We didn’t know about a World Wide Web

Was a whole different game being played back when I was a kid

Wanna get down in a cool way?

Picture yourself on a beautiful day

Big Bell Bottoms and groovy, long hair

Just a-walking in style with a portable CD player – No!

You would listen to the music on the AM Radio

Yeah, you could hear the music on the AM Radio

These are the opening lyrics to the song “AM Radio” from one of my favorite 90’s bands, Everclear.  I was a kid in the 1970’s and 80s, and I can very much relate to the picture painted by these lyrics.  While these lyrics are from the perspective of a kid growing up in the 70s, you could just as easily rewrite them from the perspective of a kid in 1990 or even 2010.

I still remember the excitement of getting an Atari, a “portable” jambox that weighed over 5 pounds, and cable TV.  The latter of which did not happen until I was in my late teens.  I remember feeling lucky to have a 12” black and white TV in my bedroom as a teenager, and it was a TV on which I had to use pliers to change the channel to pick up one of the 4 stations we could tune in over the air. I also remember going into debt when I was a junior in college to buy a Tandy (yes Tandy) computer so I could use a rudimentary spreadsheet program to help with my accounting classes.

I also remember getting my first laptop when I entered the  high flying world of Big 6 Consulting in the late 90’s – I don’t recall the exact specs of it, but my back to this day remembers that it was heavier than a brick.  And I recall connecting that laptop to pay phones (yes pay phones) at the airport so I could dial-into our Groupwise mail server.  And I can’t forget the awe and amazement when I was issued a cell phone a few years later.

Fast forward 15 years and I am now sitting on a plane writing this blog on a touch screen tablet that weighs less than 2 pounds and is connected via wireless to the entire world at 35,000 feet – all while listening to one of the 1000s of songs on a my iPod and thinking about which type of smartphone I want next  – smartphones that I am sure have more memory and horsepower than that first brick of a laptop I had and certainly much more than the Tandy computer that took me 2 years to pay off back in the early 90s.

As a kid, I never imagined we would have the real time interactions we have today.  To think that in my lifetime, I went from Polaroid picture to being able to stream real time video anywhere in the world from a 3 inch x 5 inch device in my hand is just crazy.  Just last week, I was riding in the back of car through the mountains of Colorado while having a conversation with a business associate in Australia via a tablet connected to a wireless hotspot.  While this is common place technology in today’s world, I couldn’t help but stop and think about how dang cool it was to do it.  And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

In the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to listen to people from Intel and Microsoft talk about what is coming down the technology pipe.  While many of us are amazed at the technology that is hitting the market now – all the touch laptops, tablets, phones and the ever increasing number of connected things – it sounds like what will become available in the next 18-24 months will rock our worlds – in how we work, how we learn and how we live.  The pace of technology innovation feels to be picking up.  The question is “Are we all ready to keep up with it?”

A few final disclosures:

1)      As a kid, my parent’s car had nothing but AM radio.

2)      We still have VHS tapes and a VCR to play them on at our house.

3)      I just recently took the very first DVD player I ever owned to Goodwill.

4)      I can now change the channel on my TV from my iPhone (no pliers needed)

5)      I still listen to AM radio on a regular basis.

I was recently asked the question, “What will business technology look like in 2020?”

My first thought was, “That’s so far out into the future; there is no way to think that many years ahead.” Then I looked at the calendar and realized it was almost 2013, and that 2020 really wasn’t far down the road. I also realized my oldest daughter will be wrapping up college around 2020 and entering the workforce for the first time. So I decided to ask her what she thought it would look like.

My daughter’s first response was one of shock that in seven years she would be starting a career. She told me she thought people would just be using some kind of tablet for work, but a tablet a little bigger than what we use today. One that lets you do multiple things at once: be on a video call, edit a document, and look at a Web page. She also thought the cube mazes at many offices would go away because people would not need to be plugged into anything to do their work.

Though the musings of the future in the eyes of a 13-year-old are interesting, I have my own thoughts on what business technology will look like in seven years. If the past decade is any indication, we are in for a wild ride. I have often said that if my company’s revenue and operating income had grown over the past decade at the same rate as our data storage and bandwidth requirements, I would have retired early. My crystal ball shows that growth in data to still be going strong in 2020, which means a continued demand for more and faster storage, faster network speeds, and larger data circuits.

