Playing the game like it matters

Tonight at my men's team meeting we took a break and played a game of street hockey.

I did not want to play. It was cold, I was feeling stiff, I wasn't feeling up to playing.

I didn't want to be a suck either so I agreed to play goalie. At least I wouldn't have to move around too much, wouldn't have to chase the ball down the road in the dark, wouldn't be getting jostled and bumped by guys bigger than me trying to get the ball away from me, or me futilely trying to get the ball away from them.

For a good three quarters of the game I had a really sucky context - how much longer will we be playing?

The opposing side scored at least four goals on me where I was just moving too slow to block the ball. A few of them just went right between my feet and through the goal line. How much longer will we be playing?

When I heard one of the men call out "Next goal wins!" I felt relief. At least the game would end soon. I didn't care which side scored that winning goal because either way would mean that the best team won.

Then I started thinking, what if I played this game as if it did really matter? What if I played it as if I really did have something on the line? There is a saying that the way we do anything is the way we do everything. I have a revenue target of $180,000+ for 2011. I have a fund raising target of $8,000 that I'm raising to help find a cure for arthritis which affects 4 million Canadians. Am I going to play the revenue game, the fundraising game, the way I've been playing this hockey game?

And then the hockey game did begin to matter, and it mattered which side got the winning goal. It mattered because now I had something on the line. I had $180,000+ revenue on the line. I had $8,000 fundraising on the line. I had 4 million Canadians with arthritis on the line.

Once I shifted those thoughts into my mindset I started noticing different results. The ball didn't just roll through my feet over the goal line, it bounced off my stick. Or it landed right under my foot and stopped. I noticed that the big guy who had been repeatedly scoring against me was losing control of the ball more often when he came near me.

Yes, the game was taking longer to finish now and that was okay because now it mattered. And in the end it was our side that scored the next goal and thereby won the game.

It makes a difference to play the game like it really matters. For those 4 million Canadians with arthritis it matters.

Red Rock Nevada video montage

A road trip to Red Rock and a tour of The Strip in Las Vegas are featured in this video montage that my company, Pictures That Move, produced for Men's Divisions International (MDI). The footage was filmed by men attending the MDI Internationals convention in October.

Grand challenges

My men's team, Grand Central, and its parent team South Central have been facing some difficult challenges. Grand Central and our brother team Sub Central have been alternating between meeting as separate teams and meeting as one large team throughout the summer. How has that worked for us?

Apparently not too well. I think that we became too insular, too inwardly focused. I'll be frank - I think we'd been operating at a shitty level. Shitty to the point that coming into the fourth and final quarter of the year we decided to meet jointly as one large team regularly through to the end of the year so that we could build the teams up again, rekindle that old South Central team spirit.

Things are picking up for the large team, South Central, and men have stepped up to lead various projects that will shift us back to being more outward focused. By outward focused I mean we take on things that reach out to the communities around us.

We've also started a 21 Day Challenge program. This program is based on the premise that it takes 21 days to make or break a habit. Most of the men have identified a habit that they would like to break and a habit that they would like to replace it with. We're using each other as a support and accountability framework to set ourselves up for success. The habit that I'm working on is tidying up my room. I have piles of clutter in my room and every time I take on the project of tidying it up I get so far and stall. I hope that at the end of this 21 Day Challenge I am really proud of what I've done with my room.

What We Learned

One of the pieces of feedback I got when I gave my Ice Breaker speech last week was that my public speaking is already at an advanced level. I attribute that to a combination of experience, of doing two-minute presentations at Twenty First Century Leadership, my community theatre experience, and my experience in MDI presenting the What We Learned segment at the end of Division meetings.

I have been doing What We Learned for about two years as part of my role on the core team as Chief of Staff. This spring I completed as Chief of Staff and stepped down from the core team in order to take on a new role as Team Captain.

By request from the current core team I reprised my performance at last night's Division meeting. The core team had prepared a great meeting and the men who were present gave me a lot of good material to work with for my presentation. I really felt on top of form as I delivered last night.

Yesterday was also my birthday. For anyone who is keeping track, I'm now 45. I've decided to count backwards from now on, so I'm looking forward to turning 44 next year.

At the end of the meeting all the men spontaneously sang Happy Birthday to me. Wow. And they were all in the same key. They sounded like a men's choir. I scanned around the circle to see how many men were present and I counted 44, though there may have been 45.

I like the thought of 45 men singing Happy Birthday to me on my 45th birthday.

Roasted almonds

Was at another Legacy Discovery weekend couple of days ago. How many have I now been part of? Enough to have lost track.

Got home from the event early in the evening on Sunday. Felt like I had missed church, found out about a cell group meeting being held that night at Vern's house, and still had enough energy to get myself out of the house and on my way there.

Grabbed some snacks on the way out. A bowl on the kitchen table, a large round ceramic bowl, full of weird shaped roasted almonds. Or so I thought. My housemates must have gone grocery shopping while I was away. I grabbed a handful and popped them into my mouth as I headed for the door. Munch munch, chew chew, swallow swallow.

