We fell back into our “Maynooth schedule” this morning – up at
6:15 to get ready, have breakfast, and cab it to the office. Someone gets a pitcher of water and glasses
and someone reviews our whiteboard assignments and tasks for the day while the
laptops and iPads boot up, then off we go to conquer the Wavebob/Chile challenge
: ) It’s been enjoyable – I like Andrew
and the folks at Wavebob, the project is interesting, and working with our team
has been a good experience. There can be
a lot of value in bouncing ideas off of and seeking input from a small group of
people.
I can definitely see how a good
leader needs good people around him/her.
It is possible to thrive amidst challenging people, but much easier to
do so among good ones. And by “good ones”
I don’t mean “yes men,” but rather, intelligent people who can push back, share
ideas, and then walk away in unwavering support of what was decided, committed
to making it work to the best of their ability.
The gentlemen we interviewed for our leader study today said “You know
you have a quality business relationship when you’re comfortable making each
other uncomfortable.” His point being
that there needs to be enough emotional intelligence to know that you’re not
attacking each other personally, but openly debating the best idea. The trick is in both doing it appropriately
and interpreting it that way from others.
Also, people who share knowledge, want to learn, and help others succeed
in every way possible. People who are motivated
and passionate about what they’re doing, but aware that they don’t know what
they don’t know and that are willing and able to listen and draw ideas out of
others.
Anyway, we finished up our deck this morning, then presented
to Andrew what we’d found. We ended up
with 105 slides…most of our time was spent on the content so the slides weren’t
that pretty or super-well worded in some cases, but given our timeframe we felt
that was the most appropriate use of our resources. The happy news is that Andrew seemed really
happy with what we’d found. Not in the
sense that it delivered the “right” news – we actually concluded that a very
slow approach is best right now – but in the sense that we provided something
of value that will help him with the strategic direction of Wavebob. That felt good! How neat that our class project will actually
add value somewhere instead of just going in the “made up scenario” file. Andrew gave us a few follow-up items he’d
like us to research for Chile yet, then asked us to do a “quick down and dirty
overview of Japan” tomorrow.
So we took
a quick celebratory walk to get some lunch fixins, chatted with some Wavebob
staff during lunch in the breakroom, and worked a couple more hours finishing
up Chile before we had a call for the last interview of our leader study. I’ve really enjoyed speaking with the folks
for our leader study…so much wisdom and learned-the-hard-way experiences that
they’ve so willingly shared with us. I
hope I can apply some of it based on the second-hand learning, vs. having to go
through it all myself. I think I’ll
start taking some of the key principles and trying to consciously apply them in
my everyday life until they become more of a habit. Like the take-away I mentioned the other day about how Paul
tries to not respond emotionally to news he doesn’t like, but rather, waits to
respond until he’s processed it.
We wrapped up the work day with a check-in call to Jan, then…wait
for it…worked out in the hotel gym! It
felt so good to get the blood moving, and maybe it will knock us out tonight. Dinner, catch-up on email and journals, and
we just might get to bed before midnight!
It was a good day. Productive,
successful, rewarding. Both because our
stakeholder was pleased, and because we came together as a team to do it.
I'm tired...
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