chances and choices

Something happened for my birthday this year that I never saw coming: The Canadian Tenors sang "Happy Birthday" to me. It was definitely a "top five" moment and the combination of their four voices focused on the celebration of my entry into this world was the sweetest sound I'd ever heard. It was like a dream. Surreal to say the least and something I'll continue to process for some time to come.

When I was driving back from their concert with my wife Tania and business partner Aly, it occurred to me that that night and everyone in it was the result of a single choice I made more than 22 years ago.

I was in the second year of design school taking a course on entrepreneurship in the MBA school. Hal Thompson came to the class at the request of our professor to give us some real world perspective. Hal was a gold medalist from both the engineering school and the business school he attended and as a young man had been exposed to a roller coaster of business experience. At the end of his lecture, he handed his business cards out to the 24 students in the class (23 MBA candidates and me) with the offer to spend an hour with whomever called him. I thought that if someone of his calibre was giving away free hours, it was a no-brainer. It turns out I was the only one who called.

When I started my first business–an industrial design consultancy–Hal was my mentor. Several years into that enterprise, I complained to Hal that I was lacking a sense of purpose and he introduced me to a company called Context Associated, which offered a series of personal growth courses.

In the second course in their series, I met and promptly fell in love with Tania. We've been married over 15 years.

After I completed all the courses I fell in in love with the personal growth business and bought the rights to market the courses in Calgary. That venture ultimately did not succeed but I met Aly in one of the courses and ended up hiring Phil from Context to be my coach.

I moved out of the seminar business and into the coaching business and Phil introduced me to one of his clients called Tom.

I did a good job coaching Tom and Tom introduced me to John. Their families vacationed in the same area every summer.

I did a good job coaching John and John introduced me to Dave. They were professional colleagues.

I did a good job for Dave and Dave introduced me to Richard. They were also professional colleagues.

I did a good job for Richard and Richard introduced me to Brett. They had done some deals together.

I did a good job for Brett and Brett introduced me to Jeffrey. Jeffrey manages the Canadian Tenors. The Tenors are becoming very successful and Jeffrey wanted Aly and I to coach them. Like any other kind of elite performers, the Tenors are facing the challenges typical of success and Aly and I started coaching them on the day I turned 46. Which is why they sung to me. That result was the last in a series of alternating chances and choices: things I had no control over mixed with things I had absolute control over.

Here is a video of our work with the Canadian Tenors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqiXSCHo34

I can only imagine where this thread of introductions and connections will go next.

So the moral of the story is this: if someone offers you an hour of their time take it. You could end up with a dream wife, a dream partner, dream clients and four guys singing to you like you were in a dream.

False positives and true negatives

Albert Einstein, while being primarily known for his keen fashion sense, hairstyle and oh, of course, that e=mc2 thing, would have been a great blogger had he been alive now.

He is the source of some very deep philosophy about life, as is the case for most great physicists, and his snappy quotes are some my favourites, up there with Emerson, Thoreau and Bush (the latest George W. one being something about "maybe I did make some mistakes".)

Einstein once said that you can either come from "fear or faith".

People make many decisions and do many things out of fear and many of those fears are not founded on reality.

I was once caught in an avalanche and nearly had the breath snatched out of me. This qualifies in my mind as a legitimate fear, linked directly and immediately to my actual death. The irony is that I was not really afraid, just calm, and this has been true for most of the life threatening experiences I've had in the mountains or behind the wheel.

Most of what I'm afraid of is vastly more abstract and fuzzy. I am afraid, in the low ebb sort of way, of amounting to nothing, of getting Alzheimer's and of being eaten by a shark, not all at once mind you, but if I do amount to nothing and get Alzheimer's, a shark attack might be a good way to end up with a swift death and a final write-up in a newspaper. I'm also certain that if I managed to get Steve Jobs' iPhone number, upon hearing he was shopping for a coach, I'd have a difficult time dialing the phone. And don't even get me started about the prospect of singing in public (secretly also my biggest rockstar fantasy.)

In the way I like to think about personal growth, people have four main fears: failure (and paradoxically success), rejection (which includes abandonment and all sorts of social shunning), criticism (humiliation, embarrassment, judgement) and loss (of money, health, life itself). It's a stunning to think about all the misery, value destroyed and opportunities lost to improve the human condition due simply to our natural tendency to avoid situations we think are painted with these fears.

I think the only viable alternative to fear is contribution, and here's where faith enters. Leaders show up when it's time for something to change. A leader sees something missing and thinks up an innovation to fill the gap and resolve the problem. There is so much working against a new innovation that it's remarkable that anything ever changes. In the face of these daunting obstacles to change, the leader must dig deep and find the sometime faint heart beat of the self-confidence, self-trust and self-security required to keep going on the sometimes cold and dark path to abetted future.

In the purity of my aspiration for a better future, I am not afraid. Such is the stuff of courage and the dance with danger.

huckers and stackers

When I was growing up, my mother always kept stacks of of stuff on the kitchen counters. She kept things on the logic that they might be useful one day and the carefully catalogued vertical pile was the organizational mechanism of choice.

Curiously, my first wife employed this same style of household storage with countless piles of stuff piled about the house. Ditto for wife now. There is no horizontal surface that does not feature items perched upon each other in groups of at least two.

I am not a stacker. I am a hucker. I would rather repurchase an item I have thrown out on the unlikley chance I'll need it again. Without the influence of a stacker in the house, my horizontal surfaces would be completely free of sequenced vertical organizational structures.

This leads me to the cruel irony that huckers and stackers tend to marry each other, and so each is forced to learn to reconcile their dipolarity.

The universe is not without a sense of humour.

I am, by the way, raising a daughter who is, not surprisingly, a stacker. She too will marry a hucker and will have the opportunities for personal growth that that offers.

an unusual definition of honesty

When my kids were growing up, we'd often talk about moral dilemmas and what each might do to resolve them. It was my way of talking about my values with my children.

I have a clear definition of stealing that applies to physical items, computer software, music downloaded on the internet and if I'm careful magazines. If I have not paid for something and I do not have the owner's or author's permission to consume the item, that's stealing.

Both my kids have no songs on their iPods that they did not pay for. Neither do I. I've paid for every piece of software on each computer I own. It's a respect I have for people who create things. I honour intellectual property.

I wrote a column at Alberta Venture Magazine for a few years back called "the business of life". As part of the arrangement, the magazine acquired full rights and ownership to the articles I wrote for them.

One day, at Chapters, I saw a copy of the magazine and went to my column and read the article.

My kids were with me and so I asked them if reading the article constituting shoplifting.

I'm not always careful in my definition of stealing as it applies to reading magazines in Chapter's, which is, strictly speaking, shoplifting.

But then I pointed out to the kids that I wrote the article. Then how could that be stealing? It's stealing, we concluded because I sold the rights to the article and thus it was now not mine. When I consumed a product without payment and without permission, I was, once again, strictly speaking, a thief.

It's an extreme example, but it's in the extreme examples that we discover who we are, really.

My definition of an honest man is one that knows when he's lying, cheating and stealing. Since we are all, in even some small way, liars, cheats and thieves, it's good not to fall down the slippery slope of justification. (If you question this logic, consider this: if you've ever driven over the speed limit, you are a cheater; if you've ever told someone they look good in an outfit that they didn't, you are a liar and if you've ever read a magazine in a Chapter's without paying for it, you are, like it or not, a thief.)

kryptonite

I've had numerous near death experiences as a climber and have fortunately graduated to the ranks of "old climber" from that of "bold climber". While I have no interest in repeating any of these experiences–some things are fun only the first time–I am very grateful for what I've learned about myself in the process of surviving them.

I recently had my fifteenth wedding anniversary with Tania. She was not a climber when we met, but she has become a superb climber over the years.

Just after our engagement and prior to our wedding in the spring of 1995, I took her on an alpine rock climb up Mount Edith, just outside of Banff. it was supposed to be easy and straightforward. it was not.

The route up the mountain and the way down were convoluted and complicated to say the least and we ended up off route on a part of the mountain that no one ever goes on purpose. As we were descending what appeared to be a viable way down, our rope got stuck and I abandoned it thinking we were just a short distance from the ground.

I continued to scramble down a gully, searching for a way down to the ground when I got to the top of an overhanging cliff 50 metres from safety. By this time it was 11PM and starting to get dark. We were caught between two overhanging cliffs. With no rope there was no way to go either up or down. I called up to Tania who I had anchored to the rock on a small cliff and said: "we're fucked". She started to cry. Here she was in her first season as a climber with her new fiancee stuck on a mountain that no one new we were climbing in an area that no one would think to look. Grave danger. Is there any other kind?

We had two headlamps, a powerbar, half a litre of water and a small amount of extra clothes. I gave her my pants and stuck my legs in our climbing pack and we settled in on our little ledge for the night. The ledge was just deep enough to sit in but only wide enough for three of our four ass cheeks. As the night turned cold, we tossed and turned quite restlessly. I kept waking up from what I thought were nightmares into the actual nightmare and as the night wore on I pieced together an escape.

I decided to leave the powerbar and water to the morning so that my brain and body would be functioning at its highest possible level. I was the more experience climber and when I saw Tania crying the night before, something clicked inside of me. I moved into a mode that I can only describe now as extremely "manly". Something primitive took hold and I needed to save the woman I loved.

