Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Are we helping?

Are we helping?

This is a question that is repeatedly coming up in my trek across America. Two blogs back I ranted about the "sweeper" role on our team, and the more I think about it the more I see it as handicapping other adults from taking responsibility for themselves. A second one that is driving me crazy is the expectation to "Chalk the Turns" for those following you in the peloton. I mean you have a Garmin, and an iPhone, and the route sheet hardcopy, why the hell am I supposed to be making chalk marks on the asphalt for you? You have better tools than I do to route your way to our destination. Put your big girl panties on and find your own damn way. Think of it as scouting (Girl Scouts Boy Scouts) and you have a number of compasses and they are all pointing you a certain direction if you would just take the time to USE them, instead of expecting me to stop my ride and make a chalk mark so that you don't have to look at your multiple tools.

So both sweeping and marking penalize the faster (i.e. harder working, sweating, more disciplined) riders, in order to "help" the slower riders. This is complete bullshit. We aren't helping them, we are keeping them helpless in their own minds. Apologies to those who think this is about bicycle groups moving slowly across the USA, the leadership principles here, apply to many of not most other fields of execution. IF this were a race, then these tactics could very well be helpful to the whole team. But since this is not a race, and everyone has permission to travel at their own chosen pace (within limits), then these tactics are not helps at all.

But just so that you don't think I am only pissing and moaning about the slower riders (who I am sorely tempted to call the "complaining" riders, because listening to them non-stop whining about how I did not mark the route with large enough markings, or that we were pushing them too hard as sweeps is getting really old) I am also plenty disappointed about another set of riders who want you to "pull" them along. When you get in a pace line of riders, proper etiquette is that one rider leads for generally about 3-5 minutes and then the next rider in the pace line takes the lead and the front rider goes to the back of the pace line, because being in front is alot more work than being in any other position in the pace line. In fact that is the entire point of sharing that load of leading, so that you can go farther faster and expend less energy as a group. So we have a set of riders who eagerly join my pace line every single day, but never take the lead off my hands. This is complete bullshit. (I actually "pulled" for 22 miles three days ago waiting for someone else to step up and take the lead a single time! Did. Not. Happen.)

I have stopped pulling these people period. I just either stand up on my pedals and outpace them so that they can't keep up or I just stop and take pictures until they are out of sight (although one time last week two of the morons stopped and waited while I took pictures rather than pull their own weight and keep on riding!!) These people are not leaders. They may be fast, they may be strong riders, but they are not leaders. Leaders don't wait for others to take responsibility. Leaders don't wait for others to pull their weight. Leaders lead, and that does not have to happen at the front of the peloton, it can happen wherever you find yourself in the line or process.

Monday, July 25, 2016

The biggest value

The biggest value

For far too often I thought the best value I provided was what I did. But I could not have been more mistaken. Don't get me wrong, doing a job well, with careful excellence has great value.  But not the most value at this stage of life. The biggest value comes in careful thinking, and you absolutely must be alone in order to do that. 

Alone time, thinking time is the single most underrated activity in all my clients worlds, and mine too. Fortunately for me, I actually really enjoy my alone time, actively seek it out, start to feel desperate if I don't get it in regular doses. But my more social peers can't get off the hamster cages of expectation and opportunity for social interaction long enough to get any real thinking done. 

The best work in my opinion involves super intense quiet times followed by robust interactions with the appropriate people. You need the quiet in order to have something significant to contribute at the point of interaction. I am super appalled at how many conversations in the real world are banal nonsense! I have to carefully choose not to help that wasteland continue. Contributing real value requires real work between my ears.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Sweeper? Tradeoffs?

Today I was asked to be sweeper for the team. I said "no thank you" which was really difficult, because most of the folks on this team believe volunteering to be sweeper occasionally to be a critical part of being on this team. Not. Going. To. Happen. Again. I did it already. Once. Can't waste that much time again (five extra hours) for such weak reasons. First of all I don't agree with the Fuller Center's insistence for sweepers. I mean who sweeps the sweepers? It is redundant nonsense. (Sweepers are the two people who stay behind the slowest members of the group to make sure everyone gets where they are suppose to go, and there are so many assumptions at play here I can't even start to explain) Who makes certain the sweepers arrive? How is that any different than the last person in the peloton doing that themselves and (horror of horrors) taking responsibility for themselves! Read the route sheet for pity sakes! Use a stinking GPS that is on every single phone if nothing else! Get a life people!

Moreover I need to write you. This is a far more productive activity than babysitting people who don't meet the minimal requirements for riding on a trip like this, (12 miles per hour is a minimal requirement and if you can't ride that fast, stay home or work out more but don't waste my life). I need to work with my clients around the world. They are changing the world and I want to be a part of that, not watch some pre-menopausal over-weight woman stay stuck in 1st gear for 91 miles. 

So I will strive to be more attentive, encouraging, helpful, hard working with the chore teams, first to volunteer for work that others don't want (which are practivcally helpful to the team), but I have to stay firm in my refusal to squander my life in pointless activities, even when those around me perceives them to be important. It's called a tradeoff.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Up and down these monsters

We have been crossing Colorado and Wyoming at a frantic pace this week. Frantic in a bicycle sense, not a car/motorcycle sense. The Rocky Mountains are serious climbs and descents, and I have a burnt all my available energies this week, making my way up and down these monsters. I think I could go to bed at 7 pm each day! Of course the schedule does not allow for that, and so I have to stay up late each night and get up early each morning.

