Live. Learn. Lead.

The first concert I ever attended what Pink Floyd. May 20, 1988, at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin. I was just finishing my 8th grade year and my mom won me these tickets and my dad took me to the show. I wasn’t a huge fan, but I knew it was a big deal show. I can say I have never seen a show like that since. I’ve rarely felt the bass vibrate me internally for that length of time. And I am certain that the tinnitus I have started at that show.

Once of the great things about the internet is that while my memories of that night swirl in and out of the music and the experience, someone has cataloged that show. You can find a set list. You can read about the line up of who was playing that show alongside David Gilmour. And if you spend a second on You Tube, you can find a recording of the show.

A little over an hour in, as they transition out of “One of These Days” you can hear the unmistakable trill of an alarm clock and the intro to Time; the ever-present ticking of the clock paired with the ethereal guitar creates an internal dissonance. 

My friend, Tom and I will spend minutes and hours (Time… get it!) talking about bands, singers, drummers, and on more than a few occasions Pink Floyd. This morning, as we’re want to do, we were sending each other videos to watch with our own 2 sentence reflection. And he mentioned that he read my recent ukulele post and wanted to make the uke – rock n roll. (You can read that post, here.) He said that he appreciated how I jumped into doing the work and are continuing to refine it rather than waiting for perfection. He said, “I don’t have time the time or interest to wait for anything to be ‘better;. Today is Wednesday, January 31, 2024, #!*k it, this is the only one.”

“I don’t have time the time or interest to wait for anything to be ‘better;. Today is Wednesday, January 31, 2024, #!*k it, this is the only one.”

And I think that mindset is one thing that sets him and other great leaders apart. And I think that’s what Roger Waters was getting at in the lyrics of Time. 

And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

How do we understand the intersection of immediacy and recklessness? The older I get the more I hear the constant metronome of time ticking away. At the same time, there is a moderating part of my personality that taps the breaks. That asks the question, is that the right decision, at the right time? To paraphrase John Maxwell, a great idea at the wrong time is a bad idea. 

As leaders, we might continually walk the tightrope on the continuum between immediate action to move forward and reckless actions that will set us back. And I keep coming back to the context that Tom shared, start and refine versus wait for perfection. Too often we are tasked with leading change, in our personal lives, with our families, or work and wait for the perfect plan or the perfect time and in reality there is no “perfect”. There is better and worse. There is often a better and worse time to make a change. There are often better and worse plans to implement change. But when we are waiting on perfect all we’re really doing is stalling. We are hedging our bets. 

On the BIG things maybe we need to error on the side of caution. But when it comes to making change, we are often the greatest impediments. 

Take a look at your goals. What’s one action step that you can take TODAY to get you a little closer? It’s now February 5, 2024 – it took me a few days to figure out how this post ends… It’s not perfect. But it’s definitely not worse.