Well, the Dog Sign Saga continues in our neighborhood. What high brow entertainment this is becoming.
A few weeks ago, I blogged about several “Dog signs” that have been posted in our neighborhood. One neighbor posted 2 professionally built signs in his yard that stated:
“Keep Dog’s Off The Grass”
“This Yard is NOT a Toilet For Your Dogs”
“Keep Dog’s Off The Grass”
A sign was promptly posted across the street responding:
Dog’s Can’t Read!
Well I thought we had seen the end of it, but no, one for our dog loving neighbors who is not only eccentric but also simply a character has now posted a professionally designed sign reading
“Welcome All Dogs ……. Please Pick up Your Logs”
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My oldest son John Christiansen is a 16 year old Junior in High School. Each day I observe as he gets himself up at 5:30 am and heads down to the high school, trumpet in tow and practices with the marching band. I have simply been amazed at his level of commitment and how seriously he has taken this extra circular activity.
Today they held the Battle of the Bands at Payson High. One major problem was it was freezing cold and raining freezing bullets. My family and I huddled in our coats, ran into the bleachers covered with blankets and watched in amazement as these kids held in formation, soaking as they prepared the field. Each band had prepared 3 numbers and nothing was going to deny them from completing these numbers. Amazingly the band really sounded good, but I knew that it could not be pleasant as the flag twirlers slipped and slided and their flags drooped around the pole due to being saturated with water.
I could not help but feel a very strong sense of pride in my son as he stepped forward, held his trumpet high and bellowed out a solo he had been assigned. I knew how cold his fingers had to be but he lifted his horn acting as if the sun was shining and blew like the entire city had come to hear him play. I must admit I had a few tears come to my eyes knowing the sacrifices he had made and his willingness to do the hard things.
Often times in life and business we do get rained on. It makes it difficult to stand up and deliver. We have several choices. 1. Quit or 2. Stand up and deliver under the circumstances.
Very seldom is it about the song. It is more about the character with how you deliver …. Win or lose
I choose to follow the example of my son … once committed stand-up and blow like the sun is shinning. .
This past week I have been helping my daughter prepare for a trip back to her home in Nepal. As part of this trip we plan on sending back a laptop to her younger brothers for use in their school.
I love a deal and could not resist the 1/2 price special on a HP laptop I found in a store near my office. The only problem is the laptop had one missing key. The ; key.
No problem, being a “perfectly good engineer that went bad” I figure I can fix that key and score a new laptop at cut rate prices. I called HP and found the part number and prepared to order the key. Luck would have it that I happen to own a brand new very similar HP laptop that I purchased for myself. My great engineering mind at work determined that if I popped the key off on my laptop I would then be able to place my key on the new laptop in time to send it with my daughter. Plop…. off went the key. I carefully examined it and placed it back on. It went on OK, but it had a horrific side to side wobble and was not firm and taunt like the other keys. I decided to try again. I watched closely and I said to myself as I put my nose right down to the keys and plop off went the 2nd key. Regretfully despite two hours of painstaking reassembly effort I now had two wobbly keys. My logic kicked in and I thought, “well it is under warranty and I will call and confess to HP the evils of engineering and they will send me a RA tag for my new laptop”. I then had one last brilliant idea. “Hey the wobble is just not that bad and the ; key is just not used that much. I will buy that cut rate laptop and send it around the world.” Pop off went the key and I raced to the store to purchase my new gift for my Nepalese friends. When I arrived at the store there was no laptop with a missing key. As I inquired about the laptop, the sales clerk stated “the strangest thing, it sat here for two months, and this morning a guy walked in and purchased it. ……..
Lesson learned, when it is fully functioning and you are guessing at what you are doing, don’t pop new parts off your laptop or your business. Both have a tendency to be very temperamental.
This past week there has been quite the stir in our neighborhood. Through the block we have some neighbors that have a beautiful yard. This yard is meticulously groomed and each fall planters full of Canna lily flowers make a magnificent showing. This yard truly is amazing and there is with out question significant effort that takes place to keep this yard a show piece. this being said, my gardening neighbors really lost sign of reality.
