Early Morning Musing

It’s five am.  Nothing earth-shattering about that time except that I haven’t seen it for years.  Why do I keep waking up at 5 am?  My professional and personal world changed last week.  For the past two years, I’ve been running and growing a technology firm.  It has been wildly challenging and rewarding beyond measure.  While growing the company (330% in 18 months) was fulfilling, it is what it took to produce that growth that is the real story. 

Because I continue to wake up early, mainly due to processing events and some level of grieving, I think I will take this time to explore the experiences of the past 20 months.  This exploration will be most heavily focused on the stellar employees who I hired in, and who quickly became collaborative colleagues in the quest for professional success.  But I will weave in experiences that come from my 20 years in the C-Suite and what I’ve learned.  No person becomes “great” overnight —  it takes a tapestry of experiences woven together to produce a “powerhouse” leader and frankly it is the people behind and beside me that create that leader over and over each day.

I was a manager/leader first.  Over the years, I realized that perhaps I had it backwards.  In order to be a powerful leader, I first needed to serve. I had to figure out a way to measure my transition from a “leader first” (i.e. power/money being the drivers) to a servant leader.  I had to ask myself the following questions about the folks who worked for me.  Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?

Stay tuned as I talk about what I learned on my way to producing professional fulfillment in unexpected ways.