Mike Fitch

When I tell someone I don’t know what I’m doing for Christmas, I usually get a look somewhere between confusion and sympathy. Or that perhaps I didn’t understand the question. Well meaning people tell me how they think I should spend it. And I’m lucky enough to have a close circle of friends who would gladly welcome me into their homes. I know many are not so fortunate and the holidays are truly a troubling time.

I come from a large extended family and Christmas was quite a rambunctious affair. Loud and full house of laughter and food. Norman Rockwell stuff – complete with an occasional argument about politics or football (football being the more polarizing of the two). As my generation of siblings and cousins started having their own families – new traditions were built and people started forming in their new hives across a wide stretch of geography.

My new traditions are smaller and simpler, but no less important. More often than not (with at least one COVID interruption), I spend Christmas Eve with my sister’s family who are all nearby. It’s become a special time for me and one that I look forward to every year. The time between Christmas and New Year’s includes gathering with friends in smaller and more casual settings that feel slower paced that the normal flurry of the year. These days I’m more spiritual than religious, but the end of the year is still a natural time for introspection. And I’ve made a new personal goal of taking at least one trip in the last couple weeks of the year to someplace I enjoy – the last three years being Santa Fe, Chicago, & New York.

Why am I sharing all this? My point is that there is no “right” way to do Christmas and we don’t need to rationalize or explain. I often joke – or at least I think it’s a joke – that my Christmas tree is in the lobby of the Driskill Hotel. Wishing peace and happiness to you and yours no matter how you choose to spend it.

Merry Christmas

I went to ACL Festival a couple weekends ago. It’s been an annual tradition for me since 2003. I had a great weekend spending time with friends and listening to a lot of good music. But it wasn’t perfect. As I recalled the few minor mishaps along the way, I started to think about whether there were some broader analogies to apply outside of Zilker Park. Here are my thoughts.

Don’t be a jerk. This one applies more to the fans than the bands – although I’ve seen a bit of both over the years. Something seems to have changed for the worse since COVID briefly paused the event in 2020. Most people still share a happy festival attitude, but a sense of entitlement is creeping up in a few too many corners. You are sharing the park with 70k strangers and when in doubt a bit of kindness goes a long way. I’ve had great conversations with strangers on a number of occasions. The same thing holds true for business meetings. You may be having a crappy day, but how you act and respond could shape the future of how a customer or employee views you. Which leads me to….

Do what you say you are going to do. Overall the coordinators of ACL (and many other festivals) run an impressively tight ship. Everything stays on schedule for three days and nights. Every once in a while, a band will start late or end early. Anything other than a few minutes here and there is a disappointment. And no, it doesn’t build your mystique. Things happen – maybe you are sick or the van broke down. Absent something out of the ordinary – you owe it to your fans (customers) to deliver on your commitment.

Have a plan, but be willing to adjust. Every year I spend time listening to bands in advance and putting together a schedule. By the end of the weekend, my actual schedule looks notably different than the outline I started with. I have a few primary bands I want to see, but adjust other things around them as time, weather, and circumstances dictate. Work days have the same ebb and flow. A meeting may get canceled or pop up. An urgent situation may shape the course of an afternoon. You can’t afford to get sidetracked in minutiae, but you also have to be willing to adjust and adapt.

And so, another year of ACL is in the books and a new work week is underway. I’ll take away some great music memories and I’m oddly looking forward to an office chair. But I won’t miss the dust….

There is plenty of stuff in life that is dichotomous. There is a place for good/bad, wrong/right. But in my experience, there are more things that are gray. In a world of 24/7 news and 140 character updates – we are forced into false choice. We have to do either this “or” that. More often than not, we’d be better served to find a solution that accommodates this “and” that.

Every year, my reading list is more paltry than I had intended. But that’s one of the reasons I keep track of it – to hold myself accountable for both quantity and quality. I tell myself that I read a lot of news articles, magazines, etc. Which is true, but also a dodge. As a kid who stayed up into the wee hours reading Stephen King under the covers, I know I have room to do better. In the meantime, here is what I finished last year.

• What You Do Is Who You Are – Ben Horowitz
• Upheaval – Jered Diamond
• Quiet – Susan Cain
• Heartland – Sarah Smarsh
• Writing My Wrongs – Shaka Senghor
• Dare to Lead – Brene Brown
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
• The Short and Tragic Life of Rob Peace – Jeff Hobbs
• Make Your Bed – Bill McRaven
• Option B – Sheryl Sandburg and Adam Grant
• Give and Take – Adam Grant

And given the seriousness of the year, I decided to end on a lighter note and started to read…but didn’t quite finish before 12/31….Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I was a huge fan and somehow always bumped the book down the list. I could literally almost hear his voice telling the story as I turned the pages.

Recommendations for 2021 are welcome.

For most of us, each new year brings a moment of reflection. 2020 seems more like a chapter close than a turning of the page. COVID vaccines bring promise to ending a pandemic. A bitter and divisive election has been decided. No matter your age or stage of life, few of us are likely to forgot this year.

