My sister was also happy for us, but she was also happy with her own child which was due shortly. And, six weeks before my son was due, I became a proud Uncle to my Nephew, who my sister named…..Alex.

Now I come from a family who never could order the same dish at a restaurant; even if you knew this would be your last meal and you desperately wanted NY Strip, if someone else at the table ordered NY Strip, you’d go for the Monkfish. So, of course, we had to do a quick change and my son, Alexander John, became John Alexander.

But there was the matter of the stocking. My mother-in-law offered to change the name, but we decided to leave it the way it is. So, from my son’s first Christmas to last year, he’d fish out his Christmas gifts from Alex’s stocking.

As you can see, John had an identity crisis from the get-go. And he is certainly not alone. Growing up for any kid is enough of an identity crisis itself; you are exposed to media versions of how people should dress, behave and believe, you’re American Idolized into thinking that success doesn’t come as much from within as from 10 million text messages and if that weren’t enough, you have to endure the horrible middle school years of trying to fit in to one of the popular/jock/nerd/goth/fill-in-the-blank-here cliques that divide most school cafeterias and school yards.

So, I have to admit that I was a little skeptical when, four years ago, John’s new high school principal said that he wanted the incoming class, to be, above everything else, themselves. No artifice, no idealized image, no cliques.

But the principal was right. Over the past four years, my son has explored who he is, the gifts that he has and the person (or persons) he may choose to become. And, as my son took his journey, I followed with him, not in lock step (because I knew he had to take this journey by himself) but behind slightly, somewhat like a shadow that grows and deepens as the image itself grows in stature and confidence.

What I learned about my son was that high school certainly developed his mind but it also gave him the opportunity to discover that his true self came through his heart. As he become more self-aware, so to did he expand his generosity of spirit, his kindness, his blindness to personal differences. And has this grew, as his heart grew, more people were touched by him and when they were touched, their hearts grew as well.

I have to admit that as I’ve seen my son grow, my heart has been also touched and has been strengthened. The poet, William Wordsworth, writes that “The Child is the Father of the Man”, and while he describes another context, I can certainly say that my child has “fathered” me to see the world in different ways, myself in different ways, and the undeniable connection between the two.

So on this, my son’s graduation day, the gift I give to you the gift my son has given me – to challenge yourself to seek the good in others and that, by doing so, they will do the good that you seek. And, in the meantime, draw a picture of the images of yourself that you’ve created over the years and put it out there, like a Christmas stocking with someone else’s name on it, so you can see it clearly and be grateful for how far you’ve come.

Thanks, John.

We have in our house a large basket of computer, phone, ipod and other cables. When we need to charge something and we can’t find the cable, we have to hunt through the basket. It’s a daunting task. We really don’t know what half these cables are for, or if the device that they are supposed to plug into still exists. But we’re afraid to throw out a cable, because we believe that once we do, the next day we will need it.

And, actually, the cables have outgrown the basket. We now have a basket and a grocery bag stuffed full of cables, power adaptors and even a few (computer) mice. Give us a few years and you won’t be able to find us in the house because of all the wires.

Fear is a lot like our basket (and bag) of cables. Through our life, we accumulate a lot of experiences and develop a set of reactions to these experiences. Sometimes, the reactions are based in fear — either something bad happened that we don’t want to repeat, or we’ve been told something bad will happen, so we don’t want to do it. Over time, those fears can grow, wrap around and engulf us. And just like the computer and power cables, the fears are not really tied to anything useful anymore and can be thrown out.

I have found that the biggest challenge individuals and businesses have towards achieving their goals has to do with their capacity to change. And that capacity to change is largely limited by the level of varieties of fear which have been built up over time. It is not easy to get rid of these unnecessary fears. You have to identify them, you have to see if they have any validity and if not, mentally, emotionally and organizationally toss them aside. And, often, you can’t be really sure you are right until you actually do let go. That takes a leap of faith and is, in itself, scary.

The first step, however, is to be curious about how many of your actions or inactions are based more on fear than confidence. Then, perhaps you can begin to unravel them.

Now, where did I put my cell phone cord? It just hope it didn’t make it’s way to the basket!

But it also got me to thinking about the alarm clocks which might be beeping in my background. And there’s always a few. There are the ones that are louder and more discernible, like those that tells me I’m late for a meeting, or that I need to get a project done. And there are ones that I probably should ignore, like some issues which are due far out in the future, or ones that talk to me about things I have no control over, or about people or actions that get my blood boiling over trivial issues. But there are other ones in the background that I really should listen to; the ones that ask whether I’m focusing on what’s really important, that tell me I’m spending too much time on the road and not enough with my family, or the ones that tell me I better watch what I’m eating or that I’m not getting enough sleep.

