Not having written in a while, I thought I’d take a large step into the personal with a story that probably qualifies as one of the most romantic experiences in my life.  Something that was quite amazing and cool at the time and that today, unfortunately, would be impossible to pull off.

As a footnote, it may seem odd to be sharing, given I’m divorced, and this is something that was part of our married life, but I don’t honestly care.  Good memories last, and this one qualifies.

Explaining the background…

Back in April of 1997, I was starting a new consulting job that required us to travel out to Boston for three consecutive weeks of training/orientation.  Given that the job was formal attire at the time and it was a full-week schedule, it was a not a “traveling light” situation and there were bags to carry, which made slugging through the airport a hassle (the relevance of this part will be explained later).

On a separate note, a month or two earlier, Kathy had planned a weekend to visit her best friend in Houston, and the dates ultimately overlapped when I was traveling out for training.  This meant that she’d be out of town over one of the weekends when I was only home for a couple days.  When we realized the conflict, we decided not to do anything about it, though it wasn’t fun to have almost two weeks without seeing each other.

Bending the space/time continuum…

When the week eventually rolled around where this was going to happen, it became apparent that there was a chance I might be able to wrap up my training on Friday a little earlier than expected and try to see Kathy before she flew out to Houston (my original flight was late in the day and hers was mid-afternoon).  While I knew Kathy’s flight number and take off time, I didn’t tell her what I was trying to do, figuring that it would be really disappointing if it didn’t work out (and it would be better if I was the only one disappointed, as opposed to both of us), and to pull it off as a surprise would also be pretty cool.

As luck would have it, we finished relatively early, I blew out of the office and told the cab driver in Cambridge that I was in a life and death situation and needed to get to Logan.  He got us there in a timeframe that would be better not to think about, I threw him a huge tip, grabbed my garment bag and smaller (but relatively heavy) carry-on and ran to the United terminal, putting myself on standby for the first available flight back to Chicago, which I managed to get.  I eagerly rode out the few hours of the flight, and tried to figure out what to do when the plane reached the gate.  Upon touchdown and eventual ‘debarkation’, I grabbed my carry-ons and fought though the crowd to reach the terminal.

Thirty minutes and counting…

I landed about 30 minutes (at most) before Kathy’s flight was scheduled to take off.  She was booked on American Airlines, and I had just landed in United Terminal 1 – C Concourse.  Anyone who knows O’Hare airport now realizes that I was in the farther United terminal, needed to run (with the two heavy bags) through that terminal, down the stairs, into the tunnel with the rainbow lights and famous “the moving walkway is now ending, please look down” voice, back up the stairs, through the B Concourse and over TWO terminals to where the American Airlines flights are…

With a healthy fear of failure to keep me going, I eventually reached Terminal 3, ran to the Departures monitors and located the gate for Kathy’s flight.  Feeling like I was about to experience a moment worthy of TV commercial footage, I raced to the gate to find… no one but the woman at the ticket counter.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“We just finished boarding the plane.”

“Oh my God, you have got to be kidding me.”

I looked out the windows, and there was her plane.  The door was still open and people could still board, but I probably missed her in the gate area by less than 15 minutes.  I was standing there, completely out of breath, in a suit, sweating from having literally run across most of the airport with my bags in tow, and I failed…

I looked at the woman behind the ticket counter and said something along the lines of “I can’t believe it.  I literally just flew in from Boston. I haven’t seen my wife in a week.  She’s going to Houston for the weekend, I wanted to surprise her, and now I’m not going to see her for over another week because I’m heading back out of town.”

Without saying a word, she put a piece of paper and pen on the counter… “What’s her name?  Write a note for her.”  She gets on the phone to call the plane as she’s pulling up Kathy’s passenger info.

I wrote a short note (which I’m not sharing here), but part of the message was “It looks like I just missed you.”  I handed it back to the woman at the ticketing desk, she took it over to a flight attendant who appeared at the gate doorway, handed her the note, and she swiftly disappeared.

After thanking the woman profusely, I decided to sit for a minute, rest from all the rushing, and watch Kathy’s plane leave the gate.

A few minutes later, they hadn’t gone anywhere and the flight attendant reappeared.  She handed the ticketing woman the piece of paper, on which Kathy had written a response.  The flight attendants were apparently now in the business of helping pass around our personal notes.  Kathy was surprised and happy that I tried to get there… albeit slightly disappointed at the outcome.

Sitting at the gate, looking at the note for a few minutes, I began wondering why the plane hadn’t moved and went back to the ticket counter to ask.  “The flight crew is delayed.  They don’t have a pilot right now.”  Oh great, they got on the plane and can’t even go anywhere… Had they known this before, maybe they could’ve held up the boarding a little and I would’ve seen her… I went and sat back down.

A couple minutes of inactivity later, the woman behind the desk got on the phone, had a short conversation, wrote something down on a piece of paper, then gestured to me to come over.  I walked to the desk, she handed me the piece of paper (which had a seat number on it) and she pointed to the gate.  “Go ahead.”

WHAT?  “Wait a second, what about my bags?  I shouldn’t just leave them there, should I?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll watch them for you.  Go see your wife.”

At that moment, I could’ve jumped over the counter and kissed that woman… she picks up the phone again, says “He’s coming“, hangs up, and says “Ok.”

With no ticket and Kathy’s seat number written on a scrap of paper in hand, I walked down the ramp, to the entrance of the plane, where all of the flight attendants were standing, with huge smiles on their faces, as if I was somehow participating in a story larger than my own, one of them pointing me in the direction of Kathy’s seat.

At this point, things were a bit awkward.. because none of the passengers seemed to have any idea why the heck they had boarded the plane about twenty minutes earlier, were buckled up in their seats, and now some strange dude was walking down the completely vacant aisle looking for someone.  Having taken many flights over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced something quite like that, because everyone was fully seated, ready to push back, and some were looking at me as if I had something to do with why they were still stuck there… Out of a sense of guilt or obligation to explain myself, I said “It’s not me, there’s no pilot on this plane yet…” a couple times as I walked through the plane.

Eventually I got to Kathy’s row, she was in the window seat looking outside and didn’t see me right away, and the other two passengers looked at me like “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen my wife in a month (yes, I exaggerated to get them to move) and they let me come aboard to see her before you leave.  There’s no pilot on the plane right now anyway…”

They got up, she got up, (romantic moment I’m not describing)… people actually applauded… wow.  Finally, I gave her a big hug, told her to have a great trip, headed back to the exit, the flight attendants all gave me another huge set of smiles and nods of approval, I thanked all of them, and walked back to the gate.

