Why YOU Need a Burled Arch—It’s Not What You Think

Pro tools for decreasing burnout and finishing strong 

All Iditarod mushers know the words “Burled Arch.” What sounds like a strange landmark to anyone else is excitement—and relief—to their ears. 

The Burled Arch means victory. It’s the term mushers use for the long-awaited finish line. 

The destination each team hopes to see at the end of their strenuous trek. 

The term “Destiny” comes from the same word as Destination. Destiny is not “Fate” (“Well, whatever happens to me, that’s my Destiny.”) No, Destiny is a pre-decided Destination that I am determined to reach!

With “Burled Arch Destiny” all we need is the map, the skill, and the will to get there! Maps are createable. Skill is teachable. There’s only one question left—do you have the WILL?

Finding and honing the will is easier than you think. What I would tell people is this: “Dream big and then learn the steps to get you there.”

It starts with these questions: 

  • Where are you now along this trail?
  • Why do you want this Destiny?
  • What will you need to Learn?
  • What skills will you need to develop?
  • What role will others play in helping you reach this Burled Arch?
  • What are measurable steps along the way?
  • What is the NEXT step? (And then take it!) 

If you continue to ask these questions and then take the next step, nothing can stop you from reaching your “Burled Arch Destiny.”

As you prepare for your destination, here are some “pro tips from the trail” that every leader needs if they really want to make it to the finish line. 

These mental checks help guard against frustration, burn-out, confusion—and when you’ve wandered, they put you back on the path to success. 

It Might Get Messy

No one gets it right the first time. No one reaches their potential in one day, week, or year. 

It’s not going to be perfect, but that’s okay. Because anything worth doing is worth doing UGLY! 

Ugly is real—and it leads us to continuous improvement!

Remember how bad we all were when we first started learning to play sports as little kids?  Eventually, if the will persists, the skill improves—and you make JV and then on to varsity! 

It takes talent, but as my mentor John Maxwell says, “Talent is NEVER enough!”

Every Checkpoint is a Victory. 

After each Next Step, celebrate small victories like crazy!

Celebrate any progress—yes, any—toward your Burled Arch Destiny. If you learn a new skill, take a new class, spend 30 minutes in dreaming and mapping, whatever it is, mark it down and celebrate the wins!  

This is the fuel needed to keep it up! Why keep running if you think you’re not going anywhere?  

Mark your progress, even the small steps, and celebrate!

Find the Right Belief 

What the roots drink, the fruits think! Our beliefs as leaders, as team members, and as people have a lot of power over what we actually accomplish. 

Before 1957, some athletes believed that a sub-4 minute mile was impossible. They kept trying, but after so many failures, it was easier to chalk the record up to fantasy—a goal potentially just too strenuous for the human body. 

Then came Roger Bannister. He started his running career at 17 with an already impressive 4:24 mile/minute pace. Eight years into his career, still no one else had broken the 4-minute mile. 

But on May 6, 1954, during an Oxford meet and winds of up to twenty-five mph—that just happened to die down right before his race—Roger Bannister completed the mile in a crowd-rousing 3 minutes and 59.6 seconds.  

What’s more astounding?

He held the record for only three weeks. 

And within three years of Roger’s ground-breaking physical feat, 16 other runners also cracked it. 

Once they could visualize the path to victory, it seemed like anyone could achieve the “impossible.” 

Check yourself: where could beliefs be limiting you and where are they advancing you?

Partner up with Inspiring Individuals

Lastly, make sure to find an encouraging friend, accountability partner, or coach. When you start to doubt (which we all do!), when you want to quit, you’ll need them to cheer you on!

Fight the self-defeating voices with everything you have! Saturate yourself in can-do positivity!  Find a voice, someone that lifts you up, and listen to their positive beliefs. 

I listen (almost daily) to speakers that are highly positive and motivational. Why? Because I need it too!

Read, listen, watch anything you can to make sure your tank stays full of the belief in possibilities!

Keep dreaming. Keep moving. Keep growing. Keep doing! 

The Burled Arch is ahead. 

RightPath Tools: From Failing Student to World-Renowned Astronaut

The Keys to Transforming Your Leadership Today

In the inspiring book Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, Scott Kelly describes his journey to become an astronaut, living for a year and a half in space and commanding both the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. 

While the book recounts many fascinating details about living in space and NASA training, I was most intrigued by a key turning point in Kelly’s life.

