Dorrier Underwood

I have learned so much playing the World of Warcraft with my grandson, Davis, age 11. Davis wants to play with us, play with our work team, 3 of whom are in Australia, so we have to coordinate times when we are all awake at the same time, so we go back and forth on email until bingo we have a time we have all agreed to. It isn’t a time that we all wanted to play right now, right now like Davis wanted to at 8:30, now now now on a school night. Davis said as I tucked him in and he was pouting a little, could I help him get to Tenaris, the realm where we are playing the World of Warcraft and could I help him get to be at level 25 where we are so he would be ready to play with us and I said yes, yes, yes of course and we set up a time next Sunday when I will have landed at my desk after a week of work and play travel in Atlanta. We are asking his Dad, Stan to come to play too. He got quiet for a moment then promised that he would be able to play with the team, “I promise,” meaning that he ...

Dorrier Underwood: Traveling Adventure, by Jane Smith

This is a first world problem, he said. No question – not hard to get that as we sat in the airport on Tuesday night, confronting delay after delay to the last flight out of Cincinnati to Charlotte, now already too late for me to make my Raleigh connection. It’s a miracle of our times that we can start our day in two different cities, get in the long silver tube with seats, meet up and be in another city, then go up into the air and land to lead an afternoon program an hour from the airport, then return the same day.  The Spanish speaking ladies didn’t see it that way, nor did the vacationers who wanted to get to Myrtle Beach that night. They complained, loudly and often – “I can’t believe this, this is ridiculous. They are going to pay for my hotel.” Not happening, this was an act of God that stacked the delays up like dominoes all through the country…a tornado between the runways at the Denver airport, thunderstorms and wind through the Midwest, East and South. One plane late, th...

“Listen, do you want to know a secret? Listen, do you promise not to tell? I am in love with you.” Listen, pay attention. There is someone there. Someone brilliant and you will see them if you listen and listen a little longer. At first and still, I have thought our new program on listening and love was about giving a gift, the gift of really listening without interrupting with your good idea or to make a joke or say what that reminds you of, etc.  Now, I think it is also about giving yourself that gift of discovery, that gift of seeing for the first time. What does this have to do with business strategy? With business success?  Except everything? At the end of the day no matter what the numbers, no matter how big the success was, it was the people. People that love to work together, think things through together, and pull together and celebrate a job well done or work out recovering from a failure together.  I got up this morning and ...