My father John Roy Sanders was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer in June of 2020 and succumbed to the disease 7 months later. 

Along with so many changes that came with 2020 our family has been navigating the pending and alarmingly immediate loss of a happy and kind patriarch.

In keeping with our V2 theme I would like to share a few lessons learned from my father as we leap into 2021 with the hope of Covid free world but the experience to know that more storms lurk.

John Sanders (Oil man by day, builder and family man by night) 

• Riverdale High School, North Dakota
• Iowa State Class of 1959 Electrical Engineer
• Chevron Corporation 1959-1995 
• Married to Carolyn Smith Sanders 1959-2020

A Sanders - "Can Do Anything" 

• Work the problem, and trust the process 
• If the pandemic has shown us anything it is that we need to be able to use the constraints of having things taken away from us as a way to develop our abilities and skills.
• Being ready to adapt and not have all the pieces of a puzzle is a mindset and I received weekly training for this in the backyard as we tackled whatever project that was next.
• It wasn't arrogance that a Sanders could do anything, it was a commitment to stay with a problem and where a process was known to stay with that process and see it through.
• CURIOSITY and PERSISTENCE were hand in glove 
• We imagine that for most of you 2020 provided countless situations where you applied these skills and are preparing for 2021 to not be as smooth as everyone seems to think it will be. 

School is a means to an end 

• Skills vs Habits 
• When struggling with a class in school my father would repeat the phrase, "School is a means to an end"
• It was lost on me what that meant for a long time but I got the point, he cared about more than my grades and a work ethic with a good attitude were at the top of the list.
• What he knew was that in life it didn't matter if you had skills in all areas but that you had the habits to build upon the areas that you had strengths.
• What we have noticed as well is that desire and drive are sometimes developed out of struggles and mistakes and lower grades than one hopes.
• Sir Ken Robinson's book "The Element" with the accompanying Ted Talk (70 Million Views and Counting) really nails what my dad was driving at.
• Observe where a person loses track of time, build around that a series of constraints to develop your abilities and then get your hands bloody in the pursuit and practice of improvement. 

Show up to work days and enjoy the work

• Piedmont Community Church had a work day in 1978 and as an 8 year old I tagged along with my dad and we were given the task of weeding a hillside and trimming some ivy.
• We were new to town having moved from Alaska the year prior but yard work was nothing new for us.
• The people we worked alongside became friends for all of us and the shared experience of giving back to our community was unique.
• Fast forward to 2020 my son Ryan has been helping me in the yard for years and was looking to earn some gas money now that he was 16.
• I told him to make a flier and knock on 30 doors in the surrounding area offering to mow lawns and do general yard work and he would be just fine.
• How will this work? He asked. 
• "Because you have been working next to me for years and we know how to work and when you take that same level of energy to their yard, word will spread".
• 8 months later he has a nice business going and his confidence is soaring.
• 2021 is going to ask all of us to pitch in to help the community again and again and most of the tools we will bring will be either John Sanders tools or the tools John Sanders gave us. 

Looking forward we imagine that you are champing at the bit to get going in 2021, these first 105 days appear primed for great activity especially since the lock downs happened in Q1 last year. 

Our aim is to work our plans hard but to also have another Plan B and Plan C in the drawer for when the next curve ball comes our way and when it does we will be emulating John Roy Sanders often.

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This is the third email and second checkpoint in our 1/1/2022 Victim or Victor Series.

A quick disclosure on the title.

Early in the pandemic a friend mentioned the phrase "Victim or Victor" off hand in a conversation and it seemed appropriate, not in a dominance sort of way, but as a mental puzzle.

Kind of like we all get to choose our mindset in every situation and the hope is that you will see the good and work towards the victory.

That friend just lost his wine crop for the year in the recent fires and we are crushed for him.

2020 has been a year of so much loss and required so many people to work so hard to keep things going that it is humbling to even have the audacity to write and expect anyone to have the time to read our prose. 

We write to share what we are learning to encourage others and as a form of self therapy to look for the good amidst the clouds and for us in Northern California the seemingly endless smoke. 
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Thank you for your friendship and readership.
Drew & Sara
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Uncertainty reigns right now. (Don't forget to still Plan)

• The election, and the pending Covid case spikes appear to be in a tango with so many people's profits, jobs and lives. 
• It is also darn hard to celebrate while others are suffering.
• It can be equally hard to plan when many of the things you had planned for were wiped off the table.
• Yet plan we must and celebration which means (to assemble to honor) can take on special meaning in times like this.
• Here is a post we shared on CBA planning. 

Meaningful Shared Experiences are being created every week in 2020 (this bodes well for the future)

• SE=C=T=Joint Success has been a formula we have shared for years and memorialized for college graduates in 2016 in "The NextGen Almanac" 
• SE stands for shared experiences.
• C stands for a window into your character.
• T stands for Trust.
• The formula is perfect for young people who want to do well, but don't know where to start. 
• This is when we share with them the power of pitching in or giving back to a cause they care about.
• One of the natural byproducts of helping out is that you meet other people who have the same interests and your relationships build quickly in that environment. 
• 2020 has created a universal "give back" opportunity and we are building relational bonds for the future.
• Here is a quick how-to on community service.

