The RGIII Experience

The RGIII Experience

                What Baylor Blog would be complete without a reference to Robert Griffin? So here goes.

The RGIII saga at Baylor has been a truly fascinating one. I came to Baylor last year having heard of RGIII but having never witnessed his play. Over the course of the season, I got to watch him put together a spectacular football season capped by the Heisman Trophy, which is given to the top collegiate football player in all of college football. That means that out of the 124 teams that field a team in Division I college football, RGIII was the best.

The football part of this story is great, to be sure. But that’s not my point of focus in this story. Griffin handles himself in a manner that is simply less and less seen as our country moves forward. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find people who let both insults and success roll off their backs quite like the elite leaders. He never seems to lose his confidence, nor does he let his ego overwhelm him.

Robert Griffin has long since left Baylor University. I have no doubts that he will support the school as he goes forward in his NFL career through endowments and donations, but the imprint he has left behind is truly special. He has continued to strive on a daily basis and put in hours and hours of hard work in spite of the temptations that athletics can bring.

Many people credit his outstanding character and work ethic to his parents, both of whom have a military background. This, in my opinion, is the true game-changer. More and more children are born outside of two-parent households.  And Yahoo! recently posted an article referencing a person’s ability to make it to the middle-class of America. This article was based on a study performed by the Brookings Institution which stated that, among other factors, a driving piece of a child’s successful arrival into the middle class comes from the success of parents before them. The prevalence of single-parent households can leave a gap in childrearing when it comes to income, life lessons, or both (though there certainly are exceptions to this rule), and while this certainly doesn’t doom the child, it can certainly make the child’s path to success much more difficult.

I look at the success of Robert Griffin’s parents and think about how I could possibly be that kind of a parent one day down the road. I certainly can’t control the parenting or life habits of others, but I certainly can take the steps now to decide what kind of parent I eventually want to be, so that when the time comes, I’ll be a man capable of raising my son or daughter to be strong, intelligent, and wise. Success will likely stem from that.

In his book, “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, author John C Maxwell says that, “Champions don’t become champions in the ring – they are merely recognized there. If you want to see where someone developed into a champion, look at his daily routine.” This can be applied to all areas of life, including activities, like parenting, that are not competitions. The road itself is long, but the potential rewards are great, as we’ve only begun to witness with RGIII.

Traveling…

Traveling

                After finishing the first round of final exams this week (as mentioned in the last post), I’ve gotten the opportunity to sit down and reflect on the MBA experience to date. More specifically, I’ve gotten to take the time to think about the new places I’ve been in the past years’ time, and how different that experience has been in comparison to my athletic career.

Growing up, I didn’t travel too often. In fact, for a few years, I thought that traveling was only a violation in basketball. Eventually, that belief wore off, but the sports did not. In fact, this attraction to sports ran all the way through college. I spent a significant amount of time playing Division III baseball during my time as an undergrad at the University of Texas at Dallas. During that time, I was a part of the team that traveled to small towns in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Yet, these athletic trips feel far different than the business trips that I’ve taken since then.

With that said, the trips in this program have had a deeper sense of purpose somehow. First, I got the opportunity to attend a set of seminars in New York City as a part of the first semester’s curriculum. The lights and the atmosphere of Manhattan are far different than I would have known if I hadn’t been there. The second trip, to Walmart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, was a part of the Focus Firm course that acts as a “Capstone project” to the program during the second MBA semester. It’s not an everyday occurrence to get the opportunity to view the inner workings of the #1 firm in the Fortune 500 rankings, and it’s certainly one I did not take for granted. Next week, I will travel to Indianapolis for a career fair, and I’ll get to see the stadium where last year’s Super Bowl was held, Lucas Oil Stadium.  Hundreds of companies and tens of thousands of people will be there, looking to find the right employment fit, including myself.

Yet, when people talk about travel today, a majority of people express frustrations with the travel process. Somewhere between the first times they got on an airplane and now, the joy of new places went away. This is due in part to the travel restrictions of late, but somehow, I think that the busy-ness that comes with business travel has taken away some of the mystique of traveling to a city that is not your own.

