“As you grow older, you’ll find that the only things you regret are the things you didn’t do.”

-Zachary Scott

Welcome to The Regret Me Not Project – a little project that is all getting past the “when” and entering into the “now.”

My first-ever dashboard cam video gives you the background. You can also read about it below if you prefer.

My 20s seemed to go by in a blur, largely because my nose was buried in my work. There were lots of experiences I didn’t have and things I didn’t learn. There’s a lot that I did do, but it seems that some of the most fundamental things, especially the things outside of work, are missing.

I have 9 months until I turn 32, and a lot to do between now and then. This is about getting out of the trap of “when” and moving into the space of now.

Avoiding Three Things

There are three things that I never want to be: boring, mediocre, and full of regret. The Regret Me Not Project is about me trying to avoid all three.

Rockin’ the cliché

Under the Tuscan Sun. The Bucket List. The Buried Life. Julie & Julia. Eat Pray Love.

I know what you’re thinking. Another person undertaking a project to reinvent themselves, find happiness, discover the meaning of life, blah, blah.

Yup. That would happen to be exactly what I’m doing. Not because it’s a cliché and because everyone else is doing it, but actually in spite of those things. It’s just like cupcakes. I love cupcakes. I’ve loved cupcakes for a long time and the fact that everyone else all of sudden decided that they love cupcakes too isn’t going to make me stop eating cupcakes.

I’m going to keep eating cupcakes because I love them and I’m undertaking my little project because I need it. If other people happen to enjoy hearing about my adventures or get inspired in some way, then that’s awesome, but it’s not the main point.

More on the clichés…

When I explain to people what I’m doing, I get this:

Them: “Oh, so is this like your version of The Bucket List?”

Me: “Yeah, except that I’m not planning on dying anytime soon. This is my ‘to do before I turn 32 and the fact that haven’t done these things gets even more ridiculous’ list.”

What the #&%@# Jessica?!?!? How have you not seen that movie!?!?

I get that question a lot.

When people refer to a line from Top Gun or laugh at someone’s take off on a Matrix-style back bend or do an impersonation of The Godfather, I know I’m supposed to know what they are talking about. But the brutal truth is, I only know I’m supposed to laugh because I’ve heard someone say the same quote before or repeat the same Matrix move. The real truth? I’ve never actually seen those movies.

And that’s just the start.

To continue the embarrassment, let’s shift to food.

I say I hate mushrooms. But I realized the other day that I don’t think I’ve actually ever really eaten one. They just look gross. I also say I don’t like sushi. But the most adventurous I’ve ever gotten with sushi is eating a California roll. Now granted, I thought the California roll was gross (the seaweed wrap tasted too fishy), but I’m not sure that should have driven me to relegate myself to consuming only inari, the most unsushi of sushi, for the rest of my life.

You want more?

• Until recently, I had never run a tab at a bar (had to figure out how that worked).
• I’ve never read anything by Ayn Rand, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Joyce, Stephen King, John Irving…
• I’ve never seen Gone with the Wind, Aliens, Casablanca, Die Hard, Do the Right Thing, Pulp Fiction (only seen portions), Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Toy Story, Swingers, The Usual Suspects, The Big Lebowski…
• I can probably count on my fingers and toes the number of times I’ve cooked a complete meal (i.e. a meat or fish plus a starch and/or veggies)
• I’ve probably only uncorked a wine bottle two or three times in my life
• I’ve never traveled to a place with a language I didn’t know (trip to France in 11^th grade didn’t count since I had been taking French for 5 years)

And that’s probably just the start…

Reactions A and B

You may be having one of two reactions right now:

Reaction A – How is that possible, you’re 31 years old!?!

or

Reaction B – Who cares!?!

Let’s address Reaction A first: How is that possible, you’re 31 years old!?!

How did this huge list of things I’ve never done become an embarrassment of not-so-riches?

The biggest, one-word answer is: work.

