Personal Growth

Thanksgiving may be my favorite holiday of the year. There is so much to be thankful for: The freedom to Worship. Sarah. The kids. Our health. God’s provision.  Healthy sibling relationships in the midst of leading a business. A dad who still kicks my butt in golf, and offers unsolicited (and solicited!) business advice.

The list could go on and on.

As I mention regularly, my favorite aspect of work are the relationships.  The list that follows are relationships that work has provided.

I’m thankful for:

My friend Patricia and her vision to “#makemeaningfully products that matter via the medium of plastic.”

For Tony’s boldness in hosting manufacturing podcasts and leading Alliance Specialties and Laser Sales from a Biblical view point.

For Rich’s generosity. If you are in plastics, you probably know the Rich I am referring to and are connected to him on LinkedIn!

For Luke’s generosity to our team investigating new technology.

For Craig’s encouragement, and advice at Pack Expo.

For the entire ProAmpac team: Millie, Ben, Alex, Dan, and the whole gang.

And then there is Sal. I love you buddy. I write these posts weeks in advance and will be sending you a text tomorrow (11/2) as you prepare for your big weekend.  I’m with you in spirit and will be praying for you tomorrow.

I’m thankful for the entire flexible packaging market.  People like Roger, Sonia, Wade, Rob W., Mark, Rob L., Rodney, Joey, Raul, Mercedes, and on and on I could go (I’m surely forgetting names).

I’m thankful for trailblazers like Dennis. I may not know him well, but I know for sure that we wouldn’t have the business we do in spouted pouches without his efforts.  Thank you!

I’m thankful for people like Matt. Not only does he inspire me, but I am also in love with his product!  I can’t see a YumButter pouch and not want to eat the whole thing!

And then there is my friend Brent, who used to be a customer, but now works at his family farm and moonlights as someone on our team.  Your work with our team is a joy to watch.

I’m thankful for DP.  We aren’t where we are in pouches without your help in getting the plane off the ground.  I’ll never forget that.

Finally, this brings me to John. I used to say that you were a customer that is more of a friend, now I just call you a friend.  That week in August was special, despite the way we played!  Our kids could not have had more fun with you, and your wife. For that, Sarah and I were tremendously blessed. Our home felt warmer with you guys there.

Last, but certainly not least, I am also thankful for every family member at Hoffer Plastics. I hesitate to mention any names because every name matters.

There is a part of us in every piece.

So, let’s all be thankful.

Back in January, I wrote a post about training the mind, and used the example of my putting routine in golf to demonstrate one area in which I was working on doing so.  I said that I would report back in October to how the golf season went, so that is what I am doing here.  What follows is not so much a commentary on my golf game, but a few reflections on routines and plans in general.

Mike Tyson supposedly said that everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face.  As I wrote back in January, I had a putting routine plan that I was going to focus on this year.  By mid-April, however, that plan began to evolve because I had been punched in the face!

What’s interesting isn’t how it evolved, but that it evolved in the first place.  This should be obvious to me by now.  After all, every post that I write evolves from the first draft to the second.  That’s how the creative process works.  What’s interesting is that I still have this expectation that I can plan something, like a routine, and stick to it throughout the project or task.  This never happens in reality; thus, I need to start planning for more contingencies at the outset of projects.  As I have been reminded this year, very few things in life are linear. ERP systems, new projects, even my golf short-game, have twists and turns that cannot be predicted in advance.  Therefore, any plan has to have room, even freedom, for flexibility and adaptability.  The benefit in understanding this reality is that I don’t freak out when I need to change, or slightly alter, the plan.  I just simply remind myself that this is part of the planning process!

As a quick aside, Daniel Coyle details some great examples of contingency planning in his must-read book, The Culture Code.  My personal favorite, and one that I have briefly mentioned on this blog, is that of the raid of Osama Bin Laden’s compound.  It succeeded because the leader anticipated things going wrong.  We all could learn something from such anticipation.

Next, and back to golf, having a concrete goal (improving putting) was detrimental to my short-term progress, but helpful to the long-term process.  That probably does not make sense, so let me explain.  In the short-term (early in the season) I was laser focused on my putting.  As most golfers can probably relate to, the laser focus led to me “pressing” and trying to make putts.  This was a disaster and led to many “3 putts,” which is something that repulses me.  I lectured myself, literally, that I need to relax, and some time in May or June, I changed my putting grip, which also helped me finally relax.

