Tom Krieglstein

Hindsight - 09/30/10 - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The saying "reduce, reuse, or recycle" is in that order for a reason. One should try and first reduce usage, then reuse it, and lastly recycle.

When it comes to paper consumption I'm probably 95% paper free. When others use paper, I opt not to or use a digital alternative.

I try in my daily life to reduce my usage of paper, but one place I'm surrendering my righteousness is the napkins flight attendants hand out with drinks. 

I've tried several times to say I don't need a napkin, but every time ends in a humorous "who's on first" scene with the attendant and the rest of my row confused as to why I don't just take the napkin. So I've surrendered and today on my flight to DEN, I quietly accepted the napkin from the attendant, placed it on my tray table, then handed it back to the attendant unused and she threw it away. 

Peace is once again established in the skies.

MindYoga: Rethinking The Pizza Box [VIDEO]

via SwissMiss

Hindsight - 09/24/10 - Room Setup

Today I worked with Howard Community College. It's our third year working with them. Every time I go back I remember the unique environment in which the training happens. It takes place in a large open area with people passing by on all sides. Kinda like a fishbowl without the walls (see image below).

My first year there I asked the advisor about the room and she said it is meant to build transparency into the programming so random people walking by can get interested and join in. Not the easiest place for a training, but makes sense to me. On my break this time out there, I dreamed up how it would be possible to build in some glass track walls that could move around and give the space some privacy while still allowing outsiders to walk by and get interested. Ya know, if the school happens to have an extra 50k sitting around :-).

Speakers have to deal with all kinds of setups. The worst set up I've ever had was in a cafeteria/game room with people eating and playing games and not specifically there for the training. It happened six years ago and I still remember it, that's how bad it was. On the other hand, I never remember the best ones because they become an incoscquestial variable and let me focus more on the training itself.

Running Group & Accountability

In my EO class today, the facilitator told a story about a group of runners who would give each other a bag of their running equipment at the end of each run. Each person was then responsible for showing up the following week, because if they didn't, both themselves and the person who's bag of running equipment they held for the week wouldn't be able to run. Wow! Thinking about how I can apply this idea of accountability to other situations.

Hindsight - 09/23/10 - Momentum

It's an exciting time at Red Rover, you can feel the momentum as all the pieces inch closer to each other. The team, the sales/marketing strategy, the development, the user support systems, the market, and the philosophy.

Today we held a town hall meeting with all the new team members. We walked through the back story of Red Rover, where we are now including guiding principles, and where we want to be in 12 months. It's fun. It's exciting. 

Kevin told the back story this time and it's fun for me to sit back and hear him walk through how all the pieces fit. To explain why we went from SuperCamp, to urban camps, to Dance Floor Theory, to tech training, to Red Rover. And throughout all of it, the vision stayed the same, and the mission of x+1 remained intact.

Hindsight - 09/22/10 - Cubical Life

The Red Rover team is in the process of transitioning into a team room at MMC, but due to remodeling, it won't be ready for another week. In the mean time, we're occupying a collection of cubicles among the full time employees of MMC. 

After only a couple days, I quickly realized how allergic I am to the cubical life. Instead of focusing on what I don't like about cubicles, I'm instead going to focus on what I value in a work environment, and from there you'll see why cubicles aren't a good fit for me. 

Work Values:

• Collaboration
• Shared Celebrations
• Creativity
• Conversations
• Joking
• Team Camaraderie 
• Story Telling
• Communal Artifacts
• Shared Purpose

Hindsight - 09/22/10 - My People

This morning I attended my first EO event in NY. It was an entrepreneur panel discussion at the Bloomberg main offices which, by the way, are pretty ridiculous (see images below). 

From the moment I walked in and heard the conversation and types of questioning like "what's the best advice you've learned about hiring?" or "how did you keep going when your business wasn't?" I knew I was in the right spot and these people were speaking my language. And best of all, unlike other meetups I attended in NYC, to be a member of EO, you already have to be running a pretty successful business. I'm excited for my first full day event coming up on Thursday.

Hindsight - 09/21/10 - Jesus Loves You

On the train home today I witnessed a seated lady pass a hand written post-it-note to a lady who just got up to exit the train. On the note it read, "Jesus Loves You."  

Based on the facial expressions and body language of the exiting lady, it was clear they didn't know each other. It's not the first time I've experienced religion evangelized in public, but it was the nature of this incident that threw me. The exiting lady was wearing a hijab and, by all accounts, I suspected she was Muslim.

My question is if the post-it-note lady does this to everyone or does she just target people based on their appearance, or just Muslims?

Hindsight - 09/20/10 - 43rd Floor

Today we moved the Red Rover team to the 43rd floor at MMC (our corporate client). It's the second highest floor at MMC and a far cry from the 23rd floor with the interns and other randoms that sat in our area. The game and vision are bigger on the 43rd. The view is also amazing (see pictures below).

I've always known that the best thing I can do for myself is to keep revolving closer to people who are higher up than I am because I know I will keep playing to the level of the game that is presented to me.  What I'm learning is how big the game can get. I don't want Red Rover, or my individual success to be stifled by a limited vision of the world, so here's to expanding my view both literally and figuratively.

Being A Referee [QUOTE]

"When you learn to be a referee, they tell you to keep your whistle at your waist. So when you see a foul, you have at least one second to contemplate whether you are actually going to call it or not while you bring your whistle from your waist to your mouth. And for a new ref, that one second can be terrifying. Anybody can memorize the rules of the game. What a referee does is decide based on the context of the game whether something should really be called. It is in that one second where you prove whether or not you are a referee." - Andrew Schwartz