Two years ago, when my VP of Human Resources asked me what my hobbies were, my response was “work.” I was serious. I literally did almost nothing but eat, sleep, and work. On average, I usually spent 90 to 100 hours per week working. And it’s been that way for the last seven-plus years.

The funny thing is, the majority of that time, I was happy working that much. My work was exciting to me, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to have a hobby. To me, a hobby would have just been a distraction from what I really wanted to be doing: working.

No one told me I had to work that much, and no one told me that I couldn’t or shouldn’t do any of the other things that I haven’t done. I made a choice to focus on work.

I also let myself fall into the trap of “when.”  If I had an urge to do something outside of work  – exercise, go to a dance class, take voice lessons, read a non-business book – I would put it off with a “when.” I would say to myself, “I can do that when I’m done with this big project,” or “I can do that when work quiets down a little bit,” or “I’ll take that lesson when I make a little bit more money.” The problem is that the projects kept coming and work never quieted down and my expenses always seemed to expand to fit whatever size paycheck I was getting.

In a lot of ways my choice to focus on work paid off (in a few short years I went from Fund Development Associate to CEO), but it also left me with a one-dimensional, incomplete feeling life. Which leads me to…

Reaction B: Who cares!?!

Well, you may not care, but I do. (start playing sappy music now…) I care because it hits me really hard sometimes that we only get one chance at life and that when we get to the end, there is no rewind button so that we can go back and do things that we wished we’d done. If we don’t do them now, we never get to do them. We get caught in the trap of “when” until there are no more “whens” and then it’s too late.

I also care because I’ve realized that part of what makes me happy is connecting with other people, and a key part of connecting with other people is being able to bond over common experiences. Or at least have something to talk about other than the latest Girl Scout cookie sales figures.

All of this may make it sound like I’ve never seen or done anything, and that I therefore may not know that much. While that may be a true about a lot of things that people who are 31 would have normally done, there are a lot of other things that I do know a lot about. I can speak business pretty fluently, especially corporate culture, organizational development, workplace flexibility, social media etc.

And I’ve actually read a lot of different books and watched a lot of different movies, just not the ones, it seems, that everyone else talks about. I still remember trying to explain over and over to some friends why the original Japanese version of the movie “Shall We Dance” was so much better than the crappy Richard Gere version. Since the only version they had seen (and liked) was the one that I was calling crappy, that conversation didn’t go over so well.

This Is What It Is

The Regret Me Not project officially starts on September 1 and it technically ends when I turn 32 in May. I say technically, because I have a feeling I won’t want to stop. I’ve already started a little early dabbling in my Regret Me Not activities and, well, it kind of rocks. Whether I officially end or not, May will at least involve a big party to celebrate.

Nine months to experiment, to try things, and to stop putting things off. Between now and then I’m going to squeeze in moving as many things as possible from my “never done” list to my “done” list.

If your mind just went to the gutter, get it out. This isn’t about sex or drugs (although it may be a little bit about rock n’ roll).

My Regret Me Not to do list falls into two major categories (with exciting sub-categories too!):

Skills:

• General Life Skills (like cooking)
• Artistic/Creative Skills (like lindy hopping and singing)
• Sporty/Fitness Skills (like running)

Experiences:

• General (like sky diving and kite boarding)
• Travel (like going somewhere where they don’t speak English)
• Food (like actually trying mushrooms)
• Books (reading stuff I’ve never read)
• Movies (watching movies I’ve never seen)
• TV (watching shows I’ve never seen)
• Music (listening to stuff I’ve never listened to)

What Am I Missing?

I’ve started my lists for each category, but since in many cases I don’t know what I haven’t done until someone calls me out on it and embarrasses me by their screams of dismay, you can submit your suggestions to me for things I should be doing in every category.

Fill out my form!

The Regret Me Not Project

Nine months of pretty life-changing activity. I’ll be documenting it all. Join me if you want.

They say it takes ten years to change an organization’s culture.