Kelly was a poor student in high school and during his first year of college. He spent his days in school staring out the window, watching the clock until school was dismissed and he could roam the woods and think up stunts that often landed him in the emergency room. 

Unable to focus on school work, his grades suffered. He was so distracted that he ended up applying to the wrong college. 

His freshman year of college found him at the bottom of his class, listless and directionless until two things transformed his life: Vision and Grit.

Vision Is Only the Start

He picked up a copy of The Right Stuff which describes the training and adventures of the early NASA test pilots and astronauts. Kelly was hooked. 

He instantly knew that he wanted to become a Navy test pilot and eventually an astronaut. 

Yet, as a young man with a poor academic record, low motivation and a history of coasting through life, Scott realized that his vision was not enough, he needed grit.

A key moment came during the first weekend at the Merchant Marine Academy. He called his brother and told him that he wanted to visit some friends on another campus for a party. 

His brother said, “Are you crazy? If you are going to be a Navy test pilot, you need to spend the entire weekend in your dorm room and do every problem in your textbook until you can do them all PERFECTLY.”

When he started on Friday afternoon, distractions would pop up in his mind

  • “I need to sharpen my pencil.”
  • “I should get a drink of water.” 
  • “I wonder what my friends are doing.” 

Yet he resisted these distractions by remembering his vision of becoming a Navy test pilot. After a full weekend of study, he aced his first test and started down the road that would lead him to set the U.S. record for endurance space flight.

Can You Relate? 

What is your vision? When you get to the end of the year and look back at the events of this year, what will you have learned? What new skills will you have? How will you have grown?

To accomplish your vision, how will you develop the power of grit

Let me suggest three steps:

  1. Use a tool. Objective insights from an assessment tool that measures natural, hard-wired behavior like RightPath’s Path4 and Path6 assessments provide valuable understanding of your strengths, struggles, and how to relate to others.
  2. Make a plan. Too often vision only focuses on the final result, not the process to accomplish it. Take time to write down the steps to accomplish your goal. Be specific and describe the commitment of time, energy, and money you will invest in accomplishing your goal.
  3. Get a coach. A coach can be a powerful ally and help make change last. Not only does a good coach hold you accountable, but coaches like Kamau Bobb of Google provide new insights and perspectives that can help you overcome any obstacles and roadblocks you face. Drop me a note if I can be of help.

Start by Getting on the RightPath

Over my career, these steps have been my leadership lifeline. I’ve always had a vision, but these keys to grit-development have become disciplines of success that no leader should lose. 

Without third-party insight, I’m running blind. But with the right tools, there is no limit to the places I can lead my team. 

In fact, we have been using the insight tools RightPath’s Path4 and Path6 for over a decade, which is why I’m so excited about the “joint adventure” we’ve undertaken. 

They are essential parts of my success path. 

Influence Leadership wouldn’t have achieved such high levels of performance without equipping our leaders with

  • High-level understanding of emotional intelligence
  • Detailed training for building stronger relationships
  • Enhanced communication between individuals, teams, and companies
  • Tailor-made team and leadership development solutions

With RightPath, I’ve seen myself and my people increase accuracy, maximize team relationships, and continue to grow bigger and better as a company. 

Our vision grows. Our grit increases—and the proof is in the results.

 

3 Keys to Execution Excellence in Your Organization

How to Consistently Get More Done without Losing Your Mind

You could probably study for the rest of your life—and still never finish all the books, articles,  editorials, and contradictory perspectives on how to execute with excellence. 

Thankfully you don’t have to sift through it all to find a process that just works.

One of the most helpful—and beautifully simple—leadership processes I learned was from a group of seasoned, Alaskan mushers. 

They didn’t have to get fancy or annotate. They got right to the point and shared with me something that not only works for them on the treacherous Iditarod Trail but can work for any leader—on and off the trails. 

We called it the R.A.C.E method. 

The acronym stands for Ready, Action, Checkpoint, Evolve. 

These simple but powerful steps create a process that any leader can apply—for excellent team execution again and again… and again! 

Let’s break down the first step: Ready 

In this phase, I’ve found three keys to consistent execution excellence—goals, roles, and habits. These are the what, the who, and the how of getting things done. 

To get ready, you need to know what you want to achieve, who needs to fulfill which roles, and how you will function in the day-to-day to succeed.

Goals

Setting INSPIRED goals begins with asking these questions:

  • Where do you want to end up? 
  • What is the order of the steps? 
  • Who does those steps best? 
  • How much time do you need? 
  • What are the best in your industry doing?