All in all, I’m incredibly humbled and thankful to have had the opportunity to see new places and new perspectives, and it wouldn’t have happened if it were not for Baylor’s offer to teach me. It’s because of this extension that I can make an attempt not to lose that mystique that comes from new cultures, new ideas, new cities, and new people. Such experiences have given me the urge to see more dynamic cities in this country, and eventually, maybe, other countries. But of course, travel can be draining and stressful, and there’s something to be said about building community at home.

Perhaps next week, I’ll need to talk about home/travel balance!

The Completion of 2 Core Classes…

The Completion of 2 Core Classes…

                As I write this blog, I’m filled with a bittersweet set of emotions. Allow me to explain.

As a part of Baylor’s curriculum, MBA students are required to take 6 “core courses”, which are non-traditional college courses. They are a part of the central curriculum of the program, but in order to help the subject matters stay as fresh on the students’ minds as possible, these “core courses” (Accounting, Quantitative Business Analytics, Finance, Economics, Operations, and Management Information Systems) are split into 3 1-hour courses, each of which covers 5 weeks (instead of the traditional 16-week semester). These classes are a part of every semester for the MBA student.

As a 3rd semester student at Baylor, my time here is limited. I will be graduating in less than three months’ time, and it’s been a great experience overall. Yet, there’s a part of me that’s anxious to get out into the “real world” and re-start my career, and spend a little less time studying.

So as I’ve reached the end of the 5th week of my studies this semester, I feel a bit saddened, because I know that I’ve completed two of these “core courses” for the last time. Conversely, I’m excited for the progress that has occurred, and the completion of two of these courses is a landmark event towards indicating progress.

Every day that goes by is one less day to spend with this great set of cohorts that Baylor has assembled. And while that is certainly saddening to say the least, it’s also true that this Baylor MBA will pave the way for future opportunities greater than I would have been able to achieve on my own.

It’s becoming more and more real every day: the reality that in a few months’ time, I will be a part of Baylor University’s Fall Class of 2012.

Why Yoga Prepared Me for Business School, Part 2

Why Yoga Prepared Me for Business School, Part 2 

                Going through yoga teacher certification caused me to take a deeper look at life to better understand how to live more fully. While this did mean that I worked on getting physically stronger and more flexible, it also meant that I needed to study the disciplines involved with yoga, and one topic in particular that took a while to sort through.

At my yoga studio, we would talk about a discipline of the week, which rotated week by week. In consecutive weeks, we reviewed the topics of “Santosha”, which translates to ‘contentment/satisfaction with one’s belongings or position in life’, and “Tapas”, which is interpreted to mean ‘the spiritual and dedicated effort to improve’.

To me, this seemed outright contradictory. How can one really improve to get better and improve one’s situation without the fuel of being discontent with it?

Essentially, I’d always been taught that ‘if you’re not getting better, you’re staying the same, which means that the world is passing you by’. This hasn’t changed, however. The process has.

The process of improvement means to lean into one’s edge, or to find the range of one’s capabilities and gently push the boundaries to improve. Physically, this can mean stretching a millimeter farther in a pose. Mentally, this can mean finding and reading new literature on a topic of moderate expertise.

This can often mean an exercise in futility for a time, or a ‘plateau effect’. So this means that one may only be conscious of significant improvement on a given subject/task one or two days out of a month of consistency in a task. But those breakthrough days generally aren’t possible without showing up to face the task every day.

This, finally, leads to the balancing of Santosha and Tapas – one should be knowledgeable and comfortable about oneself before achieving gains through daily discipline. For example, for person A, it means to ignore Person B who is working out with a weight that is far heavier than what is feasible for A.

Understanding how to balance contradictory ideas is something that comes up in the business school curriculum on a regular basis. Generally, when a business tries to make a sale to a client base, there will be people in that base that have a different taste in a given product or service. People in marketing will disagree with how to deliver the product to the end-user. People in finance will disagree with how to best finance the opportunity. People in accounting may disagree with how to best file the income taxes or when to set up the fiscal year’s end for the company.

Contradictions are often frustrating. But without the benefit of understanding multiple perspectives, one cannot expect to consistently make the right decisions in business.