I say that’s a nice excuse.

Last March, I spoke at SXSW Interactive about our organization’s Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) and the amazing organizational transformation ROWE instigated. But ROWE was just the start. There’s a much bigger story to tell about how a young CEO transformed the culture of an old organization and made work suck a whole lot less.

So this year at SXSW, I’d like to tell the bigger story. A story for people who work someplace that sucks and want it to change, or work at a great place and never want that to go away.

The concept for Rebel in a Polyester Sash: Rehabbing Corporate Culture goes like this:

You work at a start up. You’re sketching out brilliant ideas on the back of beer-ringed napkins while slurping down ramen noodles and nursing your hangover from the massive party you had in your freakin’ cool loft the night before. Blah, blah, blah. Your culture rocks. I get it.

But what if you work for a dinosaur? An organization that needs cultural rehab more than Amy Winehouse needs straight up rehab? What if you work for an old-school, stereotypically uncool, butt-of-jokes and yet still loved non-profit that is now nationally known as an organization with a “weird child army in tablecloth dresses” (thanks SNL’s John Mulaney)? What if you work for, I don’t know, the Girl Scouts? A place where pantyhose, polyester, and clock watching are still raging like its 1985. That’s where I work. And despite the many great things that the organization does, working there sucked until we decided to make it not suck anymore. We broke the rules and reinvented everything: clock watching turned into working however we want as long as the work gets done; pantyhose gave way to jeans; and the polyester met its demise on the Sacred Cow BBQ right next to a heap of senseless rules.

At SXSW 2011, learn how your culture can stop sucking too. Whether it’s sucked for five weeks or five years or half a century, there is still hope. Misery and work don’t have to be synonymous. Corporate doesn’t have to equal crap. If a rebel in a polyester sash can lead cultural rehab, you can rock the rehab too.

The caveat? You can’t hear the story unless you vote. Anyone can. Even if you aren’t going to go to SXSW. (The head of a weird child army in tablecloth dresses thanks you.)

Needless to say, when I first heard Bruno Mars’ song “Just the Way You Are” I kept waiting for him to screw it up, to switch to some overly sexualized lyrics – something about a butt or boobs or wanting to jump into bed with the girl he’s singing about. But nope. He kept it a song that I would happily play in front of a group of young girls who every day are made to feel unamazing by the unrealistic media images they are faced with.

Thanks Bruno Mars for giving the girls we care about something good to listen to.

As I listened, the words of the song bothered me. As an adult, I understood the underlying meaning behind Rihanna’s haunting chorus, but I wondered if young girls hearing the song would understand the song at that same level or whether they would take Rihanna’s words literally, somehow believing that it is ok to suffer through hurt and lies.

It was Eminem’s final lyrics that bothered me the most:

“Next time
There will be no next time
I apologize
Even though I know it’s lies
I’m tired of the games
I just want her back
I know I’m a liar
If she ever tries to f*ing leave again
I’mma tie her to the bed
And set the house on fire.”

These words produce a powerful visual image of how violent relationships can end, but again, I wasn’t sure whether the teens and pre-teens listening to the song would think that somehow that type of behavior was being condoned as opposed to being condemned.

Unless you can read into the emotional subtext of the song, the lyrics themselves don’t do much to place an opinion on whether violence within a relationship is right or wrong. The lyrics just seem to be stating the facts of the story of a relationship and I find myself wishing that the song painted a clearer picture for young people of how damaging that type of relationship can be.

I’m writing about this now, even though the song has been out for a little while, because the video was just released online and after seeing it, I’m even more worried about the messages that young people will take away from the song. (video contains explicit lyrics)

The video makes domestic violence seem sexy. It sends the message that even though you may fight hard, that fighting is followed by extremely passionate kisses and moments of tenderness. The video even ends with the actors playing the couple in the video – Meghan Fox and Dominic Monaghan – spooning peacefully in bed.