The key is to tune into those alarms which are important and tune out everything else. In my mind, there are six “alarms” to pay attention to. (And, full disclosure, I’m not good at paying attention to them all the time myself)

Alarm 1: Relationships — Are you spending enough time developing and nurturing your relationships with your family, your beloved, your friends, your co-workers? This is perhaps the most important one to pay attention to. Self-imposed lonliness is a hell that is very difficult to crawl out of.

Alarm 2: Your Passions — Are you spending time on activities which you thoroughly enjoy? Did you take the time to read that book you want to, or go see that band you wanted to see or work on that project that you loved to do?

Alarm 3: Your Health — Take it from someone who knows — When you’re young, you think you can do anything to your body and it will bounce back. Then one day, it knocks at your door and asks for payment due. Pay attention to what you’re body is telling you, and treat it as you would like to be treated (after all, it is you!).

Alarm 4: Your Sprituality — I’m not talking (and wouldn’t talk) religion here. I’m talking connection. To each other, to the world, to the universe, to yourself, to a higher power, to all of the above. Call it what you will, but if you’re not focusing on your version of “it”, you feel like you’re going through the motions.

Alarm 5: Your Finances — Is your spending out pacing your income? Have you set enough side for that upcoming wedding or junior’s college? When you’re stretched financially, it becomes difficult to focus on anything else and you feel like you can’t get out of it. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Alarm 6: The One Thing — During a strategy session last week, we talked about the line from Curley in the movie “City Slickers”, when he tells the main character Mitch, the secret of life. Curley: Do you know what the secret of life is? This. [He holds up one finger.] Mitch: Your finger? Curley: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean sxxt. Mitch: But what is the one thing? Curley: That’s what you have to find out. We spend a lot of time responding to alarm clocks, often someone else’s alarm clocks that at the end of the day do more to distract us than any thing else. As Verne Harnish writes in Rockerfeller Habits, a business consultant once got a job by telling the CEO of a Fortune 500 company that he could help him generate millions in revenue by simply writing down the top five business strategies that would move his company forward and looking at the number one item on his list every fifteen minutes until it was implemented. We think we are great multi-taskers. Perhaps we are just multi-muckers, simply moving the crap from one part of the stall to the next, without getting any of it out of the barn. If you focus on your One Thing you’ll do more than most, and enjoy life more than most, as well.

Take a sheet of paper out, write down the six alarms: Relationships, Passions, Health, Spirituality, Finances, The One Thing. Next to each alarm, write down what your long term goals is and then write down what you want to achieve today in each of those categories. If you really truly focus on these alarms, you are paying attention to what’s really important.

Then pop in your ear buds and tune out the rest.

We had a wonderful weekend. One of my favorite memories is when we took a little boat to go fishing out on the lake.  We were at the mouth of a creek and the water began boiling with jumping Kokanee salmon.  My daughter was excited and grabbed the one fishing rod we had and started casting and reeling.  ”Now I have a real fish story to tell,” she exclaimed.  And it was a sight to behold and under any other condition, I would have been reaching for the rod myself, or at the very least fussing that I had not brought another one out, as well.

But, I actually enjoyed the not fishing. I actually enjoyed, teaching my daughter how to make a good cast, how to jig, how to make sure she cleaned off the seaweed “salad” she’d invariably hook in to.  We did not catch any fish that morning, but I did catch the satisfaction and gratitude of sharing an experience with my daughter.

Business is often all about doing, and doing invariably means personal achievement.  And it is true, we are measured and rewarded by our accomplishments.  What I hope we don’t forget is that sometimes our accomplishments are best defined when we don’t do anything but let someone else give it a try.  Not only do we grow as an organization because then someone else knows how to get something done, but you grow as a person.

And that’s a reward all to itself.

I do. Not often enough, because I don’t always take my own advice. I fight through questions too much at times, going over and over situations, running scenario after scenario until my brain hurts.

Two articles I’ve read recently, from two very different perspectives, tell a similar story. One, an article from the New York Times “Your Brain on Computers — Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime” talks about the fact that the exercise machines with the tvs and ipod ports and video displays may help keep you sweating but don’t give your brain the same release as excersing outside.