As I got back into the terminal, the flight crew arrived, I gave the woman behind the ticket desk a huge hug for creating a memory I knew would last forever (for both of us) and headed home…

It’s truly amazing what people will do under the right circumstances.  There is a line from William Hurt in the movie The Village that I’ve always liked a lot, which is “The World moves for Love…  It kneels before it… in awe.”

On one very special day, many years ago, I can honestly say that statement was very true… and I will forever be grateful to those people who made it possible.

[Re-reading this note, I want to clarify one important point: this story is not about the guy who ran through the airport, it’s about the girl on the plane who was worth seeing, even for the briefest moment.  Many people may want to find a person who is willing to do the running, but I’d rather find the person worth running to… because, when you’ve found them, the running isn’t really an effort at all]

-CJG 04/09/2014

To summarize my day, I…

• Got up excessively early for work
• Hit a pothole in the dark and blew out two tires
• Threw my entire day in the trash before 5am, stranded for 13 hours in a McDonalds
• Did WAY too much walking in bitter cold with a suit on…(not exactly warm clothing)
• Spent $1,200 I didn’t expect, on something no one wants to spend money on
• Had a great day

Something in that list doesn’t fit the rest… and thank goodness, because otherwise it would’ve probably been a pretty stressful and frustrating day.

What made the day wonderful was the luck and many reminders that there is hope and an excess of humanity under otherwise adverse conditions… (but I’ve gotten ahead of myself)… from the minute things ‘got interesting’ on Wednesday morning, I thought it would be worth chronicling the sequence of events as it occurred… because it’s good to have reminders that good people are out there, and they rise to the opportunity to make a difference.

——–

It was a day like any other where I head downtown, with a couple exceptions: I expected some conflict in the morning and, as a result, had trouble sleeping and was up a little earlier than normal (3:30am instead of 4:30am).  Despite my best efforts to reclaim the sleep, eventually I just gave in, got up, got ready, and left a little earlier than normal, hitting the road at 4:30am.  It was bitterly cold, with the temp below zero and the wind chills in the -20+ range somewhere.  To be honest, after you get past “holy crap, it’s cold”, I honestly don’t think anyone should measure the wind chill.  It’s cold.  Stay inside.  Point made.

In any event, heading into the first 10 miles of city street driving on the 40 mile trek downtown, it was pitch black out, and the roads were as empty as you’d expect.  That is, after all, the point of leaving so early… to avoid the headache that would be an additional hour at least of driving if I left an hour later in the day.  Once the world wakes up, the drive takes a ton longer, and I don’t enjoy sitting in a car going nowhere that much.  Fifteen minutes into the ride, about a half mile from the expressway entrance, it happened…. BOOOM!!!  I hit a pothole in the dark at 50 mph or so that felt a little like the Grand Canyon.  The jolt was pretty substantial and it didn’t take long to realize something had happened.  With no one on the road, I was able to pull into the left turn lane at the nearby intersection, stop, get out, and take a look at the left front tire, where I assumed the problem existed… oh crap.  It was clearly flat and, making matters worse, it was really cold out… even stepping out of the car it hit me quickly, given I was in a suit and my topcoat isn’t exactly intended for a day at the North Pole. Warm: yes.  Thermally insulated: Not so much.

Worth noting that I knew I was going to need help immediately because, even though I have a full-size spare, I had just used it to replace another flat tire not even a month earlier.  There was no spare anymore.  I now needed two tires.  Lovely.  At 4:45am… in the arctic.

Having taken a quick look around, I tried to figure out what to do and decided to head to the gas station in the next block that happened to be open.  First stroke of good fortune, I was within a block of a gas station that was actually open before 5am.  Going in, the attendant was an older man who provided the first sign of the day to come.  I told him what happened, expressed my despair at the time of day (and cold), and asked if there were any tire repair places around.  As luck would have it, he pointed out the gas station on the opposing side of the intersection had a service station.  They weren’t open until 7am, but they probably could help.  Second blessing of the morning, I also had the flat right at an intersection with a service station.  What are the odds of that?  Pretty infinitesimal, and I realized right away that I was pretty lucky that this happened where it did.  Anywhere else, and I’d probably have been stranded for quite a while.

While the attendant could’ve just pointed across the street, he went a step farther, dug out his phone book (yes, they still make those apparently), and started digging through it, saying that there might be a 24-hour towing place about a mile over from where we were… while he was checking, I looked around for other signs of life and noticed a car in the drive thru of the McDonalds next door.  “Are they actually open?”  I didn’t think McDonalds opened until around 6am, but there was someone getting something at the window.  Third stroke of luck already, there was a 24-hour McDonalds right at the same spot.  They have wi-fi… I can hang out there, get connected, have some coffee, and wait it out.  What are the odds of that?  I thanked the attendant for his help, told him he didn’t need to worry about the towing, because I’d just drive my car across to the service station, walk back over, and kill the next couple hours at McDs.  He didn’t have to go through the extra step to try and find a place for me (technically I guess I could’ve done some looking on my cell phone, but that thought honestly never occurred to me at the time), but I thought it was a nice show of kindness from a stranger when he really didn’t have to do anything.

Taking my car across the street, I parked at the service station, grabbed my laptop and started the short walk (probably less than a block) back to the McDs.  It’s worth noting another stroke of luck at this point.  Even though I shouldn’t technically need them when I drive downtown, given I go straight from my garage to an indoor parking facility, I always bring my topcoat, warmer gloves, scarf, and hat, just in case some kind of emergency happens.  On this day, it ended up that I needed them.  All of us hear that kind of stuff on the news or weather channel and thank God I had them.  That one block walk was brutal and extremely uncomfortable.

Arriving at McDonald’s things returned to a degree of normalcy, because I ordered a coffee, found a spot (the entire restaurant was empty), got connected, and started adjusting the day.  Between a quick call to London and the normal flow of things that come overnight from offshore, the next couple hours passed quickly.

Like Tom Hanks in the movie Terminal, I was clearly going to be around a while and might as well settle in.  The odd thing about being stuck in a McDs for a period of hours is the cross section of people who converge on it over the course of a day. In the morning, there was a single mom with her two teenage kids who settled in near my new makeshift office.  I ended up wishing I could bring the woman around with me just to dispense good advice.  She had a great way of putting things in perspective as her kids were talking about things they were dealing with at school in their relationships.  At one point, her son said a classmate was bothering him, to which she responded “How tall is he? (made a gesture with her hand at about 4 feet tall)  This tall?”  “Yeah.”  She raised her hand up about a foot.  “You’re this tall.  Are you kidding?  You’d have to pick him up a foot off the ground for him to be in your face.”  I couldn’t help but let out a laugh and she and I exchanged a smile before she went back to telling him (and then ultimately his sister) the importance of being who you are, having self-respect, faith (which came in at one point), and not letting others drag you down because of their own insecurities and issues… wow, I love this woman.  Come hang out with me for a while, I have use of your uplifting spirit… it’s empowering, and it was another moment in the morning where I felt like maybe the day was meant to take a left turn to help me hear a different message than the ones I’d been hearing for the many days before it.