Checking in with people in the next 45 days before the holiday rush might be a good idea.

• Listening and sharing go a long way towards building community.
• Pick your channel, email, text, phone they all work and when you ask, "how the heck did we get here?" we can only imagine the answers you will get.
• Here is our post on building out a network. 

In closing if you want to help out our friend who lost his crop you can sign up for their periodic offerings and wine sales here. 

Click for the NEXT post in the Series or the PREVIOUS post.

45 days ago we shared our vision that navigating your personal, family, and work lives in this pandemic period could benefit from having a NorthStar heading of 1/1/2022.

Where do you want to be on that day and what do you want your world to look like?

This is our first checkpoint follow up with a few things we have noticed, and some questions we have been asked.
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These are bulleted below for your ready reference.
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What we have noticed.

• The virus didn't pack up and leave this summer.
• We all have collectively failed the famous Stanford Psychology study "marshmallow test" on delayed gratification.
• Law makers and leaders don't have a playbook for the pandemic and realize that sharing that will increase the chances they are removed, so information is doled out slowly.
• Our phase 3 trial process in the US will mean we are slower to vaccinate our population relative to other countries (we value 1 life here more than other countries)
• Covid 20, 21 etc are anyone's guess and could extend this period to be the entire decade of the 2020's. (remember polio impacted the US from 1894 to 1955) 61 years!
• The noise around what is true will get louder and louder between now and the general election in early November, plan accordingly.
• There is massive opportunity for positive growth inside families, nonprofits and businesses during this period, and it begins with letting go of what worked in the past. (what works now?)
• Lamenting the changes and the perceived negative outcomes for different sub-groups like "children under the age of 5" can snowball and paralyze your team, 
• (touchstone phrases matter) The link has a few from General Jim Mattis whose recent book "Learning to Lead" is our book of the year so far. 

That is what we noticed, what about you?

Want more of our Victim or Victor Series?  Click HERE for the next post.

This is a series of articles from emails that we were sending out to clients and friends as the CV Crisis evolves. Hope it is helpful for others and also provides a historical context as we all reacted and learned about the seriousness of this virus.

June was another month of adapting and learning how to decipher the signal from the wall of noise that was building.

Now that we are past the midpoint of 2020 it seems natural to focus on where we should be by year's end, yet somehow it feels like we need to go further out.

My question for you to ponder is this:
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Where do you want to be 1/1/2022? 

• Think through this from a personal, familial, and work point of view.
• Break the 18 months into 3 sections and then further break it into 45 day periods.
• This will give you 12 gates to go through between now and 1/1/2022.

In your planning consider thinking through what you can control and what you can not.
Do your best to not waste energy or time on things you can't control, like whether we will have college sports on TV.

You can't control if online school means you have children at home, but you shouldn't be surprised by it, allocate time to having a plan to help your kids thrive.

It is very easy to envision the Covid Crisis costing the world billions and 2 years of disruption.

What is also easy to envision is that the victors will say this period was where they honed their vision and adapted to become their best self and team.

You won't hear much about these people on the news, the media will focus on the victims.
As a leader of yourself and others, the choice is yours, Victim, or Victor.

Let me know if you need any help setting up a 18 month plan, the first checkpoint is August 15th.

Onward,
Drew

p.s. Way back in March we wrote about "Endurance" and as we start our journey to 1/1/2022 it appears Admiral Jim Stockdale's words are more helpful than ever: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cv-crisis-chronicle-march-29-implementing-principles-drew-sanders/

Click HERE for the next post in our new series.​

Don't worry, we have not picked up a new bad habit, a recent trip to the library had me opening up a new book, and the combination of the adhesives and paper gave off a smell that made me smile.  If you can imagine that smell right now, then you might really enjoy this edition.

When it comes to reading, word of mouth seems important. We just don’t want to make a book purchase and end up with a dud. With that in mind we suggested for the past summer 12 book ideas for the 12 weeks of summer. We hope you find one of our selections interesting and that you find the time to read (or like many of us listen to the book).

We have divided up the recommendations into five categories: 

• You
• You with others
• Historical perspectives
• Futuristic perspectives
• Learning from the lives of others.
  

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Most of these books are not new but they all were worth the investment of time, money and enrichment a good book can bring.  CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR SELECTIONS

Billy Graham died on February 21st, and we were struck by the breadth of personalities that weighed in on the impact of his teachings. One particular quote stood out and we decided to email it to a few people under the heading of “everyone needs some encouragement."  It had to do with his response to a question he got at a conference later in his life. He was asked, “Who is the next Billy Graham?”

He replied. “You all are the next Billy Graham.”

We received a very high response rate in which people shared their own experiences and passed the encouragement back to us. We are hoping for a similar result in this newsletter. 

