If you want good relationships with people, your relationship must be in balance. The feedback ratio — optimizing for improved future performance vs reinforcement of the right behaviors. Ideally 1:1.

I act the exactly the opposite of how my team expects me to act. If they expect me to get pissed, I act calm. If they expect me to be calm, I act a bit cooky — arguably, my steady state. I notice that the humans I lead act the opposite of the way I expect them to behave too. The universe, life, everything — all of that is under no obligation to make sense to us. (borrowing a line from Neil deGrasse Tyson). I have found the best way to lead is to prostrate myself before the absurdity that is life and human nature, embrace it in all its glory, and approach slightly off center.

The West Allis West Milwaukee School District sent me a survey asking my thoughts on funding initiatives. They need to increase budget for improvements — both immediate and long term. I wonder how many citizens have enough information to make recommendations? I answered “unsure” to most of the questions. I came back to the same questions over and over again:How are you leveraging the existing constraints? What outcomes are you getting? How are you scaling what works? With so much educational material online and free, how do you bring more of that content into the classroom? What is driving the need to increase funding per student? How much of that increase is tied to maintaining and upgrading existing physical capital? How much of it is labor market demands? If additional funds were not approved via referendum, how might the school district leverage private partnerships to educate? And if that’s not possible, how will they weigh the cost of cutting programs? These are just my questions. I can only imagine what questions someone with kids might have. When I realize how much I don’t know, I begin to realize that the only decision I can make is the decision to learn more. I wish that was an option on the survey.

4 years later, I still believe it. An employee I had hired came up to me and let me know that their recruitment moment was the singularly most important moment of their life. The individual shared that my job offer brought them out of a depressing situation. Wow. I had that impact on another human being?  Suddenly, all of the wins and cost savings meant nothing to me. It didn’t matter how much we saved. What money we didn’t spend translates as lives impacted. What caused me to miss the importance of others? What happened that I did not help people find other work? How could I let myself become so consumed?   Needless to say, after much soul-searching, I would learn to do this much differently.  1. Communicate what’s happening and what we’re trying to do.2. Ask the team for their input and advice. Make the employees part of the solution.3. Develop better partnerships with vendors and have them unify around a common goal.4. Be mindful, self-aware, and temper the feeling to “win” and use that energy to “help” others.Winning isn’t winning if it costs your morality.  “Winning” is a stop along a more infinite journey.  Now, I’ll focus on the journey.  Now, I’ll focus on others.

I have a strong and sweeping opinion about performance reviews — I believe their useless. What’s the value in a conversation that’s held once a quarter, twice a year, or annually? I believe effective managers engage with their team’s work as often as possible. Managers say what they love about the work, they offer ideas for making it better, and they point out pitfalls and future traps their team members might not anticipate. Radical thought: what if managers used the quarterly/semiannual/annual review the way that a customer success manager uses a quarterly business review?What if the manager says, “here are all the things we worked on together, here’s where there’s opportunity for next quarter, and,” the part that no manager I’ve ever had has asked, “is it your intent to stay another quarter?”If the employee says “no” or “I don’t know,” that’s a great response. Then the manager can engage in discovery, and with the employee, determine the path forward.If the employee says “yes,” that’s a great response too. Now the manager finds a way to maintain a steady state and plot a growth path with and for the employee.Effective managers give generous insights and guidance that helps their team move forward routinely. Better managers go out on a limb and ask their teams to renew.

I like Tyler Cowen’s thought on time management from his blog. I resonate with #2, and I think I may adopt #3. Here are my suggestions:1. There is always time to do more, most people, even the productive, have a day that is at least forty percent slack.2. Do the most important things first in the day and don’t let anybody stop you.  Estimate “most important” using a zero discount rate.  Don’t make exceptions.  The hours from 7 to 12 are your time to build for the future before the world descends on you.3. Some tasks (drawing up outlines?) expand or contract to fill the time you give them.  Shove all these into times when you are pressed to do something else very soon.4. Each day stop writing just a bit before you have said everything you want to.  Better to approach your next writing day “hungry” than to feel “written out.”  Your biggest enemy is a day spent not writing, not a day spent writing too little.5. Blogging builds up good work habits; the deadline is always “now.”Rahul R. asks me if I would like to revise the list.  I’ll add these:6. Don’t drink alcohol.  Don’t take drugs.7. At any point in your life, do not be watching more than one television show on a regular basis.8. Don’t feel you have to finish a book or movie if you don’t want to.  I cover that point at length in my book Discover Your Inner Economist.I think I would take back my old #5, since I observe some bloggers who have gone years, ten years in fact, without being so productive.

I swore to myself years ago that if ever I stopped being something when I fired someone I would quit my job and change careers.The experience still hurts. I still feel a deep sense of pain for the person I must let go, and I feel a sense of failure in myself. Almost simultaneously, I feel a sense of love and goodness. There’s a part of me that believes that the right thing to do is to let someone know that you’re not for them. I can’t allow my pain to interfere with the very human job of transitioning someone to their next best step. Leaders can never forget that honesty and frankness is a strong currency of which there is scarce supply and great demand.

When people say “please note” or “noted” I always wonder… where do they note it?  what do they want me to note and where do they think I should note it?  Also… how come someone thinks that what they say is deserving of a note should I have a note to note upon?

In Lewis Carroll’s book, “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There”, The Red Queen famously tells Alice, while running…Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.Business people love this quote. It implies that in order to maintain a competitive advantage, you must continuously adapt, move, pivot, and sprint. Evolution.On the other side of the coin, this concept is also known as a “Rat Race” or a “Hamster Wheel.” I suppose it’s a matter of perspective.Hopefully your life is evolving and you’re getting better at being you every day.

A friend asked me if I think life is unfair. I answered “no.” Fairness is subjective. How does one’s concept of fairness get shaped? At the time our cells combined? How we grew up? How life shaped us? All of it? None of it? Because fairness is unique to the person, life can’t be unfair or fair broadly — it must be whatever it is to that person. I choose to see life as fair. I believe things balance out in the aggregate. Eventually, the randomness and chaos of life, comes to absolute zero and total order.… at least that’s my thought for now.