Bring Balance Back.

It isn’t easy to drink anything out of a glass that’s filled to the brim. I work with teams often that are overwhelmed, have more requests coming in than they can deliver, and yet are very, very skilled at what they do. Highly capable, yet feeling stuck. They move fast every day, checking off tasks, but not making the progress they want to. A team can accumulate skill with individual members shining, but the true depth of the team doesn’t get better. If we have a glass that’s always full,...

I was at a cybersecurity conference a couple of weeks ago (BSides Seattle), and heard Wendy Nather‘s keynote on Saturday, “Falling Off The Edge, and How to Help”. She shared a perspective on the difficulty of being in the industry, how it’s not getting easier, and things that cybersecurity professionals do that might feel “right” but aren’t helpful. She had a line at the end of her talk, “Let’s focus on helping, not being helpy.” That’s stayed with me since then. In all of the reading and...

In his book, “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World”, David Epstein references “desirable difficulties”, from the work of psychologist Nate Kornell. These are difficulties that someone experiences while learning something, and generalists, the people who decide not to specialize early in their profession, benefit from this. These generalists are often in situations where things are uncertain, since they’re in territory they don’t specialize in. They’re trying new things, and...

In the book, “Multipliers: How The Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter”, Liz Wiseman introduces 9 different Accidental Diminisher tendencies, and I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t self-identify with at least one of them. In short, your Accidental Diminisher tendency always starts with good intentions, but at some point, it becomes too “loud” and diminishes someone around you. It diminishes their contribution, and most of the time, it’s accidental. Here are the 9 tendencies, listed briefly:...

I’ve been wearing glasses since 3rd grade, and without them my vision isn’t great. My optometrist recently offered me a fork in the road – choose clearer vision at a distance or precision up close? I chose distance. Something I had been postponing for a while. Now menus require my extended arm (ugh). Reading smaller print demands brighter lights. The trade-off isn’t really subtle, I noticed the up-close difference right away. But walking my neighborhood? Driving? Squinting at that tiny...

A great team isn’t just a group of superstars working side by side, we have proof of that from the 2004 U.S. Men’s Basketball Team. Known as the “Dream Team”, on paper, they were supposed to win the gold medal by a LOT, but lost 3 games by a big margin and ended up taking the bronze medal home. Even though they were a super group of all-stars, they were young and lacked the time and effort to work on building a sense of team. Most importantly, they were playing a game they knew well, but in...

No one likes to feel exposed. So they add cover, they add armor. No one likes to be sold a fake, of anything – especially when you’re hoping for the real deal. Have you ever felt like a fake, as a leader? Or you’ve put on armor to not reveal “the real deal”? Feeling the need to conform or comply to a mold, or being pressured to mimic someone who’s not any version of you can be paralyzing. “What do I do? I have to be who they want me to be.” The teller. The knower. The agitator. The doer. The...

🎉 Earlier this week I celebrated 5 years of being in business! I had a post on LinkedIn that talked about a few things that I learned last year, and all of the comments are humbling and a big boost to me. Here's more background on the first 5 years of Kinkou - most of this I haven't shared...I publicly launched Kinkou on January 27th, 2020, and then less than 2 months later, COVID locked everything down. When I launched I was wrapping up the altMBA program which pushed me to realize what I'm...

I’ve been thinking about the word “accountability” over the last year or so. It seems that most leaders have a minor obsession over it, and the word is usually only referenced when someone isn’t doing something that’s expected, and we need someone to blame. This obsession is loaded into PowerPoint decks everywhere, especially this time of year when annual strategy and goal setting is taking place. “We need more accountability!” In Finland, they do not have a word that captures the nuances of...

Kicking off a new year might spark you thinking about and setting new goals. You might even continue a few from the past year. Some like to flip through books on habits that help them achieve their goals – such as Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit” or James Clear’s “Atomic Habits“. If you’re anything like an imperfect human being with big ambitions but always working on things, you’ve probably come up short on a goal once or twice. And we usually reflect after our self-imposed deadline has...