If the song is supposed to send young people the message that they shouldn’t be in violent of relationships, I think it contradicts itself through the images in the video. Meghan Fox doesn’t leave. At the end of the video she is still very much there.

Maybe I’m not giving young people enough credit. Maybe the message is completely clear to them. I’m hoping that it is. Otherwise, a beautiful song with a potentially powerful message has been wasted.

My blog has been depressing me. Why? Because as of right now, it’s pretty crappy. It’s current state of crappiness inspired me to create this:

The crap-o-meter. A public way of acknowledging that I know that my blog is pretty boring and a reminder to myself that I need to fix it. I know my blog is not total crap – the content isn’t too bad, but it is too long, too boring, and too corporate for who I really am. While I spend the next couple of weeks getting my act together and hopefully moving the crap-o-meter to a place that is definitively crap-free, you can enjoy this video, which hopefully you won’t find crappy:

Results-Only Work Environment: Why It Works

Monday, March 15, 2010 – 11 am – Hilton D

More info at Go ROWE

No matter business you are in, over the past year, you have probably had at least a few of your customers break up with you. Maybe it was more than a few. Each of those lost customers has cost your company money. You do not need anyone telling you that it is almost always bad to lose customers. You get that part. The bigger question is: what are you doing to find out why? Fortunately for you, unlike in real dating relationships, the answer is probably not as incurable as “he is just not that into you.”  So, why do your customers leave?

You can keep your customers for a while by trying to offer superior product. Studies show, however, that only 14% of customers leave because they are dissatisfied with your product.  You can also try winning the battle for customers through price, although continually lowering your price isn’t necessarily the best option. The same study also shows that only 9% of your customers leave because they are lured away by a competitor. Why then do customers leave? Studies show that 68% of customers leave due to the indifferent attitude of a company employee.

If you have heard that statistic before, then what are you doing about it? I had heard it before too, but an ah-ha moment the other day made the statistic finally come alive for me. I was having an interesting conversation with a Zappos.com employee when we got on the subject of volunteer retention. For Girl Scouts, and many other organizations who rely on volunteers, volunteer retention and customer retention are one in the same. As I talked to him about what we do to retain our customers, I realized something incredibly important: when we really look at why our volunteers leave the organization it is not because they stopped caring about girls or that they stopped caring about our mission (our product). They leave because the costs start outweighing the benefits. They have to complete too much paperwork or they do not get a response to their question in a timely manner or they do not feel supported enough.

The customer of a business gets benefits from being a customer: a product they like, a price they can afford, a tool that make their life easier. The problem is that those benefits can be easily overtaken by the costs. If the customer has to wait in a long line or receives unfriendly service or waits too long to get a call back, the benefits start to shrink in comparison to the costs. Despite the customer still liking your product or your price, they are no longer willing to be your customer because the costs now outweigh the benefits.

This is why it is so important to understand why your customers leave. When we started asking our customers about what they were most frustrated with, an overabundance of required forms and paperwork was at the top of the list. As we continue to ask questions, we are able to work specifically on fixing the things that most often tip the cost benefit scale in the direction of the customer leaving. This level of listening is incredibly important.

An article by Anna Thibodeaux in CRM Weekly summarized a recent study: “According to a 2006 survey released by a group within the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, a typical business only hears from 4 percent of its dissatisfied customers; the other 96 percent leave quietly. Of that 96 percent, 68 percent never reveal their dissatisfaction because they perceive an attitude of indifference in the owner, manager or employee. But a typical dissatisfied customer will tell eight to 10 people about their experience. One in five will tell 20.” You want your customers to tell you about why they are unhappy, not 10 of their friends.

If someone were to break up with you in the dating world, you would want to know why. You should be asking your customers why as well. You could even go one step further and start asking questions and listening before the relationship turns sour. Which is a good practice no matter what type of relationship we are talking about.

