The IMD Global Leadership Challenge is Over!

I'm so grateful for all the support I received in my participation in IMD's Global Leadership Challenge! I finished #27 out of 5,380 contestants from 124 countries on five continents and I couldn't have done it without all of the help I received.

The contest was broken down into three sections, each of which embodied a different aspect of global leadership: Open, Pioneering, and Collaborative.

The Open section was essentially a test of global political, commercial, and historical knowledge. It reminded me a lot of my IMD MBA "International Political Economy" course. As with the initial quizzes in that class, I fared poorly in this event, garnering only 115 out of the maximum 400 points. Still, it seems that others found the questions challenging as well; my score was still #543, top 10% in the event.

Pioneering was a matching game, matching pictures of pioneers (individuals or organizations) who have profoundly affected the world with pictures of the results of their innovations. I did better in this game, earning 358 out of 400 points, which was good for place #45, top 1%.

My best event by far was Collaboration. In this section each contestant wrote a short quote in response to, "Imagine you could be someone else for one week. Who would you be and why?" Then three months of online voting revealed the most popular responses. My quote was:

"I would be...myself. I can't think of anything more worthwhile than working feverishly to address the global energy challenge with innovative business ideas. Entrepreneurs can change the world. Many of us may fail, but those who ultimately succeed ensure that none of our attempts has been in vain."

This turned out not to be very original as many other quotes also bore the "I would be myself" theme. However, thanks to the efforts of my friends, family, colleagues, and others, who not only voted for my quote but also called others to do the same, I finished with 532 votes, #18 in the entire contest, earning me 392 out of 400 points.

The Collaborative section is clearly the one that boosted my total score up to #27, top 1%, and that is incredibly fitting. In real life as well my major achievements are attributable to the contributions of others, whether those on my immediate team or those who provide me with the support I need to achieve on my own.

Tremendous thanks go out to those who kept voting for me day after day and, especially, to those who engaged others to join them. As always, I stand on the shoulders of giants and I only hope that I can give back even a fraction of what you have done for me.

Intense Workout at The SHOP

This morning I had one of my most intense workouts in recent memory, courtesy of The SHOP. The SHOP is an awesome gym in Dallas. It is a no-frills, high-intensity gym with lots of heavy equipment - it's basically what Rocky's gym would be like. It is owned and run by a good friend of mine, Drew, who also blogs about fitness / nutrition.

Although I have referenced The SHOP several times in my blog, this was my first time actually visiting. I was in Dallas to pitch Smart Office Energy Solutions to the newly formed Dallas Angel Network last evening so I stayed the night and scheduled a workout before driving back to Houston.

This morning began early with a 4:55 AM alarm. After a brief pre-training breakfast (just a grapefruit for me; a yogurty / oatmealy / fruity concoction for Drew), we were in The SHOP warming up. Warming up was necessary because The SHOP is in a non-temperature-controlled garage environment (coherent with the raw, hardcore workout philosophy) and the temperature this morning was in the low 30s Fahrenheit.

We were joined about 5:30 by one of The SHOP's regulars, a professional athlete who also happens to be a Rice alum. Drew played on Rice's national championship-winning baseball team that sent many players to the pros and it is partially through that network that he winds up coaching so many professional athletes. I suspect that they like the same things in his methodology that I do: a highly analytical approach (What else would you expect from someone who double majored in Chemical and Environmental Engineering?) and a commitment to research / results, not fads.

I made my requisite excuses about taking it easy because it was my first time (and I had a long drive ahead of me that wouldn't be too comfortable with a traumatic muscle strain / pull / tear); then at 5:45 we had "wheels up" and began the workout in earnest. We started with box jumps and sledge hammers. I was barely able to jump up onto the first level of boxes; when they added three more levels I had to swallow my pride (and resolve to improve!) and stick to the first. I had never used a sledge hammer before, but there was something immensely satisfying about slamming it into a huge tractor tire with all my force. It took me awhile to get the technique down (and I still have room to improve) but it was fun.

Next up were dead lifts. It has been a long time since I have dead lifted and this time I chose to use a trap bar instead of straight bar just because I had never done it before. I kept the weight pretty low but it felt good and I'm sure my glutes are going to be sore tomorrow.