I have said before that I could see being the CIO of a company without a data center. I don’t think that we will be there by 2020, but it will certainly be closer to a reality. I envision a continued contraction in the size of corporate data centers and the continued expansion of computing capacity being delivered by third-party service providers. I recall five years ago worrying about whether the main data center we built would be large enough to handle our growth and physical consolidation of smaller satellite centers. As I walk through that data center now, I worry about what to do with all the space where racks full of servers once stood — servers that have now been virtualized and take up a small fraction of the physical space. The worry of having a too small data center has been replaced with the worry of having one that is too large. As we march toward 2020, server virtualization and X as a service — X being software, platform, infrastructure, or application — will continue to change the shape of data centers. There will be fewer servers, more network hardware, and less energy consumption.

When I look back at how much has changed with end user devices since I entered the workforce in the early 1990s, I can’t help but think that we will see that same pace and innovation over the next seven years. They will not have gone completely the way of the typewriter, but the install base of desktops and laptops will be reduced substantially by 2020. Tablets and smartphones will be the standard devices in the workplace, and I am sure there will be some not yet thought of device form factor that will be the hot new thing in 2020. Rest assured: There will still be people camping out in June 2020 to buy the iPhone 13. Much like my daughter, I also see the use of the traditional office phone, hard-wired data drops, and the conventional office cubicle slowly being phased out as we approach 2020. I might even dare say that for some businesses, the office as we know it today will cease to exist. The office will truly become wherever the employee happens to be, which will surely drive InfoSec professionals crazy.

So in summary, how do I see 2020? More data. More mobility. Smaller corporate data centers. I just hope that CEOs in 2020 realize they still need CIOs.

The special card was sent by Angel House Soup Kitchen.  Angel House is located in downtown Austin.  Since 1990, the kitchen has been serving a hot lunch meal to the homeless and economically disadvantage seven days a week.  Today the number of people receiving this life sustaining service averages over 300 each day.

My oldest daughter and I have volunteered at the Angel House several times.  The volunteering involves assisting with the preparation of the meal, which always includes a huge pot of soup, and also serving the meal to the long line of people queued up when the doors open each morning at 11a.  A day of volunteering takes 3-4 hours; a small amount time that makes a big impact in the community.

Now back to that birthday card.  The message on the card:

Our prayer for you on this very special day –

The day that God created you in His image –

Is that it will be all that He wants for you!

A day to rejoice and be glad.  It’s your day!

I recently wrote about trying to be joyful each day.  Receiving a message to “rejoice and be glad” felt like a great reminder to find happiness in each day – not just on your birthday.  Receiving the card was also a good reminder that it probably time to arrange another volunteer day at the kitchen.  All too often we get caught up in our busy lives and forget that we need to find time to give back to others around us.  This birthday card made me stop and remember that we need to share our blessings with others.

If you are interested in learning more about the Angel House Soup Kitchen or want to arrange a day to volunteer or want to make a small monetary donation to a great organization, you can find out more at:  www.angelhouse-abc.com

For those under the age of 40, these are the opening lyrics to Don McLean’s 1971 song about the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in 1959 – also known as “The day the music died.”  Years ago, I had the opportunity to go to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa and see the last place those rock-n-roll legends performed.  If you love rock-n-roll and find yourself in Iowa, stop by and see it.

Today’s thoughts are not about the death of music.  They are about, at least for me, the passing of a device that much like Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens had an extremely bright but short flame.

I became an “i” guy out of necessity soon after the first generation iPhone hit the market.  Our CEO at the time called me up and told me that he wanted an iPhone to use with his work email.  I attempted to explain that the iPhone would not work well with our older version of Lotus Notes and that the experience would not be one he would like.  As CEOs are apt to do, he did not want to hear that  and insisted that I go get him an iPhone and make it work.

So off I went to the Apple store to buy one and set up an ATT wireless plan.  With a few days of tweaking and testing, we were able to get mail flowing, but no calendar synching, no access to our corporate directory, no synching of his contacts, and no access to any of our internal systems.  It was a far cry from what could be done at the time with Blackberry devices.    I delivered the device to our CEO along with the long list of things it could not do within our corporate environment.