The world is full of thoughtful strategy. Companies spend hundreds of hours every year and significant financial resources on ensuring that they have crafted a strategy that will lead them to success. When so much of a company’s intellectual capital is dedicated to building its strategic foundation, why does the execution of a strategy so often fall short?

First, crafting a strategy feels deceptively simple. It is a finite process. It involves a beginning (brainstorming, data gathering, conducting a situation analysis), a middle (analyzing and discussing data), and an end (crafting and writing the strategy). Even though this formal process may be revisited every few years, writing strategy is not work that a company has to do every day.

Execution, on the other hand, requires daily recalibration. If a strategy is going to be executed effectively, every moving part of an organization has to be aligned to delivering on that strategy, every single day. Even in small companies, it is difficult to align each department and staff person with the overall strategy of the company on a consistent basis.

It turns out that this challenge of execution can actually be tied back to an underlying problem with strategy. Often times, strategies sound visionary, but do not paint a clear picture for the individual employee of how they fit into the strategy. They may not see how their daily work needs to change or how they need to align themselves differently with another department in order to execute the new strategy appropriately.

Spending time at Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas back in October, I witnessed how a large company can effectively align all of its employees to its strategy. Zappos started as online shoe retailer and has come to be known not only for the shoes and other wares it sells online, but also for its phenomenal customer service, its creative culture, and its fast growth. Zappos’ first step in setting their strategy is defining their “BHAG” (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), which at Zappos is focused on growth in sales.

The BHAG is posted throughout the Zappos offices, complete with a graphic representation of the BHAG as a big, hairy beast, displayed proudly on the walls. Once the BHAG is established, the senior leadership at Zappos crafts plans for how each of their teams will contribute to achieving the BHAG. Each subsequent manager down the line finds a new way of refining the presentation to their group of employees to ensure that every employee knows what the BHAG is and knows how the work they do on a daily basis will contribute to achieving the BHAG. The employees in sports merchandising know what their growth in sales needs to be and the customer service representatives know what their level of performance needs to be in order to reach the company’s overall goal.

Taking a big goal and breaking it down into smaller, easily executable pieces is a daily occurrence at Zappos and is a skill that the company helps its employees develop. Zappos onsite coach, Dr. Vik, helps employees address a variety of personal challenges in their lives, from losing weight to reducing credit card debt. He teaches them the technique of setting their own personal BHAGs, and then slowly chipping away at their BHAG in small steps: doing 10 sit-ups a day or volunteering on a weekend instead of shopping. As employees see that this technique of accomplishing major personal goals one step at a time works, they start applying the same concept to the company’s BHAG. Everyone is focused on the BHAG and knows how they can help the company reach it, and it pays off.  Zappos recently achieved a huge BHAG – reaching $1 billion in annual sales.

Successful execution requires a strategy that is relevant to every employee. Although there are many factors that influence the outcome of execution, the rate of success increases dramatically when each employee can clearly see how they can contribute to achieving the company’s goals. How relevant is your BHAG?

I was about to write this column focusing solely on how companies should stop babysitting employees’ use of computers – that they should stop blocking websites, stop blocking Facebook and MySpace, and stop restricting use of programs like Firefox. I recently read Farhad Manjoo’s great article – “Unchain the Office Computers!” – on Slate.com and I was all ready to unleash my battle cry of computer freedom, when a nagging memory of a recent news story stopped me from moving forward with my single-sided argument.

When the story first broke in October about the two Northwest Airlines pilots who overflew the Minneapolis – St. Paul International Airport by 150 miles, some of the blame was placed on them being distracted by using their laptops while piloting the aircraft. Although it now looks as if that might have been a more minor factor in the incident, it got me thinking about the other possible circumstances in which restrictions on the use of computers might help avert substantial disasters.

In his article on Slate.com, Majoo argues that doctors and nurses in hospitals, for instance, have received enough training and are skilled enough to juggle using an instant messenger program while they are completing their other work. What happens though, when those doctors and nurses get so engrossed in the messages they are sending back and forth that they don’t respond to a call quite as fast or they don’t get to a patient’s bedside as quickly as usual or they write the dosage of a medication down wrong?

