Leadership Blog

Most of us have control over our personal vision – our personal “Burled Arch”. However, very few of us have control over the Organization’s “Burled Arch”. For the vast majority of leaders, you are handed a destination, given the direction and told to ‘Mush’ the team in that direction. Operationally, you may have some flexibility on How it gets done but for the most part mid-level leaders are limited.

I don’t have time on the Friday blog to unpack all of the positions on the team, but let me introduce them to you and let’s round table what that might look like in your organization – or your ‘Sled Team’.

In most organizations, there are sled teams within sled teams within sled teams. You are the musher of your team – and you play a role in the team that is organizationally tiered above you. In Dog Sled Teams, there are four positions apart from the musher. The first position is ‘Lead Dog’, followed by ‘Swing Dog’, ‘Team Dogs’, and, lastly, ‘Wheel Dogs’.

Lead Dogs sniff out the trail, show the way and set the pace. Swing dogs are partners with the Lead Dogs. They help with the leadership of the team, but more specifically, they influence the rest of the team to follow the lead dogs’ lead. Team Dogs provide the power, the energy, and do most of the ‘heavy lifting’ (i.e. they make the widgets). Wheel Dogs provide additional power and help steer the sled. They are a strong force and they play a vital role in steadying the sled.

Within your organization, what is the role you most naturally play? Are you one of the first to lead out, find the direction, and start pulling in that direction? Then you’re playing the role of ‘Lead Dog’.

Do you take the lead and energy from the Lead Dogs and use your influence to get the rest of the team on board? Are you the ‘motivator’ of the group? Then you’re playing the role of ‘Swing Dog’.

Are those things too stressful? Does your strength lie in getting things done? When the team hands you something are you the ‘go-to’, get it done player? Then you’re playing the role of ‘Team Dog’.

Lastly, are you a steadying force? Do you provide much needed, solid council to your musher that helps them turn the sled and direct the team? Are you there and ready with the wisdom of someone who has been on the team a while and has the knowledge and understanding from being ‘long in the tooth’? That’s the role of the ‘Wheel Dog’.

Do you play more than one of these roles?

In our sessions we spend time and unpack all of these at a deeper level and teach people how to maximize their roles and increase their organizational value, but for today, can you own one of those positions? When it comes to organizational vision and your role within the team, you must find some way to add value to the over-arching mission – the organizational ‘Burled Arch’.

Wrap up for the week..

Are you ready to leave the lodge? Great achievements rarely take place in the Lazy Boy.

Musher’s carry the 3 gallon pot – for the ‘clear water’ of IDITAROD. Have you taken the time to dream about your ‘Burled Arch’? Have you filled your pot with all of your hopes and dream?

Musher’s carry the components for fire. If you haven’t taken the time to think about your ‘Fire components’ of Oxygen (passions / desires / skillset), Fuel (growth / learning / personal Kaizen), and Heat (line it out, write it down) set that time aside today or this weekend.

HAB 22 – Break the dream down into checkpoints, know the ABC’s of the dream and the A before Q components of what are my next 5 checkpoints or steps.

Lastly, what role do I play in my organizations vision and moving the team forward as a player, as well as a musher.

Thanks for being a part of the journey this week!

The Iditarod Dog Sled race covers 1100 miles of some of the roughest terrain around. Simply put – to an outsider or rookie, there is now way they can fully appreciate what it takes to reach the ‘Burled Arch’.

As you turned up the heat on your personal and professional vision, does it seem like a daunting task? Does it seem unlikely that you could achieve the dream?

In the Iditarod, there are 26 checkpoints from beginning to end and each checkpoint varies in distance from one to the other. For argument sake, let’s just call each about 45 miles each. Instead of the overwhelming task of running 1100 miles – mentally, it breaks down into 20 something training runs of 40 – 50 miles each. Again, this may vary depending on the roughness of the terrain and the conditions on the trail but you get the point.

Going from the ‘A’ to the ‘B’ in the HAB 22 model is just as intentional of a step as going from ‘A’ to ‘B’ in ABC. In order to accomplish a vision, our first step was to ‘H’- have one, next to ‘A’ refine the vision through ABC, now we transition to the ‘B 22’ – Break it down and Broadcast it.

We still use the ABC methodology – or sometimes what I call A before Q methodology. If you could break your dream down into components or training runs, what would that look like? You might say something like, “I want to run my own division.” What does a great division leader look like? What knowledge do they need? What knowledge do I possess, right now? What is my growth plan that will allow me to achieve my dream? What is the time frame I hope to accomplish this in? What is a reasonable time frame? Where do I need to place myself to be able to see what I need to see and experience what I need to experience?

If you could break the achievement of your dream down into 22 different steps to go from where you are now – to living the life or profession of your dreams – your ‘Burled Arch’, what are those 22 steps or ‘Checkpoints’?

The process for a good musher – and a good leader is to concern yourself with the next few steps in the process. To look much further than that is good for long term thinking but it can lock you up mentally and emotionally to take in too much. How do you eat an Elephant? How do you run 1100 miles?

I’m not concerned, at this moment, in reaching my ‘Burled Arch’. My job is to complete the next 1 to 5 checkpoints (steps) in the process that leads to the fulfillment of my journey. If I complete the 22 checkpoints lined out to achieve my dream – then I will have reached my ‘Burled Arch’. It’s as simple as that. ** Please notice that I said as simple as that – not as easy as that! **

Nothing worthwhile – nothing of incredible stature is ever easy – nor should it be!

