Posts from — December 2008

What an incredible year it’s been! The birth of our beautiful daughter Malone, moving to Washington, celebrating 2 amazing years of marriage with my wife, starting out my career as a C-17 pilot and meeting some great new friends. Oh yeah, and then there’s this blog.

I started writing on a consistent basis just over a year ago with the sole purpose of passing on various lessons in skilled living to anyone that might be interested. I’m not going to lie, at times the daily grind of blogging can be a bit challenging, but overall, the experience has been wonderful. Connecting with readers, making new relationships, and learning to put ideas into words have all made blogging something I’d recommend to anyone.

Here’s a quick snapshot of Schaefer’s Blog in 2008:

• Total Visitors – 131,785

• Total Pageviews – 236,546

• Comments – 686

• Subscribers – 641 (started the year with 11)

• Google Page Rank – 4

Thank you to all of you who have subscribed, commented, told friends and been a part of the community. I’ll do my best to make sure 2009 is even better. And with that, here are the top 10 posts for Schaefer’s Blog in 2008 as voted by you and your pageviews:

1) 7 Ways to Remember What You Read – the immense benefits of reading are only as great as one’s ability to remember and process the information. Nothing is more frustrating than reading a great book and not being able to recall any of the major points a year or even a month later.

2)  The Lost Art of the Push-Up – As much as I hated it, the push-up helped mold me and keep me in incredible shape. In the process, it also found its way into my heart as an exercise that while not flashy, gets results.

3)  The Holy Trinity of Fitness – Keeping in theme with classic exercises that don’t require thousands of dollars of equipment or gym memberships I present 3 exercises that will give you an incredible workout and get you in great shape if done consistently.

4)  Whatever Happened to Personal Responsibility: A Rant – at the end of the day it’s about taking a coat when it looks like it’s chilly outside.  You can choose not to, it’s true, but don’t whine when you get cold.  Life’s about choices.

5)  Change is a Community Project – Change does not happen in isolation, change happens in the midst of quality human relationships.

6)  5 Things to Remember While Traveling the World – I have now been to 6 of the 7 continents, with hopes to travel to Antarctica in the next few years. Some of my trips have been short, others long, but all of them have combined to give me a much better idea of what it takes to be a skilled world traveler.

7)   7 Common First Time Home Buyer Mistakes – Now that we’ve finally found a home I wanted to look at some pitfalls for first-time home buyers. Some we narrowly avoided, others we fell right into, but they are valuable things to think about when facing this milestone.

8)  The Greatest Buying Opportunity of Our Time – When the market is going down in flames, seasoned investors see incredible buying opportunities where novices see only doom and gloom.

9)  How to Kill an Organization: 5 Barriers to Kaizen – The philosophy of kaizen is something that is of great benefit not only to businesses, but churches, non-profits and civic groups as well. It seems like a no-brainer, yet few organizations really practice it. Why? Here are some thoughts.

10)  20 Things to Do In Your 20′s – The twenties are also foundational years for us and should not be wasted or lived unintentionally. With the help of some friends and mentors, the following are some of the best things we could think of to do in order to make the most of your twenties.

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Fear of failure is something many of us struggle with individually, but within an organization it can be magnified in a way that leaves everyone paralyzed as they attempt to go about their day-to-day work.  Not only a terribly inefficient way to do business, this state of fear stifles creativity and innovation, creating a very unhealthy setting for growth.  Being conservative is one thing, but when a fear of falling short leads to the refusal of members to push the envelope, organizations are destined for stagnation and eventual failure.

This conversation came up in my squadron at a recent training day.  The issue involved pilots and loadmasters trying to accomplish the mission with the constant fear of a Q3 (Air Force speak for a documented failure or breech of standards doled out by squadron leadership) hanging over each of their heads if they messed up.  A Q3 isn’t necessarily a career-ender, but it stays in your permanent record and can have negative consequences for future assignments or promotions.