The key to to rescuing ourselves was of course rescuing our rope. The night before when the rope got stuck, I reached up and cut as much of it as I could reach thinking that even a small amount would be useful to our scramble down. When I scrambled back up in the morning to the overhanging cliff where we had left the rope, it had shrunk back up the cliff face well above my reach (ropes stretch a lot when we slide down on them).

To retrieve the rope, I needed to climb about 3 body lengths of slick overhanging rock, several grades of difficulty above my climbing level. I then had to bat man my way up the rope another 30 metres to where it was stuck, the whole time hoping that the rope didn't suddenly get unstuck with me hanging on it (with the resulting fall to my death.)

Obviously, as I'm writing this, the story has a happy ending and it turned out to be the most seriously chivalrous romantic deed of life. It required a combination of emotional strength, physical skill and intellectual cunning I would not have guessed I was capable of. The thing that I have learned about myself from this and other extraordinary circumstances is that when the shit really hits the fan, so to speak, I'm the kind of guy you want around. I don't panic. I don't fall apart. I get calm and creative. I get the job done.

We all have strength that we maybe don't know we have because it's seldom called upon. But it is in all of us and we are all more capable than we realize.

And, we all have our Kryptonite–that person, circumstance or thing that zaps our personal power.

Mine is simple and it comes when someone challenges me on the price I charge as a professional coach or an invoice I have delivered and they are questioning the value. This is particularly true if I have been delivering or will be delivering the kind of heroic support that I do under very demanding situations.

It would be kind of like Tania saying to me after we got back to the car from our Mountain Edith adventure: "you think you saved my life? Whatever."

notes on selling coaching

1. Coaches in general make less money than other professionals.
2. A successful coaching practice is the result of both great coaching skill and great selling skill.
3. Many great coaches are not successful in business because they lack a sales attitude.
4. Great selling is both transactional and relational, requiring both masculine and feminine energy.
5. Selling is the coaching I do before I’m hired.
6. The objection that the prospect has to the coaching is the objection that the prospect has to their own personal and business growth.
7. The objection lies not in the prospect but in me the coach.
8. The objection that the prospect has to my coaching is the objection I have to selling.
9. Selling is an act of leadership. If I change my mind, my prospect is free to follow.
10. When I step up and take the lead, my prospect looks for reasons to buy.
11. When I step down and don’t lead, my prospect looks for reasons not to buy.

top five experiences

Last year, Tania and I and our friends Chad and Adele spent the day walking the beach in Malibu. At the end of a beautiful day of sun, surf and conversation with great friends, we started rooting around for a place to eat. We went to a wine store first to stock up on spirits (spiritual growth is very important to me) and I found a vintage bottle of Krug Grand Cru. This champagne is very expensive and is almost impossible to find in Canada, so it's a great treat on a special occasion. Due to the US recession it was on sale for 50% off. A no-brainer. We asked the vendor to recommend a restaurant and he told us to try "Nobu" across the street, but warned us that it can take two weeks to get a reservation. We troddled off across the street, Krug in-hand to negotiate a reservation. Perhaps it was the fact we are Canadian, or it was the champagne we asked them to chill for us, or it was Chad's Black Amex. I don't know. But they let us in for an hour later. (I think it was the Canadian Factor.)

We asked the waiter to simply "bring us your best best stuff". I like going to a restaurant this way. The staff bring their signature items and we never know what's coming. We ate wave after wave of the most interesting sushi creations, drinking the bottle which the wine vendor said would be a "spiritual experience" (it was), watching celebrities eat all around us, and then finished with a chocolate spring roll. We all agreed it was a top five restaurant experience. For me it was the top one. Hands down.

My favourite concert was watching the Barenaked Ladies do an a cappella version of their most complex song "one week". My favourite musical moment was having the Canadian Tenors sing happy birthday to me (surreal but nice.)

My favourite sports moment was when Canada won the hockey gold medal in this recent olympics.

My favourite relationship moment was the first six hours of my romance with Tania and more specifically the first time I looked her in the eye.

My favourite business moment was finding out a client had rescued his marriage from the brink of a nasty divorce.

Children being born. Travel. Professional achievements. These are the highlights of our lives, what makes life worth living and what the stretching and striving is all about. The list is a dynamic thing and cultivating the presence of mind to actively seek out these experiences is the logic behind a bucket list.

It's possible to have a top five list that changes every day, if not every week, month or year.

For help with your bucket list go to http://www.stepup.net/

ghosts in the machine

Yvon Chouinard–the founder of Patagonia and the very successful environmental designer, climber, fly fisherman and outdoor clothing entrepreneur–earned his MBA early in his business career. "MBA", in his case, stands for "management by absence". YC spends much of his time surfing, fishing, travelling and supporting environmental causes while a competent team takes care of business while he is away.

While he may not be physically present all that much, people ask themselves frequently: "what would YC do?" His spirit is very much present, and still felt, almost like a ghost. This will likely be true, perhaps literally so, long after his death.

Ghosts are everywhere and are sometimes a help and sometimes a hinderance.

Today I just played my worst round of golf in some time, taking no less than 17 penalty strokes, mostly for lost balls. I played a course I've played often but inconsistently and wildly. I have bad memories of most of the holes there–times I'd hook the ball into the water or slice it into the trees–and I repeated most of those errors today. The same was also true of a few holes I've always played well on; I played well on those today as well.

Bad memories of past failures often lead to anxiety and fear which undermines the confidence we need to perform any skill well, just as good memories support our rise in confidence. Breaking the pattern of "residual misery", by even accidentally reversing the usual action and result, gives us a chance to overwrite previous actions and results and start new patterns.

For help with shifting out of bad patterns into new good patterns go to http://www.stepup.net/.

the yin and yang of selling

The Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner stated that the most creative boys are sensitive (empathetic) and the most creative girls are aggressive (ambitious). What he was saying is that for a boy to reach his full potential he would need to integrate his feminine qualities and a girl would need to integrate her masculine. The path to fulfillment lies in the integrity of the male (yang) and female (yin) energies we all possess.

The problem with this of course is the resistance men have to their feminine side and women to their masculine. There are many severe social judgements that come from being either a sensitive man or an aggressive female.

In business, I see this challenge showing up mostly in the selling process.

The words "selling" and "sales" and "salesmen" conjure up all sorts of negative images and connotations for people who operate professional service practices.

Obviously there is no business without a "sale", because without a "sale" there is no "customer" with a "need" that I can "service" in exchange for a "check".

One of the biggest barriers to a successful business is the resistance of service provider has to being a sales person, operating a sales process and making sales.

Most of the resistance comes from the first generation of professional sales. This was a very masculine era, when salemen had a tendency to push products on prospects using whatever manipulations, "buyer psychology" and trickery they could muster. As generation one selling matured, the profession and discipline of sales emerged. This included sophisticated needs analysis, presentation skills, objection handling and closing. The good thing about first generation selling was that the salespeople were ambitious. The negative was that they were overly aggressive in their willingness to do anything to get the sale.

As the saying goes, people love to buy but hate to be sold.The second generation of selling grew up as a direct reaction to the overly aggressive and manipulative darkside of the first generation. This also marked the entrance of women into the sales force en masse. The concept of "relationship selling" emerged to reflect the introduction of empathetic skills into the process: asking questions, listening, paraphrasing, support. The idea was to build a relationship with a prospect first and the commerce would then flow naturally out of the rapport and trust and goodwill residing in the relationship. The professional sales person would "draw the prospect out" and the prospect would come to the conclusion to purchase all on their own, without any prodding or solicitation on the part of the sales person. During this phase, sales people created clever and often useless and meaningless euphemisms for "sales person", such as "client relationship manager" or "director of business development", as if prospective buyers would not see through the ruse. As the pendulum swung, relationship selling added some much needed sensitivity and compassion, but became overly passive as it left prospects to figure things out on their own, without the direct intervention of the sales person. Prospects don't always know what they need and they are not always the ones with the sophisticated knowledge about what their options are. Relationship builders saw ambition as inappropriate and morally bad and thus would not engage, even if it would have been really helpful.

Third generation selling integrates the best of the female and male approaches to selling. It is both empathetic and ambitious as it aligns the values and needs of both the seller and the buyer into a workable professional relationship. It unites good open-ended questions with technical needs analysis, listening and presenting, objection handling and gentle support in moving forward. A third generation sales person is a coach who helps a prospect come to understand what they need and want, see what's in the way and then develop the mindsets and mechanisms to overcome the obstacles. Third generation selling is a professional intervention in the life of another person. It's neither passive nor aggressive, but assertive and ethical. The professional sales coach has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the customer but is not afraid to take the lead in the relationship.

For more on the possibilities of integrating a coaching mindset and methodology into your sales process go to http://stepup.net/.

perfect enough

Stephen Covey was the first author I know to make the distinction between doing work which is urgent rather than doing work which is important.