Encouragement came up around another topic that is timely and has to do with inspiring women and girls to lead. It is speculated that confidence can sometimes be missing from the minds of women and especially pre-teen girls. Encouragement from others appears to be a key ingredient. Katy Kay and Claire Shipman’s recent book called “The Confidence Code” outlines it in detail. We highly recommend either the adult or children’s version.  Of course as word geeks we like that in the midst of the EN and the MENT there is something we love…. A huge dollop of COURAGE.

Next read our post Trust Your Spider Sense!

Having a trusted friendship with some person years older or younger than you is a true gift. We often refer to these non-familial connections as mentors or mentees. The roots of the word go back to ancient Greece when Mentor who was a friend of Odysseus was entrusted with the education of Odysseus' son Telemachus.

Relationships that are strong have certain elements that help them build. Affinity, time, and shared experiences are all ingredients. One of the outcomes from a strong cross generational relationship is that it can allow the subtle gift of wisdom to present itself. When wisdom arrives, it means the mentor has built up enough trust with the younger party to share their best insights and perspective. Often times this can be life changing for the mentee.

Yet for all its benefits, great mentors are in short supply. Why is this? It may have something to do with the all-important shared experiences. The generations don’t always do things together, and thus it is...

​It was front page news in 1982 when IBM announced it was laying off employees, the security of lifetime employment with Big Blue was in doubt. The undertone to others was this meant that almost no private sector employee was safe.  From moments like that 35 years ago to today, the idea of a personal brand and its cultivation have been forming. You, the individual, have the ability to create what the brand marketers will define as a 'promise wrapped up in an experience' and LinkedIn has been building a platform for your brand since its founding in 2002. 

In the last five years LinkedIn has not only been a great place to store all your contacts, it is a great place to share your thoughts and perspectives. In a business world where almost all employment contracts are “at-will” (which means you are working week to week at the whim of your boss), it is increasingly important to have a place to share what you have to offer an industry or marketplace. 

There are several key actions to consider when it comes to publishing on LinkedIn. The first is to share what others have posted and add your comments. This is easy lifting and benefits the person who created the original content. The second is to....

Recent sociological research has started to notice that our ability to perform well in a role as an individual or as a member of a team can be traced back to three quotients. The first relates to your IQ and speaks to your ability to cognitively handle the tasks required. Knowing your strengths and then training to improve on them is vital. There are very few roles in today’s economy for people performing out of their strength. Be sure you can articulate your capabilities and the contribution you can make.  

Your performance will be enhanced when you show the ability to understand how your contributions can blend with others for your joint benefit. Central to this concept is acquiring empathetic traits and building your emotional quotient, EQ. The force multiplier of working well with others sky rockets when the team sees the goal through everyone’s eyes and then seeks to achieve for their mutual benefit. Yet being smart and caring, doesn't appear to be enough these days. It turns out that your ability to be resilient and adaptable in the face of change, both as an individual and as a teammate are game changers.

Click on the links for Ted talks from Amanda Lee Duckworth at Penn and Carol Dweck at Stanford, who are both actively researching how to add some grit to your life to help you improve your resiliency quotient, RQ. The next time you hear the phrase “Mind your P’s and Q’s” we hope you will not only remember to say please and thank you, but you will also think about combining your wit, your heart, and your gut to be the most complete contributor possible.

Try our post The RE Exercise For Self-Improvement next!

Do you have a team member that is killing your "Swing?"

The book “The Weekly Coaching Conversation” by Brian Souza touched on this very issue. Business schools such as Harvard have shown a real focus in the area of career development and the term “coach” is evolving within corporations. Souza recommends a regular check-in session with your direct report to asses not only their performance, but also review softer metrics as well. We would like to add to this article with some of our own findings and offer a few tools for you to use with your team. 

Whether your check-in meeting is quarterly, monthly, or weekly, having a template to work with as you are getting started can be a big in facilitating dialog. It will also allow the direct report to be speaking more than the boss, which is of particular importance if the boss is an extrovert and the direct report is not.  

Our experiences have shown that a regular check-in on areas such as your team members Soul, Fuel, Work, Fun, and Community Service will quickly identify the area that is distracting them. A simple listening exercise along with a specific question on what steps they will take to remedy the concern can go a long way. We have been amazed at how well these templates work when it comes to getting what is in a person’s head out in the open, proving once again that “your head is a horrible place for a discussion”.  Here is  one of our templates from our book The Next Gen Almanac.  Let us know how it goes.

​You might like next our post "Does Competition Fuel You or Drain You?"

As spring turns to summer most sports offer us a “Major” championship to follow. Media channels abound and the actors in these live dramas have massive exposure. The narrative of live competition is a draw to a huge percentage of our population and if you follow a sport like Golf or Tennis you can even go out and attempt to transfer some of the magic into your own game.
 
Yet most of us “compete” within a social context, few of us really play a sport for a living with people we don’t know, and once you have a social context much of the game gets tilted on a new axis. This new axis is very familiar to most as it is similar to our work life where your performance is all relative to the structure of your enterprise. (Don’t show up your boss etc.)
 
Add to this interesting fabric the dynamic of youth sports and it is hard to get a consistent definition of the word “competition”.  However, because we study the performance of self.......