This was followed by push press and glute ham raises. Push press (standing military press with a little help from the hips) felt good but my form had me catching the weight too much with my back. I did half my sets and then switched to incline dumbbell press for the other half. Glute ham raises were a joy - by which I mean basically the opposite of joy, but the severe pain they caused brought about joy that they were accomplishing their objective.

The next round featured ring pushups and single leg hip thrusts. Ring pushups are done with hands grasping gymnastics rings (for additional stability work) and feet elevated. Because that's not hard enough we also wore weight vests - 20 lbs for my first two sets and then 90 lbs for the last one. The last set took me to total failure and I only managed to squeeze out that last rep with an epic grunt.

The grand finale comprised two circuits of heavy rope drills. Each circuit had 3 20-second variations: short alternating arms, long alternating arms, and two-arm power slams. I had never done heavy rope drills before and I was really impressed with just how much of a workout 20 seconds of super anaerobic activity could provide. When we arrived at the last variation (the power slams) of the first set, I challenged everyone to go shirt-off (which was humbling since these guys were way more ripped than I . . . for now!) - it was freezing cold but our internal furnaces were going full bore.

I mistakenly thought we were only doing one circuit so I really sold out on the power slams, completing a couple extra reps after my 20 seconds were over - I didn't want to leave anything out there. Much to my chagrin, Drew informed us that we were only halfway there. After the first two variations of the second circuit, I was totally spent. Again I had to swallow my pride as I wussed out of the final variation. My heart rate was through the roof and I was feeling faint / nauseous. I was bumping up against my limit and the last set would surely have pushed me over - not something I needed right before hopping on the road for four hours.

Afterward we refueled with pumpkin-berry-banana-yogurt-oatmeal-flax seed-protein shakes which, after a few minutes of deep breathing / recovery, I was able to handle. Wow, what an intense experience - lots of new (for me) movements and nothing left by the end. This inspired me in a few ways:

1. I had forgotten how much I loved morning workouts. Despite the exhaustion level I achieved, I remained pumped and energized all day. It also feels great not to have the "I need to find some time to squeeze in a workout" monkey on my back all day.

2. The caveat here is that I clearly need to do a better job of fueling up before morning workouts so as to avoid the depletion at the end. In the last year I've reached that about-to-faint level four times and actually thrown up on one of those occasions. Each time it was a morning workout after not consuming much nutrition.

2. Anaerobic activity is awesome. In recent years I've tended to think of aerobic activity as my main weapon in my fight against body fat but this morning's workout showed how effective anaerobic activity can be as well. By the time I left Dallas at 10 AM, I had already burned more than 1900 calories - the most I've burned before 10 AM as long as I've been measuring! Without doing much else all day (spending a great deal of the time stationary in the car) I finished the day having burned 3800 calories - 550 more than my daily goal.

I was very excited about my first ever The SHOP experience and it didn't let me down. Now I need some rest as the soreness is already starting to set in.

Official The SHOP post including limited video of this workout: here.

2010 Wrap-Up

Wow, 2010 was a hell of a year! I got engaged, got a dog, started up a company, lived in Switzerland for the summer, and really advanced a number of my personal and professional goals. A year ago I posted my resolutions for 2010 and periodically I have posted status updates (one week, one month, three months, and seven months into the year). Now is an appropriate time to look back at what was accomplished, what was not (and why) before putting forth goals for 2011.

Relationships

1. Date night once a week with Katie

2. Spend social time in person with friends or family once a week

3. At lease one Skype or phone call with distant friends or family once a week

I am pleased that these relationship goals were far exceeded almost every single week. The Switzerland trip was helpful in keeping distant relationships alive with personal contact but, even without it, I was Skyping with friends and colleagues around the world frequently.

Health

1. Calories in less than 3,000 per day: I originally targeted 3,250 calories per day then revised down to 3,000 as it became clear that that would be necessary for me to reduce body fat. By midyear I was still averaging 3,141 calories consumed per day and my final average for the entire year was 3,119. While I failed to meet my goal, 3,119 is MUCH less than the 3,700 I averaged last year and the 3,900 I averaged the year before. At my age my base metabolic rate should be getting a little slower each year so this trend of improvement is good.

