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.
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I grew up in California and was on a swim team from the time I was 7. Trips to the coast were a delight and with them came lessons about the strength and power of the ocean. One element you felt almost instantly once you were past ankle depth was the undertow which was managed without much difficulty. However, the more dangerous element that still leads to ocean drownings every week is the rip current which is frequently call a riptide.

The key thing we learned was that you could use a burst of energy with an undertow to get yourself to be able to stand and recover, but you could never beat a rip head on.

Why the ocean swimming lesson 10 weeks into a pandemic and a correlating economic shut down?
We have noticed many people, including ourselves, trying to sprint to safety and our misdiagnosis of the situation could be costing us valuable energy in what appears is going to be a much longer swim back to shore.

The rip takes you out past the breaking waves, into the deep water. Once you know you are in a rip you orient yourself to the shore, swim sideways (they are typically no more that 100 yards wide) and then can start to re-orient yourself to swim diagonally or directly back to the wave line. You still have a ton of swimming to do, you will be very tired when you get back, but you actually can make progress and survive.

The one two punch of the pandemic and recession is a substantial rip. Each week we get more bad news from a wide range of industries. It can be confusing but it shows just how intertwined our supply chains are and how finely tuned they had become. It seems odd that pigs would be slaughtered, why not just let them get bigger? Why is a lettuce crop getting tilled up? But both of these are viewed as a crop and if you are going to lose money, then you stop losing money as quickly as you can.

Here are our findings after another active week working.

You Can't Punch the Pandemic in the Mouth

Don’t look for the heroic kick save that always works in the movies. Save your energy and reorient your position to live to fight another day and take the measures that will allow you to survive.

Plan from the bottom up.

A good first measure is to build out plans on how your family and your business survive a Pandemic Period. This war is like any conflict, it never shows up where or when you thought it would. Enemies attack where you are weak and adapting to that blow is the first step. Our training needs to be in adapting and then preparing for the next unforeseen action. Part of that preparation is doing what we call C-B-A planning.

C-B-A planning was something that came out of the financial crisis of 2009, it is where you understand how things will look in reverse order. You plan to survive first, then improve and then optimize. It is not normal for most of us as we plan for everything working and often times we succeed.

However, in a pandemic period work the numbers and the choices out in your mind so that if and when we get another broadside attack adapting will be about implementing not deciding.

Help others with the eye of a Lifeguard

Start looking for how you can help others within your interests and strengths but make sure you have the energy allocated to do it. Another swimming lesson from my youth was from life guard training. Reach – Throw – Row – Go was the mantra for helping a struggling swimmer.

Part of the reason for this was that the last thing you wanted to be was a life preserver for a drowning person.

Endurance, Endurance, Endurance

Continue to practice the habits we wrote about from Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop and Admiral James Stockdale’s Paradox as you hone your endurance skills.

We all came into this Pandemic Period at different points in our lives and with big plans for the next 90 days, 9 months and even 9 years. It has brought some closer together which doesn’t make the news, it has driven others further apart which always makes the news, and it will leave its mark on all of us.
#onwardtogether

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.

Click for the NEXT post in the series, or the PREVIOUS post.

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.​

Somewhere between Salt Lake City and Grand Junction this January while climbing a scary mountain pass in a four wheel drive it came to us that a way to look at the CEO’s job is as follows:  

To determine how much stress the balance sheet of the company and the people that work for it can handle at this time in the company's life. 

You may have a different view of it, or a different way to say it that works for you and we would love to hear from you about how you see it, but humor us for a minute.

It appears at times that even at some pretty large companies that the only person who is really thinking about the future of the entire enterprise is the CEO. Everyone else is in their department looking for more resources, and hopefully in the words of Peter Drucker, focused on the next most important task.

What does this mean for you?
It means you need to be relentless in your pursuit of what is true from your direct reports because they may have an inherent bias to keep you on a consistent drip of flattery and fluff.  It also means that having a board of directors that can help you think about the company from the outside is vital.

Questions a good board can help you wrestle with are:
•    How much debt should we be working with now to grow the business? 
•    Where are your next threats coming from?
•    What innovations are going to allow you to increase your margins? 
•    Where is your current leadership team in their own personal life cycles?  

The rub is that building and maintaining a productive board of directors is a challenge. Too often it is such a hassle that you don’t even have one. CEO’s can often feel like the coach of a professional sports team. The players on the field are your employees, the fans in the stands are the customers, and up in the owner’s box sits the board of directors. Where does the coach stand? Sometimes they stand alone.

Key Insight
Ask yourself the following question: What is the company telling itself right now that we want to be true, that may not actually be true? Many department heads will be talking about growth because they know that is what everyone wants to hear. The challenge is that if the company doesn’t manage its balance sheet and time the growth correctly outside forces can end up owning the business. You may have a growth mandate, but try as we might most of us can’t make water go uphill, so back up your mandate with facts and processes you can trust and measure. This rigor and dialogue can save your business.