The idea here is that many of us get caught up fighting short term fires, oiling the squeaky wheel or handling "apparent" emergencies at the expense of working on the activities that add real long-term value. Much of what appears in front of me as urgent "must-do-right-now-or-the-wheels-fall-off-the-wagon", proves out in the longer term not to have mattered at all, or at least to have mattered very little. Meanwhile, what truly matters, what is whispering rather than screaming for my attention, gets bumped to the back burner of low priority items.

Many really successful people discover this the painful way as they achieve material success at the expense of marriages, relationships with children, health and free time to spend on interesting hobbies and other intellectual pursuits outside of business–all the stuff that proves out to be the important stuff, but did not appear to be so at the time.

Dimension one then is a focus on the important rather than the merely urgent.

Another pursuit that is equally troubling is perfectionism. The drive towards perfection is a really the perversion of the drive towards excellence. Perfectionism is a very destructive force that operates under the mindset that "nothing is ever good enough" (or the more personal "I'm not good enough.") The mindset under the drive towards excellence is the idea that "things can always be made better". This mindset opens up possibilities of creativity and innovation without activating the law of diminishing returns brought on by perfectionism.

At some point in the process of improving something, we attain a place where it is good enough and sufficient to satisfy the requirements and expectations of our customers or other patrons. All the work we do past the point of sufficiency adds genuine value–it does make the thing better–but in a way that does not really matter as much to the people we serve. This is the point of diminishing returns when we would be better served investing all that energy, attention, creativity and other resources on improving other things that are not yet at that point of sufficiency.

Dimension two then is a focus on the sufficient rather than the perfect.

If we created a two by two matrix out of these two dimensions, I'd say that many of us are wasting our energy on trying to do urgent but unimportant tasks perfectly.

It seems to me that a better way to invest myself is working on important things to the point where they are sufficient to satisfy the requirements: to work on the things that really matter until they are "perfect enough".

For support on changing your mindset, go to http://stepup.net/.

what would steve do?

Many Christian people have key chains or pendants with the letters "WWJD" on them. This stands for "what would Jesus do?".

The essential choice any of us have in each moment is: "what decision creates the most value?". WWJD is one a way that Christians tap into that value question, by invoking the presence of greatness in the process of making decisions and determining direction, particularly in times of moral quandary or ambiguity or uncertainty. The question seems to tap into a very complex value structure in a very simple way.

There is a secular version of the question that is very useful. For the past few months I've been designing a coaching app that will see it's way onto my iPad and iPhone. I have a tendency to make things overly complicated and I really admire Apple for its approach to everything. When Apple first introduced laptops they created a blockbuster product. Then came the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad–all blockbusters. When Apple opened its retails stores they eventually became the most successful retail operation on the basis of dollars per square foot. It's rare for a company to have even one blockbuster. I admire how Apple approaches innovation and I admire the leadership of Steve Jobs, as they both seek the ultimate simplicity of form and function.

The question "what would Apple do?" captures a complex Gestalt of philosophies, mindsets, processes and methodologies in a simple way that provides immense guidance in times of moral quandary or ambiguity or uncertainty.

It's possible to design that question using the inspiration of any great person.

One of our clients is rebuilding his business and for direction he is looking at three people he greatly admires: Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet and Clint Eastwood. He his imagining what a business would be like if those three men went into partnership.

Next time I'm stuck, all I have to do is think about someone I greatly admire and ask what they would do in the same situation. The person could be someone I know or don't know, someone famous or not famous, someone real or fictional (from literature or film.) What follows is an inspiration to guide me to the next level.

For assistance when you are stuck, go to http://www.stepup.net/ for guidance.

the problem with plan B

The mountaineer and outdoor clothing millionaire Yvon Chouinard said: "if you bring bivy gear, you'll end up bivying". "Bivy" is short for "bivouac", which means to sleep out somewhat unexpectantly on the mountain. What he meant was, if you carry a lot of heavy camping gear on a climb you'll probably end up climbing so slowly that you'll have to spend the night on the way up.

Contingency planning seems on paper to be a good idea. It seems smart to ask the question, "what do we do if we don't succeed?" "What happens if we don't reach the target, achieve the goal or hit the mark?"

The problem with having a plan "b" in case "plan "a" doesn't work out, is that we often end up executing plan "b". We inadvertently, subtly and unconsciously let ourselves off the hook from fully striving, aspiring and stretching.

The book "Don't Think of an Elephant" points this out. If I ask you not to think of an ELEPHANT, you can't help but think of an ELEPHANT. We tend to go where we are looking and end up where we are thinking. Superbike racers know this fact well: on a tight turn, the bike goes where your eyes go; if you look at the ditch that's where you'll end up. The same goes for climbing. I've never found it helpful to look at the ground, as a reminder of the consequences of a lapse of focus or judgement.

Is it great to manage risk? Yes. Is it good to operate as if the contingency plan was the main plan? Probably not.

the answer is in the question

In design school, I came to appreciate that a well-defined problem is half-solved. Nothing so big as "how do we create world peace?" and nothing so trivial as "how do I cross the street?". Something in the middle is very constructive.

Great questions frame the entire problem-solving exercize. For example, in any professional service, the main problem for the service providers is that when we are not working, we are not making any money. Most service providers operate essentially a fee-for-service, billable hour set-up that has very little leverage and many barriers to scale.

Since I come from the industrial design world where we designed products that come off a production line–I've been interested in the service leverage problem. It's a design problem.

The problem ultimately is that a professional "practice" is missing several attributes that a high-leverage, scaleable "business" has. Michael Gerber made this distinction when he talked about "working in a business" versus "working on a business."
Creating leverage is the Holy Grail of the service world.

So the question: "how do I convert my coaching practice into a coaching business?" actually frames all of my business development activities as it forces me to see the opportunities for leverage and scale that I'm blind to as I practice my service. Now I'm working on building a team, a brand, programs on-line and a capital structure that makes it easy to bring partners on board. That's leverage. That's a business.

From a framing perspective, I like to think that I cannot really ask a question that at some level of conscious I don't have at least the start of an answer. If I can think of a question, I probably have the answer. Or my team does.

team building lessons from a school of fish

When I was courting my wife, she lived in Edmonton and was a keen Fringe fanatic. The Edmonton Fringe Festival happens for a few weeks every summer and draws all sorts of "unusual" performers and an equally "unusual" audience.

Tania had been attending the festival for many years and got to watch many different kinds of experimental theatre and performance art. She thought it wise to introduce me into this world slowly and picked what she thought was a relatively conservative stand-up comic for my first experience. No point in scaring off the new boyfriend.

As it turned out, dude was flat out weird.

As it turns out, dude was flat out weird, in a really magnificent way.

He started his show with the lights off, as he gave a diatribe about the tenuous boundary that exists between a performer and the audience. The boundary is the stage.

He brought one guy up on stage and predictably had some mildly embarrassing fun with him. Then he brought a second person up and started playing with both. Then a third, then a fourth and then, eventually, he had all of us on stage and he went into the "audience." This process reversed what I think we all considered to be the stage. Audience members were now performers. Kinda.

While we were up on stage–maybe 150 of us–our host taught us how to act like a fish. We all crouched as we walked, with a hand flipping behind us simulating our tails, and our cheeks sucked into our teeth with our lips making the familiar fish mouth.

We practiced this a fews times and then he led us outside. We walked down Whyte Avenue as a normal looking, albeit large group and every once in a while he'd yell fish! and we'd all assume the fish position. We packed into several bars and he yelled fish! We surrounded a few innocent pedestrians and did "fish." Then we went into the middle of the intersection of Whyte and Calgary Trail–one of the busiest intersections in the city–and did "fish", blocking the road for several lights both ways.

We closed by singing the theme to the Flinstones, which of course by that time seemed like the normal thing to do. Then he disbanded the group and we all went our separate ways.

In 60 minutes, our "stand-up comedian" led us through one of the most interesting group bonding processes I've ever been through. I felt truly sad when it ended.

not a wealth of stealth

Emerson said: "who you are speaks so loudly, I can't hear what you're saying."

When I was 18, for a reason I don't remember and can't explain now, I became a bow hunter.

Since I don't do anything half-way, I set out on my first hunting trip to the back country in full camouflage, with face paint and even a dash of skunk scent applied in the way most men would apply cologne.

After traipsing through the forest for several hours and seeing nothing in the way of game to shoot at, I came across a field of several hundred cows.

I snuck up to the field. When I reached the fence line, I got down and crawled on my stomach to avoid detection, attempting to bypass the bovines without disturbing them.

I crawled with my head down for about 100 yards and then looked up for the first time. I was shocked by what I saw.

All the cows were staring at me, in the way that only cows can stare, with their heads cocked to the side, standing totally motionless, without so much as a tail wag.

At that point, one of the cows, which I assume was the alpha cow, walked up to within five feet of where I was hiding in the grass and proclamed: "moo". Not one of those slow gutteral "mmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww" kind of moos but a moo that was just a single loud sharp syllable. And then the cow walked away, having taken care of herd business, leaving me humiliated in the grass.

I never bagged any game that day or really on any other day, for that matter. I couldn't even sneak up on a cow.

Sometimes when I face groups of people, I think I'm being all subtle, silently cloaking my true intentions, and I think that other people can't really see what I'm up to. But alas, I might just as well be transparent and come out with it because they can see through me anyway.