In any event, 7am rolled around, I packed up my stuff, bundled back up, and walked back to the service station.  Another journey across the arctic tundra… only one block, pretty awful.  It’s odd that if I was walking from the train station a few blocks to work on a normal day, I don’t know if it would’ve phased me so much, but somehow the gut punch of the morning just made it a lot more taxing.

A lot more traffic at the intersection at this hour than when it was 5am.  Arriving the service station, the attendant told me that they could help, the mechanic wouldn’t arrive until 8:15am (lovely, more wasted time), but he could order the tire in the meantime.  Like 99% of the world population, I had no idea what size tires I had on my car, so we went outside to check.  At this point, the next shoe dropped.  BOTH of the left tires had been blown out, I just never thought to look at the rear tire once I saw the left front was flat…that pothole really took a toll. Ok then, now I guess I have to replace three tires.  We went back inside and I commented on how lucky I was that this all happened in the right location, but what a day for it.  After giving him my number (so he could call with updates), the attendant asked if I wanted to sit down for a while, warm up, and catch my breath before going back outside… another one of those small moments where I thought “well, that’s an awfully nice thing to say/offer.”  I’m sure I had to sound frustrated, but he didn’t have to really give a darn, he just did, and it felt nice to see another person trying to help.  With the new found energy, I thanked him, and decided to get back over to my office away from home to get some more work done.

After a couple more hours passed, 10am rolled around and the call came from the service station.  It would make more sense to get a full set of tires than order three… yeah, I saw that coming, and agreed it made sense.  No point in replacing three tires.  Now, the good news.  $1,200.  Good morning.  Today’s highlight will be an opportunity to pass a kidney stone.  Making it slightly more interesting, they needed some cash because they’re a small garage, can’t use a charge, the supplier works a certain way, etc.  Ok then… I’ll go over to the bank branch across the street and hit an ATM for whatever I can (knowing there might be a limit).  Oh yeah, lucky break number 4, the other corner of that intersection had a bank, not mine, but a bank… and at this point, we just need an ATM.  I drag myself over there and go inside… “Where is your ATM?” “We only have the one outside.”  “What?”  Seriously, who doesn’t have an ATM inside?… It’s still about 20 below out… and it’s not like I want to be outside screwing around with an ATM machine.  No choice apparently, so I go back out and walk toward the drive thru.  As luck would have it, that’s exactly when a woman in a van pulls up to the machine.  You have to be kidding, right?  I’m going to end up waiting in the cold for someone else, who probably has six deposits and a couple account transfers to do…right?  I’m walking towards her as the woman sees me.  She waves to me, backs her car up, and let’s me go first.  What just happened?  No one let’s another person go before them at an ATM machine… that’s like a shark backing off the chum and letting others have the first shot.  Unheard of, and yet another person does something incredibly helpful and considerate under the circumstances.  I realize maybe this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but believe me, when it’s 20 below out and you’re standing outside in a suit freezing your butt off, she might as well have given me a million dollars.  I hit up the machine for what I could get, which unfortunately wasn’t much given it was another bank, and walked back to the service station.

It’s not enough.  Can I go to my actual bank and get a couple hundred more, so we can work this out?  Um, well, there’s a bit of problem with that, because you see… God didn’t drop my bank at this intersection.  I’ve been incredibly lucky at this point, but there are still some real world constraints in play.  The attendant then decides to blow me away, “Look, I want to help you out… take my car.”  What?  He’s giving me his car?  Who does that?  I thought we lived in a world where it’s every man for himself and screw everyone else… I thought I’ve heard that somewhere, quite a lot actually.  Apparently this guy didn’t get the memo, or he doesn’t watch the news.  Sure, why not.  I’m desperate and that’s a great solution.  He also happened to know where my bank had a branch about a mile away, so I didn’t have to do any searching online to find one.

I jumped in his car, immediately noticing that he had that amount of gas below a quarter tank that isn’t quite approaching the E, but you don’t have a lot in the car.  Made me wonder…is he one of those people who doesn’t make a lot of money and rations himself on gas, given it’s expensive and you’d rather get a quarter or half tank than splurge and get yourself a full tank.  This situation was getting addressed… one good turn deserves another, and I definitely believe in paying it forward.

I set off and drove the mile down the road, found the branch and went inside.  One person working in the lobby, and she was busy attending to the cars.  No one else in sight for a couple minutes until the branch manager strolled out into the lobby and said “Good morning, how is your day going?”  Well, funny you should ask that question…lol.  Pretty freaking awful, but at this point, I am so blown away by all the people who’ve already done something to help me out, that I really feel quite good about it.  Upon hearing the situation, he goes back behind the counter, opens the door to the back, “Joe, leave that for a minute, come out here and help this gentlemen right now.”  Ok then, another minor act that takes a little of load off.  Honestly, if getting that cash meant I was going to have my car back, I really didn’t feel like being patient on the drive thru person eventually paying attention to me… and this was helpful.

Leaving the bank, I took a quick detour and filled the attendant’s gas tank, feeling another surge of positive energy for having done a little to pay back the big favor.  I spent the few minutes on the drive back trying to decide whether to tell him or not.  Honestly, I love the idea of doing things without saying anything about it and let the act itself provide it’s reward. I don’t really seek out thanks.  It’s enough to know you made things a little better for someone who might just need it.  In this case, though, I decided to tell him given I wanted to be able to show my thanks in a tangible way for the gesture he made himself.  Upon giving him the cash, and telling him that I filled his tank, the reaction was priceless.  For a second, it was like the guy was about to cry… I have no idea what the heck was going on there, but I can only expect his situation wasn’t so good either and maybe just that little bit of a random act of kindness was a surprise he needed too.  It was a cool moment.  He told me the car would be ready between 4:30-5:00pm and then proceeded to offer to drive me anywhere I needed to go, get me a cab, a rental car… anything.  Holy cow.  It’s all good.  I elected to just go back across the street and wait it out, figuring there’s always a chance that it could be done sooner, and he’d already done his bit to help me.  Twice.