Simplifying my approach and has helped me have a very good putting season – it has also led me to simplifying other parts of my “short-game” that also need improvement for me to reach my golf goals.  What I learned here is that too much focus is not healthy.  This lesson, like the one above, applies directly to leadership at the office as well.  For the leader needs to have the wisdom to determine how much focus to put on a situation.  Read any book about performance (I mentioned The Inner Game of Tennis in my January post) and you will discover that performance requires freedom.  This applies to individual performance, and team performance.  In both circumstances, we have to stop thinking at some point, and let our natural abilities take control.  Admittedly, this is counterintuitive to every fiber in our being –and another reason why golf is a good primer for leadership.

(I feel like a disclaimer is needed here.  I write often about the need for reflection and planning.  Both are still vitally important.  The point is that at some point the game begins, and the planning must end prior to teeing up the first shot).

This year’s golf season could tempt me to keep sharing lessons I have learned.  For example, caring about what others think of my game, talking to myself in positive phrases rather than telling myself what not to do, and humbling myself by going to the doctor when my shoulder is hurt (rather than playing through it for two months), but I’ll stop here for now.

One last question to ponder before I end.  What lessons are you learning from your hobbies?  As hopefully I have demonstrated above, whatever you are doing can be filled with applicable lessons that help you in improve in your life and career.

Golf continues to drive me crazy, but the lessons make me better.

At least that’s what I have to make Sarah –and often myself –believe.

Reflecting has become a major part of my weekly routine.  Not only do I utilize Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner, I also have begun using his journal.  The journal gives 8 questions/prompts that help one reflect on their day.  My routine is to use the journal Monday through Thursday, and the weekly review in the Full Focus Planner on Fridays, leaving the weekend to recharge.

I share this because I have come to realize the power reflection has in one’s life. Setting aside a few moments to think about what you have been up to is powerful.  Course-corrections are a necessary part of self-leadership.  And let’s be honest, this world is moving faster than ever, so reflection of any kind is counter-cultural.  As the cliché goes, sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.

This blog was born from reflection.  As I have mentioned before, I started writing consistently after realizing in a reflection period that not keeping up a blog was one of my biggest disappointments of that particular year.  Hundreds of posts later, the consistency of writing is one of the things I am most proud about in terms of the blog.

Blogging helps me clarify, and make sense of, events happening in business and life.  Going forward, expect more of that.  In fact, I am challenging myself to open up more, especially about my faith in Jesus and how it intersects with work.  But, more about that in the weeks to come.  And as always, I realize that even mentioning the name of Jesus might turn some readers off.  This is not my intention.  So, before going any further, a friendly reminder that everyone is welcome here.  And that means everyone!

What outcomes do I hope to achieve through writing blog posts? I ask myself this often, so here are several thoughts:

Posts that lead to genuine relationships.Posts that encourage business leaders.Posts that challenge me, as well as the reader.Posts that humble me (writing about failures).Posts that share how broken I was, and in a lot of ways still am.Posts that are vulnerable, transparent, and even uncomfortable.Posts that make other people think, and possibly change. Posts that challenge people to think differently about Jesus and Christianity.Posts that inspire people to action.

One of the most powerful reflection questions for me is asking myself whether “I am practicing what I am writing about?” If reflection has taught me anything this year, it has taught me the need to slow down and become more intentional about implementing the various inputs (Bible, business books, podcasts, etc.) that I have in my life.  Similarly, I have to be careful in what I create because there is an alluring power to LinkedIn and Facebook “likes.” In short, the ego craves more, so it is tempting to keep posting in pursuit of what, in actuality, is futility.  Notice, more “likes” is not one of the outcomes listed above.

Therefore, upon reflection, I have decided to change the frequency of the posts that I write from 2 posts each week to “1-ish” post per week.

What can the reader expect with this change?

