Our son-in-law, Erik, husband to my speaking colleague, Kristin, must have one of the highest IQ’s of any person I know. One day, he challenged me with a question.
While chatting about music, a subject he enjoys immensely as a singer/musician at heart, a well-known group came up and I said, “Yeah, I have one of their songs on my iPod, but I don’t like it.”
After a brief pause, he asked this:
Continue ReadingBlessed are the flexible, for they shall never be bent out of shape!
The holidays are a special time for cooking, baking, and eating. New recipes, old recipes, Grandma’s recipes, Uncle Mark’s recipes, Mom’s recipes—and favorite recipes! We all have those dishes we look forward to every year. But here is one entree we do not want to serve:
Here lies the body of Jonathan J.,
Who died maintaining the right-of-way,
He was right, dead right, as he rode along,
But just as dead as if he had been wrong.
Bill is a professional driver. Bill drives people all around. Bill drives a lot. Bill picked me up at the Detroit airport and drove me an hour north to a hotel for my “Personal Accountability and the QBQ!” speaking engagement. Bill and I have a bunch in common:
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“Dad, why do we work?”
Charlene, our 18-year-old, didn’t ask that exact question, but she might have. Here’s our conversation:
Continue ReadingGot spam? I sure do. Sadly, I’ve learned to tolerate it much of it, hoping it goes straight into my “trash” folder. But yesterday, I got a “spammy” email that looked and felt somewhat legit. From a firm selling phone services, the sender was Matthew and it started like this:
Continue ReadingIn spite of the precious child pictured below, this message is not about QBQ! parenting (but this was). Also, be forewarned: We will be mixing our metaphors today! Lastly, stick around till the end where we apply the content. I mean, isn’t that what it’s all about? Enjoy!
Rebecca “Becca Boo” Elizabeth Lindeen – born 9/21/12
After Kristin, our firstborn, arrived in 1983, I began carrying a Canon AE-1 camera everywhere I went, exclaiming, “That’s a picture!” Drove my wife, Karen, nuts.
But it’s what new dads do.
Thirty years later, with an ever-present smart phone in my pocket, I see stuff everywhere and exclaim, “That’s a blog!”
It’s what old authors do.
Continue ReadingI love this brick. I paid $10 for it in 1982.
It came from the Anaconda Mining Company smokestack in Great Falls, Montana. The “Great Stack,” as it was called, was built in 1908 and was 585 feet tall—quite a feat for the times. Karen and I were lucky enough to be living in Great Falls in September 1982 when a demolition crew detonated charges to bring it down while the whole city watched.
But it didn’t go quite as planned. This is how the Great Falls Tribune described the moment:
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John (age 22) and Karen (19) on June 21, 1980
Karen Elizabeth Giles Miller has many roles …
And one other title that fits her well:
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I asked Molly, our twentysomething daughter, who has served as captain of soccer and basketball teams, “Molly, in your opinion, what makes an effective team?” I was honestly just curious what she’d say; it wasn’t like I was doing book research! But I loved her answer: “Everyone taking care of their own stuff, Dad. Everybody working hard at doing their job.” I appreciated her thought so much, it went into Outstanding! under the chapter titled, “Work!”
Continue ReadingIn Flipping the Switch, the companion book to QBQ!, we teach five “Roadblocks to Learning.” One of them is Exclusion, and it’s all about when we, based on our faulty assumptions of people around us, fail to learn from them.
My story:
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