Strategic Planning

At the end of October, 2009, I spent the weekend in Columbus, Ohio, at the 63rd annual reunion of the Men of Easy Company. We held a book signing at a nearby Barnes & Noble, then enjoyed a banquet back at the hotel.

On the morning I was set to leave, I was down in the hotel atrium waiting for the shuttle bus to take me back to the airport. It was about 6 a.m., and one of the original E Co men, Paul “Hayseed” Rogers, then age 91, was already up and getting his exercise, walking laps in the lobby.

Paul approached me, and we shook hands to say goodbye. We spoke for a few minutes and he said, “You know, Marcus, this will be about the last of these reunions I ever attend. Maybe I’ve got one more in me, but probably by next year I’ll be gone.”

I was silent, not knowing how to answer. Then I asked the only thing I could think, “Are you ready, Paul? Are you ready to go?”

He thought for a moment, smiled, and said, “Yeah, I’ve had a good life. I have wonderful friends. I’m ready.”

The shuttle bus was leaving. It was time for me to go to the airport. That’s the last thing that was said between us.

As of this writing, Paul Rogers has bested his prediction. He’s still alive and smiling. Still, that question remains—for Paul, for me, for all of us. The question looms like a visit from the goon squad. We all need to face death sometime, somewhere, as best we know how.

My wife needed surgery this past summer. It wasn’t life-threatening, and she’s healed now. But we used that experience as a catalyst to get our house in order, so to speak. We redid our wills and updated our life insurance, all those practical death-oriented things you never want to take care of because it feels too morbid. Although once you do, you’re relieved. You feel like a responsible grownup. Certainly that’s part of how people answer the readiness question.

But, sure, the question involves more. Death doesn’t care how people classify themselves—spiritual, atheist, agnostic. Like a thief in a home invasion, death kicks through the front door and whacks us across the face. Surely the prospect of eternal existence lies at the core of this question. If God is real, are we ready to face him? Some spin the wheel and hope for the best. Others hold to nothingness—that it’s just a vast blackness of oblivion on the other side.

Jim 'Moe' Alley (1922-2008) with Shifty Powers (1921-2009), at the Emmy's, 2002

Sergeant Jim “Moe” Alley, another man from Easy Company, died in March, 2008, and I was honored to attend his funeral.

I guess Moe had always been a tough nut to crack when it came to thinking about death and the spiritual side of life. At the funeral, the minister told a story of how he’d visited Moe plenty of times, even when Moe was really sick toward the end. Continually, the minister asked Moe if he was ready to go, but Moe always indicated he was fighting God, not willing to give an inch.

Then one day, for reasons unexplained, Moe suddenly decided his fighting days were through. That day when the minister visited and asked Moe if he was ready to do business with God, Moe said yes. So Moe and God did business. Then, just a day or so after that, Moe died. There wasn’t any doubt, said the minister, that Moe was now at peace in the presence of God.

Are you ready?

How have you answered that question? Have you wrestled with it yet and found your peace?

Easy Breathing with the Young Pirate

The elderly woman stood next to me in line at the bookstore and made googly-eyes at my son. She grinned gap-toothed at my 3-year-old, flapped her nose, and made motorboat sounds with her lips. Then she looked at me, her eyes shining.

“You’re going to have so much fun raising your son,” she said.

That wasn’t what I expected to hear. People normally look at a little kid and say, “Oh, how cute.” Or ask how old he is. But she was predicting the future. It was a blanket pronouncement from somebody who’d been there once with her own kids, I guessed—and had a ball.

Fun.

I confess I don’t often see life through that grid. Even when it comes to raising my kids. Oh sure, there are fun moments. But most of the time having kids mean installing car seats, and watch out for strangers, and eat your carrots! That kind of …uh … fun.

How easy it is as leaders to place fun on the bottom rung of priorities. We’re more prone to busy ourselves with the importance of whatever needs doing. Work isn’t about fun, we’ve long since told ourselves. We need to complete a project, meet a deadline, or sell a product. And home life isn’t about fun either. Not if we’re honest. The mortgage swirls through our mind. We’ve got a car to maintain, a spouse to schedule a date with, a child to take to soccer practice.

But fun?

Last night I needed to discipline Zach. He was being zany, pushing his sister, yelling like a cutthroat pirate. I don’t remember the specifics. He’s at that wacky age where we don’t keep track of his nuttiness for long.

After I growled at him, and we got that over with, I put him in the bathtub and let him putter around with boats for awhile. Then I got him out and put jammies on him, and we sat in the old brown overstuffed chair in his room. Normally we have the same nighttime agenda: book, prayers, bed. But last night Zach was quieter than usual. He didn’t clamor for a book. Not even The Sneetches—his favorite. He simply sat on my lap and leaned close into me.

And I simply let him. I turned off the lamp and wrapped my arms around him, and we didn’t do anything except sit in quietness. Maybe twenty minutes passed. Zach’s breathing grew deeper and regular, and I knew he’d fallen asleep. When I carried him to bed, I noticed how long and angular he felt. How quickly the days with him are already passing.

You’re going to have so much fun raising your kids.

As a family leader, or any kind of a leader, will I remember that basic truth—that much of life is indeed fun, if we see it as so. And will I allow that blessed grid to become the filter for the moments of my daily life?

I tucked the blankets around my son’s chin, and crept softly out of the room.

 

Question: Do you tend to see life as a problem to be solved, or a journey to be experienced. Explain.

 

How an Ancient Drunk King Teaches Us to Keep What We Value

Once in a while on this blog I’m going to go big or go home. I’m going to draw leadership lessons from a place some of you avoid whenever possible: that highly controversial spiritual cookbook known as the Bible.

