The Controlled Rebel

In my (admittedly limited) experience in consulting I have learned that organizations actually want people that don't settle for the status quo. They may not know it, but they do. They want someone who can seek and destroy things that don't make sense. Not someone who wreaks carnage upon anything and anyone in their path, but a silent and deadly killer of bureaucracy, band aid solutions, and misguided holdover decisions. They want someone who doesn't settle for the status quo because frankly not settling is a lot of work. Both in the discovery of what doesn't make sense and in the crafting of solutions to impact meaningful change. Most people in organizations are just too busy to engage in one let alone both of these activities.

Don't get me wrong, organizations don't want someone to come in and totally rock the boat. They don't want an abrasive personality demanding radical change. They don't want someone to scream "bullshit" when the sacred cows are defended or when the inevitable "this is how we have always done it" arises. What they do want is someone to call "bullshit" in a professional and perhaps even a disguised manner so the organization doesn't have to address the reality that the status quo isn't working. The controlled rebel who can skillfully navigate this delicate balancing act is in demand.....even if most organizations don't know it.

The Final Countdown: A Rookie Father's Introspection

Here I am. Staring down the final weeks before I make, perhaps, the single greatest transition of my life. I have been through a great deal of transition in my relatively short life and just digging back through my various blog posts I am amazed at all that has transpired in the short period of time that I have been blogging. But I am pretty sure that the next chapter of my life will prove more monumental and defined than any that has come before it. The transition I am referring to is that of fatherhood.

In a matter of weeks my lovely wife and I will bring a baby girl into this world. In some sense it has seemed like an eternity waiting for this moment. An eternity both in terms of the pregnancy/miscarriage/pregnancy journey we have endured and my lifelong actualization of becoming a dad. On the other hand, I feel like I am running out of time to "prepare" for the ceremonious shift that is fast approaching. As if one can ever prepare for a change like this.

Perhaps my converse perception of time is representative of the majority introspection I have done throughout this journey.

Emotionally I am overwhelmed by excitement and fear. Excitement in knowing that I have always wanted to be a dad and fear over whether I can pull it off. I can't wait to step into this new chapter alongside my wife but am terrified by an overwhelming sense of responsibility for their well being and happiness. I am so excited to see her little face but petrified on what to do after that moment. I imagine my feelings are common to most new expectant fathers but that doesn't make it any easier!

I also can't help but consistently think of the dynamic between the known and the unknown with regard to our family's future. I know that bringing a child into this world will be amazing and that it will forever change my life for the better. What I don't know is how parenthood will specifically alter our current existence and how it will change me. I know I won't get any sleep for the next six months but I don't know what our daily routine will be like. I have spent the last few months envisaging what our new life will be and not surprisingly the different visions of what our future could be are pretty broad.

Although my conscious introspection is wrought with paradoxical thoughts and emotions, my daily ideations and musings are much more random and (ironically) childlike. I can't help but wonder what she will be like. What will baby Blake's favorite color be? What passions will she develop? What will she look like? When will she stop thinking I am "cool?"

The combination of focused reflection and casual wonder can be mentally taxing and I must admit that I have been more tired than any time in recent memory. I can only imagine what my wife feels like! With that being said, I feel that we have harnessed our excitement for this life change and have continued to optimistically push forward towards our due date.

If there is one thing that eases my mind and reassures me that everything will turn out fine it is family. I am taking this journey with my loving wife who I have always felt is destined to be an amazing mother. I have been blessed with an amazing family and a set of parents who have given my brother and I a childhood that serves as a retrospective expose for successful parenting that I can follow and emulate. I married into a great family that provided the same loving environment and positive parenting example to my wife. So with that kind of lifelong support I feel like I have a foundation that will allow me to grow, develop, and flourish throughout my fatherhood journey.

After a few months of introspection I am left with just one question....am I good enough? Hopefully I can look back on a lifetime of trying to be the best dad I can and answer yes.

Sustainability & The Military: Parallels Between Two Worlds

Since my departure from the Air Force I have had to try and explain to family, friends, and acquaintances what exactly it is that I am doing now. When I explain that I took a role within a start up Portland-based consulting firm called The Gunter Group people can generally follow along. However, when I get into the details of the client and division I work in I often lose people. 

I was lucky enough to have Nike as my first client in the consulting arena. It is a company that I have an immense amount of respect for not only due to the fact they are a leader in the athletic apparel arena, but because that have been a shining star company that continually innovates over time. Of course there is a coolness factor that is associated with Nike, it's products, and it's marketing and at the risk of sounding cliche' that attitude transcends throughout the World Headquarters campus. But it is the innovation piece that I am more closely aligned with in my current role and that is the part of my Nike experience that I find most engaging. It has been a great experience and I really have enjoyed my time at Nike so far.

