Musings on a Monday Morning from Mike Mullin…
The weekly Newsletter of Without A Vision Consultancy LLC
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June 22, 2020
Good morning!
Happy second full day of summer — and if you’ve had rain, rejoice! (We so need it!) If you’re a Dad and haven’t yet received adequate affirmation, you are hereby affirmed: Happy Fathers’ Day!
The other day I was wearing a protective surgical mask in a local retail outlet, and a woman gave me a big hug to thank me for wearing a mask.
I have come to cherish the evening meal almost more for its ceremony and ritual than for the food itself. I have also come to value the purposeful preparation of a meal — especially for others — as an almost greater joy than eating it. Are these phenomena due to age, experience, increased empathy, loss of taste and smell — or none/ all of the above?
- Wanna read something that will hit you right betwixt the eyes?
- Easy read, promise, but a complex and complicated subject… you will feel smart when done.
- Here it is: How long since Brown vs. Board of Education?! I urge you to at least open it and to skim for a bit.
- I will personally vouch for the data because they were munched and crunched by the #1 researcher in the United States.
- What else are you reading right now? Try Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist if you are open to learning.
- Are you a CEO?
- How do you approach these six essential elements of your role?
- Corporate Strategy
- Organizational Alignment
- Team and Processes
- Board engagement
- Center on the long-term “Why?”
- Doing what only YOU can do
- How do you approach these six essential elements of your role?
- Who are your mentors? How many do you have? Do you regularly search for new mentors? (I do.)
- We are who we hang around, as we might have told our children.
- In June 1984 I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly the Principal at the school where I had served as a teacher, coach, athletic director, and assistant administrator just three years earlier.
- Upon my return I told the staff, “I feel like Jonah must have felt!”
- The school had suffered some recent dysfunction resulting in several surprise resignations.
- Mid-summer we found ourselves needing about ten new teachers.
- By good luck, coincidence, or incredible powers of discernment we found ourselves by later that summer with ten of the best (and ultimately longest-serving) teachers who ever were — among them, Dave Neron.
- I interviewed Dave for about twenty minutes on an August morning and offered him the job of art teacher.
- He had come close to pleading with me to let him teach. “All I want to do is teach,” he told me.
- I would discover over the years he was telling the absolute truth.
- He was fifteen years my senior, which shouldn’t have mattered, but when you’re 32 looking at 47 it’s a greater distance than 70 looking at 85; time and age have a way of shortening distances.
- Dave could teach more art with a sheet of paper and a drawing pencil than most teachers could with $10,000 of materials.
- He wasn’t frugal, he was just that good.
- At the end of the year his students had each produced portfolios a foot thick.
- Dave meaningfully engaged each student for every available moment of each day better than nearly all his peers.
- The other thing about him I really appreciated was he didn’t play the budget game.
- If he needed something he’d ask and if he didn’t need it, he didn’t ask for it just in case he might need it.
- He often came to me in April or May when no school in the world would have any money left in its budget.
- He would give me a handwritten list of what he needed to complete the year.
- He hadn’t ordered it earlier in the year because he hadn’t needed it earlier in the year.
- I always made sure he got whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it because he was so honest and didn’t play games.
- I eventually asked Dave to serve as my assistant principal.
- I wanted someone I could trust when I had to be out of the building, a like-minded person philosophically on matters of student behavior, and someone who would counsel me when I needed it most.
- Dave was an expert mentor, a selfless servant. He never badgered me with his pet ideas.
- He made sure I understood when I was making a mistake.
- I could trust him because he taught me what trust looked like.
- Over time we became very good friends, so good my wife and I asked him to be the Godfather to one of our children.
- He was unbelievably faithful and generous in that role until the day he died.
- You don’t often think of a subordinate as a mentor, but everyone should have a full circle of mentors: Heroes, experts in the field, advocates, colleagues, those who report to you, and those to whom you report.
- We are who we hang around, as we might have told our children.
Chairs on the Curb
By Michael A. Mullin
Who decides when a chair’s life is over?
Why is one chair kicked to the curb
while another seemingly identical chair continues
its usefulness for another century?
A chair whose life has ended might get rescued from the curb
or be crushed in the massive jaws of the truck.
Is the executioner to blame or the one who placed
the chair there in the free pile?
Does the free pile absolve the decider?
A dead chair might get handed down,
given to the Good Will,
fetch a fortune in an antique store,
or provide an hour’s worth of warmth during a Siberian winter.
What standard is used to decide?
A chair combined with a table is sacramental;
it welcomes you to supper, invites you to rest,
encourages conversation with others seated there.
Too many chairs suffer premature deaths;
they’re preventable.
We have rescue dog programs, why not something for chairs?
©2017 Michael A. Mullin
- What do you get when you work with Without a Vision Consultancy LLC?
- We listen, we learn, we listen some more — and then we customize our response to deliver:
- Confidence
- Clarity
- Coaching
- Companionship on your journey… sometimes it gets lonely and it’s good to have a friend.
When you tell others about us — and I hope you will — please emphasize the ways in which we are unique.
I work with individuals, governance structures (Boards), non-profits, and businesses wanting to be bigger, better, stronger, healthier, happier… yes, all five are possible and best done in concert, but it typically requires a coach (consultant) or a companion to help illuminate the path.At Without a Vision Consultancy LLC — www.withoutavision.org — we LISTEN, we LEARN, we LISTEN some more, and only then do we suggest strategic directions unique to your situation. We do not bring a one-size-fits-all template, nor the latest flash-in-the-pan solutions, to working with you.As we work with you we deliver and provide an increase in your CONFIDENCE, and CLARITY while providing coaching and companionship for your journey.We bring more than fifty years of experience from all sides of the Board table in thirteen different leadership roles — 26 of those years as a CEO.
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