The next eight hours went by much faster, in hindsight, than I would’ve expected. In practice, I could’ve gotten back home, but decided to ride out the day on my fast food island.  The driving back and forth would’ve burned 45 minutes of the time alone, and I’d made it that far.  There was plenty of work to do, I talked Kathy into coming over to have lunch with me, and there was more people-watching in store.

At one point, the Golden Girls took a table next to me for what I would guess was a periodic get together for coffee and some friendly catch up.  When they were winding down and getting ready to leave, I decided to say hello and tell them the story of how I ended up there.  Not something I would normally do, but it was a crazy situation regardless, so why not?  What I found out in the process was that each of them had a story to tell too… of some unexpected situation where they also were in need of assistance, and a random stranger came up to help them.  The day had become even more positive, through the sharing of the stories, and I’m glad I gave it a shot.  People are more connected than you’d sometimes believe… we just need to have our eyes open to look for things we might otherwise be distracted from seeing.

Since I haven’t made mention since the opening, I should share that the challenging day I expected at work played out quite differently as well.  Things went much better than expected, through another unexpected twist of fate (beyond my situation).  We finished the workday with two projects we’ve been trying to win for many months both receiving a go ahead at almost the same time from completely different client teams in different locations.  That will pick you up, even in a McDonalds after a very long, strange day.

As 5:30pm rolled around, I still didn’t have my car and decided to head over to the station to see what was going on.  The garage was now closed, they had taken the car around for a quick test drive to make sure everything was ok.  The attendant had stayed late (his shift was supposed to end at 4:30pm) to make sure I got my car back.  He thanked me again (twice) for filling his tank.  If only it were so easy to lift people up every day… it’s a really small price to pay, isn’t it?

I paid the balance of my bill, thanked them for the help, and set out, back into the dark in which the day began, time to go back home… I effectively drove 20 miles, got nowhere, and accomplished everything.  I got my work done, but more importantly found a sense of hope and kindness that was both unexpected and very refreshing.

In hindsight, what could’ve been a pretty awful day, turned into an amazing experience and I’m glad to have had it.  I needed the reminder.  There is a fundamental good in people.  There are a lot of good people out there too… far more than you’d expect.  We just have to make those little efforts that matter… and the world becomes a better place, even under circumstances that otherwise could be unpleasant.  People can make a difference… and this week, for me they did.

-CJG 03/01/2014

With Christina off on a school outing to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last night and Kathy working, I had a chance to spend some daddy-daughter time with Anna.  As the evening moved along, I gave her the remote so she could put on whatever she wanted to watch.  She chose “Chess in Concert” (musical), because apparently her sister has been singing the music quite a bit recently. What followed was a very nice evening of wonderful music and some great performances.

The power of music (or art in general, for that matter) never ceases to amaze me.  Understanding that people don’t all experience it the same, it can bring out such strong and powerful emotions.  Seeing my girls engaging in that is really important to me… it opens up a larger and deeper world to them.  Hopefully they’ll both stick with it, even if only to be “engaged listeners.”

Listening to the show last night brought back a lot of memories, from the exceptional lady singers of Marillac HS, who I had the privilege to support as part of a few pit bands, to gigs I had years later playing music professionally with various types of bands.

In high school, the memories of sitting in the pit, listening to the wonderful voices coming from the Marillac stage are still there, over 25 years later.  To be able to plug into that, even if in a minor way, and try to add a little something extra to the performance is such a cool thing to feel and experience… even when you’re in the dark and all the light is focused elsewhere.  The sound is everywhere and the world is alive in the performance.  One change, one nuance in the tone, inflection, pitch… moves everything somewhere, it’s fluid, and you are just riding along with it.

While I only played with the First Concert Band for one year at the University of Illinois, I can certainly remember the incredible sound of playing Stars and Stripes Forever in the Great Hall of the Krannert Center… it might as well have been Orchestra Hall and the individual and collective musicians (and director) of that band were incredible.

A couple years later, I remember a fusion band gig where we were playing the Nature’s Table (unfortunately no longer there), we had a decent crowd, and were playing a song with an odd time signature… I looked over to the bar to see a woman dancing with her eyes closed.  Given it wasn’t in 4/4, it was pretty strange to see that, but it made an impression that made me want to raise the level of play.  I have no idea who the person was, but the impact of the music was clear and it was cool to experience.

On another night my sophomore year in Champaign, about an hour before a big band gig, I received a call from home to tell me that my father had a heart attack and was in the hospital.  Time seemed to stop.  My father had always been a strong figure and somehow the entire image and situation was WAY too much to take in.  I knew I couldn’t get back home that night, and went to the Music building as an utter emotional wreck, trying to figure out what I was going to do.  Sitting down with one of my best friends, I remember asking him what I should do.  I can remember to this day where we were sitting and pretty much everything about the situation.  His question was very simple:

‘What would your father want you to do?‘  (That was all it took.)

‘He’d want me to go on and perform.’

‘Then, you should play tonight for him.’

Over 22 years later, it’s hard not to become emotional sharing that part (Yes, Mike, I remember it that well).  I’ve been blessed with some incredible friends and situations like that remind me that we can have such a significant impact on people without intending to or even realizing it.  In any case, having played in the jazz bands for three years in college, I have no doubt it was my best performance the entire time I was there.  Maybe it was the emotion, maybe it was the intense focus, maybe it was just releasing everything into the music, I don’t know… but it was an incredible experience that I’ll always remember.  If that was meant to be a dedication, it said it all.

Several years later, I had a chance to sit in a few times for a high school friend who is a full-time professional musician, playing with a jazz trio at the Rockhouse Grill in Rolling Meadows.  The club is a little place in a strip mall and nothing particularly grandiose.  The gig was special both because the guitar and bass players were amazing pro musicians and the theme of the night itself.  The band was called “Free Food for Poets” because the evening was set up as an open mic night for poets to come and read their work.  So, various people would get up, read their work, and do a set, then they’d take a break and we’d do a set of trio music, and so on.  Probably 25 people in the place all night…and one of the best creative experiences I’ve ever had.  The audience was so immersed in what was going on that it was an awesome fusion of different energies all night.  Some of the poets were very dramatic, others subdued, some angry, some inspiring… everyone got respect, applause, and 100% of the audience’s attention.  For our part, we literally decided what we were going to play as we went.  We never rehearsed, we just performed, and it was quite amazing.  Both of them were so incredibly talented that it was like a journey in every moment, where we figured out where we were going along the way… they could take it up a notch, back it off, go up a couple levels, change the style…every trick in the book.  The audience absolutely loved it and was right there with us.  In hindsight, it would’ve been really cool to hear them play with my friend, given he’s an incredible drummer and a much better player than I am… I wonder where they could take it.  In any event, it was a very strong contrast to a pop music gig I was playing at the same time, where we’d play a big club with 700 or more people in the crowd on a night, but the experience was entirely different.  Not to say one form of music was any better than the other, but you can feel the difference when the audience is into what you’re doing, and even if it’s a lot less people, it really only takes making an impact on one person for it to feel like you’ve made a difference somehow in a performance.