Many pilots and loadmasters voiced a similar complaint that went something like this, “Q3′s are handed out like candy in our organization even for small mistakes, no other community gives out Q3′s as much as ours.  Basically, we know that if we mess up in anyway, we’re going to get hammered, no matter what.”

The squadron leadership countered that they held us to a higher standard than other organizations and accepted less margin of error.  Additionally, they were concerned that by easing up or taking Q3′s off the table that we would take advantage and become lazy or disregard procedures.

The debate went on for over an hour and centered around one question:

How does an organization cultivate healthy risk-taking without losing control?

Obviously organizations can’t take the Q3 (fill in your own organization’s hammer equivalent) away completely, as there are times when people do something very stupid or dangerous and must be held accountable.  There must be a negative incentive for recklessness and negligence or it will slowly become acceptable to take unreasonable levels of risk.

On the other hand, when Q3′s are the go-to punishment for even the most minor mistakes it causes every pilot and loadmaster to second-guess every move they make, call home for every decision and seek cover from leadership before ever even thinking about stepping out on the limb.  It’s like swatting a fly with a hammer. Hammers aren’t very precise and should only be used as a last resort, not the go-to instrument of punishment when things go wrong.

Innovation requires risk and inherent in risk is the occasional mistake. In an environment where every mistake is severely punished, the career field stagnates, no new techniques or methods are developed and leaders turn into cowards rather than heroes.

This isn’t the first time an organization has wrestled with this type of dilemma.  Every day leaders must make decisions on how to react to missteps and poor decisions made by their employees.  Come off too weak and the fear is that people will walk all over you.  Be too harsh and people will either begrudgingly toe the line or simply walk away – neither helpful to the organization.

The military presents two additional dilemmas:

- You don’t have the option of quitting (unless you’ve fulfilled your obligation) so the default mode when faced with an environment of heavy-handed punishments is to be ultra-conservative and never go beyond the minimum required for fear of failure.  The attitude becomes one of survival rather than professionalism.

- Unlike some organizations where the cost of failure can be measured in dollars, ours has the potential to be measured in lives.  Every time we turn on the jet we hold people’s lives in our hands, not to mention a $200 million piece of equipment.  Risk must be taken, but at some point it becomes criminal.

Needless to say, these characteristics present a very fine line for military leadership.  How does one encourage troops to push the boundaries of their career field, develop new techniques, improve processes and take risk, but at the same time keep people from getting killed?

A very similar predicament can be found in the medical profession.  As a surgeon, how does one develop their skills or new techniques when the consequences for making a mistake often mean a dead body on the table?  Cadavers are great, but can only tell you so much.  Sooner or later a life has to be put on the line to advance the medical profession.  How does a Chief of Surgery manage his people in a way that encourages this advancement, but avoids taking on an unacceptable amount of risk?

After discussing these things and doing some thinking of my own, here are a few solutions I have come up with.  The following are a few ways that organizations involved in life and death missions can encourage innovation and risk-taking without being negligent:

1)  Accept the Little Mistakes – If you are going to create a system of risk-taking and innovation, you have to accept that mistakes will be made.  In his book “Product Innovation Strategy Pure and Simple,” Michel Robert explains that not all mistakes are equal, nor should they be treated as such.

When I worked at Johnson & Johnson in the early 1960′s, a motto permeated the organization: ‘If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not making decisions.’…that is how J&J encourages risk taking.  3M does it in a similar fashion.  ‘Make a lot of little mistakes, but try to avoid big ones,’ is 3M’s way of doing the same thing…Innovative thinking requires risk taking.  Prudent and calculated risk taking, but nevertheless, risk taking.

2)  Practice Harder, Much Harder Than You Play – In our profession we have multi-million dollar simulators whose sole purpose is to replicate our actual flight experience as close as possible.  On top of this we have local training missions in the actual jet, but minus passengers or valuable cargo.  These are the best places to push the envelope, make mistakes and try new techniques.  Unfortunately they are often treated like another box to fill, rather than an opportunity to push the limits.

