Dorrier Underwood

Having a big vision is a mixed blessing. For one thing, the bigger the vision, the more likely Integrity is on its way out. Growing up, I heard a lot about "doing business on a handshake," which meant honorable people kept their word to each other even without a signed document. It was understood that “forgetting about" the agreement cemented by that handshake—or waffling on it—would damage one’s reputation in the community. A promise does not exist in isolation. The issue of integrity is not a personal issue. There is always somebody else involved—or many somebodies. My first thought when I'm not going to make a deadline is that I'm bad. It takes effort to set aside "showing how sorry I am," so I can remember the strategic purpose that my promise serves. It also takes compassion (on the part of the person who made the promise and the person to whom something has been promised) to let go of blame, so we can focus clearly on what needs to happe...

In·i·ti·a·tive , noun the ability to assess and initiate things independently. the power or opportunity to act or take charge before others do. This week I got to distinguish initiative by observing its absence in myself. The strategy team had a retreat scheduled for Thursday, and I marked my calendar “be available,” because Nancy told me they might want to pull me in sometime during the day. On Tuesday, I had a call scheduled with Doug, but before and after, I was thinking mostly about the big dog client interviews I’d promised to summarize this week, and was starting to worry about how much (or little) of them I’d understand, and thinking that I should have started on them earlier. I had a few marketing and sales calls with people on the team, and between the reorganization of the supply closets and the email transition, working at home seemed like a smart choice. On Thursday morning, my phone rang at 9:00, just as I was settling in front of my computer to s...

As the first item of business on our company retreat, we wrapped up the sales game we’d been playing for three weeks. Jane, who had come up with the idea for a game, asked Gary and me to design a session for evaluating it, acknowledging the participants, and announcing the winners. Left to lead the conversation myself, the team would have experienced Boom, Boom, Boom – This is what we did. These are the results we produced. Here are things that X, Y, and Z did particularly well. The end. Thank God I didn’t take the opportunity to bore everyone to death with my bias to action and my understanding of “completion” as “an assignment to handle as quickly and efficiently as possible.” There’s something to be said for speed, but not when the bigger goal is opening up new actions that could prove more effective than anything we’ve tried before. I think of myself as someone who’s all about creativity and innovation, but am I?  I was charged with building on what we learned i...