Most successful and well-adjusted people understand how to progress each day toward one’s overall life goals or “calling” – and they know how to enjoy the journey. This doesn’t mean doing something spectacular each day, but rather being able to appreciate that the small steps are critical parts to making impact on one’s personal life or the workplace.

For example, a Sunday afternoon nap that completely rejuvenates me can be a big step for a productive week ahead. Therefore, that nap should be enjoyed and appreciated, rather than being considered an unproductive guilty pleasure. Playing cards with a grandmother for hours is core to building one’s character and gaining insight on life, and not a waste of time.

You can make the most of each and everyday. It is sustainable with the right perspective and clear overarching goals for your life.

In a story-telling format, he’s laid out an interesting case for what are the dysfunctions keeping most teams from optimal performance — and how to get around them.  Here is a sampling of each of the five dysfunctions. If these resonate with you, the book may be helpful. It is a very fast read.

1. Absence of Trust: In the context of building a team, trust is the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group. In essence, teammates must get comfortable being vulnerable with one another.
2. Fear of Conflict: All great relationships, the ones that last over time, require productive conflict in order to grow. This is true in marriage, parenthood, friendship, and certainly business. Unfortunately, conflict is considered taboo in many situations, especially at work. And the higher you go up the management chain, the more you find people spending inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to avoid the kind of passionate debates that are essential to any great team.
3. Lack of Commitment: In context of a team, commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in. Great teams make clear and timely decisions and move forward with the complete buy-in from every member of the team, even those who voted against the decision. They leave meetings confident that no one on the team is quietly harboring doubts about whether to support the actions agreed on. The two greatest causes of the lack of commitment are the desire for consensus and the need for certainty.
4. Avoidance of Accountability: In the context of teamwork, accountability refers specifically to the willingness of team members to call their peers on performance or behaviors that might hurt the team. The essence of this dysfunction is the unwillingness of team members to tolerate the interpersonal discomfort that accompanies calling a peer on his or her behavior and the more general tendency to avoid difficult conversations. Members of great teams overcome these natural inclinations, opting instead to “enter the danger” with one another.
5. Inattention to Results: The ultimate dysfunction of a team is the tendency of members to care about something other than the collective goals of the group. An unrelenting focus on specific objectives and clearly defined outcomes is a requirement for any team that judges itself on performance.

Prior to that I’d spent most of my life in the southern suburbs of Seattle playing basketball in gyms or hanging out at local malls.

I’ve now lived on three continents and visited many different cities. My career has allowed me to be mobile and given me a lot of opportunities to travel. While traveling can be tiring, it is still something I really enjoy. Reflecting back, I’ve enjoyed almost every place I’ve ever visited. Every city offers something unique and interesting.

When on the road I always try to spend some time in local places. Once when young working for a global agency I was in Jakarta and left my “Western” hotel for a weekend to live in a local lodging place with shared bathrooms. While on an extended trip to Paris, I volunteered to entertain a man in a nursing home so I could be with locals. Even in Butte, Montana I spent Saint Paddy’s day drinking with the locals until I passed out.

Life is like traveling. You can choose to get involved and seek out different experiences, or retreat back to what is familiar.

I’m one who encourages you to do the former.

When I had lived in Seoul in the late 1980′s, it was really difficult to get decent-sized paper napkins at local restaurants. If lucky, you would be given a small single-ply piece. Please understand that Korean food can be very messy to eat with the red sauces. I remember my American female  friends treating soft tissue from the states like they were strips of gold. Now, napkins and tissues are relatively abundant in Korea.

Even in the UK back in the 1990′s, I remember my wife complaining about the lack of quality paper napkins at some restaurants. Things have improved a lot since then. Of course, at nice restaurants you  would get the cloth napkins there.

Now, as I visit Vietnam frequently, I’m usually in search of bigger-sized paper napkins (unless at Western style restaurants). What Vietnam restaurants do, however, is provide pre-packaged wet towels. This is very convenient given the tropical weather. These are placed in front of you but if you use them, you are charged extra for them. So, technically there still aren’t good free paper napkins.

