.

The soil, the water, the light, the weeds… these are the conditions.

But none of it happens if the plants don’t do the thing they want to do in the first place.

This is always true, anywhere a leader succeeds.

Creating the conditions is the hard part.

Seth Godin

The secret to focus

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Steve Jobs explains the secret to focus

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

New goals don't deliver new results (james Clear)

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"New goals don't deliver new results. New lifestyles do. And a lifestyle is a process, not an outcome. For this reason, all of your energy should go into building better habits, not chasing better results."

James Clear (Atomic Habits)

Which agenda? (Seth Godin)

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Every day matters.

It seems like a waste to spend one as a to-do list item on someone else’s agenda.

It’s easy to become so focused on checking the boxes that we forget that there are people involved. Peers, colleagues and friends that with something human to offer, if we only cared enough to connect.

Seth Godin