Last night was fun!
Andrew took us on the Literary Pub Crawl in Dublin. As the name suggests, we visited several pubs
in Dublin that are linked to famous Irish writers, but the twist is that it was
led by two actors who recited pieces or acted out parts of plays along the way. I’m not much of a drinker, but it was quite
interesting and fun to learn a bit more about Dublin and some of its famous
inhabitants! Andrew is such a gracious
host, and has gone out of his way to make sure we have a good time here on top
of the work we’re doing. Jan’s son Kevin
came along with us, which was fun too. I’ve
really enjoyed meeting people and hearing their stories this trip. As Andrew said last night, life is a bunch of
stories strung together – what will your chapters be? We all had a great time and enjoyed
ourselves, despite the rain. By the time
we finally got something to eat and cabbed it back to Maynooth, we didn’t get
to bed until around 1:30am. Which made
the 6:30 alarm clock particularly unappealing…
We had a short day at Wavebob because we had to leave around
11:00 to get back to Dublin for our afternoon interview. We started compiling all the info we’ve found
into a powerpoint, and dug a little deeper on a few topics. After a train ride to Dublin, we dumped our
bags at Trinity and took a cab to Paul Byrne’s office – the CEO of Trintech
that we’re doing our leader study on. Talk
about a fascinating person to talk to for a couple of hours! I really like Paul – he is passionate about
what he’s doing, has solid values that appear to be more than words on paper,
and is leading a disparate team toward some really big hairy goals…and he
believes they can get there! There are
so many things he talked about that I want to write here, but I need to noodle
on them a bit first. The two that stand
out at the moment are his take on his role and his response “under fire.”
Paul said his three (most important) tasks as
a CEO are to lay out where he wants to go (the vision), set/communicate/model
the values that create the culture and drive decisions/actions, and get the
right people in the right seats on the bus.
What I find interesting (and quite frankly, challenging) about this is
that many people want to be the CEO.
They want to be part of the big picture strategy and setting the lofty
goals and such. But they can’t let go of
the details – the day-to-day decisions about exactly how to get where they’re
going. Paul actually seemed to have a
good handle on it, realizing that that is the job of his four direct
reports. They are the ones who figure
out how to do what Paul wants done, and Paul needs to make sure they’re
equipped with what they need and then step back and let them do it. I’ve found that it’s easy to claim you want
to turn in the management role for a “big picture CEO” role, but the control
freak takes over and makes it difficult to stay out of the weeds.
The second thing is Paul’s approach to bad news/stress/something
he doesn’t want to deal with. First, he
involves himself in things outside of work so he has outlets for his
stress. But the part I found most
admirable is that he said he has learned how to not react emotionally to things
he doesn’t like. Instead, he says “ok,”
and thinks about it before responding.
The adage says to “go with your gut,” but Paul says going with your gut
during a time like that always ends up in disaster because if you act out of
emotion, you are likely to lose your integrity by responding poorly. Two things happen when you do – people lose
their respect for you and they stop coming to you with bad news. Both of which are poor outcomes. To me, this goes back to being self-aware
enough to realize what is causing the rush of emotions and addressing that
internally first, then moving forward to address the external situation with a
clear, healthy perspective. More on Paul
later, cause there's a lot more to tell.
After getting a photo with Paul, we got ourselves back to
Dublin central and returned to KC Peaches for dinner, then trudged ourselves
back to our rooms in Trinity’s Goldsmith Hall.
The wireless card on my laptop stopped working – ugg – so I pow-wowed
with Jill to figure out some tentative plans for tomorrow, caught up on a few
things, and am now about to crash…looking forward to more than 5 hours of
sleep…fingers crossed…
Despite being tired, I’m SO glad to be here doing this!! Woot!
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