On the Iditarod trail, mush teams rely on trail markers to let them know how far they’ve traveled and how much longer they have to go. 

Even with these markers, some mushers have stopped fifteen minutes from the next checkpoint, because they didn’t realize how close they were to achieving the next goal. In the middle of the action, it’s difficult to tell one snowbank from another. 

The same is true for you and your team as you execute. 

With your head down in the weeds, you can lose sight of where you are. That’s why you need goals that serve as checkpoints. 

The checkpoints do two things. They help people focus on componentized goals and provide built-in celebration points along the way. 

Similar to the way the various camps on an Everest ascent provide visual cues to progress, your checkpoints let people measure progress toward achieving results.  

As you evaluate your goals in the harsh light of reality, you must consider your team’s ability to deliver on those goals in that time frame, which leads to evaluating the roles needed and who will fill those roles.

iditarod-dog-sled-race

Roles

When you’re clear on your goals and you’ve set checkpoints to monitor progress, then you can start positioning your team for maximum success by examining roles. 

I suggest you begin with these questions: 

  • Who is actually doing and delivering? 
  • Is everyone crystal clear about roles and responsibilities?
  • How does each person contribute to each step?
  • What strengths does each person contribute and where will he or she do the best work?
  • In light of the role, what weaknesses does each person have and how can these weaknesses be overcome? 
  • Do you need to add or remove people from the team? Have you first trained them to ensure removal is wise?

Sports teams are only allowed a certain number of players. You too must work within certain constraints such as budget and organizational restrictions.

 That’s why it’s so important to have the right team members in place to get the job done. 

An offensive lineman may technically be physically able to line up under center, receive the ball, and throw it to a receiver, but that’s not what he’s built for.

 In baseball, pitchers are notoriously bad hitters. That’s not why they’re on the team.

The constraints actually help the team by forcing them to put the best players in the roles where they perform the best.

 Likewise, constraints help you ensure you put the right people in the right places to win. 

That doesn’t mean no one will ever have to do a job they don’t enjoy or step out of their comfort zone, but it does mean that you position each person to be and deliver his or her best. 

(A pitcher sometimes has to bunt a run in. Football players sometimes line up differently for a trick play.)

But your team is filled with people who will excel in their areas of expertise—and propel you to excellence—if you ensure they are in the right role. 

Habits

Habits have the power to make or break your execution. As James Clear says in Atomic Habits, “You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” 

Nowhere is this reality more apparent than in execution. 

You can have the noblest goals but, without systems in place to achieve those goals, you’ll never get off the starting line. 

You’ll do what you’ve always done and wonder why you’re getting the same results. 

To achieve excellence through execution, you’ve got to manage your own habits and then help your team members manage theirs. It goes back to the DITLO I described earlier—what happens in the Day In The Life Of your team. 

So, how do you make the right things habitual for your team? Identify the right things to do, then make them repeatable, sustainable, and scalable. Start by answering these questions:

  • What’s the workload?
    • Does it come to you segmented or does it need to be compartmentalized? 
    • Are there trends, patterns, and timing to follow? 
  • What are the standard operating procedures (SOPs) that lead to successful execution?
    • Do they exist by design or by default? 
    • How effective are they? Are they current? 
    • Do you know the steps in the process? 
  • Do you know your strengths and struggles, efficiencies and inefficiencies?
  • What are your output expectations? 
    • Are there checkpoints to ensure you get the outcome you need and provide accountability?

Working through these steps takes time. It’s not flashy, and it’s not always fun. 

And that’s why so few do it—and they fail to deliver excellence. 

But when you have answers to these questions, you can begin to work them into your DITLO and move to other steps in the process.

business-measurement

Are you ready to RACE with Excellence?

The bottom line is this: preparation is half the battle. Getting RACE-Ready with achievable team goals, clear member roles, and systemized habits will put you three steps ahead of the competition before the starting whistle blows. 

These goals, roles, and habits make up the foundation for excellent execution. 

You can be intentional, passionate, real, have a heart to serve, and integrate well, but if you fail to execute you’ve failed to do your job.

There’s no substitution for executing with excellence. But if you work the steps with excellence, execution takes care of itself.

If you or your team needs a proven guide to help you plan well in this Ready phase, just reach out.

The Fatal Flaw in Business Planning

Business People Planning Strategy Analysis Office Concept

Vince Lombardi is often credited with saying, “The man on the mountaintop didn’t fall there.”