2. Calories out greater than 3,250 per day: I originally targeted 3,500 calories per day but revised down at the same time that I adjusted my consumption goal. By midyear I was averaging 3,163 calories burned per day and my final average for the entire year was 3,168 so I failed to achieve this goal as well. This is a huge drop from my 3,750 average the year before (although it's unfair to make a direct comparison; the year before my expenditure was based on estimates while this year I have been using BodyMedia, a much more consistent measurement), which I attribute to the non-pedestrian lifestyle of Houston, lots of sitting at a desk (When there are no other employees in your company you rarely get up to go ask someone down the hall a question!), and more socializing leading to more skipped workouts. For the first half of the year, some of the workouts I was doing simply didn't burn very many calories either. Wii Fit, for example, really is fun but not hard. Midway through the year I eliminated it from the workout rotation and my average daily expenditure increased a bit after that.

Even though I missed both my intake and expenditure goals, I still maintained a caloric deficit throughout the year. By the end of the year I theoretically burned about 17,500 more calories than I consumed, meaning I theoretically should have shed about 5 pounds of body fat. But did I? Bod Pod analysis at the end of the year indicated that in fact I lost about 2 pounds of body fat. While that is positive, it is far short of my goal. In the year to come I will multiply the BodyMedia measured caloric expenditure by 99% as that produces results more in line with the actual fat loss I achieved last year.

3. Maintain lean weight greater than 155 lbs: Although cutting was a higher priority for me than gaining muscle, I didn't want to lose strength and lean mass. Despite a few dips throughout the year, I generally stayed above this 155 lb lean mass threshold and finished the year with about 1 lb of extra muscle.

4. Less than 90 g fat intake per day: I failed to achieve this goal every single week and ultimately disregarded it. Fat gets kind of a bad rap in the US; it is a very essential part of a complete diet. The calories I was consuming were relatively balanced and came from fresh (mostly local) sources and that is my real priority.

5. 1 hour of Wii workout / week: See above for explanation about why I eliminated this goal.

6. 1 hour of flexibility work / week: I adhered to this pretty strictly for the first half of the year but A. it was tough to meet my calorie burn goals when devoting so much time to stretching and B. I just really had a hard time getting psyched up for it. I'm a big believer in doing what motivates you; exercise shouldn't be a chore. So eventually I began incorporating flexibility into other areas of my life (like reading), freeing up dedicated exercise time for higher-intensity activities.

7. Win Men's doubles "A" beach volleyball tourney: Failed. I competed in only two tournaments this year with a #3 out of 5 best placing. Heading to Switzerland for the summer (prime tourney season) hurt my opportunities and the last tournament of the season here in Houston (in which I was scheduled to compete) was canceled, wiping out my last chance. Doh!

8. Run three races: Accomplished by early April

9. Run a 5k race under 22:00: Accomplished by the end of January! My PR going into 2010 was 23:45 but my first race of the season brought me a new PR of 21:43. As I trained throughout the rest of the year I brought my best time down to 21:07.

10. Run a 10k race under 47:00: Accomplished by early April! I originally set this goal at 55:00 but my training run times were coming in in the low 50s in January. So I revised this down to 50:00 but my first really hard training run (in preparation for a March 10k race) finished in 47:50. So I set my new target at 47:00, which I barely missed in the March race (47:02!) but blew through at a 10k race in April (45:56).

11. Swim 2,000 consecutive meters: Accomplished by the end of March.

12. Read one book for pleasure each month: Accomplished (even read one more!)

Professional

Relationships

1. Mentor / help at least one person each week: Accomplished!

2. Engage at least one of my own mentors each week: Accomplished!

Development

1. Read at least one professional book, book summary, or article each week: Accomplished!

2. Develop foreign language skills at least once each week: Accomplished!

Productivity

1. Post "to do" goals at the beginning of each day and accomplishments at the end of each day: Accomplished but I'm not sure this was as useful as it could have been. Look for a subsequent post from me about this issue in greater detail.

