Today's post was inspired by the following quote from the book "The Dichotomy of Leadership": "Every leader must be willing and able to lead, but just as important is a leader’s ability to follow. A leader must be willing to lean on the expertise and ideas of others for the good of the team. Leaders must be willing to listen and follow others, regardless of whether they are junior or less experienced." One of the best ways a leader can truly lead the team is to also follow them. It is extremely empowering for your team to know that you not only listen, but trust them to make important decisions and that you are going to have their back and let them take charge. Some people think that being the leader means you make all the of the decisions all of the time, and if you think your idea is best, to just pull rank and make it happen. Like everything in life, it is better when people CHOOSE.  The autonomy and flow it provides your team is extremely importa

I often am challenged or get asked how I have developed the thoughts and insights I have into certain domains even though I don't have years of work history in those spaces. Maybe I'm just weird, or wired differently, but this always leaves me puzzled. The reality is I'm not sitting around coming up with quadratic equations, most of the way I frame things is rooted in common sense. At the end of the day, when not at work, I am a customer / consumer too, just like everyone else. Often I simply look at things and say, "how would I do this", "how would I make this better or less of a pain in the ass"! It's not rocket science. This always makes me think of some line from a movie or TV show (probably something geeky that I came across over the years because I couldn't Google it - if you know it, let me know!) Basically the idea is that to truly understand something, you need to see it while hanging upside down in front of a mirror. The ide

This week seems to be starting off with a theme for me ... the idea and requirements of Express Delivery in last mile. Last mile is a challenging space. You are making direct deliveries to a customer. These are typically the least efficient deliveries that you can make, because an individual order size most likely will be challenge with respect to the operating costs to perform the activity. The discussions I have seen recently seem to be providing people with a bit of a false sense of security (in my opinion). We live in an age of data and technology, where the smallest operations can replicate what used to only be achievable by the biggest companies. This is a double edged sword however in the face of rising expectations. Everyone thinks about Amazon, and how they are 'easily' able to deliver on their service experience, but even Amazon has been careful and slowly approaching express / same day delivery. Walmart has been in the news recently as they launched their

One of the most interesting things to me is how we can be so sure that we are being clear, or that we are communicating our position perfectly, yet someone else interprets it in a totally different way. The image linked to this post is one of my favourite visual examples of this. In both cases, the person is completely right ... based on their perspective. I recently had an experience where I was trying to explain and show my understanding of the last mile space. That my experience deploying and managing last mile in one context, easily and logically translates to another. For me, I was being crystal clear. My examples clearly demonstrated my mastery and understanding, the way I was framing my points was relevant. And then "Can you highlight how this relates to last mile ..." My initial reaction was to simply restate what I already had (since I had done such a 'good job'). Then I paused. I took some time to step out of myself, and take a different approach. The fac