Go to http://stepup,net/ for more clues about how to present yourself in a compelling way.

ego–the good, bad and the ugly

Many authors in the self-help industry have been attacking the idea of ego, as if it were entirely a bad thing.

I disagree with this point of view. Ego has its place and nothing good would happen without it.

Ego is simply the place we store our self-concept and the concepts we store most deeply are the ones most firmly rooted in the presence of great emotion. Ego like any structure gives a useful short-hand of constructs, ideas and definitions on which to build. And like any structure they have an inertia that can stubbornly sabotage innovation and growth. Structure is not inherently bad as our lives are built on structure, but there are limitations.

For example, as a young kid, my dad would bring machines home for me to take apart. As I was disassembling the units, I'd study how they were put together and then reassemble them. I usually had parts leftover but that was part of the fun. This was they joy of my childhood and as I grew up, I became a professional designer. Not surprising at all if you knew me as a kid.

The idea of being a designer is a part of my self-concept and thus a part of my ego and most of the time it's quite constructive. So is the idea of excellence. As I've studied how things are made, I've developed an appreciation for the finer things in life.

This idea of excellence pervades all aspects of my personal and professional life, It affected my choice of spouse, my choice in clients (good news if you are one of them), drives the design of my coaching system and guides all of my purchasing decisions.

I recently returned to the sport of golf and reconnected with the negative part of my ego and excellence. I had not golfed since my late teens as I did not like the person I was becoming, but felt mature enough at 46 to have another go.

Naturally we bought the best equipment, sought out the best instruction and are playing the best and thus most challenging courses. I'm losing a lot of balls, which is expensive, because they are the best balls.

We played hideously in Lethbridge yesterday on a beautiful coulee course and then played again today. Lessons and practice are starting to kick in and I managed to birdie two holes in a row on the strength of my putting which was the first of my childhood golf skills to return.

At this point in the game, I was doing really well, on my way to the best score of my life when I realized that I was doing really well and on my way to the best score of my life.

Every time I addressed the ball from that point on an image of my final score flashed in my brain and I proceeded to double bogey the remaining holes. I would submit that this is a misuse of ego and the dark side of the otherwise virtuous drive towards excellence.

Ego is inherently neither a bad nor good thing, it just depends on how we use it. And sometimes, it get's ugly.

For help with translating negative ego into positive ego visit http://www.stepup.net/.

a new way to keep score

Jeff Pain, the two-time world champion and Olympic silver medalist in skeleton, said in his book, "Marriage and Medals", that whenever he pictured the finish line at any time during a run, he'd not do that well. That mental picture of "victory", while intuitively something that might seem helpful, only took him out of the present moment. He was then just off focus enough to make the subtle mistakes that account for the fractions of seconds that are the difference between actual victory and failure.

I've been relearning golf this year and have discovered a similar pattern. I start relaxed, hit a couple of great tee shots, some lucky approach shots, a few great pitches and putts, have a few fortunate bogies and an encouraging par and then start getting cocky. Then, while I'm setting my stance, taking my back swing and striking the ball, I start imagining a great score at the end of the game. I'm then not very relaxed, hit some duffs and skulls, start losing balls and then start getting frustrated for about 12 holes. I start relaxing again once I'm certain I'm not going to have a great score and then usually par the last hole. Weird.

It doesn't quite seem right to me to completely disregard the score–every game including business has a score–but I needed a different way to measure my my performance.

I invented a new way to think about golf and came up with a different way to keep score most of the time.

Now, I just keep track of the number of times I hit the green in regulation (landing on the green 2 shots less than the par of the hole) and the number of times I do two or less putts. In my last round I either two putted or landed in regulation on all but three holes and did both on one hole to get my par of the day. Most of the time I did not hit in regulation and two-putt on the same hole and I have no idea what my final score was, but I was way less stressed out and was in a much better headspace to master the shots I'm struggling with (everything other than my putter, driver and wedges).

Paying attention to an appropriate metric will, in time, lead me to an excellent final result.

This thinking applies to any game, especially business.

For help with devising an intelligent metrics contact us at http://www.stepup.net/.

Got to http://www.marriageandmedals.com/ for information on ordering Jeff's book.

clues to a calling

The concept of a "calling" originally referred to the pull a man felt to become a priest. In sacred terms, God was calling a man into service.

From a contemporary and secular perspective, the term refers more to the general sense of mission people feel to serve humanity in someway.

A calling implies that someone needs me, that I have a place in the world to express my talents and unique contribution. It's an opportunity to do what I'm here to do, what I was born to do.

So who's calling?

The answer to that question for me is a group of people that, for whatever reason, I'm best suited to support and most attracted to helping in someway. When I make my unique contribution to this group, I'm answering the call. I'm fulfilling my purpose. And I also create the most value for this group and thus make the most money doing it.

But who are these people?

First off, it's not something general like, "people who need help". That definition applies to everyone. My definition is specific without being narrow. Can you imagine if I asked a colleague for a referral saying: "can you introduce me to some people who need help?" The answer is everyone and thus no one.

If I was in the business of making outdoor clothing, for example, I might be tempted to elaborate by saying: "people who go outside." Again pretty general. All people who go outside need to stay warm and dry but that's when the generalities cease to be useful. There are several kinds of people who go outside in winter. Each is a completely different group that represents a subculture within society at large. Consider how the design of a winter jacket would change for oil rig workers, skiers, snowmobilers, snowboarders, dog mushers, mail carriers, cyclists or business executives. "Warm" and "dry" apply to all categories but the designs would be very different for each group. Each group has a way about it, a way of speaking, thinking and operating that is quite different from the other groups. It pays to be specific. It's also easier to get referrals and introductions to a group that is more specific. Do you know any skiers that I could meet? Probably. But there's still a tighter definition that makes it easier to spot my group.

My group, ideal client, target market–the people who are calling me–are all entrepreneurs. I've always been drawn to entrepreneurs. I was raised by entrepreneurs, live in an entrepreneurial city and did my Master's degree in design and entrepreneurship. And still, "entrepreneurs" is still too general. Do you know any entrepreneurs? Probably. But there are so many kinds of entrepreneurs that it actually makes it harder to visualize specific people. Can you imagine me buying a list of entrepreneurs? It would be huge. Where would I start to make calls?

Firstly, I prefer entrepreneurs who have successfully navigated start-up. There is nobility in helping an entrepreneur start a business and unfortunately I suck at it. The problems that come with success are numerous and intriguing and I've become an expert in them. I really like entrepreneurs who are in growth mode and need to build infrastructure to support that growth; I also like people who have built that structure and are facing the challenge of passing on the reigns to successors. I also prefer to work with smart people and people who want to help other people. This is why I tend to focus on the technical services.

So here's my basic profile: successful entrepreneurs operating a technical, service-based business in a growth mode. I also have some demographics to tighten it further but that's my group (I tend to work with companies between 20 and 200 people and the leaders of the groups tend to be baby boomers, who I relate best with). That definition is very focused and helps me to determine where my people are and how to get to them. I'm still free to work with someone who comes along that does not appear fit my profile, but, is nevertheless intriguing. It's just easier to find something specific that general, even though it might seem counter-intuitive. In time, I come to understand the needs of my group and how to best suit them.

If you fit that profile and I invited you to a party at my house, you'd meet a bunch of other smart and successful service-oriented people growing a business. Makes for a great party, don't you think? If you do, you are probably one of my people. Feel free to call. http://www.stepup.net/

the structure of goodwill

In "The E-Myth Revisted", Michael Gerber distinguished between the operational work that entrepreneurs do "in" the business and the development work they do "on" the business.

In a professional service organization, there is a big difference between say a dental "practice" and a dental "business". A practice is a group of people performing technical services and a business is something quite different. In a practice, when I'm not working, I'm not earning, In a business, I can earn without working.

Accountants define goodwill in a business as the difference between the book value of the assets of a business and its market value. Capital assets are worth either what someone else is willing to pay for them if the company liquidated or what the accounting and tax rules determine through an on-going process of depreciation.

The value of any practice is pretty much the capital value of the assets, without much goodwill. Most accounting, law, engineering, architecture, dental and medical practices don't have much value over and above the physical assets required to perform the service. The same is true of any service practice.

A business has value over and above its capital assets and the wages I draw from working in it. From this perspective, the higher the goodwill I build into my business, the greater the premium I earn, either as profits I take from the business when I'm not working in it or the price I fetch for it when I sell it.

It's possible to consciously create goodwill in a business. Business development creates goodwill not business operations. This is hard for masterful service practitioners to grasp. Simply doing good work creates very little goodwill. It might create high wages for me, but the reputation I have for doing good work does not necessarily benefit other people on my team and it likely does not benefit someone who buys the business from me.

Goodwill has four components: brand, product, system and culture.

The brand is the name of the business. In time, the name comes to symbolize the value shared by the owners, staff and customers or the business and the reputation the business has for doing great work. With a strong brand, customers are willing to pay higher prices and stay bonded to the business for longer. The brand is everything that the business presents to to it's people: logos, taglines, slogans, the design of uniforms, interior spaces, signage, the statements of mission, vision and values.