Smart Office Energy Solutions

1. Close $100k seed investment round by end of March: Accomplished! Even oversubscribed by 50%!

2. Several other goals that were no longer relevant weeks into 2010! Perhaps it was a bit naive to post annual goals for a business so young and dynamic; more fundamental targets might be more appropriate.

Professional Brand

1. Present original thought leadership / research: Accomplished by end of July (Leveraging Social Media for Executive Careers)

2. Earn 300 twitter followers: Accomplished by end of August (finished the year with 400 followers)

3. Achieve Klout level of 50 for social media influence: Accomplished by end of December

4. 5 daily LinkedIn profile views: Failed. There were some peaks and troughs but I spent most of the year at the same level: 2-3 views per day.

5. 1000 blog hits per month: Failed. Again, peaks and troughs but most of the year was spent between 300 and 500 views per month. One reason I'm sure was my decline in content production (53 posts in 2010 vs. 78 in 2009 and 197 in 2008!).

As hinted at earlier, I'm currently giving serious thought to my social media strategy for 2011. 2010 was a great year of experimenting and data collection but 2011 needs to be more focused.

So there you have it: some successes, some failures, some almost-successes, and some total flops. I'm proud of the successes and have tried to learn from the failures. I'm also proud of having adapted goals as I moved throughout the year; some goals became irrelevant and I didn't stick to them blindly; some goals needed to be tweaked and I did. Goals are great to have, but one must not lose sight of the bigger picture. The next post will be about adapting these learnings into goals for 2011!

A White Christmas

Katie and I spent this Christmas with her family in Minnesota. I have been there several times since we started dating, but always during the summer. Both my parents earned their PhDs at the University of Minnesota so I grew up with plenty of warnings about the Minnesota winters; this was my first time experiencing one first hand!

On the flight up we had the fortune to sit next to Michael Skelly, whom I voted for in the 2008 congressional election. It turns out that 20 years ago he and his wife-to-be were celebrating their Christmas and engagement with her family in Minnesota as well. They are still together and doing well so hopefully that is a good omen for us!

We arrived late morning on the 24th and were less-than-thrilled that our economy car rental had been "up" graded to a minivan. Is this how it works? As soon as you are engaged they start automatically putting you in soccer mom vehicles? Oh well, it got us where we needed to go and had plenty of room for transporting around others. My mom had arrived the night before so was already situated and ready to party.

We spent the afternoon at Katie's parents' house, where it was truly a winter wonderland. Minnesota is on pace to obliterate previous December snowfall records and there were feet of the white stuff everywhere. As Katie and I were already suffering from Max withdrawal (He was being very well tended by good friends of ours in Houston.), it was helpful that her parents have a golden retriever too.

We spent Christmas Eve at her aunt/uncle's house, which was filled to the brim with family, food, and song. The Martin clan (Katie's mother's side) definitely has a much more musical orientation than I grew up with but they seem willing to accept me anyway. :-) I won the coin toss and the other boyfriend (Katie's sister's) had to don the Santa outfit and bring presents for all the kids. He was a good sport about it and hammed up the role.

Christmas Day was spent at Katie's parents house. We had a tremendous Christmas breakfast, opened presents, and then spent awhile playing in the snow. Snowball fights, snow angels, snow fort construction--even a snow scavenger hunt for hidden tins of Katie's mother's famous dark chocolate waffle cookies! It was a blast and our four-year-old nephew who loves pirates was particularly excited when we began firing snow cannon balls from our snow pirate ships!

The evening was spent at the new house of Katie's brother and his family. When I first met him 10 years ago, he was still in middle school. Now he is married, expecting a second child in March, owns a house, and has already served his country with a foreign tour of duty. I've seen many middle school "good kids" somehow lose their ways as they grew older so it is heart warming to see it the other way around: good kids growing into good adults with good lives. And it helps that their first son is frickin' adorable. :-)

Katie's family threw an engagement party for us on Sunday, which was really fun. There were family members, friends, and--of course--lots of food! It was fun meeting some new folks, catching up with some whom I hadn't seen since the very first time I came to Minnesota, and just generally feeling incredibly welcomed into a big, awesome family. Katie's family catered the entire affair, which I know was a real undertaking, but the end result was just marvelous! We capped off the evening with a bonfire to celebrate Katie's aunt's birthday--a big old bonfire in the middle of the snow!