My hope is that as we go into the next chapter, we take the lessons that have been planted this year and let them blossom into beautiful actions and ideas while trimming away and discarding the unnecessary weeds.

Wishing peace to all and a fruitful next chapter.

If you like what you see here – please visit https://mikefitch.substack.com and subscribe to my newsletter.

2020 has in many ways been unpredictable. One consistent is that late December is historically a time where well intentioned people offer up fool-proof rules to have a better next year. Many of these are written as absolutes and without balance:

• Think Big
• Think Small
• Focus on the long-term horizon
• Focus on the sprint steps

As an unapologetic Shades of Grey guy – these fall flat. (There is some irony that it’s taken me a few edits to land on grey versus gray).

Rather than “either/or” – I prefer to think “and/also”. Sure, think about your grand plans – healthy family, rewarding job, etc., but also focus on the joy of a simple walk through the park. Even better, these become a virtuous circle when coupled together.

Life is not a business plan. Go out, get messy, play in the mud. But then come back inside, clean up, and get to work. By making yourself a better person – you may just make the world a better place.

There have been all too frequent examples of poor decisions in the name of “winning”. As we wrap up this election season, the examples are numerous of candidates more worried about winning an election than standing by their principles. Sometimes it’s a sports team cutting corners to achieve a competitive edge or a business misstating results to appease shareholders. While most of these are worthy of condemnation in their own right, the other problem is that it’s unlikely to work in the long run. The shortcuts almost always get exposed – often with disastrous results and wiping away whatever temporary gains were made.

As an extension of the same theory, we need to consider what winning really means. Insulting someone in an argument until they give up and walk away doesn’t work. It might feel good in the moment, but is unlikely to have achieved the ultimate goal of changing their mind. If hurling insults was persuasive, we would have achieved world peace a long time ago.

Real winning is rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard work. Winning is doing the repetitions during practice or taking the extra time to fix a customer’s problem even when it delays the next sale. Winning isn’t just the “what” – the “how” and the “why” are equally important.

Photo by Japheth Mast on Unsplash

One of the difficulties of “Social Distancing” is the loss of the social aspect. For the most part, people are keeping in frequent touch with their friends and immediate family members. Perhaps Sunday family dinners have turned into Zoom calls – but the ties persist. What is much harder to replace are the conversations in the office hallways, the hair salons, or your local watering hole.

Mark Granovetter introduced the concept of the Strength of Weak Ties in 1973 and it has fostered many conversations in the intervening years, but has become a hot topic again in the current environment. Speaking for myself – I’ve always drawn strength from those casual interactions. I’m lucky to have a strong support network, but miss the small conversations.

Rather than waiting until we can gather again to attempt restoring your networks, try finding creative ways to address this now. I’ve started reaching out to people that I’ve worked with in previous roles, but had lost touch over time. In every case, I’ve walked away feeling better for the interaction and my guess is they have as well.

If you like what you see here – please visit https://mikefitch.substack.com and subscribe to my newsletter.

Photo by Meghan Schiereck on Unsplash

I’ve never worried much about being left out of meetings. I have enough of them on my calendar and I assume people know where to find me when they need me. If I’m left out, they can either bring me up to speed later or maybe it wasn’t relevant to me based on the agenda.

Too many times, I hear people talking about being “out of the loop”. The thing is…there is no loop. It’s about connections and adding value to your network. Doing your job well. The trick is knowing your strengths and asserting them in the appropriate times and places. If you do, it’s relatively safe to assume you’ll be represented even when you are not in the room.

It’s always possible that you are simply not the right fit for the role and that your fear is legitimate. Rather than stress, that’s the time to either close the gaps in your skill set to make yourself more valuable – or to find another role. Either path will take time and patience, so best to get started quickly.

Photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash

The saying used to be “Everything in moderation”. Now I wonder if anything is in moderation. It’s been a long evolution, but many things are becoming more absolute. The middle ground of politics has all but been abandoned. And in most social causes, we are forced to pick a side. If you are not with us, you are against us.

There will be a few silver linings that come out of this pandemic. Many won’t be apparent until we have a few years in the rearview mirror to see what sticks. I’m personally betting that the Work From Home movement will be tempered once people have the opportunity to return to the office. Maybe though, moderation will be one of the things that makes a comeback. We are at a point where a small party of a handful of friends is cherished when the guest list used to be a roomful. Small meals outdoors at a favorite restaurant are savored as a special occasion.

There will, no doubt, be moments once the cloud of COVID clears where we will collectively rush into the proverbial town square to be with our friends and neighbors. We’ll take the trips we’ve been putting off and find any excuse to run to the store. Maybe though, just maybe, we’ll still have those moments were we take a pause and relish the simple things in our day. The soft rain on the rooftop or a quiet dinner with a small group. As for political moderation…I’ll settle for having the argument in person over a shared meal.