1. My main post will come out Monday afternoons or Tuesday mornings.
2. I commit to have it out before lunch on Tuesday.
3. You don’t have time to read War and Peace, so I do not plan on changing the length.“1-ish?”
4. There may occasionally be more than one post per week.
5. Video will only be used for the occasional extra post, as I have gotten mixed reviews on those.
6. The content will be largely the same.
7. More interaction with you. Seriously, I’d like to build relationships off writing the blog. (Solicitors be warned: The few small hairs on my head stand on end when someone writes me an “I love your blog” email and then tries to sell me on something. I understand you have a job, but resist the marshmallow.
8. For the team at Hoffer Plastics, I want to re-allocate the hour or so a week that had been reserved for blog writing, and use it to build more one-on-one relationships with individuals, especially those of you that work on our manufacturing floor.
9. In sum, I want to spend more time practicing what I am writing about.

I have gone on long enough, so I think you get the idea.

I love writing this blog.  Thank you for reading it.  Thank you for putting up with my craziness.  And thank you for taking your own leadership seriously.

(A special note to those who subscribe to this blog.  As I alluded to above, the blog will be undergoing a “refresh.”  Stay tuned because when that “refresh” occurs (probably in November), you will need to re-subscribe to get each post delivered to your inbox.  Don’t worry, I’ll be reminding you as we get closer).

It was a week before Christmas. Our 6-week-old son, Ben, was terribly sick.  So sick that he could hardly breath.  He had RSV, and things progressed from the doctor’s office, to the hospital, to the hospital with the best PICU in our area.  Thankfully, our story ended on Christmas Eve when we took Ben home.  Today, he is staring down his fifth birthday, and I am still convinced that the lovely nurses at PICU gave him some kind of “performance enhancing drugs” because he not only grew rapidly after departing the hospital, but he has also never slowed down!

What absolutely destroyed me from that experience was not our situation.  To be sure, RSV is very serious for a six-week-old.  But, the odds were vastly in our favor.  Next door, however, was a little child fighting something –I don’t know exactly what—and what destroyed me was the Christmas tree.  You don’t put a Christmas tree in a temporary room.  You only put it in a room that you will be spending the entire season in.

I can still see that tree in my mind’s eye.

I pray for those parents and those kids.

In fact, I recently was driving to Chicago for a speaking engagement and drove by the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s hospital.  As I drove by, I turned the radio off and just began praying out loud for the parents, kids, and doctors:

Please heal one kid, Lord.

Please guide each doctor, and give them wisdom, insight, and focus.

Please help each parent persevere.  Comfort them with the peace that surpasses all human understanding of how this could be going on.

We live in a fallen, broken, world.  And it sometimes sucks.

I don’t know how to transition, so here is the point of this post:

The next time you feel that work is “out of control,” and the stress is getting to you, thank God for work and its problems.

In fact, the beauty of work problems is that they are only work problems.

Let’s own that.

And to every mom or dad that can identify with anything written above, I am praying for you.  I can think specifically of a mom and dad we know that is walking their daughter through an unimaginable situation, and inspiring us all in the process.  I can also think of a mom and dad at our church, whose son is in heaven after a brain tumor.  I’m still amazed at your courage and faith (and I still want to do coffee, so come on over to HP).

If you can identify with any of this, let me know.

I will pray for you, too.

Deal?

When is your work day completely over?

In the last week, there have been two times that I have ignored my kids after reading emails in the evening that worked me up and claimed my mental attention.  As I mentioned in prior posts, my official email stop time is at 8 p.m., so in both cases I was following my strategy. And in both cases, I failed at focusing on what matters most.

Maybe you are better than me, and never allow emails to irritate you.  After all, I don’t blame the senders of either email.  The only person I can control is myself.

But still, what are we giving up checking email well into the night?

What are we even proving?

Anyone can respond quickly.  More problematic, when we tirelessly pursue the never-ending cycle of being “on” and being available, we inevitably become “burned out,” crabby, and thoughtless because no one has the bandwidth to craft thoughtful messages 24/7.

Occasionally, I hear leaders say that their team needs them to respond.  If so, maybe they built the wrong team?

Upon reflecting on this, I have decided to stop checking email past 6 p.m. on work nights.  This is hardly revolutionary, but it is a change for me, and a win for my kids and wife.  To be sure, I informed my team of this change and told them that I am always available in the case of an emergency via my cell phone.  In fact, I prefer to have actual conversations over texting and emails (what a thought!).  They can call me if they need me, but 99% of the time they won’t.