Not only was I lucky to get Nike as a client but I was also lucky to get on within a unique division of Nike. I work in the Sustainable Business & Innovation (SB&I) division of Nike which in in its simplest form is a bit like a 'green incubator' for Nike. SB&I seeks to innovate and integrate enterprise level sustainability solutions into the Nike business model while mobilizing key external stakeholders to make industry change.

The first question I usually get is, "what do you consult?" The answer is pretty straightforward in that I provide project management support within SB&I. In short, I help to get things done. Execution.

The second question I almost always get is, "what the hell do you know about sustainability?" To be quite honest, when I started I doubt I knew much more than the average college educated Gen Y-er does about sustainability. I had a basic understanding of the concepts surrounding sustainability that were mostly garnered through osmosis in a variety life experiences. That understanding wasn't very deep and it came accompanied with limited context. 

However, having been a part of the division for the better part of four months I may have sold myself short a bit regarding what I knew about sustainability. Although I wasn't formally educated in sustainability concepts and I most certainly had never served in a role within that context before, I came from a background that shares a surprisingly large number of parallels with the sustainability world.....the military. What do sustainability and the military environments have in common?

Systemic Challenges - One thing that I learned in the military is how to operate in challenging and ambiguous environments. Throughout my career and most notably while serving in Iraq, I encountered challenges that did not have a textbook answer. There was not a clear cut best solution...or a solution at all for that matter. There were too many unknowns, too many interests, too many interconnected subsets, and too little time to easily solve problems. In the military you are forced to confront challenges that are spread and interwoven throughout a complex system. In my relatively short stint in the sustainability realm I see the same type of systemic challenges represented. 

Execution - I have discussed on BadskiBlog before that execution is everything. I am, admittedly, probably more of an idea guy by nature. I am energized by strategic thinking and collaborative brainstorming. However, I crafted my ability to get things done in the military and that is something I will always be grateful for. Now I am, in essence, getting paid for my ability to get things done and to serve as a catalyst to help other people get things done. It is a challenge and I am constantly learning but it is exciting and fulfilling as well. A military force that can rapidly work it's way through the planning/decision cycle and execute will have a competitive advantage and will overcome resource constraints to defeat its enemies over time. My sense is that companies will benefit from a similar (albeit less combative) approach to sustainability. Taking sustainability from idea to execution faster that your competitors will become a critical competitive advantage over time.

Leading Change - As an officer in the Air Force I have sat through a few leadership presentations in my day. In fact, my undergrad experience at the Air Force Academy was almost entirely centered around character based leadership. In hindsight, a great number of those sessions drifted into discussions about leading change. The military isn't all about following orders as many like to think. And although as whole the military machine may be categorized as a bludgeoning bureaucracy of sorts, in smaller pockets the most successful units/organizations are all about leading and implementing change. SB&I is all about leading change and I imagine that is consistent throughout the sustainability space. There are a ton of methodologies for leading change (a book review on John Kotter's "The Heart of Change" coming soon) but like anything else academia can only get you so far. It is the organization that can consistently lead change that will prevail in their efforts to implement sustainability or any other initiative for that matter.

Below is a video of Nike's VP of Sustainable Business & Innovation, Hannah Jones, in which she not only provides an excellent overview of what SB&I is all about, but also some of the concepts I discussed above. Definitely do yourself a favor and watch the full video and enjoy Hannah's, very eloquent, discussion on the future of sustainability.

Check out the full video HERE, it is very interesting.

Sacrifice

Last Thursday was my last 'working' day in the Air Force. I look back and I cannot believe it has been nine years since I set foot on the Air Force Academy campus. Since I knew my departure was coming for quite some time I didn't have a very dramatic emotional experience on my last day, however I did welcome a feeling that everyone experiences throughout the course of their lives. I felt the familiar feeling you get when you know you have reached a crossroads. Last Thursday was the ending of an era for me and although I am extremely excited for the next chapter I will definitely miss many aspects of my Air Force life.

While reflecting on my time both as a cadet and as a member of the active duty Air Force I could not help but to think about sacrifice. The sacrifices I made, the ones my wife made, and how they have impacted our lives. I started thinking about the greater sacrifices that many members of the armed forces make. My reflection led me to another realization, one that I revealed during my departure speech in my unit.