Three days later, the CEO called me and told me the iPhone was not what he expected – for all the same reasons I had tried to tell him before ever purchasing one.   He told me he was sending it back.  So there I was, with a $500+ device and a 2-yr service commitment on a personally-liable account.   So for the next two years, I carried that iPhone as my main device and dealt with the pains of Lotus Notes in an ‘I” world.    As technology progressed and we moved to a new email platform, the iPhone became a more powerful and useful device.  While I flirted with other devices – various Andriods and even a WinMobile – I stuck with the “i” world.

Towards the end of 2011, I told people that the work laptop I was currently using would be the last laptop I ever used.  As I became further immersed in the ‘i” environment, I set my sights on the iPad.  I had a vision of the iPad being the end of the Windows-based laptop.  I tried for over a year to make the iPad be THE work device for me. I bought “Office-like” apps for spreadsheets and word processing.   I leveraged cloud storage to have access to needed files.  I downloaded apps to enhance my Sharepoint experience.  I forced myself to not take my laptop on trips so that I was solely reliant on the iPad.

While I was able to survive with the iPad, I never felt completely comfortable.  The “Office-like” apps were not full featured and clunky to use.  I yearned for my Excel and my Word.  I was also apt to forget to send files to the cloud, so I was always looking for that one file that I really needed.  Yes, I felt cool carrying the iPad, but I never could pull the plug on my trusty laptop.

That all changed in mid-January.  As part of the CIO track at DellWorld, I was offered a free Dell Latitude 10 Windows 8 Professional tablet.  My first thought when I was told I would be receiving the tablet: “here’s another toy to play with for a week or two.”  I did not have any expectations that this device would be a game changer.

When my Dell account executive delivered the Latitude 10 to me, we opened up the boxes and I causally glanced at the tablet, but did not jump right in to firing it up.  Hours later, I finally turned it on and the revolution was on.  I had in my hands a one and a half pound 10” laptop in tablet form.  I had the familiar Windows operation system (once I got past the tiles), my trusty Office apps, all my files that I shamefully keep on my local drive, and a long lasting battery in the palm of my hands.  The next day I had our desktop team join the device to our domain.  Soon thereafter, our desktop management tool was pushing down apps just like it does with any other Windows based computer.  Finally, there was a tablet that could be managed with our existing tools.  It also came with a handy docking station for easy connection to a full screen monitor, mouse and keyboard.

After three days of using the tablet, I shut down my workhorse Thinkpad laptop for the final time.

A week later, I had to ask myself where I left my cool iPad.  It was right where I left it the day I got my hands on that Dell tablet.  I had gone 7 days without using the iPad – a device that previously felt like I used every 7 seconds.

For me it was “The day the iPad died.”

I might be a little young for early 70s rock, but I do love me some Three Dog Night.

New Year’s Eve is a special day in the Neill house. In addition to the obvious, it is also the day we celebrate the Lovely Mrs. Neill saying “I Do” to spending a lifetime with a slightly dorky accountant back in the mid-90s. Due to this, my oldest daughter has insisted from a young age that NYE is a family occasion – not one to be celebrated without her and her sister’s presence. NYE 2012 was no exception.

Now how we celebrate each varies and in some years plans don’t gel until the day before or day of NYE. 2012 was one of those years. We had some friends over on the 30th for dinner and they mentioned they were having a little get-together the next night at their house. So the next morning, we pulled together our celebration: NYE Vigil Mass, a nice diner out, and a swing by our friend’s gathering. Well when you wait until the morning of NYE to make dinner reservations, you don’t always get the exact times you want. We ended up with a dinner reservation time that made it impossible to make it to our local parish’s Mass, but we found a time that would work at a neighboring parish.

While selecting a Mass time based on dinner reservations is probably not ideal, sometimes things just work out for the better. The priest at the parish we ended up at was the priest that had guided me through the conversion to Catholicism a decade ago. He always had a way of delivering a message in his homily that resonated with me and his NYE homily was no exception. I am not going to go into the biblical / theological aspect of his homily but his message was one that should hit close to home for most of us.

In two words the message was “Be Joyful.”

We spend too much time in our daily lives focused on the negative and worrying about the bad things going on. We are bombarded with “the negative” from all sides. Our news outlets are constantly hitting us with bad news about death and destruction. Our work days are filled with pressures to perform better on an individual and collective basis. Business leaders are faced with the demands to continually grow revenue and income less face the consequences of falling stock prices. Kids in school are faced with the daily pressures to exceed expectations in the classroom, the playing field, and in the hallway. With all these pressures and negative news, many of us find ourselves not enjoying life. We are constantly worrying about the potential negative things. We are alive, but we are not living.

