Making Connections
Making Connections
I’ve become a recent fan of playing the New York Times’ daily puzzles online, and one of my favorites is Connections. Sixteen words are provided, and the goal is to form four groups of four words that are in some way connected. You have to figure out what the connection is, and you get four mistakes, after which the game ends and the correct answers pop up. For example, on the day that I’m writing this, four connected words are bar, dinner, liberty, and tinker. They’re all “words before ‘bell’”.
When I first started playing, I would find two or three words that appeared to be obviously connected. But finding the last one or two for a group proved elusive. My initial thoughts about the connections were generally wrong. Then, I would look up definitions to refresh my memory on how they were used. I’d think about informal uses of words, and different ways of how they might be linked. The good news is, once I got the first three groups, the last one was obvious (there were only four words left!), even if I didn’t understand why they were connected. (more…)
One of the most important roles of leaders is making the tough decisions.
Hiring The Right Players
My baking skills are marginal at best. I can follow a recipe to bake a loaf of bread, but if it doesn’t rise properly, I likely won’t understand why. Skilled bakers on the other hand know the secret to preparing a fully risen and delicious loaf of bread. They recognize the importance of a small but powerful ingredient…yeast. And they can perform consistently by making loaves that look and taste identical, time after time.
Many years ago, when I was newly appointed as the leader of a large team, I met with them to introduce myself and to learn more about them. And I shared an analogy that continues to ring true in my mind today; that we’re an orchestra and I was their conductor.
This ancient quote, attributed to Aristotle, speaks to the importance of synergy between components of a system. As important as the heart, liver, kidneys, and other physical organs are, they only come to life when they’re properly connected in the context of a living human body. And a weak or failing organ similarly has a negative impact on the entire system. Each organ or element must function at a certain level to maximize a person’s health.
In November of 2022 when OpenAI launched ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer), a technology that lets users ask questions and receive humanlike responses, many early adopters and influencers were quick to try it out and use it in their work.
Communication is simultaneously one of the most simple and complex activities we engage in as humans. Two or more people can talk about a topic and completely understand each other in one moment, and in the next moment recognize a disconnect has occurred. Colleagues who have trusting relationships will typically recognize this more quickly and get back on track. But often in organizations, leaders with contrasting priorities will continue to move forward without recognizing the growing divide between their work and that of their associates. They focus more on talking than listening. And failure to listen to colleagues ultimately impacts organizational productivity and profitability. 
Several weeks ago, I completed my first half marathon. Making the decision to do it, disciplining myself to train for it, standing in the middle of the street in downtown Detroit at 6:30 a.m. on a chilly morning with anxious excitement waiting for the starting signal, and later working through the physical aches were all new experiences. But my biggest learning wasn’t physical, it was mental.
Several months ago, in mid-July, I noticed an untimely phenomenon in our backyard. A tree that towered high above our two-story home began dropping brown, dead leaves. And while the annual cycle of falling leaves wasn’t uncommon, we were used to it happening in October and November instead.