Stuck between mediocrity and excellence

It's a while after Thanksgiving.  I'm going to go a little off theme so bear with me.  Thanksgiving is not normal for my family It's only normal in the fact that there is some family drama.  But not enough to get us a reality TV show which is fortunate.  The iconic figure to your left influenced my childhood. Ignore my last name for a minute and if I told you that I grew up watching the NWA, going to NASCAR races, and was exposed to chewing tobacco in elementary school, what would you think?  That's right. My Asian butt was born and raised below the Mason-Dixon line.  So I may love fried chicken, but God help anyone who tries to take my rice cooker.  This makes Thanksgiving all the more interesting since like many American born Asians, I married Caucasian-- not a Northeastern or West Coast one. The best kind of all-- one that was raised in the South.  This means the best of both worlds and an entirely different thank you list th...

One of best things about working in Corporate America is that there are plenty of opportunities to get into an email battle or war.  If there was a way to get a "You Got Served!" pop-up to happen after you feel like you've sent a witty response to shut the other person up, I'd be all over that Outlook add-in.  Ever since I became a Contractor (note that I'm staying away from the word Consultant because Consultants don't deal with BS like this) and received the death sentence of working  in IT of a Fortune 100 company, the skill of not getting into an email battle is something that I've had to hone. Like all battles, there is usually some kind of instigating message (i.e. perceived insult) - or catalyst. It's typically ignited by someone forwarding a message that shouldn't have been forwarded. This is directly correlated with low EQ scores.  Let's take Contractor vs. Client. With every Client there is a key word that may trigger a...

The very first thing that I learned in business school was that businesses exist to make money.  Pretty simple, right? Profit = Revenues minus Costs  When you are Management Consulting, your purpose is twofold - 1.) Help your firm make money by, 2.) Helping your clients make money.  As a result, you make money-- and it's no small amount of change.  It's enough to put you on the preferred end of the bell curve.  But then this thing called life happens.  You get married. If you marry the right person, you'll actually want to spend more time with that person.  You have children. If you think that it's important to watch your child grow up, you want to spend more time at home.  You start reflecting on the past and thinking about your legacy-- Enter Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, or any other self-help professional.  (I call this the 40 life crisis - some might actually have this crisis earlier than the age of 40. Others of you ...

On my very first engagement as a consultant I remember sitting in a room with my Manager, another Sr. Consultant, and the client talking about an analysis we were doing. I want to say that it was one of those situations where the client was looking at us for something insightful to say and it seemed like everything that we did say wasn't a surprise to him.  It got to a point where my colleague said, "Look... I'm just trying to add some value here, " in which all of us burst out laughing. (Thankfully we had a good relationship with our client).  Value is an interesting word (and overused for all of us that do business speak).  John Maxwell says that as leaders (and people), we should be "adding value to the people around you." As an employee or business owner, how often do you ask:   How am I going to add value today? And to whom? What value am I going to add today? And how big is it going to be? Did putting in my time on time into all of...

Remember gold stars? In preschool and maybe even in elementary school, if you did extremely well on something, you would receive a gold star. The gold star was a symbol of excellence. And believe it or not, there are companies today that rate their employees according to a star rating system. Think of Angry Birds -- just with a couple of more stars The thing about gold stars or any other type of recognition system is that it recognizes performance at that point in time. But what about recognizing potential.  I'm talking about leadership potential, managerial potential, creative potential, or any other type of potential that's important in carrying an organization forward. In recruiting and in performance reviews at my old firm, it was important to recognize whether a consultant had the potential to make to the next level. I think that's important because when you recognize potential, you can put systems in place to help cultivate that potential. If those...

I've been off the road for over 2 years now. No more airline status. No more hotel status. No more rental car status.  My Amex points are no longer exponentially accumulating.  This also means no more rushing to the airport because of a last minute deliverable. No more excruciating wait times in the airport or on the tarmac. No more hearing those dreaded words, "We have a mechanical problem."  Finally, after 2 years, I'm okay with that.  When you are in the game (the game being a management consultant's lifestyle), you compare yourself to others that are around you. It's a race to who can get to Diamond status faster or who has the coolest alternative travel story. )You'd be amazed at what you can do with SPG Rewards.) When you are out of the game, you look back on it and wonder, "How in the world was I able to sustain this?"  It's because you've traded your time for money. And if you think about the sheer proportion of wa...

It's interesting when you read in the news that an artist and a manager or and artist and a producer part ways because of "creative differences."  Typically an artist will have a vision for what he wants the end product to look like  and everyone around him needs to at least be in the same book, if not on the same page. I have no experience in that world, but my gut tells that that like corporate America, there are outside forces at work (the label, corporate execs, fan expectations) that may influence how that artist's visions changes over time.  But the bottom line is that there will be differences of opinion- it's just a matter of how wide the gap becomes between the artist and the contributors that matter most.  You have to wonder how many of these creative differences exist, yet are stifled in large organizations because of the fear of challenging authority- or worse yet, the authority refusing to believe that they are wrong.  As a consultant, you...