The message on NYE was simply to enjoy life. Celebrate living each day. Use the talents you have been given to make the world a brighter place. Now that is certainly easier said than done, but I made a commitment right then and there to make it a priority to be thankful each day for having the opportunity to be alive. While I have no doubt that “bad” things will happen in our world and some of those things will hit close to me, my goal is to find joy in each day.

Think what our world would be like if we could all do that every day.

As I approached the 1 year anniversary of RobertnotBob.net, I decided to look back at the activity on the site.  One of the most surprising statisitics was the number of different countries represented by the visitors to the site.  There were visitors from over 30 countries.  While most were from the good ole US of A, the United Kingdom, India, Belgium and Australia were also well represented.   Heck, I even had a visitor from Qatar, and I don’t even know where that is in the world.  I guess I can now legitimately say that I am an internationally known and read author.

It was also interesting to see how people ended up on the site.  While most clicked through links I posted on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn; there were numerous visitors that ended up there via search engines.  The most popular search string that pointed to my site was “The Jerk” or some variation of references to that classic Steve Martin movie.  You may recall I had a post titled “Have a Little Respect: Don’t Be the Jerk.”  And somehow a handful of people reached RobertnotBob.net after searching on “Aretha Franklin.”  I am not sure how I ended up connected to Aretha, but you can’t complain about being attached to the Queen of Soul.

That brings us to which entries made a big splash and which ones failed to wow.  Out of the 24 entries, the most read was the above mentioned “Have a Little Respect:  Don’t Be the Jerk.”  I have to say that I too like that entry.  Other popular entries were:

1)      What’s Love Got to Do With It – which touched on Jesuit teachings, Conscious Capitalism, and one of my favorite CEOs  Kip Tindell of the Container Store.

2)      Lessons From the Course:  A Reflecting on Golf and Business – which tied together my time on the golf course with my daughter and the importance of planning and execution in the business world

3)      What’s in a Name? – the entry that started it all.

I also had some posts that just fell flat.  These included “The Love Train” which was a follow up to “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and “Where Did You Go JFK? – a little off the wall rambling about the fifty-cent piece.  I actually liked both of these, but based on the stats it was obvious that people from over 30 countries thought differently.  I guess some thoughts might just be better off staying in my head.

I am not sure I will hit 24 entries in 2013, but I will certainly keep blogging.  It’s cheaper than seeing a therapist.  Not that I have a reason to see one and not that there is anything wrong with seeing one.

And one more thing – for all those that have read my blog, even if just once, THANK YOU!

The book chronicles the life and coaching career of what I consider one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. It is a book I will certainly pick and read many many times. Darrell Royal was known for espousing words of wisdom and the book is full of his quotes. While the quotes were typically spoken in the context of football, many of them can be thought about in a much broader context.

During my first read through the book, I came across one particular quote that as soon as I read I knew it was the start of a blog entry.

“Climbing is a thrill. Maintaining is a bitch.”

The quote was said in the context of the thrill of building up a winning football program and the huge challenges that must be overcome to maintain that football program at a consistently high level. Recent football seasons have proven that to be the case – just look at the recent struggles of USC, Auburn and my beloved Longhorns. All three have gone from being National Champions during the past decade to having average or below average teams in the past couple of years.

However, when I read it I thought about the challenges faced everyday by IT organizations. On a frequent basis I read white papers about the percentage of an IT organization’s budget and resources that is spent on day-to-day operations versus spent on implementing new technology to improve and benefit the business. Many of these papers peg that breakdown at around 80% on “keeping the lights on” and 20% on moving the business forward. I recently heard the CIO at Dell proudly state that they run around the 70-30 mark.

When you see figures like 70-80% of IT resources being consumed on maintaining the existing environment, you can see how one could agree with the idea that “maintaining is a bitch.” I know I can relate to that idea.

Maintaining a complex IT environment is challenging. While many technologist want to ignore the existing and just focus on the thrill of rolling out the new technology, I think there is value in having staff that see the value in maintaining what is already installed. Especially when that staff takes the concept of maintaining to a different level of not just being content with the “as is” but instead look for ways to make the maintaining more efficient and more effective.