Of course, this is all from an American perspective, where we consume an embarrassingly disproportional percentage of the world’s natural resources. Go to any fast food restaurant and watch people grab handfuls from the unlimited supply of napkins, much of which is never used before being thrown away.

I once heard a story while in Korea about a man who would use a paper napkin and then put it back into his pocket. This was truly a frugal man who would re-use his napkin again.

Today is my younger son’s 21st birthday, but we celebrated last night with the extended family by grilling filet mignons and lobsters. He’s got big plans to spend a few nights at the Tulalip Casino Resort. He’s also volunteered to drive me to the airport today.

My wife is already on her way to the Oregon coast with her girlfriends. I had to carry a heavy load of wine bottles to the car for her this morning. Later this week, she is going to Los Angeles for a political conference for Korean-Americans.

My older son, who is also 21 for another month, is out buying riding gear because he just bought an enduro motorcycle. I went with him yesterday to negotiate a better deal, but only got an extra $200 off. I’m pathetic. I guess an enduro is a lot better than the crouch rocket we used to have.

My brother just got back from a trip to Australia and Vietnam. We got to see each other a couple of days and now I’m heading out. My father is in Seoul visiting.

Such is life in today’s world.

Rick taught me to drink traditional rice liquor, makuli

Twenty-six years ago (1985), I showed up in Seoul as a naive Korean-American student looking to find my roots. The problem was that I had very little Korean language skills and even less cultural perspective.

At the time, a 6′ 4″ bald white man befriended me and took me under his wing. No one stuck out more than he did in a sea of short, black-haired Koreans back then. The country was just starting to become an economic “tiger” and the government was not yet even a democracy.

However, as a former US military intelligence personnel, Rick spoke fluent Korean and had immersed himself completely into the local culture. My ”hyung” (big brother) taught me to be Korean again. He would forced me to eat Korean delicacies that I initially resisted. He would teach me how to drink in the traditional Korean custom and how to honor my elders.

We were quite the pair back then, when people would just gawk at him and ask me about my “giant” friend. He would always then answer for me, which at times would send people running away from us.

When I returned to the states, he too returned and trained to be an officer at Fort Lewis, a military base south of Seattle. Since he had no family there, I had the honor of pinning his officer pin on him during his ceremony. 

Later, when I was getting married, he was the MC at our reception, delighting our families with his Korean jokes.

Today, we’re getting together again as I’m visiting Seoul on vacation. His heart always tugged him back to here, where he’s now married with two beautiful daughters. Last time we got together, it was the day before my flight back home. The facts are still a bit fuzzy but I almost missed that flight when I finally found my way home the next afternoon. This time, my wife has insisted that I meet him days prior to my return flight.

In life, a friend like Rick is rare. Who would have thought a farm boy from Iowa and a Korean-American boy from Seattle would affect each other’s lives in so many unlikely ways? I’m so thankful for having him as a friend.

Now, I got to come up with a strategy to pay for our night out as we will be fighting for each bill — just as he had taught me to do a long time ago.

We’re definitely building another level of critical mass in the Vietnam operations. One of the biggest risks when starting Lift9, which eventually merged with Intrepid (April, 2010) before being acquired by Alterian (August 30, 2010), was setting up a social research center in this foreign country.  It, however, was a concept I believed in, not just because of the opportunity to leverage lower labor costs, but because of Vietnam’s young demographics, relatively large population with nearly 90 million people, and fast-developing economy.

When I sent Ed Kim from Seattle to HCMC to build this research center in July, 2009, we together agreed beforehand on these

underlying principles:

• Build a team of dynamic people in Vietnam
• Develop and provide opportunities for the team
• Provide a culture of fun, mutual respect and encourage creativity
• Accept failure from  people to encourage initiative and learning
• Respect and appreciate the local culture

Now, expanding to a second floor, the office there is being set up for faster and larger success than I first envisioned. We are grooming people who will no doubt be future leaders of our company in years to come.

Office group photo HCMC

Every afternoon fresh fruits are brought into the office

HCMC getting ready for Lunar New Year

Attending a team member's wedding

Warren Sukernek commuting into office

 

Nothing like a Vietnamese coffee jolt

After hour team building