Systems have obvious and non-obvious components. Take a family — a family system consists of a head and perhaps offspring. But what else? A family pet would be a component. A house, a car, a couch, you could name many different components of what might make a family. But what else?The components of the system are not as important as the relationship between each component. The relationship will help determine how the system operates. For example — let’s say one child in the family goes off to summer camp and will not be staying in the house. Does the family system still exist? Yes. The child’s location has changed but the relationship between other members of the family and the child has not. Therefore, the system can still operate. Now let’s say a tragedy strikes the family and a parent dies. Does the system persist? I believe yes because the relationship between the parent and the other members may not materially change. In fact, the surviving family members may want to hold the departed closer to them hanging on to their memory. Thinking about systems this way, I wonder how many systems we exist in? And I wonder how well we know the quality of our relationship between us and the other components of those systems? It’s never the trees, and it’s not quite the forest, it’s about the relationships of each item that make the forest.

“I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.” - Poul Anderson from “The Ghost In the Machine”When you look at a flower at a distance, you see a flower. Magnify the flower and you’ll notice the pedals. Magnify more and you’ll see the hairs on the stems. Magnify even more you may see cells. Keeping going and you’ll see atoms. With each level of magnification nature reveals that much more complexity. And yet we yearn for an aphoristic view of the world.

I’m reading Donella H. Meadows’ “Thinking in Systems: A Primer.” I want to be a better systems thinker. On page 5, I came across this little bit of text.Systems happen all at once. They are connected not just in one direction, but in many directions simultaneously. To discuss them properly, it is necessary somehow to use a language that shares some of the same properties as the phenomena under discussion.In music notation, a system is a group of two or more staves that are joined together by a vertical bar, or brace. Look up “piano music” on google, and you’ll see systems everywhere. The function of a system is to represent what multiple things are doing at the same time. A musician must make sense of a system in order to bring a piece of music to life. Life, or nature, happen everywhere all at once. Nature is a system. Nature has a language — perhaps that language is actual human language, perhaps it’s music, maybe it’s a bark, maybe it is trees changing colors, or tides rising… everything in some way is interconnected with everything else all at once. The gift of learning music is that you learn to see and hear the system underneath all of the noise that is life. The vibrations.

Elaine Schwartz manages and writes for econlife, a favorite blog of mine for every day person economic news. The other day, she wrote about “Taylornomics”, or the economics influenced by Taylor Swift.Taylor’s “Eras” tour generated billions of dollars worldwide. Elaine asks, what do those numbers really mean.Moving from big totals to individuals, we can see that the money came from each Swifty spending approximately $1,279 on purchases that ranged from tickets, merchandise, food, and drinks, to transportation, hotel rooms, and restaurant meals.Assuming Miami is typical, restaurants in the 53 cities where Taylor Swift performed 149 concerts, would have seen almost every category increase. In Miami, total restaurant transactions rose by 9.1% while patrons spent approximately 2.6% more. Rather than hard liquor, wine sales soared an extra 12%. However, the big surge, at 27.2%, came from omelettes.In economics, the Eras Tour is a form of externality — a positive or negative impact of a decision/action on unrelated parties, a shockwave or a ripple. And apparently, one of the greatest uninvolved beneficiaries of Taylor Swift is the omelette — big egg ;-) In some way, we are an externality on the world around us. As we move through the world, we disrupt sound molecules and photos and thus impact uninvolved third party observers — others. The impact of our movement, we hope, is positive. In a sense, you are your own Taylor Swift to those of us privileged enough to experience you.

I love beautiful lyrics. When I coach singers, I get the most joy digging into the lyric of a song to understand the character’s world. No different than analyzing a story. Mirel Wagner’s “No Death” paints a vivid picture of a person dealing with death. Mirel’s words paint a picture of a person potentially dealing with the loss of a loved one, and the loss of pride that comes from losing someone. I never considered “pride” an emotion associated with death. As I think about people in my life and how I might respond to their death, I speculate I may feel my pride hurt. Perhaps that’s where my sadness may stem from? I may morn the loss of that person no longer in my life. That I have lost. That I should expect that person in my life forever. Perhaps that’s why writings of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius all have a central theme of accepting death as a natural part of life. I’m not a morbid person, and I hope this post doesn’t leave you down. Rather, I hope this post piques your interest in Mirel Wagner, check out Mirel’s song below, and challenges you to appreciate every moment you have on this earth with people that much more. HT to Brian for the song recommendation.

At some point in your life, I hope you’ll have the experience of looking back at your work from 10 years ago. Yesterday I reviewed my work from Carnival Cruise Lines, nearly 10 years ago now. I see ideas and products and ways of leading that shaped me into the leader I am now; some things I wish I maintained. I also saw things that I would have done differently. On the whole, the experience touched me. How far have I come? How much did I forget or lose? And now that I see what I forgot/lost, how might I bring back the best? What am I still doing today that I did then? For all of what I am now, I am thankful for what I was.I enhanced the trip down memory lane with “Waga kado ni”, from Chiyomi Yamada & baobab’s new album” “Songs of my land”.

The construction of music fascinates me — still. Making music is this beautiful melange of ideation, critique, trial-and-error, intuition, knowledge, technical skill, craft, and luck. The skills required to construct music are the exact skills you want on a team. I am still thankful that I spent a majority of my career in professional music — most of my lifespan. Among many things, I learned the most from being a musician. It, in some way, is who I am.I got inspired to write this post after watching the behind scenes video of Yasmin Williams new album.

When you have that energy that propels you to near infinity… realize that’s not natural. Nothing natural lasts forever.

“Quit while you’re ahead.” - John Brady

I asked someone what behaviors they value in leaders they admire. The answer:ListeningEnablingHumblingListening makes sense to me — it’s a behavior thought leaders in the Linkedinosphere write about all the time. Click baity articles that read “the #1 thing you need to do to win the C-Suite” all about being a better listener. I believe listening to be so simple yet so absent in our world — the people who do it well mastered an ancient art.Enabling, as we discussed it, means to enable possibility. To make situations and events so much better that people are enabled to output their best work. Humbling — admitting mistakes. Being confident enough in one’s self to admit errors, failures, and how they’ve learned from it. Enabling and humbling are behaviors that I also admire in leaders. They are behaviors I wish I saw more of in people… generally speaking.

Thinking about craft today.I defined craft as: “The action of applying your skill, knowledge, and invention to create something is craft.”I often read thought leaders write about how we should obsess about craft. If we’re obsessing over an action, we’re not actually doing the action. We’re thinking about, reflecting on, learning more about, planning how to… but not actually doing.If you want to obsess over your craft, then do more. And after each do stop and reflect. Pull learnings forward, make improvements, and do it again.