Thank you!

As Gene Kranz called the notes he often sent to his corner of NASA, I had my own “thoughts while shaving” this morning while preparing to fly to Kuwait to conduct a leadership workshop. It all boils down to, “What a year this has been.”

A little over a year ago I published my book, Leadership from the Mission Control Room to the Boardroom in North America. The international edition was released in the UK as Mission Control Management, with another in work in India, and a Russian edition due by the end of this year. 

Also just over a year ago I had the great honor of being selected into Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches. It is as humbling as it is inspiring to be in the company of these amazing people who never fail to offer yet another insight.

After a slow and steady series of keynotes and workshops throughout the year, the pace has definitely jumped up. With leadership messages ranging from the connection between core values and team performance, to lessons-learned in high-performing teams, culture and quality, enabling high-performing teams, and critical thinking, I’ve recently spoken at technology and pharmaceutical conferences and to global finance, investment, and petroleum companies, undergraduate and graduate programs, educators, and congressional staff.

Everywhere I’ve gone I’ve found audiences who were not just receptive but hungry to discuss deliberate cultural stewardship and the various ways an organization’s culture and leaders can make or break them. Just in this year, that includes groups in Washington DC, New York City, Houston, Dallas, Galveston, Newport Beach, and, of course, College Station, Texas. 

Next week it’s a leadership workshop in Kuwait, and I couldn’t be more excited to offer these perspectives to them and to learn from them. From there, it’s London for keynotes to a global offshore drilling company on preparing for incident response and the inherent cultural challenges in management. And then on to Edmonton and a workshop with a group of Canadian CEOs. 

Thanks to Greg Bihn and PetroEd, HCC is then planning a workshop from which their film production program will create professional grade videos. Among other things, my friends at PetroEd will use these as the basis for an elearning version of the workshop.  

More workshops are booked into next year, and I have keynote requests as far out as May 2020.  

Yes, what a year this has been. I am deeply grateful for all of it — the opportunities, the support, the interest. It does my heart good to see these messages resonate so strongly with audiences from a wide range of industries. I’m forever reminded of the privilege it was to spend so many years learning to see and say them inside NASA’s greatest leadership lab. 

This morning though, I just have to get 12 days worth of clothes into a single roll-aboard...