Maybe the time I have chosen does not work for you.  I know one CEO who does a lot of her work in the late afternoon and evening.  She also has a much slower start to her day, with plenty of time for thinking, journaling, and meditating.

The point is that you can’t always be on, and it takes intentionality to set boundaries around your work hours.

The work day simply has to end.

(Anyone reading this from Hoffer Plastics, please identify when you are stopping.  Let people know how they can get a hold of you in case of an emergency, and give yourself a break!  We will be better for it).

As I often say to our team members, I don’t want your spouses and kids hating me because you work too much.

Neither do I want my kids growing to hate Hoffer Plastics because Daddy is always focused on business.

The stakes are that high.

In any physical endeavor, there is a line between pushing yourself too far and not pushing yourself enough.  As I wrote about recently, I have not only been dealing with a shoulder injury lately, I have been pushing through the pain.  After all, improvement is always hard.

At some point, however, I have to ask myself the question of whether or not I am going too far?  In other words, are the exercises I am doing actually having a detrimental effect to my shoulder?  Are they making matters worse?

Am I just pushing through the pain because of my ego?

Because I am plain old stubborn?

Or, because of my pride?

(Yes, to all three.  Thank you for your grace, Sarah).

When I walk through the doors of Hoffer Plastics, the same line exists.  How many of our initiatives are we holding on to just because we want to push through the pain, or because they worked “in the good old days?” Or, what are the repercussions for the “we don’t fail” mantra that we sometimes willingly embrace to make sure said initiative or project succeeds at all costs?  Amazing as those successes are, what are we neglecting because of that pursuit? (And one has to wonder if the answer to the first question is significant if we can claim any success at all).

To be clear, there is no “secret sauce” as to where this line is.  And truth be told, it is one of the reasons that as a leader, the most common prayer request I give is for wisdom.  It may sound simplistic, but it takes wisdom to understand the difference between pushing through adversity, and saying “enough!”

It also takes a leader grounded in humility.  While I can’t speak for you, this is always a struggle for me, just not in the way most suspect when they hear the word humility.  C.S. Lewis said that humility “is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”  Truth be told, my struggle is nailed right here – If I don’t push through the pain, if I don’t hit the numbers I set out to hit, I think of myself as a failure.  But in doing so, I’m putting all the focus of my mind on me and how circumstances reflect on me.  A truly humble leader doesn’t even care.

I close with humility because it is the antidote of pride.  In the spiritual sense, those of us who follow Christ are freed to focus on others because we no longer have to prove ourselves. For Jesus has already paid the price for us, there is nothing we can do to earn our worth.  We may struggle, as I struggle, with self-centeredness and pride, but this does not lessen the reality of this truth for us.

Similarly, organizationally we have to get to the point where we are centered on some ultimate reality. We have to know our “true north,” and what our defining metrics really are, so that we can say “enough” when our pride tempts us to continue marching on when the truth is that we are only “marching on” so that we feel better about ourselves.

Why am I surprised when I get injured at the gym?  As I write these words, I have a shoulder injury, tightness in my quadriceps, and I feel run down.  The Evernote file I use to track my lifts tells me that I have made progress the last thirty days, yet progress has come with pain.

It is hard to grow.

I come to work.  Why am I surprised that things are (still) hard here? Implementing IQMS while running near capacity was anything but easy.  People issues still pop up.  A family member gets sick, so an early retirement comes.  Do we have a “bench” that can fill that personnel need?  Or, perhaps the retirement was coming for two years.  Did we build the successor up, and were they ready when their time began?

All the while the customer knocks.  They have their issues, and to do this right, those issues had better be ours.  We’d better anticipate them.  We’d better address them.  And most of all, we’d better help them win.

None of this is easy.

Like my shoulder, it can often hurt.

Leadership happens while all this other stuff is happening.

It is one thing to command people to go in a certain direction (I call this management), and another to grab the trekking pole and start climbing the mountain with others following (true leading).  When things get messy on the hike, and they most assuredly will if the ascent is worthwhile, all you – the leader –can control is you.  You can’t control those following you.  If they complain, if they grumble, if they threaten to quit, commanding them to keep on only works for so long.  Rather, the leader has to control their own attitude and effort.  When things become awful, they must set the example that others can see when they look forward.

Things will get awful.

Things will go wrong.