Why Yoga Prepared Me for Business School (Part 1)

Why Yoga Prepared Me for Business School (Part 1)

                Before I was accepted into Baylor Business School, I worked as a market researcher for about 2 years and got certified as a yoga instructor during that time. Being a yoga instructor is not something that I have an interest in continuing in a professional capacity, so I have since been decertified, but there were topics that I learned in this environment that helped prepare me for the next step in life.

Today’s topic: every person has their own individual strengths and weaknesses.

When people think about yoga, they often think of people contorting themselves into seemingly impossible postures. However, when someone brings up yoga in a conversation and it is noted that someone in the conversation does yoga, it is often assumed that the yoga devotee is a master at all poses, which just isn’t the case. I got to witness firsthand how some yogis were able to fly into a handstand with ease (flying refers to poses in which the participant balances on one’s hands rather than feet), yet were unable to touch one’s toes. Still others were capable of laying down perfectly flat in the seated hamstring stretch called Paschimottanasana, yet struggled to maintain position in Warrior pose (which requires a higher amount of “tensile strength” in the legs).

The fact is that in business as well as in yoga, different tasks have different requirements, meaning that some people show a “natural talent” for a task upon its undertaking, due largely to the set of life experiences or talents that those people have. Many people, however, get caught up in worry and frustration in not being able to get to a level of expertise in a pose that some others in the room have achieved. There are two flaws in this mindset. First, the amount of work or practice that goes into increasing proficiency in that pose usually goes unseen or is rendered irrelevant. This can be correlated to school or work in the form of pivot tables or financial analysis, where some students have practiced more than others in mastering those topics. The second flaw is that a person simply is where that person is. A person simply cannot start climbing the third floor of stairs in an apartment building without first traversing the first and second floors in some manner.

In my next post, I will talk about my understanding of the niyama of yoga, which are the internal disciplines. Specifically, I will speak to attempting to understand two seemingly contradictory disciplines, which are satisfaction with one’s possessions and the discipline to work harder for continued improvement.

Testing the Theory: Exercising Moderation

Testing the Theory: Exercising Moderation

 

“Moderation in everything, even moderation.” – Oscar Wilde

 

In my previous five posts, I talked about the areas in life that should be in working order in order to achieve a well-balanced life. Of course, this is theoretical, and in practice it is far more difficult to keep balanced over the course of a given day or week.

Oscar Wilde once said that there should be “moderation in everything, even moderation.” My life is an example of that, as I’m spending more time working in the intellectual section than normal in pursuit of my MBA. However, it’s not as though I’m allowed to create or be granted extra time in my day in order to achieve a balanced life. I get 24 hours per day, as do you, as does everyone else on this planet.

The fact of the matter is that change is important for growth – but not too much of it at one time. If a person overindulges in growth experiences, then he or she will likely not metabolize as much of the benefits that the scenario has to offer. So while change is certainly a catalyst for future growth, any opportunity to grow significantly in one or two areas should only be undertaken with the personal understanding that there will be a sacrifice in other areas of life. And such an opportunity should also be undertaken with the expectation to make significant deposits at a later time, hopefully not too far in the distant future. Big, short-to-medium-term change in one or two areas – requires need for constancy in the other three or four.

So let’s move back to my example. In order to make accelerated gains in one section (intellectual challenge), I have to sacrifice growth in other areas. I’m blessed to not need to work a full-time job during this experience, so that can be an area of sacrifice to a point, but not too much because searching for work is also a time-cost (and I certainly have bills to pay too). It also means that on specific days, I have less time to spend on relationships that could use nurturing – but no person is an island. I’m committed to spending some time being active, but that can only be used for maintenance.

The fact is that people have varying degrees of greed by nature. But it is important to be cognizant of that greed, in order to keep it from running rampant. One could easily argue that a little bit of greed can be a good thing, as it will allow a person to improve, either through one’s circumstances or one’s general growth. However, overindulgence can take these gains away over time. This is why continued contributions (or maintenance) in growth areas can be obtained through exercising moderation in all things, even in moderation.

Work-Life Balance Rule #5: Strengthening the Spirit

Work-Life Balance Rule #5: Strengthening the Spirit

                The final branch of work-life balance is the spirit, which is related to religion, your soul etc. Now before you turn away because this is a predominantly Christian University and a Christian author, let it be known that this post is not about championing one religion over another. Rather, it’s about bringing the spirit into alignment with body and mind.