We returned on Monday after a wonderful trip that was too short. I don't understand all of these complaints I had heard about Minnesota winters. Sure there was a lot of snow, but that was very welcome to this snowball fighter. Sure it was cold, but there was so much warmth from family and friends that you could hardly notice. So, while I am currently enjoying the 70-degree weather back in Houston, my first Minnesota winter experience was pretty darned good.

Happy Birthday, Smart Office Energy Solutions!

Wow. One year ago today we incorporated Smart Office Energy Solutions. As impatient as I am, it is never moving along quite quickly enough for me, but it is still important to look back at all we have already accomplished in a relatively brief time.

When we incorporated last December, we had completed tremendous analysis of the building energy efficiency industry. We had identified a very specific market gap, a large segment of potential clients that were being under- or unserved, and we had sketched out a rough solution that we thought could fulfill that pent-up need. In short, we had the makings of a business. At the time, our business was built on hypotheses and analyses, but instinct told us that we were onto something.

The year since incorporation has been focused largely on customer development. We have been using prototype products to validate our hypotheses, challenge our assumptions, and test our business model with paying customers. We raised a seed round of funding to finance these efforts and we have now developed a strong emerging brand. All of our close work with clients has also yielded new insights into generating maximum energy savings--insights which we have developed into intellectual property.

So here we are at the precipice of a new year. In some ways, very little has changed. For example, we are setting out to raise a new round of investment--exactly as we were doing this time last year. In many ways, however, our world is totally different. As we look to the future, we have a business plan rooted in proven facts rather than hypotheses. We have an extended team of contributors many times larger and more effective than the original set of founders. We have a growing set of stakeholders (clients, investors, policy makers, resellers, suppliers, policy makers, and cleantech pundits) who believe in what we are doing and provide daily encouragement. Moreover, through our modest efforts thus far, we have eliminated almost a full megawatt-hour of energy use, saving more than 10,000 tons of CO2, the equivalent to having planted more than 200 trees. Relative to our grand ambitions, that isn't much--but it's a great start!

As I have blogged about before, this path hasn't been easy. There is great uncertainty as we develop a market that doesn't exist yet with an approach that hasn't existed before. I must always give credit to my secure bases, my business and personal relationships who provide the support I need to keep going; without them I would be lost.

So happy birthday, Smart Office Energy Solutions . . . many happy returns!

The Price of Freedom

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to d0 my civic duty of jury service and it got me thinking about all the costs involved in this process. Previously my experience with jury service had been quite limited. Each time I was called in I sat around for 30 - 180 minutes and then was ultimately dismissed without any need for my service. This time I still didn't wind up sitting on a jury but I did come close, which gave me my greatest insight into the entire process to date.

I showed up at the courthouse at 8:30 AM and waited around with about 100 other potential jurors until the judge showed up to brief us at 9. We spent about an hour going through jury orientation/training and then we waited around for our names to be called for a specific courtroom. Waiting was not onerous at all; the seats were comfortable and the courthouse offered free WiFi.

Meanwhile upstairs each courtroom held 30 - 50 accused citizens. Each defendant talked to the judge and plead "guilty," "not guilty", or "no contest." For those who plead "guilty" or "no contest" they settled immediately there with court administrators. Those who plead "not guilty" had the right to a fair and speedy trial--which is where the jurors come in.

Once a courtroom processed all of the non-trial defendants, they began the jury selection process for the trials. Down in the jury room the administrator periodically called out 14 random names of potential jurors; these formed a single group which was then marched upstairs to a single courtroom. There a jury of six jurors was selected for each case and the trials were held. Because this was municipal court (traffic tickets and such), all trials were guaranteed to end the same day.