While organizations may not have actual simulators most have some sort of training mechanism available to hone the skills of its members.  Any leader seeking to create an innovative environment must establish the precedent that training time means pushing oneself beyond one’s limits.

Training is the time for experimentation, mistakes and failure…not just another routine mission.

3)  Celebrate the Risk-Takers - One of the quickest ways to decipher the values of a company is to observe the people they celebrate.  If the qualifications of people receiving quarterly and yearly awards are measured only by the absence of mess-ups, it sends a strong message that sticking one’s neck out on the line and trying something new is not valued or encouraged.  Better to toe the line and hope you’ll be recognized someday for showing up to work on time in the right uniform.

Instead, an organization trying to encourage risk taking should be quick to recognize and celebrate those who are doing just that, taking risks!  Who cares if they’ve failed a few times along the way.  Mistakes made in the attempt of pushing boundaries and testing new ideas (very different than mistakes made by incompetence or negligence) are prime indicators that innovation is occurring, or as J&J was quoted above, “…decisions are being made.”

Hold these people up as an example to the rest of the organization and people will soon realize that risk is something to embrace rather than shun.

4) Trust Your Employees – It is imperative that organizational leadership trust their personnel.  If you don’t trust the people working for you, replace them with people you do.  This does not mean that it is blind.  Like anything in life, trust is something that is earned over time, but some leaders never make it to that point, always choosing to assume the worst, rather than the best.  This is a problem.

Part of this trust involves a belief that everyone is working for the betterment of the organization as a whole.  As a leader it’s your job to give those working for you the benefit of the doubt when mistakes are made.  If the same mistakes happen repeatedly, then address them as such, but the standard posture must always be trust.

At the end of the day every organization must understand that the behavior of each of their members is a direct result of the system they have in place (hat tip to USAFA’s Mgt 303).  Leaders can chant risk-taking mantras all day to their employees, but if they punish the first member that falls short in his or her endeavors members will read their call for change for what it really is, lip-service.

In order to cultivate an innovative environment, leaders may have to initially bite their tongue at mistakes they may have punished in the past, whether they like it or not.  Until members feel confident that the default mode in their organization is for leaders to back up their employees rather than punish them nothing will change and risk-takers will be replaced by 9-5 sheep.

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ATC: “Would you accept a fighter intercept this morning?”

Us: “Uh…yes, yes we would”

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Recently the reading bug has caught me again.  It usually goes in waves, much like flu season, keeping me awake for hours at night as I devour page after page of whatever I happen to be consuming at the time.  I’ve always been a reader.

As a young boy I remember dominating my class in the reading contests in which children were given a free personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut for every x amount of books they read.  It was par for the course in my family.  Early memories of my parents involved them sitting in their chairs after dinner quietly reading with an old record playing in the background.

A few of my friends, Glenn Packiam and Aaron Stern, recently published posts listing their favorite books.  As funny as it may sound, these posts fascinate me more than almost anything they’ve written…and it’s not because they’re poor writers (the opposite is true).

To me, nothing is more telling of how a person thinks and interacts with the world than the books they cherish.  Each one reveals a unique angle to their character and perceptions that no amount of direct questioning could uncover.

So in the spirit of promoting great books I thought I would follow suit with my own list of favorite books.  The following represent various facets of what I love about books.  Not just the information contained within the pages, but the journeys available to anyone who dare enter.  Check them out and pick one up for a friend for Christmas if you’re having a hard time thinking of what to give them.

1) The Bible- no other piece of work has influenced so many, caused so much controversy and delved deeper into the meat of life.  My favorite description comes from the cover of my TNIV Bible, “How God created the world, watched it turn against his purpose, lived among us, was still rejected because he didn’t fit expectations, turned everything upside down to get things back on track and now invites you to find your place in The Story of God.”