Religion or spirituality can be the foundation of one’s belief system, and with that foundation is the potential for great strength and determination. However, people often succumb to the pressures of daily life – meaning that long-term focus often makes way for short-term, day-to-day focus. And while most religions prescribe daily prayer/spiritual rituals, many subscribers to these religions do not follow the prescriptions.

In the last blog post, there is a reference to the late Dr. Stephen Covey’s bestseller “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” I will draw on another theme of the book, and that is the value of principles. A person who has unbreakable principles that he or she uses as guideposts with all decisions is simply a more effective person than one who doesn’t. Religion provides principle reference points to people, be they through verses, parables, or narratives. The idea is that the spirit can be strengthened by amplifying the power of the moral compass, and the best source for this is through spiritual sources, the most effective of which are spiritual.

Because this topic is so important, it is a vital part of everyday life. So it should be valued as such. This means that it would be wise to do the following:

  • Develop one’s moral standards.

This is done through regular practice, in revisiting old lessons as well as discovering new ones.

  • Articulate one’s core principles.

It is one thing to discover new lessons, but it is completely another to lay them out as one’s “code of conduct.” After all, most (if not all) high-performing companies have a mission statement and a set of core values written in print, and so too should the balanced individual be able to lay out one’s core principles.

  • Put them into daily practice.

Of course neither of these two previous steps are very effective if they are not properly utilized. This means that in order to be balanced, one must have a mastery of one’s moral center and consistently exercise one’s core principles regardless of the surrounding circumstances.

 

The spirit is often the most neglected piece of the work-life equation. However, there is no doubt that it is a vital part of the equation, and it must be regularly exercised in order to achieve full effectiveness.

Work-Life Balance Rule #4: Intellectual Pursuit

Work-Life Balance Rule #4: Intellectual Pursuit

                 In the Overview Chapter of his book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, the late Dr. Stephen Covey discussed the importance of the P/PC balance, where P stands for Production, and PC stands for Production Capacity. The concept is that if one spends a lifetime operating solely in the Production phase, one limits the efficiency of each hour of Production. Conversely, if one spends a lifetime focusing only on increasing one’s own Production Capacity, one will never create anything of value.

The Production part of this equation focuses on time spent at work in one’s profession. The Production Capacity part of the equation focuses on Rule #4 – that is, it’s important to stay up to speed in the developments of one’s trade, so that one continues to learn and improve in specific areas of one’s profession.

People are creatures of habit. Our nature is to find something that is routine and stick with it. We can move into auto-pilot mode and into a place with less mental strain. This method of Production is even sustainable in the short-term. However, it is not capable of withstanding the test of time. As one continues to stay in auto-pilot mode, he or she gets passed over by one’s colleagues, as well the trade members of competing companies.

The traditional college student is still naïve. I can’t count the number of times I’ve either heard others say or thought to myself, “I can’t wait until I graduate, so I can stop having to study!” But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’d argue that 90% of the brightest people in any respective career field would say that they stay up to date with the latest industry knowledge and trends, or that they spend time reading literature outside of work in an effort to get an edge or an insight into a way to improve on the job.

The fact of the matter is this: continuing education, or intellectual pursuit, is an integral part of a balanced life. Oftentimes, the biggest struggle with this concept is that the returns oftentimes don’t seem direct – that is to say, the returns on the time investment do not always directly correlate to gains in the intended area of focus. Instead, the time investment usually acts more as “breakthrough” improvement, or as my last manager liked to say, “Ah, HA Moments.”

So, this post is intended as an encouragement to those who are tempted to put books down for good, in times of discouragement or at graduation. Continue to pursue intellectual capital as you progress through life. Just keep turning the page, and believe that something great will come from it. In time, it will.

Work-Life Balance Rule #3 – Fiscal Feasibility

Work-Life Balance Rule #3 – Fiscal Feasibility

                 And of course, the business section of work-life balance. There are multiple directions one can go with this subject, but I’ll start with a money plan – or in B-school terms, a budget.