The product is the package of everything the business delivers to a customer to satisfy their needs in ways that are better and different than other competitors. It's not merely the provision of a technical service–like pulling teeth, designing a building, writing a financial plan–but a way to structure the process, experience, results and relationship with a customer as a robust program of activities to create the most value.

The system is the set of all procedures, mechanisms and technologies that a business relies on for getting the work done in an efficient and timely manner. The system supports a team to come together around common business goals and manages the transmission of business objectives through each member of the team. It includes all job descriptions, ways to communicate and make decisions and resolve conflicts and the rules that determine how everyone get's rewarded for the work they do inside the business.

The culture of a business is its spirit. Culture is how the business smells and tastes and feels. It's like an invisible mist that guides the growth of the enterprise towards a common vision. A strong culture leads each member of a team to go above and beyond the call of duty and make the kinds of contributions that increase profit margins and cashflow.

Without a business that has a structure for creating goodwill, an entrepreneur has at best a high paying job. The true economic value of a business comes when entrepreneurs build a brand, product, system and culture that creates higher buy-in, quality, efficiency and cashflow. A business with a goodwill structure either generates higher residual income or a higher sale price.

planting seeds

Recently my father, brother and I had a very enjoyable, very warm and very entertaining lunch together.

This is an interesting and apparently strange result considering that several years ago I had written off my father and decided not to pursue any further relationship with him. I don't remember the reason why I made that choice, but like many sons, I was very angry at my dad for something that I thought he did to wrong me. It was the same for my brother.

When I announced to my coach that I was "done with my dad", he said basically that he understoond and respected the decision and that I was free at some point in the future to change my mind if I felt like it. He DID NOT say: "attempting to write off a relationship with a parent won't work" or even more directly: "you're wrong". Even though I understand that point, I would have likely dug in my heels and entrenched my position, going into what can best be described as a stubborn and self-righteous "fuck you" mode. No chance of progress in that space.

My dad was left for adoption by very wealthy, aristocratic parents from England, after having been conceived by scandalous means out of wedlock. He was denied his family, his name and much of the fortune due any heir. As a result, the concept of "honour" is a very big concept in my family.

There is a costly downside to honour as a core value. As a family system, we are prone to making severe, self-righteous judgements about each other (and everyone in general). It's easy for any one of us to feel wronged and then make a big drama out of it. The Hanna men are easily entrenched. This is a common issue in many families and teams.

What worked about coach Phil's comment was that he did not activate the self-righteous side of my honour by making me wrong. He acknowledged my choice as one I'm entitled to make and then he simply left some space open for me to change my mind in the future. It took a few years of subtle watering and nurturing for the flower to bloom but it ultimately did bloom and much quicker than it would have had he taken the more adverserial approach of criticizing my position. I softened in time, as did my brother, as did my father. We now have a relationship as father and sons that I think we all wanted but at one time were too hurt and angry to create and nurture. That's the value of a coach.

For more on our relationship and team coaching service, go to http://www.stepup.net/

redefining success

I've heard Brett Wilson speak several times on the lesson he's learned in the process of becoming very successful by what most people would define as very successful.

Success and happiness are not the same thing. They seem quite compatible, but the processes for creating each are quite different.

The economic melt-down that we've all been going through as the "great recession" revealed the mass North American project of attempting to purchase happiness. This is the essence of unhappiness: people were doing work they hate for people they don't like and buying stuff they don't need with money they don't have to impress people who don't care.

Happiness seems to reside in good health, good relationships, a portfolio of cool things to do with my time and the good work that I might do to contribute to the quality of life for other people. I think Brett would agree. It's not money and it's not the stuff that money can buy. Those are fine as an accompaniment to a happy life and they are not what happiness is made of.

For help with the pursuit of happiness and the redefinition of success go to Keith Hanna at http://www.stepup.net/.

near life experiences

As a climber and guy that drives a lot, I've been through numerous life threatening situations. I have survived all them, obviously, and learned something vital about myself in the process. I am grateful for all the times I came close to perishing and while they were all fun the first time, I do not need to repeat any of them.

The value of a near death experience for me is that it forces a rather large amount of perspective into my mind all at once. It's easy to lose perspective and let the daily stresses and struggles dominate my experience. When I contemplate the loss of my life, I reconnect with the value of my life.

The pursuit of near death experiences as a way to recharge the zest in one's life hardly seems sustainable. For the last few months, I've been working on reconnecting to the value of my life in a subtler and ultimately safer way.

During my day, I've begun to pay attention to the moments of well-being I feel, how fleeting they may be, and even the rarer times where I feel bliss.

For example, one week I was late for a meeting so Tania dropped me off downtown and took the car, instead of me dropping her off and using the car to get to and from my appoints all day. So I walked everywhere. Some of the segments between my meetings that day were quite far, but I frequently had those positive feelings.

As I've been logging these moments and searching for the patterns within, I'm piecing together a new concept for how I want to live my life going forward. The quieter voices, that sometimes get drowned out in the noise of a busy life, are sometimes the ones with the most to say.

lag time

My wife Tania and I began golf lessons this spring and had our second one this past Saturday. I had been taught how to play at the age of seven and despite a twenty year break from the sport discovered I had pretty good body memory. This is the first training Tania has had but she learned how to figure skate starting at age three and completed that whole program over fifteen years. She is thus very athletic and has had the experience of mastering a sport from the ground up.

Our golf pro Cam has been teaching us drills. Golf has been coming back for me pretty quickly and I've gotten bored with them. But Tania is very disciplined and just does the drills.

For Tania, the ball is not yet going straight and up, but all over the place. Even so, Cam is very pleased with how she is mastering each component of the golf swing and stance. So even though the results are not there yet, she is in the process of mastering this very complex sport.

There is a lag between practicing something and the results showing up. It is possible and likely to be doing very well at something and assuming that I'm not doing well just because the results have not shown up yet. We all have to be prepared to have patience, discipline and joy during the lag.

from me to we

For the past six months, I've been the chairman of a committee of extremely competent and committed coaches in charge of producing an award ceremony for the local chapter of the International Coaching Federation.

Last week, we awarded two Prism Awards to two very deserving organizations in Calgary, in front of an audience of 350 people. Brett Wilson delivered a powerful keynote address and Beverley Mahood and Kunny Munshaw inspired us all with the great music they've written and performed. By pretty much any account, the event was a great success and went a long way to build profile for professional coaching in Calgary. For me it was the best team experience I've had.

The event was the brainchild of last year's board, under the direction of then president Gord Aker. Gord and the board decided it was time to do something big. I think as coaches and as an organization of coaches, we sell our selves short and get caught thinking small about the contribution we have to make to society, organizations, team and individuals. It's a relatively new profession and we have not yet established our profile in the world.

Last year's board asked me if I could speak to Brett Wilson to see if he would be the keynote presenter (I'm his coach). Brett is a well-known entrepreneur and philanthropist in Calgary and has made a name for himself as one of the Dragon's on CBC's "Dragons Den". Such a high-profile consumer of coaching would no doubt help us build profile. As an association we were starting to think big.

I decided to volunteer on the committee that was producing the event, since Brett was my client. Then the chairman of that committee moved to Edmonton, so I thought I might as well volunteer to be chairman. Then the new board for 2010 needed a vice president and apparently the vice-president's job is to produce the Prism event, so I was volunteered for that role as well.

At first I was the only person on the committee so I articulated a vision for the event, coaching in general and the chapter specifically, along with a plan to execute the awards ceremony. Most of the directors signed on to the committee, realizing how vital the event was. Then a very cool group creativity kicked in and took over. It seemed that once there was a document that expressed the feeling and intentions of the team, the team took off and action followed.

I learned a lot about being a leader during this process and a lot about being on a team as I watched my colleagues take the lead. I was certainly not everyone's boss since we are all volunteers and yet everyone stepped up in ways that were certainly beyond my imagination. Nor did I make up a vision for me and try to sell it to the team. I think the team, myself included, had this feeling of size, burbling up for many years that wanted out. It's also very clear to me that I am and we are a part of creative process that neither started nor will end with me and us. I simply had the good fortune to come along at just the right time and put words to a very important feeling we all seemed to share. It seemed like my primary responsibility was to maintain a strong belief in the project, the team and each person on the team, making sure that the contributions of each team member meshed with the contributions of the other team members.

And, we pulled it off.

holding the space

I was once given the task to assist a Canadian company and an American company it bought to merge. The senior people met in Kananaskis for two days to consider the strategy they would follow to move the joint entity forward.

For most of the first day, there was an atmosphere of acrimony in the room as twelve different people from two different camps considered what was truly most important.

In the afternoon I started a conversation about core values. It's difficult to build a new entity without a conversation about what realy matters to the participants. Within a short time the participants took over the conversation and came to clarity with very little direction from me.

At one point I was just off to the side saying nothing, marveling at how much progress they were making apparently without me. And yet the new level of harmony was a direct result of my presence in the room.

When it gets challenging, I think the job of the leader is to affirm the core philosophy of the group, even as they have forgotten it in the moment. I've always had the strong belief that despite our differences, as human beings we are all one. There is indeed a place of common ground in every group no matter how conflicted the group is. If my belief in the whole is greater than the conflict of the parts, I will amplify the version of that kind of thinking in each person and the group will find a way to resolve it's conflict.