I mention this up front, because I realize some of you are blatant liberal atheists, and anytime someone mentions “Bible,” you immediately picture hollowed-eyed skinny dudes holding sheep in their arms.

Stay with me. There’ll be none of that here.

The illustrations I’ll draw from will be historical lessons in masculinity. The kind of leadership that hates evil and fights for what’s good. Or warnings from the opposite. In today’s story, blood, guts, and sex abounds. I promise it won’t be boring.

Note to self: avoid similar situations.   [photo courtesy Crush Cradds]

King Herod was his name, and he did plenty of things wrong. That’s why I like this story. Herod acted just like any other guy is prone to act, including me.

 

On his birthday, maybe about 30 A.D., King Herod threw a big bash for his high officials and military commanders, all the leading men of his region. Picture a huge stone hall filled with the smell of steaks and beer. The music was loud. The jokes were thick. The one about the farmer’s daughter from Nantucket kept getting told. You get the drift.

 

In the middle of the party, Herod called for dancing girls. It was the ancient Mediterranean equivalent of a girl popping out of a cake. Salome was Herod’s niece, and she had all the stuff drunken men like to see. Salome danced for the guys, and this was the type of steamy Eastern dancing that held nothing back.

 

“You can have anything!” Herod bawled to the girl. “I’ll give it to you! Whatever you want, up to half my kingdom!”

Salome hesitated. Wow. Anything.

 

She went out and asked her mother for advice, and here’s where the story takes a twist. Salome’s mother, Herodias, nursed a grudge against a wilderness preacher named John. Outback John had been saying some things Herodias didn’t like, so Herodias saw this as her big chance to get even. “Tell the king to bring you the head of John on a serving dish,” she said.

 

Herod was in a real jam. He, by contrast, liked John and wanted to protect him. But because of the oaths Herod had made, and his need to look good for the drunken boys’ club, he granted the request.

 

Out went the executioner, and in came John’s head on a plate, oozing blood, attracting flies, and starting to stink. Party over.

 

Here’s what a man needs to know:

 

1.      Herod’s downfall that night began harmlessly enough. He simply made a few compromises. Not big ones. He just threw a party with his buddies and got plastered. Hey, it happens.

 

2.      Drinking too much and looking at nude girls made Herod stop thinking logically. In the heat of the moment, with his brain turned off, he was willing to toss away what he valued. Ever known a man to do that?

 

3.      When the high was over and Herod came to his senses, he experienced profound regret. Not to mention that his actions irreparably harmed others.

 

The bottom line?

 

Safeguard your life against moments when logic turns off.

 

Okay, that’s it.

 

What efforts have you made to keep what you value? Say anything you want in the comments below.

The Importance of Hanging Out

I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of scheduled time with Lt. Buck Compton, one of the original Band of Brothers. Besides writing a book together, we’ve travelled to various shows, book signings, photo shoots, and speaking engagements. I feel fortunate to call him a friend. I hope he considers me that, too. 

Some of the best times I’ve ever had with Buck, however, have come when nothing was on the agenda. We were simply hanging out.



Buck Compton and the back of my head. Photo courtesy Josh Durias.

This happened in a hotel room in Pennsylvania. Buck and I were waiting for the next event at an air show. I turned on the TV and flipped to ESPN, thinking Buck would like to watch whatever game was on. He did. He watched for a while. Then he snoozed. Then he woke up, and kind of drowsily said, “Did I ever tell ya I know that guy?”

It was right after John Wooden’s death, and ESPN was showing a documentary of his life.

“Yeah,” Buck said. “When they first hired John Wooden at UCLA in 1948, the baseball coach invited him over to dinner at his house. The baseball coach was an old fraternity brother of mine, so he invited my wife and me along, just to help welcome John Wooden to the school.” Buck laughed a kindly, insider’s laugh. “Coach Wooden was a great man, he really was.”

One legend talking up another legend. You can’t buy that sort of experience.

As leaders, a pressure often exists to make things happen relationally. We feel a necessity to schedule time with key people and invest in their lives, or seal a deal, or learn from them, or work through an agenda.

Scheduling relational connections, in itself, is not wrong. It’s good to plan meetings, and spend one-on-one time with mentors, and go on date nights with our spouses, and regularly pencil in and block out quality time with our kids.

But often the best things happen relationally when nothing’s planned. These golden moments come when we’re simply watching TV with those we care about. Or we’re in a car together on the way back from McDonalds. Or we’re sitting around the breakfast table eating Grape Nuts. Call it an invitation to simply be there. Call it the strategy of time-spent-with.

Do you ever think that way? How incredibly important it is to simply hang out—agenda-free—with the people you care about?

A while back I took my young daughter and son over to Buck’s apartment to wish him well. There was a schedule of sorts to the trip. It was Memorial Day, and we were going to see “a real veteran.” My daughter had drawn a picture for him, and she carefully rehearsed what she was going to say: “Thank you for your service to our country.”

Buck played along good naturedly. He thanked my daughter for her picture, shook hands with my then 2-year-old son, and that was pretty much it. There wasn’t a lot more to say. Buck’s a little hard of hearing, and my kids aren’t into hearing war stories yet. Buck and I talked about books for a while. Then there was a lull in the conversation.

The TV was on. And that’s when I think everyone relaxed and started being themselves. My daughter told a knock-knock joke. My son hopped around the room like a kangaroo. And Buck started to laugh. I mean, really laugh.

Just hanging out together. It was the best part of the visit.

Question: What good things have come to you when you’ve simply hung around with people close to you?