There are other situations too, where distractions would be dangerous. We probably don’t want 911 operators watching videos on YouTube or bus drivers sending text messages while they drive bus full of passengers down the freeway. So where is the line? How do we decide what the right level of restriction is?

It has to do with analyzing the benefits of limitation-free computer use versus the potential negative consequences of allowing employees to operate with access to everything on the Web. Unless there are situations in which computer-based distractions risk the lives or the well-being of employees or the general public, there is not a very strong argument for restricting computer use. At my company a few months ago, we were hit by a virus that was traced back to an employee’s use of MySpace, and although it did take some IT staff time to fix the problem, the incident did not warrant banning employees from using MySpace or any other social networking platform. Why?  Because the cost to fix the problem was small compared to the potential negative implications on our trust-based culture if strict restrictions were put in place. It made a lot more sense for us to educate our employees on how to look out for potential virus and spyware traps (like not clicking on ads about filling out a survey to win $10,000), then it did to restrict the use of a program that we actually promote using as a marketing tool for the organization.

If you are worried about your employees slacking off and wasting company time checking their Facebook pages, restricting access to Facebook is not going to solve the problem. It is not going to make them more engaged, productive employees. You are actually missing the much bigger picture. The bigger picture is that employees should not be measured by how much time they spend physically at the workplace or even what they spend their time doing. They should be measured by what they actually produce. If employees are measured in that way, then the time they spend on Facebook or Twitter does not matter, as long as they are still getting their work done.

Restricting employee access to websites that might be seen as time-wasters does nothing but create an environment in which the company slowly becomes the enemy of the employee. Restrictions that have no reasonable basis give employees the strong message that they are not trusted. Restrictions also stifle innovation. Innovative companies like Google place no restrictions on their employees’ computers, and neither do most of the large technology companies.  They understand innovation does not thrive in environment littered with fences and barriers.

Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council’s Social Media Policy

We think social media is super cool. And so do our customers. We invite our employees to become social media butterflies…with the guidelines below in mind.

The Policy:
1. Tell the truth.
2. Have a purpose.
3. Add value.
4. Be authentic.
5. Speak for yourself.
6. Play nice.
7. Respect copyright and fair use.
8. If it’s confidential, keep it that way.
9. Be social.
10. Use common sense.

The Policy Explained:
1. Tell the truth.
No explanation needed.

2. Have a purpose.
Like everything else in life, reaching your goals is a lot easier when you have some clue what you’re trying to accomplish.

3. Add value.
Bottom line: say something helpful, or witty, or informative. The world doesn’t need to know what you ate for breakfast this morning.

4. Be authentic.
This is not the place to develop an alter-ego. Let people know who you really are and what you do.

5. Speak for yourself.
We know your opinions may not always be the same as the council’s. And that’s cool. Just make sure that your presence in the social media world is in the first person – lots of “I” and not so much “we”.

6. Play nice.
Respect people. Don’t be mean. Don’t call people names. Don’t use racial slurs. Don’t use foul language. Don’t be a jerk.

7. Respect copyright and fair use.
Don’t use people’s stuff without giving them credit (and don’t use stuff you’re not allowed to use). That’s just tacky. And in some cases, it also happens to be illegal.

8. If it’s confidential, keep it that way.
You don’t like people sharing your personal business without your permission. So if somebody has told you that information is confidential, keep it that way.

9. Be social.
Don’t be in a one-way social media relationship. If people comment on your blog, respond nicely to their comments. It’s called “social” media for a reason.

10. Use common sense.
We try to hire employees who have common sense and we trust them to use it. Think of social media as a giant world-wide billboard. What you post can be seen by anyone – your boss, your co-workers, your mom. You don’t need a poorly chosen Tweet to wreck havoc on the council or your life.