One of the functions of a leader is to create an environment in which people have the invitation to grow. The word environment means "space around the mind." The philosophical dimension of a business might seem to some as flaky and woo woo, but it is the most powerful and practical force in a team. All value begins in the minds of creative people and only comes to fruition if they give it space to manifest.

tapping the system

Last year after 12 years of intense, full-time coaching of challenging, alpha-male entrepreneurs, I got myself burned out. The actual diagnosis was adrenal fatigue.

The adrenal system is the body's finely tuned stress management system and under repeated strain it eventually just gives out.

There are many lifestyle and dietary shifts to recover from burnout and it can take over a year to restore adrenal function. I cut out caffeine. transfats, most of the dairy I'm allergic to and much of the flour and sugar. I've shortened my work days and have added additional spa days. I've taken up golf, although, I'll see if this ultimately helps or hurts my stress level.

In addition to my physical lifestyle changes, in the past year I've had to look seriously at how I do my work.

My clients are very successful and very challenging. They have already looked under most of the rocks in their lives and businesses that might suggest clues to future growth and value creation. For me to be of value I have to operate within the cracks of what they they have not looked for and in the shadows of what they do not see.

I'll call the coach I was for the last thirteen years "Keith 1.0". I would say that one of the things that "Keith 1.0" did was take too much responsibility for solving the problems and finding solutions for the clients. This was natural since in my previous life I was a professional designer hired for my ability to solve problems and find solutions.

One of the ways that this behaviour shows up is in how much I choose to speak during a conversation with a client. Like many people, I do like the sound of my own voice and I've assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that if I'm not talking I'm not adding any value. This is the attitude that has left me burned out.

The new version of me is "Keith 2.0". This version remembers that people have the answers themselves. They are very intelligent, very creative and very capable and yet they are held back by what they do not see and do not know about themselves. My job is simply to help them shift their perspective and shine some light on some blindspots. Once they see what they don't see, their already considerable talents kick in and create a solution for themselves. This is vastly less taxing on my adrenals, but I've had to come to terms with the insecurity of appearing to not be "doing" much for my clients.

I used to be an archer. One of the things I remember about shooting a bow and arrow is this: a very small adjustment in aim makes for a very large variance once the arrow travels the distance to the target. And the longer the view, the more that very small errors in perspective and perception can accumulate to make for very large differences in results.

I don't have to do the work of pulling back the bow string. I just have to tap my clients on the shoulder, remind them of what they say is important and get them to make slight adjustments in aim and stance. The arrow then flies where it wants to fly.

brevity and clarity

I once asked my mentor Jay Conrad Levinson for feedback on something I had written. Jay, who has published over 10 million marketing books, became that successful by writing clearly about complex subjects.

His feedback on my writing was: "Keith, I prefer writing that is brief and clear. Yours is neither. Love Jay".

This was my favourite piece of feedback of all time.

the joy of repetition

Last night I saw a concert put on by Chris Botti and his ensemble. Prior to three days ago, I had not heard the man's name. I love all kinds of music and jazz is not necessarily at the top of my list. Nevertheless, I was blown away.

I played drums as a kid and one of the things that always struck me about drums is that people either can play or not. Lessons and practice develop the inherent talent, but not everyone has it in them to play. I have it in me to play.

The drummer in this group is Billy Kilson. I saw Billy do things with drums that I did not know was possible to do with drums. He is by far the best drummer I've ever seen or heard and I am a connoisseur of drummers.

At the end of the show, Chris spoke to a young musician in the audience who was learning to play the trumpet. His message to parents was this: the internet, playstation and guitar hero are not paths to greatness. Nurturing a child's capacity for "joyful repetition" is a path to greatness. It takes a long time to master anything and the only real way to stick with something is if I enjoy it.

The band is in its sixth straight year of doing 300 shows per year and yet every member of the group was full of joy.

Repetition usually means boredom for most people but this group was about as for away from bored as you can get.

It might be true that the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result", but it's also the definition of practice. True masters are those people who figure out how to enjoy practicing something.

the renaissance man: a celebration of intermediacy

This year I followed my mountain guide Patrick Delaney up some seriously hard frozen waterfalls. At 46, I do a lot less leading and a lot more following up ice routes these days. The risk and reward profile of the sport has changed for me at this point in my life. I still lead the moderate routes with my wife but leave the hard stuff for Patrick.

In some way this feels mediocre to me. I've had a struggle with this my whole life. A struggle with my ego that is. I feel the instinct for greatness, but the top climbers are always well above me, even though I've always been a pretty competent and confident climber. I'm just not an elite level climber. As a result I've always been close to, but outside the inner circle of the top climbers living in Canmore and Banff.

The same is true of every sport I do. I'm a pretty competent and confident mountain biker, golfer, skier, hiker and musher, but I'm not at the elite level in anything I do. I'm a solid intermediate in all of these sports.

The same seems also to be true of my professional and business skills. I'm the product of a rather varied apprenticeship. The clients I've been fortune to have in the past twenty-five years, along with my formal education, have given me a solid grounding in finance, production, entrepreneurship, research and development, marketing, human resources, health, fitness, philanthropy and relationships. I'm a decent writer and public speaker, I've learned to listen to people and I can resolve disputes. I'm not at the best in any of these disciplines. There is an elite level well above my head just like there is in climbing.

My references for my own personal greatness have in the past been the top people in each of these areas. I look at the level they operate at and sometimes feel deficient. I've judged whether I'm good enough based on the world-class in specific fields, which is just not an accurate way to evaluate someone who is, in effect, a generalist.

As a generalist, I'm reasonably competent and a confident in the bulk of personal and business growth disciplines. I'm not an expert in these areas, but I am a solid intermediate.

This leaves me with the question: if I have the instinct for greatness, what is my actual expertise? How does an intermediate person become great?

I think for me, the answer to that question is about perspective and alignment. With such a broad and but still reasonably deep background in all the major personal and business development disciplines, I provide a rare perspective that aligns the many forces acting on and through an entrepreneur.

I might not be an expert in finance, but I can support a growing business in breaking into a market niche to develop additional cashflow from the launch of a new service. I might not know as much about social media as the current marketing experts do but I have the capacity to help an entrepreneur realize that the problem he has with a teenager is the same issue he has delegating to his staff. I've helped venture capitalists and investment bankers lose weight and keep it off and many businesses make peace between their commercial ambitions and social responsibilities.

I have long associated intermediacy with mediocracy. This is a quirk of my own growth as human being. We all have the capacity for greatness in our own special way. Being good at a broad array of disciplines is, I guess, its own form of potential greatness.

the highest leverage investment in a business is...

Tania and I had our first lesson with a golf coach since taking up the sport as a new couples activity.

After my first two uncoached trips to the driving range, I woke up the next day with a very sore back.

Cam, our new golf coach, watched me swing the club a few times and instantly noticed that I was not letting my legs follow through with my upper body, meaning that as my upper body was trying to twist around to complete the swing, my lower body was not. This was putting tremendous strain on my lower back.

He gave me a cue to work on and my follow-through instantly improved with the result that my back was not sore the next day.

That lesson was $100 for the two of us. Considering what we spent on clubs, what we will spend this summer on green fees and what we regularly spend on chiropractors, our investment in a good golf coach seems like the highest leverage investment of all.

bridging the gap

During the first calendar quarter of 2010, I set my mind to shedding sixteen pounds. I was above my ideal athletic weight of 170 and had gotten to the upward limit of my comfort zone. For me this involved establishing two new habits: exercizing every work day and cutting the bulk of flour, sugar and starch out of my diet. After 13 weeks, I was down exactly 6.5 pounds, meaning that I had managed to create a 1750 calorie per week deficit from a combination of less intake and more output. This is a good sustainable pace, borne of real lifestyle changes, preventing a future yoyo in my weight.

Physical changes such as weight loss, cashflow improvement, debt repayment, employee morale are the results of technical processes. Weight loss is primarily a technical matter of working out more and eating less. As a species we've known that for a long time and yet most people remain overweight and some, disturbingly obese.

Last week I was driving and saw a very obese man walking awkwardly next to the road. He looked as though he was very laboured in his breathing and his gate was as painful to watch as I'm sure it was on his joints. At 350 plus pounds, this man was maybe 160 pounds over his ideal athletic weight and at least 100 pounds past a safe and reasonably comfortable weight. The aphorism "eat less and work out more" though technically an accurate solution would probably just start an acute depression, if it had not already.

The gap between my ideal weight and this other man's is an order of magnitude difference: 16 versus 160 pounds. At the rate I've been going, at a half pound per week, it would take this dude 320 weeks to lose his excess. While I need to keep my attention on my goal for just over 8 months, he would need to focus on his goal for over 6 years. I personally don't think I have that much resolve or attention span and it would easy to resign and just accept that nothing was ever going to change.

The eventual solution to our problems maybe technical, but the ultimate source of the solution is emotional and spiritual. Firstly, I'm not likely to change my technical approach until I feel different about myself. Whether it's weight reduction or debt reduction, it's tempting to think that I'll feel better about myself after I get rid of my extra bulk and debt, but I'm not likely to do do the technical work, in a sustained way until I feel better about myself.