Success doesn’t favor one person over another on a whim. The longer I’ve been in the business/leadership industry, the more clearly I have seen that only by being Intentional in business planning can you achieve remarkable results as an InSPIRED leader.

You can try to skip over it. You can dash headlong towards the prize. You can hope against hope that your team can win on passion alone. But as adventurous as spontaneity sounds, when you’re planning a next-level strategy, only intentional steps will keep you off the thin ice.

A Tale of Two Leaders

Rory and Bob were two visionary leaders with a strong drive to accomplish great things.

Each wanted to be first-to-market in their shared industry. Each had identified a market objective that would put his organization on the map—but only for the one who achieved it first. The desire to achieve drove them to act. But good intentions, goals, and dreams will only get you so far.  

When Rory heard of the opportunity, his start-up organization was already strong and well-prepared. Though originally positioned to tackle a different objective, he chose to pivot and pursue this new opportunity.

Because he had been intentional about building a first-rate team and resourcing them well, he was able to retool them quickly.

When Bob learned of Rory’s new market focus, he became reactionary.

He also decided to pivot and race for the objective, but wasn’t nearly as well prepared. His team wasn’t as strong, nor was it resourced to deal with the inevitable struggles every team encounters when forging new ground.

Bob’s lack of intentional business planning meant the resources and capital they did have were often squandered. Each failed opportunity lowered the morale of the organization.

One by one, his key performers lost interest and left to chase his or her own dreams. When what was left of Bob’s team finally managed to achieve their objective—exhausted and frustrated—they had come in second place behind Rory’s team.

In that industry, second place might as well have been a total failure. Crushed after defeat, Bob had little left in his leadership tank and even less capital. His few remaining team members left him. His company never recovered and closed its doors permanently.

Making It Out Alive

Rory’s team had been prepared, strategic, and intentional. Bob’s team had attempted to wing it and engage in a fire-drill-rush to market.

Maybe you’ve worked with a leader like Bob who rushed headlong into what looked like a golden opportunity, only to see it fail and leave everyone burned out and heading for the exits.  You may even have been a leader like that and known the pain of seeing your summit dreams dashed.

You may have survived, but barely, with painful scars to prove it.

For every moment of business acclaim, there must be countless hours of preparation. For every moment at the Everest summit, there are months of pre-planning. For every minute an athlete stands on the medal podium, there are years of disciplined activity.

Success is never an accident. It always begins with being intentional in your business planning, again and again.

The Step Before You Start

If the story of Rory and Bob sounds familiar, you’ve probably heard it before.

Rory? His real name was Roald Amundsen, the first person to reach the South Pole. Bob’s real name was Robert Falcon Scott, the second person to reach the South Pole—five weeks later. By the time Scott arrived, he found a Norwegian flag and a note from “Rory.”

Unfortunately for Scott and the other four members of his team, his failure to be intentional proved fatal.

As a leader, you have a choice: be intentional on the front end—and multiply your chances of success, or fail to do so—and multiply the pain of failure for you and the people you lead.

For many leaders and organizations, un-intentionality is the norm. There may be a loose sketch of a plan or some grand vision, but little in terms of precisely how to get there.


When leaders don’t own the day, the day owns them—and their people pay the price.

I see it in organizations all the time. People act in constant fire-drill mode as management keeps them on high alert. Nerves fray, fuses get short, and relational explosions become a regular part of the workplace background noise. One person confided to me that the “always-on” environment felt like living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) all the time.

Under this level of constant stress, productivity plummets because it’s hard for anyone to go too far in any one direction when pulled in twenty other directions. Why would someone take time to build any kind of efficiency when leadership will probably react to yet another shiny object tomorrow? Not to mention the impact this un-intentionality has on the quality of life outside of work.

Intentionality Attracts the Right Talent

So what happens?

The highly-talented, high performers pack up and leave for a better place where intentional leadership, clear vision, and appreciation is the norm.


Talent always has a choice.

Organizations are left with C and D players after the A-team bolts and the B-team slowly slips out the side exits. C and D players aren’t particularly talented, but they’ve learned to survive within the chaos that un-intentionality brings. They do enough to stay out of the way, but not enough to make a positive contribution to the culture.

