Work/life – Page 2 – Mixing Pods

My favorite ‘Mixing Pods’ Commercial

I mentioned in my last blog that I love commercials. Since the Superbowl takes place today and some of the most creative and inspiring commercials will be airing, I was thinking about my favorite ads through a Mixing Pods lens (insights from work, life, and being a dad).

For some background, I wanted to be an advertising executive in high school and in my early college days. This was the late 90’s, so not the depiction on Mad Men, but more like Mel Gibson’s character in the movie, What Women Want. My role would be the liaison between the client and a number of really creative people to come up with great pitches. I didn’t (and still don’t) have the power to hear women’s thoughts, but I thought I could combine my skills with the creativity in others (I was inspired by some very creative friends). The advertising industry was going through a major shift after being disrupted by the internet, and I found my way into management consulting.

Today, with DVRs to skip through the commercials, on-demand programming that forces a few ads on you, and targeted (sometimes creepy) advertising based on your search history; it feels like some of the fun is gone in trying to capture an audience. There is an art to it.

My Top Choice: The University of Phoenix: We Can Do IT. This was launched in May, 2017 during ‘The Voice’ and I thought it was powerful and amazing. In a one minute animated ad, it captures the strength of a working single mom investing in herself to find another career in IT (Information Technology), after her job was taken over by AI and automation. There are no spoken words, just the lyrics of the Cranberries’ song, “Dream”. The only written words are “We can do it!”, from the Rosie the Riveter poster, the Bachelor of Science in Information Technology Application on her laptop, and the words “We Rise” at the end. I thought this was amazing.

On a lighter side, there are a few other Mixing Pods commercials that have stuck with me over the years as funny and inspiring that I thought I would share below.

GEICO Insurance Hump Day. GEICO is doing their best of Superbowl commercials and this has to be one of the best. The funny thing is that I think I identify most with the camel :).
The Fed Ex Office Meeting. Showing the various personalities at the office and the manager calling them out. My favorite line out of this one is ‘like a lawn chair’, with regards to folding under pressure. I use that every once in a while.
Total Whole Grain Cereal Commercial This is truly random. I am definitely not in the demographic for this commercial, I don’t know why it stuck with me 12 years later, but I thought it was super effective.

Lastly, it’s not a commercial, more of a comedy short by Tripp & Tyler. But this is a great parody of office conference calls. It’s five minutes long, but for those of you that are on calls all day, it is well worth that time watching it.

Anyway, rather the begrudge the next commercial you see, maybe just sit back and be entertained. Someone is trying to write something that will connect with you.

“You ARE a process guy… right?”

This is one of my wife’s favorite lines and part of our friendly married couple banter.

For some background, I started with Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) in May of 2000. At the time, the consulting workforce was organized into 4 main groups. Strategy, Process, Technology, and Change. I was placed in the Process group. My wife Katie and I had just gotten engaged a month earlier.

My first project involved reengineering customer call center process flows for a major telecommunications company. It was the first time I got to use Visio to do flow charts. I loved working with people to capture their processes, getting them documented, and analyzing them to make them more efficient. I was enamoured by swimlanes, ensuring a process was designed effectively, and making sure that every shape was aligned, etc. I was really into it. Then I learned about Lean, green belts, black belts, etc. I didn’t even know this kind of job existed when I was in college.

So I would bring my work home, staying up late at night to put together the perfect process. Back then, I would try to describe my job to friends and family and they would give me a funny look. I resorted to referencing commercials for companies like Subway, and say I was a ‘process artist’ instead of a ‘sandwich artist’. Another go-to comparison were the BASF commercials, “we don’t make the products you use every day, we just make them better.” Blank stares. It turns out that apparently, not everyone likes to watch commercials as much as I do (That is a topic for another blog).

In the meantime, Katie took on the noble profession of teaching elementary school. But I quickly learned that her way of thinking was very process oriented and she applied it to everything she did. So now that she knew what I actually did at work, and that I thought I was pretty good at it, she would keep me on my toes.