My debt load and body mass reflect decisions I make. The size of the change determines the number of decisions that I need to make that are different than the ones I made to get me where I am. Six years to lose weight or pay-off debt can seem like a lifetime and in a way that's a clue. The ultimate solution is to make a permanent change in the way I live, rather than going on a physical or fiscal diet and then giving myself tacit permission to go back to my old ways once I've hit my target.

Real, lasting change does not happen without a strong spiritual connection to a compelling vision. It's not until I'm solidly in the process of changing my lifestyle that the physical results begin to show up. If I learn to enjoy the processes of physical and fiscal health for what they are, then it does not really matter how long it takes for the goal weight or the goal networth to occur.

The greater the gap between what I have now and what I say I want in the future, the greater the vision. The greater the vision, the greater the number of daily acts of faith to get there. Until I see myself differently and develop the strong belief in that vision, I'm likely to resign to the way things are.

seeing blindspots

Last weekend my wife Tania went to purchase golf clubs. We decided golf was going to be our new couple's activity this year. A four hour round of golf is good time spent together.

We decided to get fitted for clubs on the thought that if we were going to do something we were going to learn to do it well and do it with the best equipment.

It turns out that at five foot eleven, Tania needed a men's set with extra length. She had only ever played with rented ladies clubs and in effect had never played with clubs that fit her. Her swing was always hunched and cramped. With her new clubs she started hitting the ball much better, which makes the game that much more fun for me since she is likely to throw her clubs less often. (I'm married to a very passionate woman from Montreal.)

When it was my turn, the fitter gave me a driver to try. I teed up the ball, set up my stance with the ball precisely one third the way between my left and right foot and was about to hit when the guy said: "why are you putting the ball there?" I was not sure what he meant. I started playing golf at age seven and this was the way I always did it. He told me to put the ball in-line with my left heel, explaining that I was to hit the ball during the upswing of the club head. I tried it and the bulk of my drives were suddenly going straight and long down the centre.

This year marks a return to golf after having quit in my early twenties. I decided back then that I was not mature enough to play golf. The problem was this: I never made friends with my driver. My first shot almost always went bad. My second shot was almost always from a bad lie and the whole game got continually worse, interspersed with the occasional brilliant shot. Had I known that simple tip for changing my stance, my relationship with golf would have been much different as it has now become.

I've told this story to several of my coaching clients who golf, all of whom know where to stand during a drive. It seems I was the only person alive who did not know this obvious little piece of information. It was a blindspot that was easy for a coach to fix. Many blindspots in business and personal life are this inobvious to a client but this obvious to a well-trained coach.

the three phases of relationship

In the beginning of every new relationship is the "honeymoon" phase. Whether it's a new romantic partner, a new business, a new job, a new service offering, a new employee, a new friendship, the beginning of anything is all positive. All I see is the best attributes and I don't tend to see any negatives.

Once the initial shine is off the relationship, we enter the "power struggle" phase. It's during this phase that the fantasy evaporates and I come face to face with the dark side of the other person. In phase 1 I tended to see only the positives; in phase 2, I tend to see only the negatives.

The third phase is the "integration" phase. I appreciate the positives and have learned to embrace the negatives as they each support me to grow.

indirect contribution

Entrepreneurs who have managed to successfully start a business that generates consistent cashflow and convert it into a business that has value outside of their own effort understand the true nature of power.

During the start-up phase, entrepreneurs tend to focus on control and end up being crucial in every detail of the operation of the business. During the growth phase this no longer works as the amount of detail is overwhelming. At this point an entrepreneur either stays small or learns to how to use power constructively.

In this sense, the definition of power is to created intended results through others. During the growth phase, the entrepreneur learns to become redundant in the operations of the business as they invest more energy in the design and leadership of the business system.

During start-up the business becomes successful because of the direct contributions of the entrepreneur. During growth if the entrepreneur learns to enjoy the process of indirect contribution, the business moves from a cashflow generating enterprise to a wealth generating enterprise. The business is worth something without the effort of the owners.

the four functions of a great product

Late this March, my wife and I made a late season attempt to climb a frozen waterfall on Mt. Murchison. The avalanche hazard was a touch treacherous, as was the risk from ice falling from overhead. We found a safe way through the snow slabs at the base of the route and onto the ice but two pitches up a large chunk of ice came crashing down within about twenty feet of Tania. I pulled the plug and we left. Ever since my best friend was killed by rockfall while guiding in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, I've been understandable testy about hangfire overhead.

While making the long and sunny decent from Murchison, I started thinking about other activities Tania and I could do other than climbing. I've been climbing for 28 years and have successfully made the transition from "bold" climber to "old" climber. This day felt particularly intense given the hazards and so I stumbled on the unlikely activity of golf as an alternative. Welcome to middle age my son.

As middle age encroaches, it seems so does golf. It's a pedestrian activity, done in mild climates and the only risk for me is getting hit by a flying club from my hot-tempered wife. It's a challenging sport for sure and since we are already used to swinging ice axes, golf clubs would be a short jump.

We played a few times last year, but prior to that it was in our early twenties that each of us last played. I had given up golf back then because I lacked the maturity to simply enjoy the sport for what it is. I was very competitive back then and put a lot of pressure on my self to do well. Last year was genuinely fun and we enjoyed each other's company immensely.

One of the great things about heading back into the sport in our forties is we have dumped the delusion that we don't need lessons. So we are committing ourselves to going to golf camps and learning the game from the ground up. We are both naturally athletic and so it should be a great new game to play together.

Neither of us owns any equipment either, so we are heading to the golf store to remedy that problem. This is always an interesting part of the experience for me as a professionally trained product designer. I want the best tools to go with any endeavour I embark on.

The first function of golf clubs obviously is to hit the ball well. At this basic level, the product is a tool. It has a very specific mechanical function. The great thing about being a baby boomer is that manaufacturers have redesigned every category of sporting equipment to make our lives easier as we age. First it was shape skis and then it was the Big Bertha. Golf equipment today has become very advanced and has taken out much of the really hard learning required in the 70s when I started the game at age 7.

The second function of the product is aesthetic: the product as a piece of art. Maybe I'm weird here for a man, but given my design background, I want to use and experience things that are beautiful. How they look and feel is a very important part of the experience. The aesthetic dimension of any product or service is the spiritual component of its consumption. it can be architecture or industrial design of any scale. It's not just the clubs but the course and the clubhouse that form a part of the whole experience.

The third part of the product is symbolic. It matters to me what the company that makes the product stands for, what core values have informed the design and manufacturing process and the philosophies that have wound their way into the creation. I like Callaway because they have a tradition of innovation, just like most of the other companies I buy from (Apple, Patagonia, Black Diamond, Armani, Etro, Mercedes-Benz, BMW.) It's not about buying brands for the sake of buying brands; these particular brands have come to stand for something I like. I have an emotional connection to them.

The final part of the product is the artifact itself, as an object of physical construction: new advanced materials and manufacturing processes coming together to create something durable and well-made. At this level the object is an expression of the care and love of the people who make it.

This is what makes something the best of its category when the technical, emotional, spiritual and physical dimesnions come together into a well-integrated package.

purity of heart is to will one thing

The job of entrepreneurs is to lead change. We build high-performing companies that bring valuable innovations into the world. This job starts the moment an entrepreneur decides that the way something is, is not the way that he or she would like it to be. Innovation starts with the faint sense of opportunity and ends when the vision has reached full fruition and has created wealth for everyone involved.

How do we know when we've won this game or are even in the process of winning it? How do we measure success? Certainly there are many intangible definitions of success (which are really definitions of happiness) but these are internal and not that useful to marshall a team around a vision for something new. Business is a commercial enterprise and so the tangible measure of success will ultimately be economic.

The philosopher Sören Kierkegaard said: "purity of heart is to will one thing". To me this statement underscores the need to focus on a single external, tangible, measurable definition of success. Innovation is a challenging and risky enterprise. A single number focuses an entire team on applying its creative resources on cracking the problem.

From the entrepreneur's perspective, and this includes all owners of the business, the ultimate financial number is personal networth: a portfolio of financial assets that generate residual income outside of the efforts of the entrepreneur. This definition of financial independence is the ultimate entrepreneurial success. It does not mean the entrepreneur is happy by any means–that is a different issue altogether–it only means that the entrepreneur is successful in classic terms.

Networth is the ultimate lagging indicator of the financial success of an entrepreneur. It's the number leftover after every other business and personal deduction. It means that the entrepreneur has created a business that generates net earnings and that the entrepreneur has learned to live below this means, paying off personal debt and saving the leftover money to invest in income-generating assets outside the main business. A high, diversified networth is less useful as a team performance metric because it is personal to the entrepreneur and less relevant to the rest of the team who may not care if the owner gets rich off their efforts.

The bottom line in business is either net income (earnings after business taxes and all other expenses) or ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). The first is essentially the personal income of the owners which they either take as personal income or retain in the company to fuel growth. The second is essentially the net cashflow from business operations. Personal income and cashflow are also somewhat lagging indicators as they occur somewhat after the successful operation of the business.