Along those lines, one last memory that I’ll share came from playing a blues trio job at a place called the Dixie Q on Fullerton on the North side of Chicago.  The owner was a notorious jerk to the performers and insisted that you play in the parking lot, which was quite unpleasant (between light rain and cold temps) a couple times I played there.  One night in particular, though, I remember playing with a blues trio on a cold night where almost no one was there to hear us.  If anyone was out coming to the place, they certainly weren’t staying outside for long, so we probably played for about 12 people all night.  What was interesting about those 12 people is that two of them were a friend from work who brought his girlfriend over to hear us for a while.  It turned out that she worked with another woman who was the lead singer in a pop group that was looking for a drummer.  That turned into the pop band gig I mentioned above, which was a couple years (roughly) of some really fun gigs in a lot of larger venues, including Festa Italiana in Chicago at one point.  The other memorable piece of the night came from a complete stranger.

Somewhere along the way, early in the evening, a guy came along who stood outside and was listening to us play.  He seemed pretty into what we had going on, and he pretty much had to be, because otherwise it was awfully unpleasant to be out there listening to it.  In any case, as you tend to do at gigs, we had a chance to talk during the set breaks and it turned out that he was also a drummer and had played for many years in a band with his brother down in South Carolina before moving to Chicago about six months before.  After checking with the guys, as we got into the last set, I asked him if he wanted to sit in and play a couple tunes.  He lit up at the opportunity, sat down, played a couple tunes, did a nice job, and I gave him the rousing applause in lieu of a larger audience out in the cold.  As the night came to a close, he came up to talk while I was tearing down, to say thank you.  He told me that he had been in Chicago all this time, didn’t really know anyone, was very down and lonely, and was just on a bus on his way home.  He heard the music, decided to get off, and what a difference we just made for him.  Having a chance to play meant so much and it brought back those memories of being on stage with his brothers.  Such a simple thing, with such a cool result… suddenly we only needed one guy in the audience that night and it all made sense.

Overall, while my days of playing live music may be on hold (at least for the time being), I’m so happy to have the memories of what performing can do, what it can mean, and how it can feel… I hope my daughters are lucky enough to have those experiences and to meet the many amazing people that participate in it with you, both on and off the stage, in the lights and outside…

In the meantime, I’ll keep recording the music I love, and hoping some of that experience and joy comes through…

-CJG 02/08/2014

So, tonight was the last and final update for all the important things we needed to know about Christina’s upcoming trip to Washington, D.C.  I’m very excited for her, though part of me feels like we’re missing out on the experience she’s about to have.

With all the rules, regulations, and requirements whizzing by, I was curiously disinterested and trying to picture my daughter’s reaction to all these historical and significant places.  I suppose it’s like this sometimes as a parent.  We can’t always see and experience these moments with our kids, and that’s part of the process for them to grow up and be independent, but something about that wonderment, awe, and excitement is such an amazing thing to see in their eyes…I wish we could be there, if only as observers.

Talking to Christina tonight, she’s a little nervous at the prospect of being an airplane trip away from home, but I did my best to point out all the things that will be cool about doing something like this with her friends and arguably one of the most engaging history teachers I’ve ever seen.  It’s strange how we can shift into a different mindset when others need reassurance.  Even if I had reservations, the minute she was worried, my stuff just didn’t matter.  She asked if my work phone should be on the contact list (on top of my cell phone), at which point I reminded her that the cell phone will probably be in front of my face the entire time she is away.  That seemed to help.  That and a few observations that gave her a laugh, but aren’t appropriate to share here… 🙂

We’re now one step farther in a long list of things undergoing transition right now.  Overall, I hope she takes a ton of pictures and they make a lot of memories that she’ll cherish for a long time.  Times like this feel very bittersweet, but I know we have to let go and be open to possibility… in the meantime, fingers crossed, prayers offered, candles lit, and weather channel soon to be under intense review, hoping they have sun and some decent temperatures for the visit.

-CJG 02/04/2014

Tonight was part two of our acclimatization process for high school.  Open House.  Can’t screw up walking around on your own, right? … um, right.  Mostly.

Much like step one of the process, I didn’t know what to expect tonight, and given it wasn’t loaded with presentations on the importance of family dinners and monitoring our kids’ use of social media, I was bound to be happy.

Having driven past penguins and polar bears on the way to the school, I was dreading the walk from the parking lot into the building in sub-zero wind chills more than anything related to the evening and I wasn’t disappointed.  A minute into his warm up chat, the Principal of the school asked for a show of hands from everyone who was frozen by the walk into the building… how you raise your hand if you are, in fact, frozen is a mystery, but let’s not be technical…

Having heard a fifteen minute schtick, mostly explaining that they were going to set us loose on the building in groups (not a particularly complex concept, but who’s counting), we were on our way.

My goal for tonight was rather simple: help Christina get one more step comfortable with what will be her new school.  Given the girls arrived several minutes late, it was immediately evident that everyone was in a bit of a funk to get started.  All going in different directions, no one even remotely present in the moment.  It’s odd how we have the ability to gear shift as people.  I had an awful day and might as well have been physically grinding an axe walking into the building. Somehow, seeing them all in a different place got me focused on the situation.  I took Christina around and we spoke to a number of people, between teachers, counselors, some people there to discuss clubs, etc.  By the time we were done, we found out some useful information to help her register for classes, but more importantly, she seemed to be having fun and a lot more relaxed.  The downside was that she really only has two elective slots to fill in her schedule and she’d like to sign up for probably 10 things… I don’t know what I expected there, but I wish I saw it coming so I could’ve helped guide her through it better… (add one to the lesson learned list for Anna in three years).

In any event, the night came and went pretty quick.  Anna was incredibly bored, until the point where I pointed out that she’ll be the person walking around asking questions in three years.  I don’t think the concept of middle school has fully settled in yet, let alone high school… the reaction was worth it. 🙂

We’re one step further down the road… likely Christina will leave her recommended honors classes alone and put Spanish and Chorus in there for good measure.  We have a week to make sure all that is in the system, but tonight seemed to get the picture a lot more clear… including the bit where she won’t be able to squeeze Drivers Ed anywhere into her schedule and have it fit… oh well, I guess we’ll have to take the outside school option.