It will remain hard.

We should stop being surprised by this reality.

What’s the difference between feeling “busy” and “overwhelmed?”

To illustrate the difference, think of your parents. Were they busy? As busy as you are today? How often did they ever use the word “overwhelmed?”

Personally, I don’t remember my parents describing themselves as overwhelmed back in the 1980s and 90s. Perhaps they were at times? I am positive that they were just as busy as I am today (seriously, there were not less hours in each day in 1980-something), but were they overwhelmed?

To answer that question, we have to understand what being overwhelmed is.

What do we mean when we say that we are overwhelmed? A lot of people would describe feeling overwhelmed by pointing to symptoms of busyness: too much to do on their to-do list, not knowing where to start, etc. But, this is busyness. Feelings of overwhelmed, however, deal with attention.

Attention, like time, is a limited resource. Similar to time, it is renewed each morning when we are naturally energetic, but it dissipates throughout the day. Feelings of overwhelm are on the rise because we have we had so many things fighting for our attention resources. Or, to once again use my parents as an example, while I think they were just as “busy” 30 years ago as we are now, they were certainly less distracted. How do I know? They, too, struggle with using their phones when they are around our kids (sorry, mom and dad).

I am writing about this because I often hear “victimhood” in people’s voices when describing their feeling over being overwhelmed. In fact, I hear it in my voice as well at times…

The reality is that the days have not gotten longer. Nor, have the weeks grown to 9 days.  We may be “insanely busy,” we may get too much email, work may be invading home, and home invading work. But none of these things are the problem. The problem is that we poorly allocate our attention resources. No one is forcing us to distract ourselves. No one is forcing us to check email around the clock. No one is forcing us to answer every interruption at work.

This may sound harsh, but we have done this to ourselves.

There is hope, however.

The next time we, or our teams, say that we feel overwhelmed, the response should be to ask:  Where are we placing our focus?  To what (or whom) are we giving our finite amount of attention? We are not victims! In fact, whether we realize it or not, we have control over this.

A thought to consider: What are you stopping so that you can focus on what matters? At work, what can you stop doing so that you can make more progress on your actual to-do list (the prioritized one, not the one containing 84 things of equal importance). Some things simply matter more than others, and those are the things we need to focus on!

(Note: If you can’t decipher what matters, you may need to do something extreme, like fasting from all inputs for a period, so that you can regain clarity. Inputs are not evil, but too many will drown out your thinking, which you will need to prioritize what really matters from what does not.  Remember, too, that things that are urgent are not always important; and things that are important aren’t always urgent—that doesn’t mean they should get ignored!)

The point is that feeling overwhelmed is a solvable problem.

While I can’t speak for you, this realization has helped me realize that technology, to-do lists, and other symptoms are not the problem when I feel overwhelmed.

I am.

(Need a tool to help you manage your attention?  I highly recommend Michael Hyatt’s “Full Focus Planner.”  It will help you focus on your top 3 priorities each day, and each week.  I continue to get positive feedback from those who have adopted it.  Likewise, the planner continues to help me as well).

Last year, my sister found the following biographical data in our archives:

“It is believed that Matthias Hoffer came to America seeking religious freedom. He came to America on the ship, “Loyal Judith” via Cowes and Rotterdam.  He landed at Philadelphia on September 2, 1743.

By trade he was a weaver of fancy over-lids, but was forced to take such employment as he could find. Mr. Wohlweider, a wealthy Lancaster County farmer hired him as a farm hand.

The choice of job proved to be a happy one for Matthias married the farmer’s only daughter, Maria.  She is described as an amiable and estimable young woman. They had six sons and six daughters: Maria, Rudolph, Catharine, Elizabeth, Veronica, Ann, John, George, Magdalena, Matthias, John, and Christian.

Maria died of smallpox contracted from Hessian soldiers quartered in their home the winter of 1778 when Washington and his half-starved army were camped at Valley Forge.

On Novemeber 3, 1779, Matthias married Anna Groh with whom he had six more children: Maria, David, Jacob and Henry (twins), Peter, and Joseph.

Matthias died at an old age, a man of wealth and influence. He was buried in a “farm grave-yard” such as are common in Lancaster County.  His tomb is located several miles east of Manheim.”

Freedom.

Happy Anniversary.