CAT | personal
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Losing Weight has everything to do with business…what???
No comments · Posted by bjvan75 in Business, personal
As most people do around the start of the year, I made the typical New Year’s Resolutions…be better at something, stop doing something else, be nicer to someone, etc. I also made the typical, “I’m going to lose weight and exercise more” resolution. Well, I’ve kept that one, and to date I’m 25 lbs lighter than I was on Jan 1. Not a huge change, but enough that my pants don’t fit for the right reasons.
While there are many different diet & exercise plans out there, many fairly extreme, mine was fairly simple. I needed to eat less, eat more balanced, and get more physical activity…the basics. I charted my day, kept track of what I ate, measured the calories (there are great, easy to use tools for this, and they’re free), and tried to get an additional 30 to 45 minutes of physical activity a day.
I wasn’t always consistent, and I definitely had my off days, but I began to get in a rhythm of what to eat and when, and how and where my exercise was going to happen. I could begin to tell what type of a day I was having. I began to understand more fully what foods worked for me and in what portions. My body began to adjust, and my attitudes and activities changed ever so slightly.
So here I am, 25 lbs lighter than I was at the start of the year. As should be expected, my weight didn’t just continue to drop, rather it was a bit more like a roller coaster. However, the overall trend line moved down.
So what does this have to do with business? I’ve read a number of business and learning books over my career. I’ve read about smart business practices, case studies, top companies and their executives, how to “do anything in 30 hours,” and so on. Many of these books can be a help to some and a hinderance to others. I have known individuals during my career who freeze up because of information overload. They cannot make a decision for fear of making the wrong one. They have forgotten the basics of their business and ultimately their success.
You can be successful in business keeping to the basics. One shouldn’t have the expectation that they will sit in their office and have ground breaking, world changing idea after idea. Those moments may come, but making the small course corrections is what keeps things rolling. The details may change from industry to industry, or job to job, however one thing that should be constant is giving an honest effort. I’ve managed thousands of people in my career, and I’ll take a less educated, less experienced person who will give me an honest day’s effort over a more educated and more experienced individual any day. Skills and knowledge can be taught & learned, however true, honest effort comes from a desire to work…to build something. That level of effort comes with integrity. They know when they are giving their best, and they don’t compare their effort to that of others.
The other constant is learning your business. I recently read the autobiography of Larry H. Miller, titled Driven. It’s a very interesting book detailing his work in the auto industry, ownership of the Utah Jazz, and his personal life. Early in his career in the parts side of the auto industry, he was determined to know everything about the parts he sold. He wanted to know how they fit on the car, why one part worked better than another, what the right combination of parts were to fix a problem, where everything was in the store, and how the business was run. He worked tirelessly to know the business.
In order to be great, we have to take one step at a time. We need to know our business, all the little intricacies, and how all the pieces fit together. When we get too comfortable with where we are, we lose sight of where we are trying to go. People, process, technology all pass us by. When we finally do look up we realize that much of what we do is obsolete.
Back to my weight loss for a moment. I had lost that 25 lbs by the end of May. Here we are almost at the end of June and I haven’t lost anymore. As I reflect on the past month I’ve become lazy again. I haven’t been careful with what I eat, and I haven’t been getting my increased physical activity. Thus, I’m stuck. Luckily I haven’t gained it back, but I’m not losing more…and I still have 50 lbs to lose.
A career is the same way. I have found at times in my career where I’m not giving my best effort and have stopped learning about my business. I do the same things every day, and usually fall into the misnomer that I can manage with email and from behind my desk. Usually, some measure of job dissatisfaction creeps in at this time, and I start thinking about the grass on the other side of the fence. However, once I “wake up” and start putting in my honest effort, and trying to see what I can improve, build, who I can develop, etc., the satisfaction returns. I begin to truly contribute to the success of my company, and I typically begin to have one or two of those great ideas to try and implement.
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I’ve often made statements in this blog, to friends and family, or to co-workers along the lines of “I’m going to learn how to X…”. The problem is that I can look back on those statements, and with a bit of shame, realize that not many of them have been realized. This isn’t to say I’m a lazy person, but rather that I think I sometimes think I’m going to bite off more than I can chew.