Disorientation step two… complete.  Can’t wait to see what comes next…

-CJG 01/21/2014

I hate conflict… I hate fighting… At an overall level, I am very bothered by any serious discord.  I don’t like being at odds with people, even if I’m not a particular fan of their views or behaviors.  If I have that sense of imbalance, it can sit with me for quite a while, and it’s difficult to shake sometimes.  I suspect there are a decent number of people who feel that way as well, some of whom then take the additional step towards avoiding conflict.  That’s the part where I generally don’t follow along. This isn’t to say I would purposefully seek out a conflict, but I also believe that some fights are worth fighting.

When I was in junior high, I had a very intense experience that had me and a few others in physical harm’s way.  Not really knowing what to do, I ended up right in the center of an intense situation that ultimately ended ok, but put me in the position of both having to think and act very quickly in the interest of protecting loved ones.  While the purpose of this note is not to talk about that experience, I did take away a couple things that have stayed with me since.

First is that we have the ability to speak our truth in life, whatever it is, and have our views understood.  We don’t have to be right, and no one ever is all the time, but we can be true to ourselves and live into our values.  One of our teachers at Notre Dame High School had two expressions that stuck with me related to this.  The first was that we should “have the courage of our convictions” and second was that “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll stand for anything.”  The latter is an expression that I’ve taken very much to heart over the years, especially in the work environment, where so many people say what they believe others want to hear (and take the safe road) rather than say what they actually believe is correct.  What we don’t condemn, we then ultimately condone and become complicit in the outcome.

Having spoken up on various issues over the years, it’s an odd phenomena that, after doing so (and sometimes getting blasted for it), people would come up to me privately and say “thank you for saying that”…”I was thinking the same thing”.. and so on.  To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about these moments.  I’ve been in that situation enough times where I’m both annoyed with the bystanders but then happy to just be someone trying to make a difference and do the right thing in the face of that adversity.  It has landed me on an island a few times over the years, but I’d rather be there than reinforcing the status quo when people may be in harm’s way as a result.

An analogy that I’ve used over the years is: You’re in a room with 10 people.  Someone is standing at the front, talking about a problem they are struggling with or trying to solve.  Eight of the people leave the room not having said anything.  Of that set, half of them think nothing of it, and the other half may comment to someone outside the room about how it sucks to be that person.  For the other two people in the room, it’s possible one of them says “You might want to try this…” and the other says, “I’m willing to help you if I can.”  While it’s a hypothetical situation, I’ve certainly been in plenty of discussions over the years to say this does happen.  The question I ask is who do you want to be?  Many people fall into the 8 who do nothing and walk away.  A select set of people fall into the other two.  My wish is that more people would engage long enough to try to help.  Thinking about it, I believe it might go back to that very early experience from childhood where I didn’t have a choice not to participate, but what I did made a very significant difference. I feel a compulsion to engage and, while it’s not always easy, it feels necessary and important to me.

The second thing that came from the experience relates to dealing with aggression.  Something about being in a position of having to protect others at a very young age really burned the notion of standing up to aggressors in at a deep level.  Bullies are way too tolerated in society, and especially within the work environment.  Knowing there are many states with pending anti-bullying legislation that would make it similar in nature to other forms of workplace harassment, my sincere hope is that is does eventually pass and helps improve conditions for the many people subjected to de-humanizing behavior on an ongoing basis.  This is where I’d come back to my original point on conflict: I hate it and don’t want to be a part of it.  That being said, someone has to be willing to step into the fray at times and keep others out of harm’s way.

There’s a scene in the movie The Guns of Navarone (one of my favorite war movies) where Gregory Peck and David Niven are arguing about how to deal with a traitor discovered among their group.  Niven’s comment is that he would never let the Army make him an officer, to which Peck responds “then you’ve had a free ride, all this time. Someone has got to take the responsibility if the job is going to get done.  Do you think that’s easy?”  It’s a powerful moment and Peck does a wonderful job bringing out the struggle and pressure he feels in making difficult decisions necessary to accomplish the mission he inherited through circumstance.  Having watched that scene countless times, it always fires me up.  It represents the burden that comes with leadership.  It’s not easy, it requires a lot of humility, courage, work, thought, compassion, and so on.

In any event, in dealing with aggression, I hate conflict but I’m not conflict avoidant.  I’d rather not have disagreement at all, but will disagree if I believe there is a better choice to be made.  That’s a difficult and lonely line to walk at times, but it’s also a rewarding one when you can look yourself in the mirror at night and know you’ve done what you believe is right.  Not surprisingly, its amazing how many paper tigers exist in the form of bullies, who aren’t actually strong or particularly tough, they are just used to getting no resistance.  The number of people with good intentions far outnumbers those who have these sort of behaviors, and yet the balance of power is sometimes shifted out of whack because there aren’t enough people trying to do something to address it.  It’s easier to look the other way, to not take on that responsibility for change, to want someone else to deal with it.  Our collective challenge is to make a difference, by taking action and speaking up, in the right ways, at the right times, to try and create a safer and more respectful environment for everyone.

There will always be a bully on the proverbial playgrounds of life, but there don’t need to be so many of them, and every once in a while, it would be really nice if the larger, well-intentioned masses rose up and beat them into submission for a change, and sent a larger message that it’s not ok, the good people of the world outnumber them, and human dignity, rights, and respect are worth fighting for…

A lot more came out here than I expected, but I’ll finish as I began.  I’d rather step into the ring and fight for what I believe in than be a passive spectator on things that matter.  It’s a lesson I learned the hard way a long time ago, and I don’t expect to give up on it any time soon… though it would be nice if one or two more people joined in that fight from time to time. 🙂

-CJG 01/19/2014

A change of pace this morning, with some thoughts on attitude and outlook.

In waking each day, the first thing I do (other than curse my alarm), is look out the window to get a sense of the weather.  That moment can set a tone, intentionally or not, for what comes next in the day.

Sunrise can be a beautiful time of day.  All is peaceful, the sky transforms from the dark night, through a range of brightening color, culminating with the appearance of the Sun.  It can be like a reawakening of life, a fresh start, a moment to begin again.  Over the water, the Sun casts a sparkle that seems to ignite the wave tops, as if an infectious glow is bringing excitement into the world.  This energy only rises as the Sun breaks free of the horizon and begins its journey across the sky, welcomed by the tree tops, the birds with their song, and warming the day as if to envelop us all in a comfortable blanket.  As the day ends, again the Sun meets the ocean, and the sparkle reappears, as if to say, “we’ll see you again”, before the warmth and light passes from the sky.  It’s powerful, and it happens every single day, whether we see it in plain sight, or not.