I have worked with many talented technology professionals that were consumed with just working on new stuff. They never wanted to spend time on maintaining what was built. It was build, build, build all the time. During my stint in the Big 4 Consulting world, the climbers were everywhere – me included. We were all about the thrill of the implementation.

However, as I moved out of the consulting world and into corporate IT, I started to appreciate the maintainers. This appreciation grew when the economy slowed down and then dipped, and then dipped again. While talented, many of the “I just want to work on new” employees in our IT organization were near the top of the list for staff reductions. Meanwhile the “maintainers with a twist of efficiency” types became the rock stars of IT. Even as business picks up, I still find these employees to be extremely valuable. In my eyes, employees that are finding ways to maintain the technology environment in more effective and efficient ways are not only brining stability to the business, they are also innovating. They are finding ways to reduce the cost of maintaining so that there is more capital available for pure innovation.

Now don’t get me wrong, businesses need technology climbers. The climbers take us to new heights through implementing bold new technology. However, once we reach those new heights, we need to the maintainers to keep as from tumbling back down the mountain.

Is maintaining IT a bitch? I think so. I am just happy that some people like dealing with the “bitch.”

Oh and one more thing: Hook’em Horns!!

Those lyrics belted out by Kenny Chesney always make you get worked up for football season. Like many others in Texas, football season is one of my favorite times of the year. For me it means spending five or six Saturdays at Darrell K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR) on the campus of The University of Texas – Austin watching my Longhorns. It also means the chance to catch a sighting of something you don’t see on a daily basis – the Kennedy Half Dollar.

Pretty much every item you can purchase at a concession stand at DKR is priced at an even dollar amount or a half dollar amount. So your overpriced watered-down drink is either $5.00 or $6.50 and the day old popcorn is $4.00 or $5.50. That being the case, when your total purchase ends in .50, the change you get back is in the form of the rarely used Kennedy Half Dollar – the good ole fifty-cent piece. I am not sure why, other than I guess someone thinks it’s easier to hand back one coin instead of two quarters.

After the first two games this season, I had accumulated three of these coin oddities. For some reason this year, unlike the past 20 years I have been attending games, I started wondering why the half dollar had all but disappeared from our daily lives. We all still use the pesky penny, but rarely do you see someone throw down a fifty-cent piece.

Well it turns out that the disappearance of the half-dollar was the result of two things that were happening in 1964 and 1965. The first was the decision to honor JFK by placing his likeness on the half-dollar soon after his assassination. The second was the increase in the price of silver in the mid-1960s. In 1964-65 there were more than 430 million Kennedy half-dollars minted – all with a silver content of 90%. These coins quickly became a collectors items by those wanting to have something that honored JFK – people got the coins and stuck them in boxes, drawers, etc. In addition silver prices at the time were nearing $1.30 a troy ounce. A half-dollar contained approx .35 troy ounces of silver which meant the silver value in the coin was approaching the face value of the coin. This resulted in silver speculators hoarding half-dollars as well. This all added up to the half-dollar disappearing from circulation over that two year period.

In late 1965, the silver content of half-dollars was lowered to 40% and in 1971 the silver content was removed altogether. This stopped the silver speculators from hoarding half-dollars but the damage was done. People had stopped using the half-dollar on a daily basis and new coin production volumes declined dramatically.

So enough of coin history. With three of these coins in my possession I decided it was time to circulate the coins. I did this only after making sure that none of them were minted before 1971 – as a 1964 version would be worth around $12 and a 1965-1970 version would be worth around $5 at current silver prices. They were all post-1971 so I set my sights on spending all three of them. I wanted to see how people reacted to them and maybe just start a retro trend.

First up, we had to send a couple of digital files off for printing those old school photographs. The total came to $0.42 at the local Walgreens. A perfect amount for throwing down a fifty-cent piece. We ordered the prints online and I headed to the store to pick them up. I somewhat nervously placed my half-dollar on the counter, not sure what to expect. The cashier just took and gave me back my $.08 in change. Mission accomplished and one half-dollar temporarily in circulation.

Next up, a trip through the drive-thru at Starbucks. My daughter’s caramel mocha frap rang up at $4.22. I whipped out four ones and a trusty fifty-cent piece. The cashier at the window proceeded to give $0.78 back. What seemed like five minutes later and cars now backing up onto then main road, I successfully explained to her that I only gave her $4.50. Another JFK in circulation, albeit with some confusion.