2)  The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky - said by many to be the best work of Dostoevsky, his final book explores the lives of a Russian landowner and his three sons, each of whom has an entirely different personality.
As with most classic literature, the tale explores major themes like greed, envy, love, faith and everything that cuts to the core of man.  “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter of the book is one of the finest sections of writing I have ever read.

3)  The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century by Thomas L. Friedman – required reading for every 20-something.  Globalization has shaped the last several decades more than anyone imagined, but Friedman explains the “why” and “how,” taking a complex world and making it simple again.  This Eureka-moment-book will cause you to look at the world around you in a new way and exclaim, “That’s why it is how it is!”

4)  Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis – somewhere along the line it became the norm to associate faith with a rejection of the mind.  C.S. Lewis begs to differ and offers an incredible treatise as to why one should choose to follow Christ in a logical and well-thought out way. “Mere Christianity” is a defense of traditional Christianity in a world that often rejects it as “old-fashioned.” Quite simply, the best defense of Christianity I have ever read.

5)  Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer – I read this book in high school and was so inspired by the life of the main character that I went on a 2-week trip into the Alaskan backcountry upon graduation.  Based on a true story, this incredible adventure examines the life and death of college graduate Christopher McCandless who sold all of his life possessions and set off on an journey to Alaska that would give him a new life, but eventually take it.  Amazing insight into what keeps the human spirit alive and healthy.

6)  From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman – Thomas Friedman’s first book reads much differently than all those after it.  Based on his life as a reporter living in Lebanaon in the early 80′s, Friedman discusses the complexities of the Arab/Israeli conflict in storylike fashion.  Using the significant events of his personal life during that period as a springboard, he takes the reader through all of the characters and themes that have made this area of the world one of the most volatile in history.  If you read any books on the Middle Eastern conflict, this should be it.

7) How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture by Francis Schaeffer – A book for anyone that wants to know how our present culture got to where it is today and the people, ideas, and moments that acted as the catalysts. Schaeffer makes history incredibly relevant and interesting. Working forward from the breakdown of ancient Rome, through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, etc. up to our present age, Schaeffer highlights the key players that have shaped how we view our world today as well as the major shift from a Christian world view to a humanistic world view and the consequences of this change. Schaeffer concludes, “The problem is having, and then acting upon, the right world view – the world view which gives men and women the truth of what is.”

8)  Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam – Authentic, relevant community is something that is increasingly sought after by my generation (the 20-somethings, college and career group), but sometimes hard to find or even define. Bowling Alone is a fascinating commentary on community, relationships, social networking and the many ways that people connect with each other in America both past and present. It provides incredible arguments for the benefits of strong community to include trust, altruism, honesty, reciprocity, etc., but at the same time frames the discussion in such a way that you don’t feel like you’re listening to grandpa tell long tales of the “good ole’ days.”

9)  Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – First, don’t be intimidated by it’s thickness (over 1,000 pages).  Rand’s writing lends itself to burning through pages quickly.  On one level this book is a fictional story of railroad tycoon Dagny Taggart, struggling to manage a railroad company as the world around her pressures her to run it “for the good of everyone,” rather than the way she sees fit.  On another level it is an impassioned defense of objectivism, Rand’s radical philosophy of self-interest, as well as capitalism.  The product description says it best, “It is a mystery, not about the murder of a man’s body, but about the murder–and rebirth–of man’s spirit.”  A huge book in every sense.

10)  A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel – This book was assigned reading for my junior-year Personal Finance and Investing Class at the Air Force Academy. It has become my investing bible. With a few strokes of the pen, Malkiel sizes up the entire investment analysis industry and renders it worthless. Citing years of personal experience and reams of data, Malkiel shows how monthly investing in an simple index-fund has matched, and much of the time exceeded, the returns of other actively managed mutual funds when measured over long time periods. Looking at history as a guide, the book examines several different market bubbles, crashes, etc. and shows how deeply irrational investors can become in pursuit of “the secret.” The number one book I would recommend on investing and personal finance to anyone that asked.

Honorable Mention:

*The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

**What’s So Great About America by Dinesh D’Souza

***Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

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