Getting home schooled!

At the grocery store: Why did I need to go back to a section we had already been? She planned her route before we even walked in the door.
Meeting up downtown: Why don’t I take the bus in the morning and she’ll meet me there that evening? That way we will only have one car coming home.
Going upstairs for something: Why don’t I take those things that she staged at the bottom of the stairs while I’m at it? Ohh and put them away since they are already in my hands.
Driving: Why would I go to the gas station that requires a left turn, when there is one on the right side of the road? There really isn’t a need to be loyal when they sell the same thing at the same price.
Changing Diapers: Why would I not have a process in mind for changing the diaper before starting the changing process? Yes, it was possible to change a diaper without using 10+ wipes.
Toothpaste: Why would I squeeze the tube there, when her method yielded a clean and efficient way to get the toothpaste out? Ohh and since you are there, wipe out the sink, please.
You ARE a process guy… right?

So it turns out Katie is the true lean operator of the household. She was my Alexa, Siri, Watson, Waze, and Uber long before they were in our lives. I used to call her MapQuest, because even if she had only been somewhere once, it was like she dropped a pin and knew exactly how to get back.

It’s amazing to see the speed at which we are improving processes and unlocking efficiency in everything we do and touch these days. We live in exciting times, but sometimes it can feel a bit overwhelming. I just have to remember that it is all just processes, and I am a process guy… with a better process girl by my side.

“Your next blog: Is it over committing or under prioritizing?”

That was the text that I received from Jensen on Friday, November 16th. I had cancelled lunch plans with some of the guys that morning after waffling the day before. I sent a text indicating that I had over committed myself and had to take care of some things at the office.

Sure, Jensen was teasing me and most likely laughing when he wrote it. He knew how much it would bother me.

Getting the boys together is one of those things that gives me a ton of energy. We have a really good crew of lifelong friends and we spark creativity in each other, razz each other for stupid decisions, and do a lot of laughing. Finding the time to get together is getting harder and harder.
My work calendar was wide open when we made the plans and I have been trying to keep personal commitments as much as possible.

Did I over commit or under prioritize? This is one of the questions that I struggle with every day. Balancing activities with friends, family, and especially with the girls; while trying to exceed client expectations, grow an account, strengthen the firm, develop our team, and invest in my own self-development. My word for 2019 is commitment and it applies to all of the above… but has to be handled with care.

One of my challenge is that I’m the king of creating lists of things that I am going to do on a given day (like most of you reading this blog). I have them in categories and usually in the order of importance. However, I seldom apply any constraints to completing them. That means accounting for how long they are going to take or how much time I actually have in the day to get them done. Combine that with the fact that I really like to talk and engage with the girls, it usually results in some late nights.

Unfortunately, it seemes to be the immediate and tactical things that fall into the over committing category. All those things that old people try and tell young people to not take for granted, and say that they regret the most later in life, tend to fall in the under prioritizing category.

Three months later, the question of over committing and under prioritizing hit me in the face again. I actually told Katie that maybe I needed to skip the weekly Sunday night dinner with her family because I have some homework and a few big presentations due this week. I thought it through and after remembering the question, I refocused and shifted the way that I approached the day and made it to dinner.

So even though we didn’t end up having lunch that day in November, the insight and the lesson from one of my best friends made its mark, even if it was just a text.

What is your one word for 2019?

This is the sister blog (if that is a thing) to my Perficient Blog (What is the one word that will define success in 2019!) In that blog, I tied this concept to business strategy and operating model metrics. However, since Jensen makes fun of me for using business speak in the ‘friends pods’, I thought I would tailor this to be much more personal.

