Lessons in Life and Leadership

At the conclusion of each week, I pause to reflect on all the things my team and I accomplished. At the same time, I begin to prioritize the things we didn't get to for the coming week. As you might imagine, there's no shortage of lessons learned and opportunities to celebrate success. Growing up in Chicago, I learned to relish every success because those times are fleeting. Life often parallels sports. Staying with that parallel, The Chicago Cubs win once every 100 years or so. Ironically, that's about the same amount of time between arctic blasts hitting Texas.

Growing up in the Midwest and particularly Chicago taught me to be hard working. It taught me to be humble, it taught me to be resourceful and above all it taught me to be resilient. It was those many years living there that helped me to navigate this past week in Texas. I won't kid you, this past week was not pleasant, but as I reflect back we learned from our experience and are better for it.

To provide some perspective on what we endured this week, I'll start with excitement for a 3 day weekend. No school, No work, just time to spend it as you wish. Our week started off Monday at 5am when the power went out. I went out to check on our generator only to find it would not start. A few hours later, my battery backup would be depleted but not before my primary and secondary internet connections went hard down. By now it's a little after 7am and I quickly notice my AT&T cell phone was not working. Seems most everyone was in the same predicament and the cell network was oversubscribed. Fortunately my Verizon MiFi worked and kept us going. On a typical day off, you'll find my wife baking treats for us, my son watching his tablet and me catching up on all the articles I saved from the past week. With no power, limited bandwidth and battery charge we relied on the one thing that binds us together. Each other.

As the hours passed, we still had no power, limited heat, unsafe water but we had each other and also perspective. I thought back to my days in Chicago. I recalled many days like these back there. In fact much worse than what we were dealing with at present. I had no shortage of people calling, texting, emailing to check in to see if we were okay. While our circumstances weren't great, they also were not untenable. I kept telling people, we're good here. Fortunately it didn't get terribly cold outside and we've been able to keep the temps in our home above 50. For those native Texans, that was a little perplexing for them, but for those from Northern parts of the country, it was understandable.

The best illustration of this is during a Teams call early Tuesday. We were going around the virtual room to check in on every one and most were very concerned about us down in Houston. When I shared it was not terribly cold, someone else chimed in to say "What? 12 degrees in Houston is cold." At which point, I asked another colleague what was the temperature in Minnesota at the moment. He responded, "it's -26 here". That is the perspective I was referring to. Sure, 11 degrees is cold to some, but perhaps tolerable to others. That perspective allowed me to remain resilient but also resourceful. Over the next several days, we'd continue to endure power outages, lack of heat and water in Houston. People were using snow to flush toilets, some were boiling it for drinking. You see, it was not as simple as just going to the grocery store and grabbing a couple of gallons of water, milk, a bag of snacks, etc. The stores were also without power and most roads were iced over, many were closed. Living in various parts of the US and world has taught us to try to be prepared for some weather event. Whether it be a hurricane, an earthquake, a blizzard, etc.. We always tend to have an extra 5 gallons of gas on hand, no shortage of 5 gallon water jugs, easy to consume food, batteries, etc.

On Wednesday, 48 hours in to this mess, and what we'd come to learn was essentially the halfway point as we were about to get yet another winter storm with snow, ice and cold, I spoke to someone who was commenting on how we are living in 3rd world nation conditions. I listened intently as to what they described. "There's no food at the grocery store, gas stations don't have gas. Home Depot is out of supplies and I can't even fix my broken pipes". Once they were done providing every illustration of what they felt was living in 3rd world conditions, I asked if they had ever lived or traveled to a 3rd world nation before? They had not. I was compelled to share with them my time traveling in parts of South America, and living for an extended period of time on mainland China. What I witnessed was eye opening. I saw a bucket which held rain water on the roof of the house. I saw a horse was the family vehicle and while I would not discount the past few days were incredibly inconvenient and certainly below the stand most of us enjoy in Texas, a matter of perspective will allow you to realize that in a few short days, it will be in the 70's again. Power will be restored, pipes will be repaired, dry wall hung and painted. People will be out on the golf course, heading in to the grocery store where we can pick from hundreds of different snacks, drinks, etc. Essentially, life will resume as normal for most of us. This was no doubt, quite challenging for many but I would submit it was a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.

Here's what this week reminded me:

1) It's never as bad as I think it is.

2) I have the most important things I need to make it through challenging times like these. My family, friends, colleagues and community all worked together to help each other endure.

3) There's few things that are more rewarding to me than to see people helping people. The best illustration of this is a neighbor of mine is a nurse. She was working extra shifts at the hospital as we still wrestle with COVID. All the while, her water pipe on the outside of her home burst. Another neighbor noted this and took it upon himself to turn her water off and then work to get it repaired the next day. With all we've been through this past year, two people came together. One person was there at a moment of need for another. Nothing else mattered at that point.

4) When times are rough, I try not to focus on how bad things are but rather gravitate to how something reflect on how good we have it. This helped me to keep perspective as there were people who were in much worse circumstances than I was.

5) Expect technology and machinery to fail. It's designed to after all. Understanding this, do what you can to prepare. While nobody can prepare for all we saw this week, you can do small things like stock up on extra food, water, fuel up in advance. Have some spare blankets on hand. I feel this is what allowed my family and I to persevere.

6) You're certain to see the worst in some people. People who will take an opportunity to take advantage of people in their time of need. For example, the plumbers who found it in them to charge $1,500 an hour to help people with broken pipes. By the same token you see incredible greatness in people too. For example, one of our employees came in the night before, slept on a cot so he would be there in the morning to make sure the walkways were safe for people who needed to be in the office to support our customers. What a selfless act and illustration of one of the things we stand by. Do whatever it takes! (Jack, you'd be pleased to know our people still live by this credo but more importantly, illustrate it in action each and every day)

So we made it through another week. So many lessons to reflect on, so many challenges to learn from and so many examples of the greatness of people. People helping people!