As Jim Collins so eloquently put it in his game-changing book Good to Great, you’ve got to have the “right people on the bus” and then also “in the right seats.” His point: It’s important to asses the individuals who make up your team or group to make sure you’re leveraging strengths. For individual team members, I use what I call the Step Back 360 assessment to help them understand where they are on their…
This past summer, my family had the great opportunity to visit the Galapagos Islands, which are nearly six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador and the northwest corner of South America. The Galapagos are an archipelago of volcanic islands that sit on either side of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean. It is one of the most preserved and treasured parts of our world. We spent much of our time traveling throughout the islands…
It is all too common to walk into a room with any team and for them to be confused about where they actually are. They might be very excited to talk about where they’re going and what Point Z is going to look like, but they aren’t totally honest about where Point A is. When I ask them the state of their team or their company, I might get five or ten different descriptions on…
It was a long day in the Adirondack Mountains in upper New York State. There were eleven of us in our patrol, and we were on day five of a 10-day backpacking voyage. We paused for a quick break on the trail to rest our shoulders, grab some water, and look at the map. Our plan for the day was to reach the summit of Whiteface Mountain, one of the largest peaks in the Adirondacks….
A few years back, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting the headquarters of Southwest Airlines in Dallas, Texas. I was given a tour, and one statement appeared everywhere. I mean everywhere. “Count on me to OWN IT. We are all ambassadors of our culture.” We all have to be willing to own our roles in the memberships in our lives. We have to find time and space to filter out the distractions, take stock…
The wintry December air in Columbus, Ohio, caused small puffs of steam to billow with each breath. Amy and I had been married on December 1 and had just returned from our honeymoon to find our magical first Christmas tree. We drove around the city before finally steering into a church parking lot. It was a Saturday evening around five o’clock and many people were making their way into the church for an evening mass….
To a child born in the mid-Seventies, Evel Knievel was an icon. He was the first true daredevil and stunt performer to capture the attention and imagination of the America of my youth. In his career he attempted more than 75 rap-to-ramp jumps on motorcycles and entered The Guinness Book of World Records for “most bones broken in a lifetime” with a total of 433. To some, he was a real-life superhero. To most, he…
You know the conversation. We all do it. It goes something like this: “Hey Jason, how’s it going?” “Great, but really busy,” I reply. “How are you?” “Oh, me too. Super busy, but good.” Sound familiar? We honor busyness. Some would say that we glorify busyness. We think it validates us. It’s easy to hide behind. I’m not judging. I do it too. I’m working to rid the word from my vocabulary. The reality is…
When people crowd the airport baggage claim to form a human wall of entitlement, we could jump to the conclusion that greed is dictating that action. But I choose to believe we simply aren’t thinking about it. As happens in many areas of life, we are on autopilot. While writing Step Back From the Baggage Claim, where I spent seven straight days living in airports across America, I conducted an interesting Security Line Study. I…
We all have memberships. Formally, we belong to clubs, organizations, social networks, and more. More importantly, we also belong to our families, friends, communities, and our world. So? We need to break out of the staleness of the status quo. We need to make conscious choices to create the lives we live. We need an awakening of sorts. We need to remember why we do what we do, who we are trying to be, and…