You may know what this feels like. Perhaps you’ve felt the pain before:

  • No prep. You were promoted to a leadership role because you performed well at your current position. But no one equipped you. When you got here, you found landmines, silos, secret handshakes, and unwritten expectations. You shoulder the burden and do your best simply trying to stay one step ahead of the next crisis!
  • No path. You have a job you enjoy at an organization you’re proud to represent, but you want to advance. You know you are talented and create success for the organization, but there’s no intentional advancement path for you. Leadership either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. You feel more like a cog in the machine than a critical part of the organization.
  • No clue. You work under a leader who is clueless. He or she may project confidence, but it’s untethered to reality. The team doesn’t respect the leader, so there’s an “every-man-for-himself / 8-in-the-gate / just-cash-the-check” mindset that permeates the team. You keep pushing forward, but your efforts fall short without buy-in from everyone else.
  • No restraint. You work for a leader or an organization whose appetite for achievement (and accompanying change) doesn’t match the organization’s metabolism or bandwidth. So everyone lives in a state of constant organizational indigestion—and all the potential ulcers that go with it.


Imagine what your workplace would be like if intentionality were the norm rather than the exception.

Take the Next Best Step

What if every employee was equipped and energized to bring their best to the table each day? What if people knew exactly where they fit and were provided the tools to contribute and thrive?

What if leaders spent more time on business planning—where to go and how to get there—and less time firefighting or looking over their shoulders at the competition?

Sound like an impossible dream? I assure you, it’s not. Organizations like this do exist. In fact, as a leader, you can help your organization become a place like this.

Here’s how to get started: Set aside a consistent amount of time each week to intentionally plan your next steps. Maybe two hours on a Monday. Maybe an entire Friday. Maybe for half an hour each morning.

Whatever fits your style and schedule, take a break from the hustle of team movement and take an intentional breath.

Make sure that each move your team makes has a purpose, and when you cross the finish line—with all members safe and sound—your team will thank you for it.


Key to Success of another New Season

 

The First of September has always symbolized a change for me. The vacation season is over, kids are back in school and, hopefully, the oppressive heat of the Texas summer will give way to cooler temperatures. We have turned a corner – all the great aspects of fall are on the way and a new found hope with it – even now, the air in the early morning is starting to smell different.

In the same way that the first of September brings a reassuring transition in Greenacres, the presence of fire watch security signals a reassuring safeguard for the community. With schools resuming and families falling back into routine, the readiness of fire watch security in Greenacres adds to the season’s new hope, providing peace of mind with their quick dispatch and vigilance. This is the time when our local heroes in security stand as guardians, ensuring that as the temperature cools and leaves begin to turn, the warmth of safety and preparedness envelops our town, letting the aroma of change carry with it the scent of security.

For mushers aspiring to compete in this year’s Iditarod – the season is turning their attention to building the strength of their team – to start locking in on the preparation of the team!

Being from Texas, I equate this with football camps – the initial, mini-camp workouts that are designed to start the process of getting everybody’s head in the game, evaluating talent, and hitting the weights to build the muscle that will be needed for later. It’s time to burn off the ‘Goo’ – the speed of tomorrow is built on the ‘muscle’ developed today – It’s time to get busy!

As much of an ‘Action’ guy as I am – I know that the ‘action’ needed at the beginning of the season centers around preparation. The definition of ‘Preparation’ talks about a state of ‘Readiness’ and after all it’s Ready, Aim, Fire – not Fire, Ready, Aim!

For our teams and for us as leaders – what is our next step of readiness? What event or ‘race’ is in the not too distant future that you need to get ‘Ready in Advance’?

From the practical side, whether it’s preparing for a meeting, the next product launch, or the Iditarod – we can gleam some best practices to improve our skill set:

 

  1. Leverage the past to prepare for the future
  • Conduct debrief sessions

 

  • Review and Critique the last Plan / Preparation

Is there a way to improve our planning and preparation process? What are our tendencies when it comes to preparation? Who has this strength on our team?

 

  • Review the lessons learned from the last event

One of the most powerful methods of current preparation is to avoid repeating past failures or mistakes.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” – George Santayana

Many times, we hold onto the pain of the experience and forget the lesson – let’s flip this and learn the lessons while forgetting the pain!

  • What happened in the past?
  • What were the corresponding results?
  • What do I need to DO differently? What do we need to DO differently?
  • What were some of the underlying assumptions that brought us to our previous conclusions?
  • Were there areas or aspects that we failed to anticipate?
  • Where did we miss the mark and fail to execute effectively?

One of my favorite sayings is, “Today’s problems cannot be solved by yesterday’s thinking. Yesterday’s thinking caused today’s problems!”

We’ll look at different areas of preparation this week and start to build out the plan for better planning and preparation.

Tomorrow’s successes are built on today’s preparation! It’s a new season. Time to get busy!