One of my problems, I’ve come to realize, is that the more experience I get under my belt the quicker I want things to come. Let me give you the perfect example. I’ve long wanted to learn how to code. I’m not interested in changing careers or spending time coding into the wee hours of the morning. However, I’m responsible for managing technology and all the people & process that comes with that. Earlier in my career I was “closer” to the day to day coding. I would occasionally write my own queries to pull raw data, I would examine the code of a page to figure out what was going on. I used the knowledge to better converse with my developers and DBAs in determining the feasibility of solutions. As my career has advanced, I’ve had to deal with more administration functions, management work, etc., and therefore have lost some of my skillset regarding coding, understanding what is possible, and ultimately my ability to critically think about what my team tells me. Hence my desire to dive into coding.
I’ve spent/wasted a decent amount of time deciding what language to learn. Something that truly is a waste as I’ve learned (and probably already knew). I’ve downloaded, watched, and interacted with tutorials on iOS, Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails, and others. I briefly read about object oriented principles, agile development methods, and the development lifecycle. Basically, I’ve skimmed over the surface of coding and never actually taken the plunge. I spent the weekend doing a bit of a “self-assessment” trying to understand why I can’t just get this going. The answer that I get is…wait for it…I want it to be easier. Not really profound, but true. I’ve spent a lot of hours in the classroom and in the real world amassing, what I would call, a wealth of knowledge. In my day to day job, I am occasionally challenged and need to pull from my past experience to put together a solution. However, it is all within an area in which I am COMFORTABLE.
I think that descriptive word is the key. Things are comfortable. When I have to step outside that comfort zone and learn things I tend to let things slide. I think part of my brain says, “You should understand this better…don’t you manage people who do this?” I need to dive in and get started.
With that said, I am going to start learning how to program in PHP. Again, back to what I said before, I’m not looking to change careers and lock myself in a room with a screen. (Yes, I know that all coders don’t do that…but it is quite the stereotype isn’t it?) However, I need to stretch outside of my comfort zone, in fact I think it is more important that I am occasionally uncomfortable than that I learn PHP. I think all of us need to push outside of our comfort zones. It’s good to be uncomfortable every so often…it reminds us to grow and develop. Hopefully in a few months I’ll be able to report back that I’ve made some progress.
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I think I’ve started and stopped this process a few times, but I’m going to start teaching myself software development again. With the explosion in web based applications and more particularly mobile web I figured I need to sit down and play around with it. I’ve decided to start on the Apple platform with Cocoa, Objective-C, and iPhone development. I don’t have a real plan in place, other than to dive in and start figuring it out. Worst case, it gives me a greater appreciation of what I ask my developers to do every day.
Last week the family and I went on a “staycation”. You know, that thing where you take time off for a planned vacation, only to realize the stuff you wanted to do was way too expensive, so you compromised with your kids that you’d buy them lots of candy if we skipped Disneyland this time around, and we just stayed home. After the tears were finally dry, we then planned out what we wanted to do/see/hear/run from and did it. We had a good time, spent some time in the outdoors and saw parts of our home state that I’ve never seen. The kids loved it…the wife loved it…and I loved it…
This week, however, I went back to work. Like the next guy, there always is a bit of time to spin up the engines again, and get re-engaged in the day to day grind of work. However, this time was a bit different. I’ve spent the week thinking about what is different, why I feel different, and most importantly how to keep it. I think it boils down to perspective. You see, I’m what you (and definitely my wife) would call a work-a-holic. I’ve always got my iPhone with me, checking email, making calls, checking up on things. I have a very hard time detaching myself from work, and tend to run around with the complex that the world will probably end if I don’t make that call or send that email. However, this past week, I was forced to “unplug” as many of the places we went I couldn’t get a signal, and what I discovered was that the world kept on going. Yes, I know, it’s quite the novel concept. However, I think it was enough of a nudge to put things into a different perspective. I like it. I think I’ll try to keep it.
The most important things are my wife, my boys, my faith, my friends, and how I treat them all. Getting wrapped up in revenue, gross margin, efficiency, call volume, projections, EBITDA, etc. is important and a necessary part of life (unless you just happen to be independently wealthy). However, it shouldn’t come at the expense of those things most important. I should have the energy and desire to spend time with my loved ones and not allow any job to suck that out of me like a vampire. So I won’t. I’m still passionate about being successful, and affecting outcomes such that those around me are also successful. I love solving problems, and creating long-lasting, innovative solutions. But if that is going to interfere with a little league game, date night with my wife, chilling with my boys playing XBOX, or developing a stronger relationship with my God, then that price is too high and I won’t pay it.
Just thought I’d share…