I have definitely been in a transitional phase over the past couple of years, making a significant move from being work-centered to family-centered. I think this phase was at its peak towards the end of 2016. Maggie was 2 years-old, and Addie was born that September. It’s not that I was I was a dead beat dad or husband, but I was still getting used to staying present and focused on the family throughout the evening. I used to put in a lot of time in the evenings making sure all of my client and firm deliverables were completed to my satisfaction. I was finding myself gasping at the end of the night when I looked at the clock and realized how tired I was. Things had changed.

Over that Thanksgiving, I read Angela Duckworth’s book Grit, the Power of Passion and Perseverance. She talks about how to build grit and the need for an “ultimate concern”, which is a supreme goal that is so meaningful to you that it provides structure and discipline to everything you do. She described a method for gaining focus by listing 25 goals, circling the top 5 and avoiding all others at all costs, while discovering themes. Her hierarchical approach of rolling up low level and mid level goals to the ultimate concern really resonated with me.

At the time, all of my goals and the ultimate concern at the top of my hierarchy ended up bringing out the word ‘engaged’. I covered my four goal categories in the blog a couple of days ago, Why having fun will be my top work goal in 2019! I could assess everything that I was doing in every aspect to my life in that moment to the word engaged. The best part is that I could quickly get back on track if I found myself not being present or missing an opportunity if necessary.

It started off being something to focus me on work/life balance and being engaged with the kids. But I also found that I was using it to assess if I was engaged with my work, team members, and clients.

I think this approach is way more productive than doing New Year’s resolutions. So I recommend taking some time to think about it. Lay out your goals and see what theme surfaces and the one word that sums it up. There is no right or wrong word, you just have to describe a meaningful word to you. A word that describes how you want to show up every day. Then do it! Everything else will fall into place.

This year, my word is ‘commitment’. I’ve signed up to do a lot and I have some ambitious goals. I’m going to need some serious commitment and discipline to maintain the right balance and get the results that I’m striving to achieve. I’ll need some help. It’s important to engage others in this so that they can be in your corner, help you stay focused, and keep you accountable (not to be confused with judging).

So what will your word be:

Creativity?
Kindness?
Focus?
Discipline?

You may have one for work, one for your family, or it can all be the same. But at the end of the day, it’s kind of like the “one thing” that Curly is referencing in the 1991 movie, City Slickers. It’s your one word.

Why ‘having fun’ will be my top work goal in 2019!

This time of year, I spend hours writing and honing my goals for the following year. You could say that I am super compulsive about it (it’s sort ridiculous). I refuse to call them New Year’s Resolutions since that sounds so temporary and everyone knows they always get broken. I try and elicit my friends and family into the ritual and in return, I get a lot of eye rolls. After 20 years, Katie will at least humor me know and she’ll have at least 3 things on the ready for when I bring it up. She makes sure that I know that she is done and doesn’t need any help editing them.

The good news is that this year, I will really be building on and executing a well rounded set of goals from last year across all the categories (yes, there are goal categories). Family, Work, Community, and Personal. I usually land at 3-5 goals in each area, but no more than 5 and they all have to be meaty and measurable.

I use trello to organize them on the computer and love the mobile app. You can do all sorts of stuff with the cards like move them around, label, color code, create checklists, due dates, etc. However, this year I’m also going to go back to a physical paper planner again. My friend Candace Mau and I been talking about the power of using pen and paper when you are getting creative and laying out your month, week, and day.

Anyway, the thing is that every year, I seem to put a goal to have fun in my list of work goals. Mainly to protect myself from myself and to put in a reminder in there to not take things so seriously. I’ve had some years where I was just wound up too tight, stressed about work, and and ended up in quite the funk (thank goodness for friends and family).

So this year, I think I’m leading with the goal to have fun, and will use it as a competitive advantage. I am definitely at my best when I am having fun with the people that I work with, bringing positive energy, and just being conscious of my mindset. I think the chances of getting the results that I am looking for across the other goals will be much higher and I’ll be more engaged (more on that in another blog). I’m hoping it helps keep things in perspective, enables me to stay grateful, and laugh a bit at myself.