Putting your brain on hold or downtime, helps place things in perspective, because it is during down times that the brain literally puts things in their place. “‘Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into long-term memories,’ said Loren Frank, assitant professor in the department of physiology at the university [of California, San Francisco]….He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, ‘you prevenet this learning process.’”

The other article (courtesy of Mitch Joel’s Blog) is from Wired magazine, about a transportation engineer in Holland who has focused on removing roadsigns to increase awareness (and thereby improve safety). The author travels with the engineer, Hans Monderman, to a city intersection he designed. “..there it is: the Intersection. It’s the confluence of two busy two-lane roads that handle 20,000 cars a day, plus thousands of bicyclists and pedestrians. Several years ago, Monderman ripped out all the traditional instruments used by traffic engineers to influence driver behavior – traffic lights, road markings, and some pedestrian crossings – and in their place created a roundabout, or traffic circle….To an approaching driver, the intersection is utterly ambiguous — and that’s the point….The drivers slow to gauge the intentions of crossing bicyclists and walkers. Negotiations over right of way are made through fleeting eye contact. Remarkably, traffic moves smoothly around the circle with hardly a brake screeching, horn honking, or obscene gesture. ‘I love it!’ Monderman says at last. ‘Pedestrians and cyclists used to avoid this place, but now, as you see, the cars look out for the cyclists, the cyclists look out for the pedestrains, and everyone looks out for each other.’”

We live in an age where we are assaulted by data, signs, stimulation. Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to step back, perhaps even away, rip off the ear buds, tear our eyes from the tv or the computer and live at analog speed for a while. Then, when we least expect it, we’ll see what we’ve been looking for all that time. Or at least be aware of all that we can see and (like driving through an intersection without directions) live a life more self-directed.

But dashboards, as helpful as they might be, are no substitute for thinking broadly. Dashboards (or metrics, or formulas or whatever set of tools you have which measures your business) are constructed based on your business model, your knowledge of the model and your ability to gather data with respects to that model as it exists today. Dashboards do not discriminate between good or bad models; they simply describe it.

And what they describe are the hundreds of critical tasks that managers and employees need to pay attention to every day. These are the “Critical but not Important” tasks Stephen Covey writes about. You can’t ignore them. They need to be done. However, these tasks may not be the ones needed to deal with something unforeseen or to exploit the next new opportunity.

Most financial dashboards did not describe the financial collapse of 2008 because they were not built to describe it — it was not in their models. Likewise, many health insurance brokers are scrambling to define themselves in the new world of Health Care Reform; a world in which the old dashboards did not anticipate.

Clay Shirky writes in his blogpost “The Collapse of Complex Business Models”, that businesses begin to fail when they become too complex to deal with changing realities. I actually think it’s simpler than that. Businesses (or individuals) begin to fail when they misread the processes and metrics used to describe the success of their model for the world itself. They fail when they focus too much inward. If complexity is an issue, it’s an issue if it impedes the ability to communicate with (and receive communication from) the world outside the model. It doesn’t matter if you’re AT&T or the florist on the corner. If you’re not paying attention to how people are buying and how their buying activities are beginning to change, your business will suffer.

Don’t get me wrong. Dashboards are important; they are good at telling you whether a process is on track or not. But they can’t be confused — and they often are — as an accurate forecast tool to predict how your business overall will fare in the future. A dashboard is no substitute for strategy. Dashboards are linear, specific, measurable. The world is nonlinear, chaotic, and challenging to determine ahead of time which cause will lead to which effect.

The key is to do what is critical, but raise your eyes to look over the dashboard and really look around you. Leave time to play around with what the world tells you is important. And “play” is the operative word, because if you want to predict something which cannot be predicted, you’ll have to make up a lot of stuff (and test them out in your make-believe world) as you go along.

And then, she said, “Don’t be like tofu. don’t just blend in.”

And she’s right. There’s a seemingly gravitational pull towards conformity that any society creates, whether the society is a business, a family or a cocktail party. While there are benefits to conformity, the costs are that we sometimes cover up our own uniqueness with the cloak of what we feel others want to see. Do that often enough and then you lose that unique essence that defines you.

And yet, in any group, uniqueness is critical if we are to grow and adapt to what confronts us. A community’s success, if not survival, is predicated on harnessing the unique talents and perspectives of it’s members and channeling them in a positive direction.

Think about who you are, and what unique skills, traits or ways of seeing the world you possess. Make sure you express those in your team, at the office, at home. You will always then be able to feel “you”, and we will all be stronger (and more interesting) because of it.