And it seems to me, that our relationships with people can be much the same as this.  We have a choice in what we bring to the world, and also what we see.

In the somewhat famous “Last Lecture” by CMU’s Randy Pausch, he uses an analogy from Winnie the Pooh to ask whether we are a “Tigger” or an “Eeyore”, emphasizing that we have a choice in how we engage with others.  It’s a simple, but relatively helpful image to highlight the opportunity everyone has to bring a positive or negative attitude into our interactions.

Going back to the start of the day, our interactions with people can be much like that first look out the window.  We have the ability to set the tone in how we communicate, behave, and influence the world around us.  Something as simple as a smile, a laugh, a moment where we encourage ourselves and others not to take everything too seriously and be a little gentler, can make such a difference in where things go.  It’s a choice, and unfortunately one that can be lost amidst the noise and frustration that many of us experience through the twists and turns of our daily routines.

Alternatively, just as we create that ‘picture in the sky’, we also are the person looking out the window.  What we choose to see can be equally powerful and important.  It’s common sense that we cannot control the behaviors and actions of others.  The sky may not just be gray some days, it may be a thunderstorm or blizzard.  What we see in that is also important.  The fact is that the Sun rises every single day, even the days we can’t see it.  For those who have ever taken a flight on a cloudy or rainy day, there is a moment when the plane breaks through the clouds and suddenly the blue sky and Sun reappear.  The reality is that it was there all along, even though it couldn’t be seen from the ground.  It can be a beautiful moment if you take the time to notice and appreciate it.  So many of us only see the clouds and lose sight of the light that is always behind them.  For me, that represents hope and a reason to look past the difficult things, and know that tomorrow can be better.

So, with these thoughts in mind, I’d simply say that our choices shape our world, both in what we bring out from ourselves, and what we choose to see when we look around us.  There is always cause for hope.  Whether we see it at any given moment is really about our vantage point and our ability to see past the clouds.  We’d all love to live in a world of perpetually clear, blue skies, but it’s not the world we live in, and life needs the rain too.  For myself, I’m very fortunate to have both wonderful friends and family to help keep these things in perspective every now and again when I lose sight of them (albeit sometimes with a healthy smack upside the head).  My encouragement to others would be to reach out and look for that support in the moments you need it or to be that light for someone else.  There are so many good people in the world waiting to make a difference and, through their actions, through our potential, we can make the world a better place.

-CJG 01/12/2014

It makes sense to go with Part 1 on this note, because there are undoubtedly many steps to the journey on which we are embarking with Christina entering high school next year.

Last night’s “High School 101” at her soon to be stomping grounds was pretty uninformative and disappointing, but that was mostly about the mechanics of the night and the execution of the speakers.  The lowlight was hearing the Principal referring to himself in the third-person with an emphasis on the “Dr.” part of his designation. It felt a little pompous, like I was living through the Jimmy episode of Seinfeld without any of the funny parts… in any event, step one is complete.

The highlight of last night was watching Kathy and Christina’s reaction at the moment they told us she can take Driver’s Ed second semester next year.  I had a “wow” reaction, Christina lit up with a “cool” look on her face, and Kathy was every bit horrified and shocked.  Welcome to the land of massively underprepared parents.  Please feel free to stay for a while…we’ll make you both full members.

Honestly, I’m excited for her, and just hope we can keep up.  None of us gets a guidebook on how to be good parents.  We’re all just figuring it out as we go, doing our best, hoping we don’t make any mistakes that will do lasting damage.  I see our role as a combination of life coach and moral compass.  Time will tell whether any of our choices were good ones.  At this point, I’m reasonably content that we’re doing the best we can under less than ideal circumstances, and our girls both seem to have their heads screwed on straight.  We’re trying to raise two responsible young women who will have the courage and conviction to trust their instincts, believe in themselves, have strong values, and be the best they can be.  It’s a tall order (especially since I could probably keep adding to that list), but they are off to a good start, and we’re just hoping to keep them on the path as best we can.  Ultimately, we just want them to follow their hearts and be happy.  As simple as that is, a lot of people in the world aren’t there, and its not a bad starting point.

In any event, sitting in the auditorium last night, and on the drive home, I was reminded how my daughters are growing up.  It’s happening right before our eyes and at a pace faster than we realize.  It seems like yesterday that Christina was entering middle school, now we have Anna getting ready to go there and Christina going into high school.  Where did the time go?  Hopefully it will slow down enough for me to get something set aside for college, because I feel like I’m the passenger in a car going full speed towards the edge of a cliff…(different topic altogether).

Some people miss having babies and small children in the house… I’m not one of them.  I love babies, but my daughters become more fascinating and amazing to me as people with every passing year. Their ability to reason, to ask questions, to challenge, to come up with ridiculous, funny things… I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  I had that time with them when they were little. I prefer this part, along with the challenges that come with it.  Answering their questions makes me examine issues for myself… what we believe, how we want our relationships with others to be, how strongly we feel about doing what’s right, how we deal with adversity…

So, in closing, the quote “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” from Lao Tzu comes to mind.  The world is about to get more interesting again, and I just hope we can continue to keep up…

-CJG 01/09/2014

Having received yet another pounding of snow in the last 24 hours, which is still coming down (by the way), and come in from a feeble attempt at shoveling, I’m wondering when Winter became less exciting and such an incredible hassle.

As a kid growing up, snow meant a few distinct things:

1. My brothers and I had to spend some time shoveling
2. We’d head over to the hill near Lawrencewood Shopping Center and go sledding
3. We’d get a couple friends together and play some snow football

In the first case, it was such a part of our routine, I guess I never thought about it too much.  Growing up, it was something my dad was definitely going to do and we were expected to help.  We didn’t have a snow blower, something I think we relegated to people too lazy to do the actual work.  In my father’s mind, I can’t imagine why he’d think he needed one when he had three sons anyway… For us, it was somewhat of a rite of passage to be doing it in the first place and I always enjoyed spending the time with him regardless.  If anything, the challenging part was that we had a long driveway that ran to the back of the house, and none of the cars were ever in there.  As a result, it took quite a while between cleaning the cars off, scraping ice off windshields as needed, then shoveling the sidewalk, driveway, and back patio… by comparison, my current workload is probably a third of that… and I did the previous amount for years, as a kid…

When it came to play, I don’t remember giving much consideration to the temperature, wind chill, or anything.  We just bundled up and looked for a good sledding run (ideally with a jump in it) or a long pass completion in the football game.  Something about throwing and catching a football with gloves on felt like a major accomplishment.  The worse the visibility, the better.  It’s worth noting that we walked (as young kids) a half mile to the park, crossing a major road, without having to be driven by our parents… how unconscionable (in today’s environment).