                Let’s start with a big subject: the national debt. I found out from Economics class and verified through this source (http://prospect.org/article/does-congress-even-need-pass-budget) that 2009 was the last time that a budget that ran was approved by Congress and signed by the President. Putting politics to the side – this is certainly one reason that the United States is in as deep of a debt hole as at any other point in its history. The US debt clock (http://www.usdebtclock.org/) involves an algorithm that computes the national debt up to the second, breaking down the US debt into multiple categories.

But in taking our eyes off of government and moving to the personal realm, we’d find that the US Debt Clock website shows that the AVERAGE person is currently just north of $180,000 in debt. The government debt is simply a magnification of the debt currently seen in the US public! While it’s understandable that there are instances where one needs to (and should be able to) purchase something today in exchange for tomorrow’s income. But where is need replaced by want in this equation? At some point, in order to achieve work-life balance, a personal budget needs to come into play – and not just to determine whether or not a purchase is affordable.

When talking about an important & costly purchase, there certainly are monetary implications for outspending one’s means, a budget will more easily allow one to understand when exactly those means are being outspent, and for what reason. This makes it easier to pinpoint where things went awry if that ends up being the case. But let’s take one more step back to the moment before purchase. There’s that feeling that you usually get in your stomach when you want something and you mull over the rewards and consequences of the purchase. When a budget has been prepared (with wiggle room for “impulse purchases” or the like), and is properly maintained, the buyer knows just how much money he or she has to spend on such an item.

In either case, the results are better. If the budget has room for such a purchase, then great! There’s no undue stress or worry from an “impulsive purchase.” On the other end, say the buyer knows there isn’t room in the money plan for a certain purchase. That person still knows just how much they’ve overspent – and how many weeks of conservative spending will be necessary in order to get back to par.

If one’s financial house is not in order, there is much undue stress and worry that can add up, and this worry can very easily leak into other areas of life. It’s also very difficult not to completely worry about money and let the other pieces of life fall where they may (i.e. work-a-holism). This certainly is a touchy subject when it comes to work-life balance, but it’s clearly a vital part of the equation, and the proper budgeting of one’s funds is an extremely important step towards the financial security aspect of work-life balance.

Work-Life Balance Rule #2: Nurturing Your Relationships

Work-Life Balance Rule #2: Nurturing Your Relationships

                Perhaps I should source more magazine covers before writing this blog post, but these days it seems as though one can’t buy groceries at the local supermarket without seeing 10-20 magazines in the checkout lines. It’s true enough that magazines are an impulsive buy, but that’s not the part that makes me uneasy. It’s the topics that are covered in these magazines. (References available upon request)

                It seems as though magazines can’t talk enough about famous Hollywood affairs. Frankly, it seems as though America just can’t get enough of what happens after Twilight. Yet, in a nearby row, you’ll see magazines that talk about “how to spice up your love life.”

What are the deeper implications here? The fact that supermarkets find it profitable to place this type of material near the checkout aisle, to me, implies that a huge part of America believes that tips like this are a panacea for relationships – solutions that I find to be truly infeasible.

Earlier this summer, I spoke with my brother and his wife about relationships – and they referenced a business tool that sounded funny at first – treat them like bank accounts.

Bank accounts??

They went on to explain that the reason they make their relationship work is that they “make deposits” to each other whenever they can. These deposits aren’t monetary, either. They come in the form of sharing dinner together every night. They come from spending many a Friday evening on the patio, just enjoying the sunset.

That is to say that the key to nurturing important relationships is putting in more in deposits than taking out in withdrawals. Of course, there are multiple forms of relationships that need nurturing. The personal relationship forum is certainly one area – but the potential solutions are quite varied and will differ depending on the individuals in the relationship. The most effective personal relationship advice will be broad and rely on those in the relationship to apply effectively.

As for the work environment – this type of deposit can come in the form of noticing a person’s new haircut, or asking someone in your department how their kid’s baseball game went. In school, it can come from expressing your appreciation to an administrator or a colleague for their help in the completion of a project.

Whether you know it or not, the people around you are capable of building you up, ignoring you, or tearing you down. By building relationships with those who would build you, you would be creating a construction cycle to the benefit of you and those around you. And that’s a win-win.

With that said, I’m far from perfect when it comes to doing these things. However, I will continue to make time for nurturing my relationships in the future – and ignore the magazine aisle.