The final spot, the local Cinemark movie theatre. A trip to concession stand for popcorn and some drinks came to $17.50 – another chance to use the half-dollar. I quickly slid a $20 bill and a fifty-cent piece across the counter. The fifty-cent went flying and clanged to the floor. But the cashier picked it up and he knew what it was. He even commented on not seeing one very often. My third JFK made it into the real world.

I wouldn’t be surprised if all three coins went straight back to the bank, but maybe one of them is still floating around out there changing hands like a normal coin. I have a few more half-dollars left to spend and I fully expect to spend them – no more hoarding for me. In fact I might go get a roll of them and try starting a renaissance of fifty-cent piece usage.

Credits on the right,

Stand up, sit down,

Fight, fight, fight!

If you don’t know that one, then you are probably not an accountant.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the creation of the University of Texas McCombs School of Business Department of Accounting.  I am proud to say that I was a part of that history for five of those one hundred years and that I received 2 of the  25,605 accounting degrees conferred since 1912.  In fact I even went down to the campus recently to take a picture of The Tower lit up in honor of the occasion.

While I left the accounting profession fairly early on in my career, I attribute much of my professional success to the educational foundation I received while attending the McCombs School of Business in pursuit of an accounting degree.  I call my accounting degrees from UT “my dirty little secrets” since technology professionals tend to have less than high regard for accountants.  But not very closely held secrets – since my diplomas are proudly displayed on the wall behind my desk.

Many people think that majoring in accounting means just learning the mechanics of debits and credits, memorizing all those mind numbing Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and just adding and subtracting numbers.  At some schools that may be the case, but at UT the professors actually taught us about business -  not just how to keep score. They also brought in real world business leaders that brought the theoretical to life.

You may think that I am just a homer that thinks that his university has better academics than the rest of the schools in the country.  But in this case, I think it is more than just my opinion.  Just check out these facts and figures about the McCombs Accounting Department:

So Happy 100th to the best accounting program in the country, and thanks for shaping my business mind and the minds of so many others.  Hook’em!

Nothing like a little BB King and U2 to start things off.

I have written a little on this idea of love in business in the past. You may recall a blog centered on Kip Tindell from Container Store and a keynote speach I heard from Chris Lowney reflecting on the Jesuit philosophy on leadership. Since then I have not been able to shake this idea of business love.

I will be the first to admit that I have never been the poster child for touchy feely leadership. For the most part the places I have worked over the past 20 years had management teams that were cut from the same cloth – the cloth of management with a good dose of fear perhaps sprinkled in with a jagged version of tough love. Now don’t get me wrong, I have worked under some highly intelligent, highy motivated, and sucessful leadership teams. But I doubt many would use the word “love” to describe those leaders.

Those radical Jesuits had a different idea about this leadership thing. Their version of leadership was to see the potential in each employee, to make a commitment to unleash that potential and to cultivate the resulting loyalty and support to unite and drive a team to success. That is their idea of love-based leadership. To see the potential in a person and to help that person reach that potential. It is a concept that is based on the thought that all employees are self-motivated to achieve success and that the leader’s role is to help by putting each person in situations to succeed and to give them the tools they need to succeed.

For me, I doubt the majority of the management teams I have worked under in my career would ever be considered as the face of “love-based” management. There may have been moments of love and compassion but for the most part the management styles have been motivation by fear and tension. That said, those teams and the resulting business results were generally succesful, but it makes you wonder if the results could have been even greater with a more loved based leadership approach. There is no way to go back and replay the past, so all we can do is ponder that thought and perhaps learn from it.

It is said that your style of management is shaped by those who have managed you, and I think that is true to an extent. While I don’t think I am as hard core as some of my former bosses, I do think my style has been influenced by them. Fortunately, I also think that you are influenced by others around you and what you read and hear. I am grateful to have been able to watch strong leaders succeed using techniques more in line with the Jesuit style of leaderhship and to be exposed to books, articles and speakers that get there is more than one way to lead. Whether it is listening to the likes of Kip Tindell, watching how my own father lead a school district or reading books on the subject; I have come to realize that one can lead and manage without using fear as the main motivator.

I am not fully on the “love train” just yet, but I have jumped into the boxcar and am slowly pulling my body all the way in. Hopefully some day I will make my way to the engine and drive that train.

So once again, here’s to love in business and hoping it comes to a company near your soon.