Gross profit occurs after the effective and efficient production of the products and services (revenue minus the cost of good sold) but before the effective and efficient administration of the business (general and adminstrative costs). Thus a focus on net income/net profit forces good management of the entire business, while gross profit places more emphasis on the creation of the service itself. If the team has some influence on total operations, an earnings target may be effective; if they don't, then a gross profit or gross margin (gross profit expressed as a percentage of sales) target may form a better metric.

Further up the income statement is the top line (revenue/receipts and sales, depending on whether they've been collected or merely billed.) Focus on a top line team goal can result in cash in the door, but may not place any attention on the cash going out of the door and therefore whether there is any left at the end. There are several interesting ways to present a top-line metric. One is in absolute terms: total revenue for the company; or it can be revenue per store or revenue per employee or revenue per customer.

Participation volume is a number that appears off sheet but is more leading than revenue. Revenue is made up of two main numbers: the number of customers (participation) times the price each is paying. Revenue increase as either of those numbers increase but there is not necessarily a linear correlation between price and volume. Sometimes as price goes down, volume goes up and somewhere in there is an optimal amount of revenue relative to the cost of servicing the revenue.

Participation volume is a leading indicator but it is not at the front. Other metrics such as new sales leads, advertising impressions and outgoing cold-calls are further out but are also most relevant to the members of the team working on sales and marketing. The ultimate leading indicator is the number of new opportunities that the team identifies as possible future value propositions. Some of these opportunities trigger major research and development efforts to create new products, services and entirely new lines of business for new customers.

What separates the truly successful entrepreneurs from the less successful ones is leadership. Innovation is not a solo activity. It's teams of people who create the really magnificent contributions to humanity. Teams win together when they work together and what brings a team together is a common focal point: a shared goal.

Somewhere in the value creating chain from opportunity identification to networth building is the best way for a team to target its immediate (leading) and ultimate (lagging) definitions of success: The best metric for immediate individual success is the leading indicator that tends to focus a team member on making a great contribution and performing at his or her best. The best goal for the team is the lagging indicator that tends to focus each team member on working together. One number for the team and one number for the person creates focus. One leads into the other as the two numbers are separate only in timing.

emotional choice

I saw Melissa Hollingsworth give her first public speech after finishing fifth in the ladies skeleton at the winter Olympics in Vancouver. She was the first seeded racer heading into the first of the four heats. After a slightly shaky start she was within striking distance of the gold medal when she pushed out of the starting blocks on the final run. After doing her best ever start on that course she missed her mark by just a few centimetres heading into one turn and that manoeuver landed her in fifth place. One decision. One result. Done.

In the excellent book he wrote with his wife Aly (http://marriageandmedals.com/), Jeff Pain made what I think is a crucial distinction about goal setting, saying that he does not believe in setting goals, he believes in making decisions. Jeff was the silver medal winner in skeleton in Torino in 2006 and has won several world championships as a slider. I respect his opinion on this.

The likely goal, or at least dream of most Olympians would of course be to win a gold medal. However, most don’t. Most don’t ever see the podium. In working with his sport psychologist, Jeff learned that whenever he focused on the goal of winning at the start of or during the race, he became much less present in the moment and then did not do as well. The Olympics places an added stress on athletes and it can be that much harder to stay focused and in the zone.

A Gold medal victory is not a single decision but the summary of countless well-aligned decisions. First there’s the decision to enter competition in the first place. Then there’s the decision to get up every morning and train and the decisions about how to train and to finish training everyday. There are many decisions related to finances, to coach selection and the way equipment gets set up and tuned. The decisions of all of the members of the support chain make it more or less possible to win. In the course of competition itself there are many minute and subtle decisions that affect the final result as Melissa clearly stated and demonstrated. Then there are the decisions by the other competitors all of whom are vying for the same title. And only one person wins Gold in the end.

Competitors have direct conscious control over some decisions and unconscious control over others as they use their instinct and intuition to navigate the competitive landscape. They have some influence on another set of decisions and very little influence on others. And finally, there are a great many decisions they have absolutely no control or influence over, which could greatly affect the final result. This element of chance plays a larger factor in the final analysis than maybe we’d all like to think. A gold medal in anything is really the alignment of a great many small forces acting in unison. This makes a gold medal all the more precious and special.

A choice in this context is not simply the declaration of a goal. The statement: “I’d like to be in an Olympics and win a gold medal” is fantastic and fanciful for most of the people who might utter it. A select few really mean it when they say: “I’m going to the Olympics to win a gold medal”. The latter phrase is an emotional choice and even then, there are no guarantees.

An emotional choice is like the declaration of goal, but with the full force of deep emotion behind it. That kind of emotion only comes from the connection of a goal with a core value. Metaphorically speaking we all have a gold medal to win in something. If my gold medal goal and my core values are in alignment, then all of the myriad minor and major decisions along the way–by both me and my support team–are more likely to be consistent with that thrust.

There is still a large element of chance in every game. That’s what makes a game a game and what makes competition such a great part of the human aspiration to achieve. If the gold medal in my area is truly within striking distance and I’m fully aligned, I have the best chance of winning. In the heat of each moment, I’ll either find a way to do what it takes or I won’t.

In the end, what may well matter the most is simply being present in the game itself–being conscious of and enjoying the process of making and acting on all those decisions. The purpose of any game is, after all, to play it.

In the right

One of the things that deep down most of like is the experience of being right, in the right and in full contrast to being in the wrong.

But the classification of behaviour and thinking and decisions and statements as either being right or wrong is very limiting. As the saying goes: "do I want to be right or do I want to be happy?" It's a choice.

I'm not saying that classifying things as either right or wrong is wrong. That would be a disastrous irony. What I am saying is that it can be more useful to judge the merit of something by how well it's aligned with what I say I want.

This right/wrong duality seems most destructive in human relationships. For example: one person does something in a relationship and the other feels wronged in someway. So, naturally that person reacts by doing something to retaliate and the other person feels wronged, for which the most satisfying short-term response seems to be to lash back in return. This starts a vicious and potentially hugely destructive downward cycle.

Either person can end the destructive cycle. A way out of this is to ask the questions: "what serves my higher purpose here?" or "what is it that I have in common with the party with whom I'm in conflict?" or "Is what I'm about to do aligned with the vision I have for the relationship or am I just lashing out in defense of a perceived attack?"

Many of the stands we take reflect a fight for some principle. To "admit I'm wrong" is untenable. This is potentially a perversion of integrity–a weaker stance. True integrity means acting in accordance with my values, in a way that creates the most value for everyone involved. It does not take admitting that I'm wrong; it takes admitting what's most important to me and then acting accordingly.

playing to win and not to not lose

The third period of the Gold Medal hockey game was excruciating to watch. Canada got up by two goals by midway in the game and then seemed to change their strategy. In the first part of the game they took the game to their opponents and this resulted in the two goals. Then, as the weight of national pride and the whiff of victory began to waft through the arena, they began to protect the lead. This is of course human nature. The US got one goal and we all got more anxious. The last five minutes of the game consisted of the increasingly desperate American throwing wave upon wave of attacks at the Canadians who were getting increasingly desperate to knock the puck back out of their end. I saw it coming, as many people did, and with less than a minute to go the US tied the game. It seemed inevitable. It was only a matter of time and based on results they had the time to wear down the Canadians.

In the fourth period the defensive strategy of "trying not to lose" was done because there was no longer a lead to protect. The Canadians were forced back into "trying to win" and returned to taking their game to their opponents. With the strongest offense of Canada against the strongest defense of the US, a 4 on 4 was bound to come up in Canada's favour. It was just a matter of time.

"Playing not to lose" is much different than "playing to win" because it focuses attention on we don't want, which is bound to then happen. The two phrases seem semantically equivalent but they are not: one brings fear to the mind (losing) and the other brings the goal to mind (winning). One brings about panic and the other a conscious competence. It's the latter than is the winning approach.

results and the sum of all choices

I was recently in the office of one of my coaching clients who had just successfully paid of all of his debt. Every dollar. Nothing but assets left on his balance sheet. Weird. But was he ever happy and did it ever feel great to be in his presence that day.

I am not out of debt at the moment and it is my goal for sooner rather than later, but I did get a glimpse into what it might feel like to be debt free. I caught the buzz.

I then realized the difference between my client and me, at least in this area, is the history of financial choices we have both made. In the period leading up to the retirement of his debt, he made different choices than I would have made, and in fact did make. Thus his results are different than mine and results speak.

Just before the New Year, I had drifted enough from my ideal weight that I got to the point that I was ready to do something about it.

Now, 8 weeks later, I have shed 4 pounds–a nice half pound per week pace. One pound is 3500 calories and so the weight loss was due to a calorie deficit of about 250 calories per day.

In this case my results also reflect my choices, notably the choice to work out every day and the choice to cut the bulk of the flour, starch and sugar out of my diet, which are both becoming permanent habits and lifestyle changes. I make these choices dozens of times per day and am making ones that work relative to my weight loss goals.

The achievement of bigger goals requires larger strings of more constructive choices. It's the proportion of constructive and destructive choices that ultimately determines whether I reach my goals and how quickly I reach them. Like everyone else, there are areas where I'm making choices that support my goals and areas where I'm not. I'm learning to make different financial choices now, fueled by the increasing connection I'm making to being debt free. For better or worse, I am the sum of my choices.