I spent the morning working on my laptop and my name was never called. There was a lunch break and then my name was called in the early afternoon--how exciting! In the courtroom, each juror introduced himself out loud (name, profession, area of town inhabited) and then underwent voir dire. There wasn't too much biting examination, just general questions about prejudices, biases, and understanding of the judicial process. Frankly I don't think the lawyers were as concerned about selecting a jury as they were about pre-seeding all of the potential jurors with the main arguments of their cases. I was not one of the six selected for that jury so I returned to the jury room downstairs. After another hour or so I was paid $6 for my time and released. $6--jury service sure pays better than cleantech entrepreneurship!

While I was in the courtroom for the jury selection process, I was struck by how much the whole ordeal was costing. Following is a very crude back-of-the-envelope estimate of the costs involved for a single day:

Building: $10,000 to rent a building that size for a day, another $10,000 for utilities, insurance and other assorted operations costs == $20,000

Personnel: 100 county employees averaging $50,000/year (~$200/workday) == $20,000

Juror missed work: 100 jurors averaging $50,000/year == $20,000

Juror pay: 100 jurors at $6 == $600

Transportation: $10 per employee/juror/defendant (let's say there were 1,000 defendants) == $12,000

Total: $73,600

There were maybe 10 cases that went to trial all day so that's $7,360 per case! Wow, more than $7k to try a $100 traffic ticket! At first blush that seems incredible--but on closer inspection it actually makes sense.

This goes back to something we studied at IMD: a group's decision-making process can be evaluated on two criteria: efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency measures how quickly the group arrives at a decision while effectiveness measures the quality of the decision the group produces. Generally the more efficient the process, the less effective it is (E.g. a quick straw poll with no discussion for an immediate decision) and vice versa. More effective decision-making processes (E.g. long debates, careful evaluation of all options, striving for consensus, etc.) come at the cost of efficiency.

Our judicial system is set up to be WAY out on the "effective" end. At the other end of the spectrum would be a single judge autonomously pronouncing judgement on each case without even hearing any arguments. $7k per trial buys us the guarantee of due process and an impartial jury of our peers. It is, literally, the price of freedom, the price of fairness. Put in context like this, I'll pay it gladly!

Thanksgiving with Max

I'm running way behind on blogging but here is a belated entry for Thanksgiving, which was a real joy. Katie and I drove up to Hot Springs, Arkansas, as we usually do for Thanksgiving but this time there was a major difference: we had Max in the back seat!

He is very good in the car, mostly snoozing and occasionally poking his head up front for a few ear scratches. We stopped every two hours or so to give him a chance to stretch his legs, do his business, etc. However, when we did so, he was always very nervous and desperately tried to get back to the car if we weren't both with him. We hypothesize that he was abandoned once by someone just dropping him off out of a car and then driving off--heart-breaking!

When we arrived in Hot Springs, Max went crazy. He's used to being a city dog, couped up in a house most of the day and only going outside on a leash. We turned him loose at my aunt's house out in the country and at first he just ran laps around the house he was so excited to be free out in the open. My aunt and uncle have their own dog too and she got along very well with Max. The two of them were regular Tom Sawyer/Huck Finns, exploring the woods together, chasing after animals, and wrestling around.

Wednesday evening another aunt of mine threw Katie and me a little engagement party, which was a lovely affair. We wined and dined and celebrated with our family and some close friends. It must have been a great ordeal to organize and execute but it was a really wonderful way to start off the long Thanksgiving weekend!

Thursday we attended two different Thanksgivings meals, both of which were absolutely excellent. Friday we spent all day cooking, lazing around, and watching football - what a great way to spend time! Saturday there was one final Thanksgiving get-together and then we hit the road back to Houston. Max's hips were so sore from all the running around that he actually needed some help getting into the car. Needless to say, he slept allllll the way home, tuckered out from his great country adventure.

Sunday we headed over to a Houston friend's house for yet another Thanksgiving dinner and yet more football - I wish this could go on forever! It was a fantastic holiday weekend but it was also a time for reflection. Katie and I both are so very thankful for so many things in our lives, but most especially for the people. For loving, supportive families, for fun, interesting friends, for capable, driven colleagues, for good neighbors...for all of these we are incredibly thankful. We try our best to give back and be as positive a force in others' lives.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!