Because of all that is going on in my life right now, the beautiful fatigue I have each day is perfect. It keeps me level and balanced and just tired enough that I don't join in every fight/conversation/discussion/argument I am invited to attend. However it has a downside, in that I don't have nearly enough bandwidth to emotionally navigate all the relationships in my life, especially the ones that surround me on this adult camping trip known as The Fuller Bicycle Adventure.  I am discovering that when in such a state, that I don't have nearly as much patience or tolerance or longsuffering as I normally experience in my life. I have less willingness to allow others to dominate, or win, or perhaps rather it's a super sensitivity to the finely-tuned abuses of leadership, or position or power. In other words, long story short, I am that curmudgeon that I always suspected that I was. No one is less surprised than I am.

The reality that I take away from this, is that much of what I do and say and my public persona is relatively shallow and skin deep. Those important characteristics and core virtues are not nearly as foundational nor deeply embedded as I would like them to be. I have a great deal of work and restructuring to do still . . . yet knowing these deficits is at least half the battle, and perhaps the most necessary starting point. Your can't change what you don't know for sure needs changing. You can't address that which you are not convinced needs improvement. So the exploding awareness that I still have quite a ways to grow, is a gigantic step in the right direction. This is the up and down of the real monster.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

The completely me me

Today we crossed into Colorado from Utah. Utah was spectacular. I had flown into Salt Lake City some 19-20 years ago, and I had driven into tiny snippets of the state before, but nothing like this slow four days in state on a bicycle - it was amazing. Let's hope Colorado offers as much along the route that has been selected for us. Spent the afternoon talking to my peeps and texting my niece and listening to folks struggles with life and death.

But my daily speed bumps concerning my brother's death 8 weeks ago are slowly growing smaller I think. These three plus weeks on this trip across the USA have been wonderfully brutal and therapeutic. The 1400 miles we have traveled so far have been so scenic there are almost no words to express how beautiful the trip has been so far. Yes yes yes I understand Nebraska and Iowa are coming, but flat cornfields have their own beauty I am hoping. If they don't, some other place in my near future will and I can wait.

The best part is that I don't have to BE anything for anyone on this trip. Sure I still have clients and I have affiliates and I do have to care for them, and I call my parents every single day, but the 25 people that I am crossing the country with on the FCBA tour, I have never met before and after the trip will likely never see again. There is a much needed freedom in this adult camping trip I find myself on right now, where everything is tight and significant, but temporary. There is a never experienced (for me at least) freedom to completely be whatever I need to be today kind of feel to this. I don't have to bring my best self to work, nor do I have to bring my business suit out, nor do I have to be the leadership guru, nor do I have to be "the missionary" or "the pastor", instead I just get to be me. The me of this moment. The completely me me of today. My only worry is that I might not want to go back to my other life.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Making the most of it!

Sitting in Heber City Utah, enjoying a fine beverage from the breweries in Maryland, a hamburger made from the cows I see in the pasture before me, snow still on the peaks even in mid July, and so many other things to appreciate about this moment, this beautiful Saturday. So much to be thankful for, so much to be blessed by, so much that I get to do. 

A number of people have questioned how I can get up at 4:45 am everyday and then bike 80-100 miles a day with our group? What they don't understand is that I GET to do this. It is no chore, it is no hardship, because I remind myself 49 times day that I get to do this. This one small window in my life where I don't have to work my normal schedule, where I don't have to keep my usual office hours, where I get to survey the Rocky Mountians slowly and completely each day at 15 miles per hour. It is awesome and I won't likely get another chance to do this. Making the most of it!

Saturday, July 02, 2016

No language is acceptable at the most frustrating dinner ever

One of the most frustrating and amazing phenomena in dealing with 20 somethings as I travel the world, is that every single phrase and word choice and adjective that I speak, they can find something objectionable about it. There are no possible solutions to this challenge on my side. Because no matter what language I choose to employ, one of them will find something wrong with it. Simple speech does not exist any longer. Straightforward conversation cannot happen any longer. Truth can't exist nor thrive in an environment where every word is loaded with assumptions and implications in the mind of the 20 something. Regardless of the topic, homosexuality, people of color, trafficking, orphans, churches (and all these terms I just used in this sentence are also objectionable in some fashion!) they are all loaded.

Don't get me wrong, I love 20 somethings. All three of my young adult children are 20 somethings. They are very special people. But in their conversations with me, they assume the best possible meaning of each statement, of each sentence, of each vulnerability. Whereas, the 20 somethings I just had dinner with, assume every possible slight, harm, evil intention, wrong morals, bad character, and worse possible position to each word that comes out of my mouth. There is no possible way to have a conversation in that context. While we are both speak a form of the English language, we have attached different meanings to each of the words that we are speaking, and thus, while we technically "understand" what the other person is saying, we completely lose and forsake the true and actual meaning of what was said, it feels like (and this is coming from a totally multi-lingual person) like I am speaking English and you are speaking Greek. There is not much communication taking place.

And once you feel this horrible communication doldrum, and experience the agony of failed shared meanings, you see that it happens in so many spheres of the world, business, politics and society in general. We use the same words in general, but attach completely different meanings and nuances to those words, and so the results are unpredictable, and are very much like hugging a cactus. #themostfrustratingdinnerever