Go Young Man

Sometimes it's up to you. Everyone looks around the table, and the question is, who is going to Louisiana? A few people voice prior commitments, and then everyone stares at you. It is your turn. You must go young man.

Business, and life, is a learning experience, and sometimes you have to travel to an unfamiliar place and mature a little. Sometimes you have to swim in the deep end to know that you can.

Learning to Lead

I like following. It's simple. Follow another, do your part, together we are stronger. However, there comes a time when suddenly the leading cannot be "delegated" to someone else. Suddenly, I am the leader. I like leading, yet it comes with the inevitable second guessing by those following and the reality that if we screw up it is because I screwed up. 

Leading is a delicate balance, at least in today's world. No one can blindly make decisions that sacrifice or marginalize his or her followers. Yet at the same time, someone has to take the first step. Someone has to accept the risk of being wrong. 

I've led in the mountains for a long time, over a decade, and it has gone very well. I've led in the running community. Now it is time to lead in less physically stressful environments, where the difference between success and failure is a much more blurry line. On a mountain, success is living, great success is a summit. In the normal world success is a stronger relationship or more efficient use of time or some other immeasurable goal. Honestly, it scares me because it is new. It's a new situation. No one says, "Isaiah, you will lead us on this." Instead leadership is amorphously earned, if those two words can fit together. We are all the same, we are all human, but to those more is given, more is asked. 

I bring this up because I am in the middle of two situations I need to lead. No one has said it, but if I give that little extra effort, the experience will be better. 

I Live in Iowa: Week 211

This was a really good week. Mostly because I was in Colorado climbing mountains the last two days, and before that I was running quite a bit. The strange thing is, while work obviously takes the majority of my waking time, it has been quiet at work lately. 

For example, Thursday we had a dip day in celebration of Independance Day. Not much work gets done when ten people are standing behind my desk eating a variety of dips. That being said, I'm working on a cost reduction project for a little bracket, and came up with the winning design (my own words) printed off a plastic 3D model full size, found a couple short comings, and then updated it and handed it off to supply management. It's a tiny little project, but I have had full autonomy and that is awesome! So often projects at work get bogged down in meetings and having to pass a variety of difficult and competing criteria, it's nice to have little bite size chunks of simple success. 

Similarly, Colorado was a huge success. We drove through the night Thursday, which is almost easy with two drivers. Climbed part of the first flatiron outside Boulder Friday, then drove up to Avon (Vail) and had this amazing brisket. Saturday we woke up at 3:30 AM and proceeded to go after an unnamed mountain and possibly a first ascent. You will have to wait for the trip report to hear the details, suffice to say for now that it could not have gone much better.

Ran 29 miles, which is really good considering I took Friday and Saturday off, and only ran three on Thursday when I was scheduled to run eight. 

Sometimes it feels like life just flies by and while I didn't especially feel rushed this past week, wow I was productive last week. 

The Selfie Stick

So here is my experience with the selfie stick. We took the selfie stick because a 17 year old girl left it at my friend's condo after fireworks and the question at 4 AM was, "Should we take it?" "Yes!" I answered. I had never played with one of these things so I thought it would be fun. These picture were all taken Saturday around 12:40 on top of the unnamed peak C in the Gore Range just north of Vail, Colorado.

How does this thing work?

Oh it's working!

Group Picture!

Then I thought, how can I make this more ridiculous? What can I do that takes the self centered attitude that is a selfie stick and make a mockumentary or satire style picture out of it?

Oh yes, put the selfie stick in the picture!!!!!

One more ridiculous picture!

It's funny because with smart phone cameras facing the screen, you can simply reach out your hand and take a selfie. Having a stick to do it felt over the top. I already feel self centered enough most of the time that the thought I could take it a step further, that there is something appealing to our vain desire to have pictures of ourselves, I just think, 'wow'.

First Flatiron, Success

As a training climb after too little sleep and bad coffee, we did the north gully on the east face of the first flatiron. Good day. I could say more... But I might as well save something to say in person. 

Looking down on Boulder.

I'm Headed to Colorado

We're on our way out to Colorado! There should be a link to track me at the bottom of the right column, and tracking is activated on my Delorme. Plan is to climb shorter stuff like the flat irons around Boulder Friday then head up to Vail on Friday night and take a crack at something big on Saturday in central Colorado. Maybe Peak C in the gore range or Capitol Peak. It will depend on weather and how we are feeling. The plan is leave tracking on my Delorme running as much of the trip as possible, because it's just nice to let people know where we are. 

What We Don't Know, That We Think We Know

In 100 years will society look back on us as simpletons the way we like to think of our ancestors 100 years ago?

In business, just like in a foot race or climbing a mountain, we are constantly making decisions based on limited information. That is part of the excitement. There is a thrill to stepping into the unknown when you think it is going to go well, but you don't really know. However, using mountaineering as a perfect example, sometimes a serac falls down and kills 16 people climbing up to Everest camp one. They thought they were simply going to hike up to camp one April 18th, 2014.

In business companies go bankrupt when enough wrong decisions are made. Kodak invented digital photography. Empires rise and fall. Rome fell. Runners win medals and set records, and then get busted for doping scandals. All the while people are suffering and dying in South Sudan yet no one really knows or cares.

A former supervisor of mine once said, "everyone thinks he or she is the smartest person in the room." I think about that fairly often. There is nothing new under the sun. We are no smarter now than our ancestors 100 or 1000 years ago. We simply have a huge knowledge base that is accessible now, so we're solving different problems.

In 100 years or 1000 years from now, if the world is still around, our descendants will certainly wonder why we did some things and didn't do other things that in hindsight seem obvious.