People that know me know that I grew up in Arizona and was a competitive golfer (key term WAS). Walking 36 holes in Tucson’s 100-plus degree heat of the summer was a piece of cake back then. Today at 55 years old, I’m not sure I would try that in a golf cart with a mister system on it.
Recently I experienced a rash that landed me in the doctor’s office. I’ve had a few similar breakouts like this one so I assumed it was an allergic reaction to something I ate or put on my skin (like a high chemical sunscreen). Turns out it was something called Polymorphous. What is Polymorphous you say? Wait for it….. It is a reaction to sun exposure. Sun. Seriously.
Apparently it is quite common for people in my age range to develop a negative reaction to UV rays, even if you grew up in the desert like I did. Weird but true. A little ointment and use of a mineral based sunscreen and it was all gone in a couple of days. However this odd occurrence made me think about how we make assumptions (like I did when trying to self-diagnose the rash) about nearly everything we encounter in life. It just so happens that a couple of books I’ve read recently address this very issue.
I’ve recently read two books about rethinking leadership and how we cognitively handle the universe in which we live. The two books are Alison Levine’s On the Edge and Think Again by Adam Grant. Both are best sellers and the foreword of Alison’s book was written by the legendary Coach K (even though Alison and I both went to the University of Arizona, we respect Duke and Coach K, so we can let that slide). These readings really challenge your mental processes, from dealing with the journey to summit Mount Everest, to surviving an unprecedented wildfire in 1949. In circumstances where your decisions are literally life and death, the term leadership takes on a whole new meaning.
These books challenge the status quo around decision making and how we perceive situations. One of the main themes from both Alison and Adam are to step back and revisit our assumptions and thoughts every day. Just because we did things one way all these years doesn’t mean we should keep doing it that way in the future.
One of the main tenets our team holds at HUG holds closely is “flexibility.” Flexibility in schedules, in workflow, and yes, in thought. We challenge each other and our processes all the time, it is part of our culture. Heck, this coming year we actually “fired” one of the largest trade shows in the country and eliminated it from our travel schedule. We have attended the particular event in question each of the past 7-8 years and have even sponsored it in the past. However today, that show and that organization are not relevant to what we are trying to achieve, so we made the decision to pivot the time and resources from that commitment to something else.
Another industry example is that the structure of an organization today may not be the right one for the future. We have seen this numerous times across the country where at one time a stand alone sports commission was the right play but today the sports tourism efforts are better served to sit inside of a convention bureau (the opposite can also be true). Each destination and more importantly, each point in time, are different.
A new year is a great time to take a step back and evaluate things. Today you may not get a rash from the sun. Tomorrow you might. Things evolve around us, and our thoughts and decision making process should as well.
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