We have often been asked to help with this question:  How does a company build a winning culture?  In pursuing the answer to this question, we have noticed the stark cultural differences between a group and a team. If culture eats strategy for breakfast than a team eats a group’s lunch.  What is a group, and what is a team? For definition purposes here are some of the fully researched differences between a group and a team: 

• When in a group, you seek out the authority to address conflict.
• On a team conflict is handled member to member with a common language. 
• Groups of people often do not share a common goal while Team’s create common goals. 
• Groups are independent while Teams are interdependent.  

We have written extensively on our 'G2T' (Groups to Teams) concept in newsletters and in white papers.  More recently has been success implementing some of these ideas with clients and helping to shape their company culture.  

Companies hire people from different walks of life, with different strengths and different personalities. These differences can be obvious and group dynamics can take over if the leadership doesn’t take an active role in helping people understand how they are aligned and the things they have in common. A great way to do this is the admiration exercise which takes about 60 minutes for a group of 15.   

• With a facilitator or leader at the white board and this template in front of everyone. 
• Ask them to write down the names of three people they admire. 
• Then ask them to write down three traits that they admire about those three people. 
• Then ask them to rank the nine traits they have come up with top to bottom.

For the rest of the exercise in more detail and to continue developing team culture read our white paper:  Groups Into Teams Part I.

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!

​Building off the great reaction we received from our post on productive solitude we started to notice that in our work conversations we were asking leaders how they were organizing their thinking and in what format. Were they using a computer, a phone, a note pad, or a bound notebook? When did they collect themselves and organize? Who did they share it with, and how did they share it? 

The answers were all over the board, and many didn’t really have a system in place. They offered up that they are bouncing around trying whatever the newest form of technology has to offer. We also noticed that many leaders thought that the idea of sharing what their tasks was a big enabler for productivity. However, that wasn’t really playing out as they thought. It was leading to more emails and more confirmations on non-mission critical tasks. Does this sound familiar?

Enter in the concept of a template as a way to create boxes waiting to be filled with answers that challenge you to prioritize your thinking. An individual benefits by working with a task allocation template like the one above. The act of not just writing down your tasks, but prioritizing them, and then...

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....

What framework or structure have you set up for thinking? Where do you think best? Many people don’t know off hand, but after a minute or two might share that they think best when alone. We recently stumbled across a book on leading yourself, and have been enthralled from the very beginning. “Lead Yourself First” by Ray Kethledge and Mike Erwin is a qualitative study of how past leaders have used productive solitude to make key decisions.  

We are now 10 years into the era of having a super computer that is in your pocket. 1.2 billion Apple iPhones have been purchased, and our new behaviors around them are only just ​becoming understood. It could be stated that one of the outcomes we all feel is some sort of attachment to the devices. Just as the washing machine replaced the scrub board and freed up hours of our week, so has the super computer in our pocket made our lives easier. Amidst the ease might be......

How fast can you tell the mood of a room? How is it that in an instant we can pick up the buzz or the tone? Something in our make-up affords us this capacity, yet for decades managers have dismissed the productivity benefits of person-to-person energy transfer when it comes to getting things done. Often times the grumpiest person seems to be able to reign over all, and decide that smiling might hurt the bottom line. Culture-oriented advocates will run up against the dreaded “it is more about the return on investment” and seldom have any real proof behind their soft skills training. 

Recently Wayne Baker of the Michigan School of Business wrote a short piece for the Harvard Business Review titled “The More you energize your coworkers, the better everyone performs.” It proves that attitudes matter and can increase worker productivity.  Baker writes about concepts like a reciprocity ring and mapping relational energy, which have been effectively proven to increase the productivity of teams. We encourage everyone to click through the different studies they have completed as you look to develop your own teams.

Colin Powell himself has stated that “perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” If you are trying to get the team across finish line it doesn’t hurt to re-read the Little Engine That Could.  Attitudes ARE contagious.

Take your great attitude and read about mentoring in our Allowing Wisdom to Rise post.

​Eggs Anyone?   What does Dr. Seuss have to do with your ability to use a constraint to improve your performance? Well, it turns out most of us only have so much resolve to repeat a task over and over, and there is a point of diminishing returns with the "rinse, repeat" strategy of human learning.  This is where the concept of adding a constraint to your practice enters our field of view. Most of us have acquired some level of skill in order to meet our consumption needs, and if we are really fortunate we enjoy the tasks we are paid to perform. Yet the forces of creative destruction are high, and it pays to keep improving and adapting (anyone reading this on a blackberry??)  

A recent study showed that ​when participants were given a constraint to their practice, their output increased over the average. A living example of this......

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!

Sanders, can’t you just give me the three quick steps to take to get my team on point?" This is something we hear quite often from managers who don’t have time for long drawn out explanations and philosophy. Your world is impacted for time and it has to be simple for it to transfer through a human system. With that in mind, here are the three steps you and your team might consider. We call it the “RE” exercise.

You start by REflecting, go back in your mind 18 months and take a look at what has transpired. The key action here is to “ponder.”  Get to the side of your life river and look back up stream and ask yourself, “what did I learn, and what does it mean?”

The second step is to REcreate by putting yourself in a fresh environment. Recreation is often associated with long trips away and those trips are very impactful, but watch what happens to you when...

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?"