Celebrate Success!!

Well, it is that time of year again. We finished up our fiscal year with a bang on September 30th, meeting or exceeding all of our milestones. It really is fun to be a part of team that sets the bar high and then does whatever it takes to get over it! We finished the year with total revenue around $1B and countless projects completed for a very satisfied customer base. Wow!

And as we have done in years past, we celebrated! We had a "New Year's Celebration" on October 1st. It was a great chance to review our accomplishments and to recognize some great people who had made success possible. This year, despite being spread over 3 states in dozens of project offices, I think we were able to leverage technology to connect most of the staff. We presented awards to a couple dozen people who worked hard to meet our end of year goals. We had cake and confetti and party favors and music. It was fun. And then I sent people home early. Yea!

The point is, we do need to take time to celebrate. We need to recognize our heroes. We have to reflect on our accomplishments and the great people who make success possible. It meant a lot to our staff and...it meant a lot to me!

Now, the year is not complete. We still need to complete our After Action Reviews (AARs) and document our lessons learned. We are planning on taking key leaders away for strategic discussions in a few weeks and this learning must be factored into our future plans. Regardless of how good we think we are, we can always improve!

So are you celebrating victories with your team? Do you let loose every once in a while to ensure that your teammates know how much you value what they do? Are you having fun? I hope so. That's Leader Business!

Please take some time to visit this month's Leadership Carnival, hosted by Mountain State University. They have gathered together a number of great posts on leadership and I was happy to see them include my discussion on "INTERNS" as part of their collection. Please check them out!

Seasons Greetings!

Friends --

Seasons greetings to all of you. Please allow me to use this forum to wish each of you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a blessed and prosperous New Year!

I am mindful during this time of year that there are many who cannot or will not celebrate as they might wish. Many of our military are deployed and separated from those they love. Many others are hurting from illness or problems at home or work.

This is the time of year to look backward and celebrate, look forward and be hopeful, and to count our many blessings. I hope that when you do, you can see the glass as half full (or more!)and that you can join me in looking forward to great things in 2009!

I wish for two things from you. First, a selfish request. Would you tell someone (or ten people) about Leader Business. The more people that can join in this leadership journey -- the better. The challenges we see in our world -- economically, politically, personally -- can be overcome with regular doses of leadership! That's where we come in. If you are not receiving LB updates by email, add your address to our list. Use the topics in this blog as an opportunity to discuss issues with your own team at work. Write me and let me know what you'd like to hear more about or what is happening in your respective leadership endeavors.

Secondly, I hope that you can find time to keep our deployed military in your thoughts and prayers. Pray for their families, for their safety during deployments around the world, and pray for peace!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! I wish great things for all of you during this special time of the year!

Leader Business Update

Friends

I just went over the one year mark with this blog. It's not exactly the most popular address on the web and I have not become any kind of leadership guru...but I am enjoying the conversation.

A special thanks to my friend Steve Harper (aka The Ripple Man) for introducing me to this format and to all of you who either value my opinion or like watching the trainwreck that is my leadership philosophy! I appreciate the opportunity to learn from some of your comments and emails and know that I improve my leadership with each new post.

In this first year, my most popular topics were learning from failure, mission execution, and morning huddles. It certainly tells me that the issues that I write about and that I am working on in my own profession resonate with others -- around the world. It also affirms my belief that military leadership lessons are applicable in many other settings.

Please pass along this address to your friends. We learn from each other and the more readers for Leader Business -- the better. If you haven't already done so, sign up for LB as an email or RSS Feed.

Most importantly, thanks to you who stop by these pages. I am humbled by those who share in my belief that leadership is a work in progress. Some write about it...others read about it. Together in our application of these lessons, we are sharpening each other. I'm looking forward to what another year of Leader Business will bring. Hooah!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

May 2008 be a great year for all of you. May you be successful in life and love. May you find true purpose in what you do...and attack every challenge with passion. May you reconnect with friends and family. May you shed pounds and bad habits...while adding muscle and good habits. May you make good money doing fun things such that work no longer becomes work. May you get a little better every day, commit to constant learning, and be much better by the end of the year. May you put other people first and grow to be the person that you know you can be. May you be successful in the business of leaders.