It didn't take long to realize that these were not nuts. Nuts have a kind of salty flavor, these did not. They crunched differently than nuts do. They tasted kind of fishy.

Decided to go back into the kitchen for a glass of water to wash down the taste. Then it hit me what these snacks really were. I confirmed my suspicion back in the kitchen when I noticed that the area on the floor were there are normally two bowls was vacant. The two bowls that the cat eats out of. Looked at the kitchen table. Saw two bowls there. One had the dry food to which I had just helped myself. The other was the little bowl with the picture of a cat on it, and contained his wet food. Why these two bowls were on the kitchen table I do not know.

The glass of water didn't help wash away the taste. I got to Vern's house and he offered me a crisp which I accepted. He also offered me ice cream. I declined, he offered again, I accepted. Ate the crisp, ate the ice cream. It helped kill the taste of the cat food. Not for long though. By the time I was on my way home I could feel the after taste again.

I came home and told Jan that those dry roasted almonds on the table had gotten stale.

Seeds or bouquet?

I was flipping through a book that Fede showed me, titled Jesus CEO. One chapter caught my attention. It's titled He Prized the Seed Rather than the Bouquet. The chapter begins by asking the reader this question, "Which would you rather have, a bouquet of flowers or a packet of seeds?" Most people would pick the bouquet. I know that it was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the question, until I thought about it a little more.

After reading the chapter I thought it would be a good exercise to bring to one of my men's team meetings. I've asked Fede to think about coming up with an exercise based on this idea to next week's meeting.

What choices are represented by the packet of seeds? For me, the answer is growth. Inviting guests to our team meetings - those are the seeds.

A Grand team meeting

If any team meeting had the potential to be a totally screwed up meeting it was tonight's meeting (see A Grand new journey). I was burned out all last week and didn't tackle planning the meeting until Sunday night - the night before. Kind of late for delegating major parts of the meeting to other men. So I would need to prepare to lead most of it myself. Add to that half the team being busy and not coming, add to that we met at a location where we had never met before, add to that me being late because I didn't leave the house early enough to get to the site on time, add to that there was only one man there when I arrived...

Despite all that, it was a great meeting for the men who did come. In total we were five men - four members plus one first-time guest. I remained focused on my context, purpose, and results, and on delivering value. My purpose was "having great communication in all relationships", and a couple of results I had were "all men including guests are encouraged to participate" and "men are encouraged to be open with each other". With that in mind, I managed to direct a non-purposeful chit-chat session into a spontaneously developed exercise in which men shared things about themselves and then expressed what they learned about the other men.

What I learned - we don't need to have a large number of men present to have a Grand meeting. Also that I am good at being flexible, adapting my agenda on the fly, generally by listening to and trusting my intuition. It does speak to me when I need it. Although this is a strength that is good to have for producing value under dubious circumstances, I have to be careful not to become too cocky, not to use it as a substitute for planning and preparation.

Oh, by the way, I finally had a chance to say "Make it so" tonight.

A string of wins

I've had a string of recent wins in the past few weeks and I've been so busy and working intensely that I haven't had time to celebrate them until this week.

My successful presentation and completion of Phase III; the completion and delivery of my "Final" business plan; a successful completion of Legacy Discovery weekend as Training Team Manager; the sale of one of my rental properties. These are all some big wins that I've had lately.

Last week was an intense week for me. My business plan was due on Monday and I knew I was going to not have time on the weekend to work on it, so I was scrambling to finish as much of it as possible last week. I handed it in yesterday and went to Booster Juice to treat myself to a smoothie as a celebration.

Today I was in decompression mode. I felt the need to feed my creative side. I spent some time doing the layout for a photobook in Scribus, and in the evening went to High Park with my digital camera to shoot some more pictures. I only took a few before the battery in my camera ran down.

Batteries running down seems to be a theme this week. The battery in my Palm Pilot won't hold a charge for very long anymore, so I may need to look for a replacement soon.

I need to charge up my Palm Pilot, I need to charge up the batteries for my digital camera, and I need to recharge me.

A Grand new journey

Tonight I have completed in my role as member of the core team in my Men's Division. It's been a long journey, of about three and a half years, and it is a journey that I am proud to have taken.

I don't think of it as something that I have completed, so much as something that I have exchanged for a new journey. My new journey is as Captain of a new team in the Division - team Grand Central.

When I joined the Men's Division (MDI), I joined a team called South Central. Team South Central has changed quite a bit since then. It has become a more powerful team, a team of leaders. It has also grown in numbers, to the point where men started talking about splitting the team.

Some men were in favour of splitting the team and some were opposed, but I think that all agreed that an eventual split was inevitable. Thus was born the Intentional Growth strategy - a vision and a plan for South Central to manage its own growth and evolution rather than split in anticipation of becoming too large to be effective.

Out of the Intentional Growth strategy came the idea of operating as two teams that were "separate but connected". This is a unique mode of operation within the Division, but then South Central has developed a team culture of innovating and pioneering.

Grand Central is one of the two "separate" teams that has born out of the growth of South Central, and I am looking forward to my new journey and my new role as Captain of this team.