While I was giving my departure speech to friends and coworkers I stated that "my military service gave me far more that I ever gave back. I imagine that statement will become even more true as time goes on and as I embark on new endeavors in the civilian world."

I truly believe that statement. That is not to say that I was bum who took all he could from the military and left, because I didn't, and I am very proud of what I contributed during my service. I was merely expressing my awe at how far I have come since the day I stepped into the dorms of the Air Force Academy.

So were those "sacrifices" really sacrifices if ultimately they benefited me and contributed to my growth and happiness? Maybe I am being naive or romanticizing in hindsight but actions that ultimately benefit you greatly don't really seem to embody what sacrifice stands for. It almost seems more like delayed gratification. Or better yet, an investment in the future. Was the bypassing of a traditional college experience for a regimented character building leadership laboratory really a sacrifice for me? Was the lack of control over where I lived and when a sacrifice, or did it merely expose me to new parts of the world that I never would have otherwise been privileged to? Did the nearly seven months I spent in Iraq away from my family and friends set me back forever or set me apart forever?

Without delving into the Back To The Future-esque arguments that compare what your life would have been like had an event not occurred, I think the point of my riff is that sacrifice is not as straight forward a concept as we may think. I can confidently say that the sacrifices my wife and I have made over the years had shaped us, improved us, and have given us a hell of a ride that we never would have experienced had we not had the foresight, and/or ignorance, to embrace.

A Lesson In Change

The last few months have been an interesting time for me. I have been working two jobs. One that seeks to embrace and encourage change through continuous process improvement, and one that knowingly or not stifles change and creativity. As frustrating and unique it has been to work in two completely different environments at times, the experience has been valuable. Earlier this week I was informed that I will be shipping out to a different base (destination unknown) by the end of the summer. It was pretty shocking and it caught my wife and I off guard. These recent experiences all share a common thread and that thread is change.

“The only thing constant in life is change” - François de la Rochefoucauld (French classical author, leading exponent of the Maxime, 1613-1680)

All of the experiences got me thinking about how we as human beings deal with change. When animals don’t change they die, as in they become extinct as a species. Humans aren’t attune to thinking in terms of a species. We think in terms of individuality. We embrace who we are as a person. However I would argue that we too die if we do not change, yet the effects are harder to see as the scope of change is typically only defined as that individual's lifespan.

We all like to latch onto the concept and buzz about embracing change and seeing it as an opportunity. However, in practice this is rarely the case. I would argue that this tendency might be some form of a survival instinct. If we find something that works we continue to do it; it really is quite rational. What we often fail to realize is that the world around us is constantly changing and therefore doing the same thing over time is ignorant and more risky than constantly changing and adapting.

I have found, and verified through my recent string of experiences, that empowerment and choice are key elements in determining how people with deal with change. As a continuous process improvement facilitator for the Air Force, I work in a lot of Rapid Improvement Events (RIE’s). Over time you start to see patterns with regard to human behavior even though the participants change. There are always people who come in pissed off that they have to participate, that they have been voluntold to participate, and they say that the stuff doesn’t work. The RIE’s typically last about 3-5 days and I can comfortably say that the majority of those types of people leave feeling that they have positively affected their process and changed something that they didn’t think they could and/or would want to change. How does this consistently happen? How does one go from Scrooge to DCC in a matter of days? The answer is empowerment.

When people are empowered to make change they embrace change. Not only do they embrace it, they see it as a important force in their personal development and their day to day happiness. RIE’s are a proven way to form a team of key players and to empower them with the ability and resources to make change. Even if they come in as antagonists they are inspired to create something. I really believe that it is an innate human desire to create.

Contrast this example with my recent relocation blindside. When I learned I was moving I was floored. This wasn’t part of my plan. I am not supposed to move yet. This ruins everything. Blah blah blah. I was not empowered to make the change, I was told. I did not go through a buy in process to verify that this change is for the better, therefore I resisted. The fear of the unknown is a powerful thing, and often when you are forced to change you are being forced into the unknown. As you can imagine this doesn’t get too many people excited.

As I work through accepting the fact that I am moving I can begin to rationalize that the change is not automatically the root of all evil. Being an optimist I even tell myself that this is going to work out to be a good thing in the end. However, positive thinking and rationality still do not change how people (or myself for that matter) react to the prospect of change. Becoming empowered to make change is the catalyst that shapes future behaviors regarding change. If you can get used to working through dealing with and creating change you are in essence familiarizing yourself with confronting the unknown. And that confrontation takes courage. Become a courageous change agent, alliteration aside it is a valuable lesson that will better your life.