God bless our troops. Make them successful and bring them victory. (Note: the Associated Press picture to the right is from a New Year's celebration in a Baghdad neighborhood...something that likely was not possible even a year ago). Keep them safe and bring them home soon. God bless their families as well.

And may God bless each one of you in 2008! I don't know about you...but I am ready to get after it. I look forward to how our individual pursuits of Leader Business will bring us in contact with each other in this next year! Hooah!

Holiday Leadership

Leaders

What does the holiday season mean to you? Is it a reason to stress over gifts, travel, political correctness, and debt? Or is it a time to celebrate family, friends, and the reason for the season? Do you put your leadership on hold (and focus inward) or do you continue to make a difference for others?

I hope you choose the latter! Take a minute and relax. Enjoy each other. Give with passion. Receive with a child's excitement. Get some rest. Eat too much. Catch up on movies and football. Play a game with family. Laugh. Help those in need. Read the Christmas Story to your family.

Since my organization is spread over four states and with project offices distributed throughout, I spent last week making the rounds of as many parties as I could. We hosted two parties here at my house. Lots of egg nogg, tons of great food, and so much holiday cheer. But I think my teammates affirmed the fact that I do party (within reason!), I do like to have fun, I love to give and receive gifts (I love the White Elephant gift exchanges!), and I care for each of them and their families. Even in a billion dollar public company, I think these little things help improve teamwork and morale...and who knows what they mean for creating the sort of environment that helps people work as hard as they do the rest of the year. Great stuff.

I hope this post finds you of good cheer. Thanks for what each of you contributes to the business of leaders. More importantly, thank you for your friendship - either in reality or even just virtually. Enjoy this holiday season. Pray for our troops and their families. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to each of you. Hooah!

Happy New (Fiscal) Year!

Our performance year ended on September 30th - another strange decision by our government that has to have a year that is different from what most others call a year! But we finished the old one with a flurry. In a line from my favorite family movie, Remember the Titans, we finished strong...and "left no doubt!" We set many new performance records and met or exceeded almost all of our beginning of the year goals. Our focus on Execution made me proud to be a part of a great team.

And now we're already 1/52 of the way through the next performance year. Our schedules and budgets for the next year have to be locked in. Our goals must be identified and articulated to the team. Our After Action Reviews must be completed, with lessons learned captured and applied to our plans for this next year. Our customers must understand that we are focused on project delivery, not on the complexities of year-end and new fiscal year activities (of course, made more complex by the rules of our federal government!). The train never stops.

Here are a few of the things we have done to bring closure to the last year and to kick off the new one:

- We're holding daily synchronization sessions during the first two weeks with key leaders to ensure that we start the new year on the right foot. We dug ourselves into a hole last year because we were slow out of the gate. The synch sessions that allowed us to finish so well are continuing to ensure that our success is sustained.

- I have mandated that all After Action Reviews (AARs) be completed prior to our organizational review here in a few weeks. All section, branch, division, and support staff AARs must be completed, with key lessons recorded and posted onto our intranet site, before we meet to review those district-wide issues. While this is somewhat new to my team, it is how the Army does it - and it works. (You may want to check out my Leader Business Newsletter on AARs if this concept is new to you!)

- We have locked in our objectives for this next year that will drive our performance. We can't be "on time and under budget" if we have not established the goals for either one!

- We celebrated! I had my Public Affairs team create an internal game (a virtual "Whodunit" activity like Clue) that had people buzzing. We announced the winner of the game, championed the many great milestones that we had achieved in the past year, and had balloons, confetti, cake, and "bubbly" to ring in the New Year. I held a "virtual" town hall that allowed all 700 employees in our several dozen offices to be connected so I could tell them how proud I was of their accomplishments. It was a great day.

- I'm still working on a more long term strategic planning session (scheduled for several sessions over the next couple of months) that will allow us to really look deeper and really get after some badly needed transformation and culture issues. Those are coming and will be wrapped into our objectives for this new year.

So Happy New (fiscal) Year everyone! We have finished our celebrations and are re-focused on the road ahead. And that multi-lane highway, still under construction in a few areas, is wide open and already passing vehicles at full speed. Hooah!

That's Leader Business.