Our preoccupation with school being out had nothing to do with temperature, driving conditions, or safety.  It was based on having more time to play.  My memory of the Blizzard of 1979 is associated with the gigantic snow drift that was several feet high around our back door and the huge igloo we carved out of the snow pile in front of our garage… Beyond that?  Well, the Chicago Mayor lost the ensuing election because he was blamed for a lousy response to the weather.  Otherwise nothing.  I was a kid.  What was I supposed to notice anyway?

These days, Winter has become an entirely different experience.  Like many other people in the Chicago area, I can’t stand it.  Getting places is a hassle; the cold is annoying, even with a warm winter coat; clearing snow is a chore I’d rather not do; and my preference would be to throw a few logs in the fireplace, hunker down, and wait for Spring to arrive.  When exactly I became the Grinch?  I have no idea.

So, here’s the thing: somewhere along the way, I seem to have lost the fun stuff and added a bunch of ‘responsibility’ in it’s place that simply isn’t so fun.  As a kid, I may have sat in the car on the way to the grocery store to get food, but I wasn’t worried about my parents driving in snowy or icy conditions to make sure we had something to eat.  I wasn’t bothered by people buzzing around in SUVs (largely because they didn’t exist yet), as if the concept of 4-wheel drive means your car doesn’t need contact with the road surface to stop.  I may have had to walk a mile to junior high (now ‘middle school’) every day, but I don’t remember being bothered about the “wind chill factor”, we just bundled up more.  I don’t know that the actual weather conditions were much different, but my point of view certainly has changed, and not entirely for the better.

Oddly enough, one thing I miss is a very simple item that I can address, of which I was reminded this morning when a neighbor came and graciously helped clear my driveway with his snow blower.  It is the ability to do something for someone else.

In our first house, we had an elderly couple next door where the husband had a heart condition.  As winter would come along, I would make sure to clear their snow for them, at first, just shoveling them out by hand and then with my snow blower (when I eventually got one).  Such a simple thing, but knowing I’d done something to make things easier for them felt great.  It is what my father would’ve done and in a small way, even though he’s no longer with us, it’s a way I can pay him a measure of respect for the man he would’ve wanted me to be.  No doubt I’ve fallen short in other ways, but something as simple as doing good because its the right thing to do does mean something, it feels great, and the world is a better place when you take advantage of those opportunities.

Well, this became a little longer note than I expected… but I guess, in reflection, I need to stop procrastinating and get that monster snow blower I’ve been pondering.  Having been somewhat of a nomad since my divorce a few years ago, I guess I’ve wanted to know I’d be on stable footing at one address long enough to use it.  What I’ve given up is an ability to help other people, and it’s probably a poor tradeoff to have made.  The other thing I need to do is get outside with the girls and make a few snow angels… and also figure out something fun we can do in the snow here and there… We can’t change what makes a Chicago Winter so challenging, but it’s probably the case that I can make it a little more bearable with a healthier state of mind.  Having gone skiing (or “falling down a mountain” as I more appropriately refer to the experience) for the first time for four consecutive days in Salt Lake City many years ago with Kathy, I do know it’s possible to have a lot of fun under the right conditions, albeit I’ve never been so sore in my life given the physical beating I took…

Looking outside, it would seem that a couple fresh inches of snow have covered up what was a relatively clear driveway when I started writing this… guess it’s time to get the coat back on, think of my father for a second, stop complaining so much, and get to work…right after I dive headfirst into the front lawn… Geronimo…

-CJG 01/05/2014

A while back, a video was posted on my Facebook page related to a rant from former Bear Mike Singletary, from his coaching stint in San Francisco (if you’re interested, it’s easy to find on YouTube).  The context was apparently the 49ers having taken a beating in the game and the coach carrying his frustration into the pressroom for his post-game interview.  What I find compelling about the video is the point where the coach says he’d rather play with 10 people than have 11 where one of them isn’t in it for the betterment of the team.  He goes onto say that he “wants winners.”  Between his obvious personal passion and the emphasis he places on people being invested in success, it’s hard to miss the point being made on the importance of a functioning team.

On a separate note, I also take a certain amount of ongoing inspiration from watching the Chicago Blackhawks.  Certainly, being a hockey fan doesn’t hurt, but I’m referring to the leadership from Coach Joel Quenneville.  Rarely do you see an interview with Coach Q or the players where they aren’t focused, echoing the same messages, etc.  If it were a “normal business”, likely it would be held up as a great example of alignment across a relatively diverse set of people with various roles.

While I’d generally stay away from drawing sports analogies where business is concerned, the underlying messages from these two examples are relatively thought provoking.

In the former case, attitude means a great deal when it comes to both individual and team performance.  One person with a negative attitude can create a very toxic environment for everyone else and draw a lot of focus away from actual priorities.  If it’s the manager of a team, it can be exponentially worse, and one can only hope that someone higher in the organization is paying enough attention (and soliciting sufficient input) to remedy the situation.  Having had the benefit of working with and restructuring various teams over time, it’s amazing how the same or even a smaller group with the right attitude and focus can outperform the original team, even with less physical “capacity”.  It’s counterintuitive, but does speak to the productivity lost when people are distracted away from the conditions that create high performance.

On the second example, part of what makes the Blackhawks compelling from my perspective is the focus and commitment you see throughout the entire hockey season.  In a simple example, when the Blackhawks win a game, it is rare that you’ll hear the coaches (or players) talk about all the things they did right.  The normal post-game discussions are related to things they could do better.  It’s quite different than many organizations with regard to how they handle success.

Having won two championships in the last four years, one would reasonably expect some level of complacency or arrogance to leak in, but it’s not what comes across, and it creates a sense of competence and credibility that could well produce successful results again in the next few years.  That type of commitment is not something you see often in the “working” world, where short-term success is often the worst enemy of long-term sustainability, because the hunger and drive (and arguably luck, favorable market conditions, etc.) that created initial success are lost the minute anyone assumes they’re smarter, better, or more equipped than their competition.

In this respect, both examples do have a common theme that resonates with me.  Winning starts with the right attitude and a shared commitment to success, but it also takes a focus on continuous improvement and a large measure of organizational humility if it’s going to be sustainable.  Circumstances can and do change, and there are many organizations that have learned that lesson the hard way… for my part, I hope I can find myself in ones that want to create the right environment for success over time.  While that demands a lot of leaders, it also pays the greatest rewards in terms of what you’re able to accomplish…

Some food for thought on a Friday night…

-CJG 01/03/2014