I do not know the specific dog(s) that promoted the infamous “Signs” to be posted, but this past week 3 professionally created signs appeared in the front of their yard. The signs read:
“KEEP DOG(S) OFF GRASS”
“THIS YARD IS NOT A TOILET FOR YOUR DOG(S)”
“KEEP DOG(S) OFF GRASS”
The following day in the neighbors yard directly across the street a poster board sign with lettering in magic marker placed in the gourd with a shovel appeared. Keep in mind that this neighbor does not own a dog. The sign reads:
“DOG’S CAN’T READ”
There are so many management metaphors associated with this little story I don’t even know where begin so in spirit of allowing you to simply have a really good belly laugh like I did, we will simply leave it with this. Next time you feel inclined to do something really absurd in your business, remember
“DOG’S CANT READ!
On the 28th of August a full lunar eclipse of the moon occurred. A lunar eclipse occurs whenever the moon passes through some part of the earth’s shadow. This can happen when the Sun, Moon, and Earth are closely aligned with the Earth in the middle. This particular eclipse only occurs once in seven years and was supposed to be highly visible in the Western United States.
I have several sons who are quite excited about astronomy and were interested in seeing this eclipse. Against my better judgment, I found myself waking all of my older sons up at 4:00 AM on a school night to experience a “Red Moon”. The moon did indeed turn red as well as my eyes the entire next day. My third son who was the strongest advocate of wanting to awake was moody the entire next day. But we survived the experience and in hind site I am thrilled we made the effort to awake and experience this rare occurrence.
The next day at the office, I told this story to several of our team members. I drew the parallel that in entrepreneurship there are also lunar eclipses that are rare and if you plan on seeing them and benefiting from them, you have to be willing to make extreme sacrifices. This often involves waking up at 4 o’clock in the morning more than once. I call these business opportunities “waves”. When you experience one, it is hard to forget. That is what makes entrepreneurship exciting and fun. And you know what? Very few individuals are willing to make the sacrifice to “get up at 4:00 AM” and go for the ride.
This weekend my wife and I had to make a quick day trip to a meeting which was several hours away. Before leaving I gathered my sons and gave them a series of chores to complete for the day. These included mowing and trimming the lawn, weeding part of the garden, hauling off some branches and most importantly picking the ripe peaches from our overflowing peach tree. I gave the kids very specific instructions to throw away all bad peaches that had fallen on the grounds as a first step. The second step was to then gather all the peaches from the ground that had fallen but still had good flesh. Then the final step was to pick the lush ripe remaining peaches placing them carefully in a cooler I had prepared. With these instructions given, off we raced to our meeting.
In my mind there is nothing better for breakfast than a fresh peach hand picked and drowned in milk and sugar. I salivated on this image the entire trip down and back.
Upon returning the first thing I did was go and inspect the peach picking job. I was delighted to see neat well organized boxes and coolers and a tree well picked. I congratulated my sons and went to pick a few of the nice ripe grade A picked peaches. I was shocked that they all were smashed on one side or another. Every one of them was bruised. Confused, I thought I had the wrong box but upon inspection discovered that all the peaches were less than desirable.
A bit chagrin I went to my oldest son John and asked what had happened. He then explained to me that they had indeed thrown the bad peaches away, gathered the usable peaches, and began to pick the tree. They realized how time consuming this picking project was going to be and were eager to get back to their friends, so he came up with the brilliant idea to shake the tree really hard, then simply go gather up the newly fallen fruit.
My first reaction was horror, but I could not help but laugh as I thought about it.
So it is in our businesses efforts. There has been more than one time that I have outlined a plan to my team but failed to communicate the desired end result and the necessity for thinking regarding the business processes outlined. It is easy enough to outline the tasks at hand for our teams, it is quite enough to get them bought into that end vision or desired result.
Upon reflection, maybe I should have prepared a fresh bowl of nice peaches for each of my sons and discussed the project over breakfast as they experience in a very personal manner what we were striving for.
