The Power Of More Than "UNO" (One)

Early Reflections: Tuesday, October 1st

おはようございます

Ohayō gozaimasu

Good morning…

I should warn you. When I call these “early reflections”, for those who have been following me, they are truly EARLY REFLECTIONS, written off the cuff at somewhere between 4:30am and 6:00am. Why is this important? Because later in the day when my wife goes back and reads them, she points out (nicely, of course) where I may have grammatical errors, misspellings, or even repeated sentences, as I did in yesterday's post.

So more about yesterday. It turns out, it was a day of “UNO”.

Or should I say it ended with a game of UNO, but really the entire day was about anything but ONE. I know, it sounds cryptic and you may think that I am already making one of those early morning mistakes…stick with me on this.

My first meeting twas regarding a project that we are working on, one that involves several areas, has gone on longer than expected, and has been marked by setbacks. We called a “town hall” meeting with key players to speak candidly and listen intently. Booking a room that holds 60-80 people, I wondered if we would get 20 that would show up. Wrong. The group was standing room only and spilled out into the hallways. So much so that I had to audible, quickly dismiss half the group and promise to do a follow up later in the week. It was telling that so many showed up, many because the setbacks with this project impacts their workloads, but as important to me, because they are passionate about us getting it right. Everyone in every area is trying, but so many coming together to give feedback, to help isolate common issues went so much further than emails and incident reports.

It felt like progress.

My second meeting of the day, with my direct leadership team, was to talk about our “go forward” strategies. When I speak, I sometimes speak in a manner that would seem to imply that I have everything figured out. In fact, I don’t. I needed this group to come together to figure out how we can lean forward more in 2020. The power of a group of people, passionate, not afraid to step out, to reach beyond their specific areas and think, yes, I am going to say it, OUTSIDE THE BOX….it felt like progress.

After two meetings that consumed the day, it ended at home, over dinner, with my daughter uncharacteristically wanting to play a game during dinner. What started as a game of UNO, turned into a marathon match that lasted over an hour, dotted with goofing around, silly songs, confusion over which direction we were going in, laughter, and finally a decision to call the match on account of it being shower time.

Yesterday was about ANYTHING but “UNO”. It was about people coming together in a variety of ways and making things better in the process. And it felt like progress.

Enjoy the day!

(you can follow me @rhoniball or connect with me at www.honiball.me)