If you do what others have done – then you can have what others have!

If you’re not willing to pay the price and run the checkpoints – that’s for the blog about staying in the lodge!

Challenge on the trail for today: Break down the trail to the ‘Burled Arch’ into checkpoints and training runs.

Run with purpose!

Boiling the vision down to a usable clarity calls for refinement by fire. Again, from yesterday’s blog, mushers take a pot that can hold 3 gallons and the items needed to build a fire. The task,for today, is to take the components and mix them together to ignite the fire.

I have a system that I call HAB 22 when it comes to vision, refinement, and execution.

The H in HAB 22 stands for “Have” a vision.

It starts with the dreaming and possibilities thinking portion that we talked about for the first two days of this week.

Next we turn to gaining clarity and definition. This blends the H in with the A. The ‘A’ for me stands for ABC’s. In other words, we must get down to the basics of vision, refinement and execution AND much like a remedial school setting – we must write it down!

The components of fire – or the ABC’s of fire are Oxygen, Fuel, and Heat. The components of vision are similar Oxygen relates to those things that give you air. What are your desires? What are your passions? What do you enjoy? What have you dreamed about? What are you good at? All of these are going to give air to the REAL possibilities in the vision.

Fuel is growth. To be great at leadership and vision, you need to be thirsty. Just as thirsty as the mushers and Husky’s on the trail. Thirst for knowledge, thirst for wisdom, and thirst for best practices! Learning and growing are the fuel for the fire. Learning about yourself refines the vision down to what is more in your particular sweet spot – where is vision success more natural. Learning about your desired arena leads you to become a Subject Matter Expert (SME). To have so much knowledge in you that it spills out of you – is a much better position than having to run to wiki for the answers at every turn!

Finally, for today, we have Heat. You have to turn up the Heat on your dreams by writing them down. I’m not saying that just because you write your dreams and goals on a sheet of paper that they will come to pass – but I can tell you the old saying, “Out of sight, out of mind” is true when it comes to personal and professional achievement.

Once they are written we can turn up the heat and look at them in a more systematic – How do we accomplish these dreams / goals – this is done in the last section.

For the trail today, spend some time writing and refining – it will pay huge dividends!

What is your Oxygen (passion)? Are you fueling up (growing)? Have you turned up the heat on your dreams (Write it down)?

If you’ve heard me talk about the Iditarod, then you’re probably aware the word has several attributed meanings. As I was thinking about today and this week on vision the meanings were forefront in my mind, again. One meaning is “distance or distant place” and the other is said to mean “clear water.” While racing, the mushers carry a pot big enough to hold 3 gallons of water and they bring materials to light a fire. They fill they pot with snow and light the fire. The fire turns up the heat on the snow in the pot and purifies it into clear water.

Your vision for your life and business is that ‘clear water’. To get there you need to have plenty of dreams and thoughts to fill the pot. The enemies of filling the pot with dreams are complacency and negativity. Negativity just tells you, “you’re not worthy to leave the lodge”, “who do you think you are?”, “you can’t do that!”, “You’re just going to look like a fool.”, “no one in your family has ever achieved at that level” – and a thousand other things meant to keep you down.

Complacency will leave you satisfied with the status quo. Leaders and mushers who are satisfied with the status quo rarely leave the lodge. And why should they? They have a nice fire, plenty to eat and drink… It’s comfortable.

Why leave the lodge? Because greatness was never achieved in the Lazy Boy! The trail is where the personal satisfaction and glory can be achieved!

Fill the bucket full of hopes and dreams!

Fight the battle over complacency and step on negativity on the way out of the lodge!

Use the beginnings of hope, desire, and passion to be the kindling for the fire. Use the passion for growth that we talked about last week to be the ignition that creates sparks. This is not the time to be concerned with the what if’s? and can’t happens. This is the time to dream the dream!

Remember: Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for supposed lack of creativity. A Munich Schoolmaster remarked that Albert Einstein would never amount to much. Beethoven was called inept as a composer.

The trail awaits, greatness is out there – it’s time to fill the pot with hopes and dreams!

Dream big today!

This week, I want to focus on our “vision” as leaders. There are many reasons for vision – personal vision, as well as, professional and organizational. Vision provides the energy – or the push necessary. Many times achieving the vision will push us farther than we would go without one. The vision for “Iditarod Leaders” is what I call the “Burled Arch”. Just as a reminder, the Burled Arch is the finish line for the Iditarod Dog Sled Race in Nome, Alaska. The mushers start the race, approximately, 1100 miles away in Anchorage and for close to two weeks they chase the vision of reaching the Burled Arch.

Like the Burled Arch, you vision must be so compelling that when you become discouraged or when bad weather hits on the trail, you will not turn back or drop out. Vision is that fire that burns in your heart – that compelling, nagging, sometimes even haunting destination that must be attained. It is personal power and organizational cohesion.

As we start the week, I want to extend a challenge – DREAM BIG!

As we start to develop our “Burled Arch”, work to enlarge the vision. I can still hear one of my mentors, Jim Wideman. He would constantly say, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time!”

What are you aiming for this week? How big is your dream? I want to encourage you – STRETCH! Stretch yourself! – you have to believe in the possibility that you can achieve your dream! Belief is essential, however, the first stage is to dream.

If you knew you wouldn’t fail…

If you knew that anything was possible…

If you had complete belief in yourself…

What would you attempt? What would you chase?

What would be your… “Burled Arch”?

On the trail this week – DREAM BIG!