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July 3, 2025

Master the Fundamentals

I was pondering recently about work. Being still for a while often brings things into focus. 

I had the impression that I will be more effective not by doing more faster, but by making the right decisions and moving steadily. As I do this, I will get faster and do more, but speed will come naturally.

This thought made me think about how I’ve been practicing the drums lately. I spent so much of my life not practicing with a metronome and mostly focusing on playing the full drumset, where all my limbs are active. 

For a long time I’ve thought that I need to get the fundamentals down on just a practice pad and even just on one hand, playing very simply, with a metronome.

So several months ago I started playing along with music that has a solid groove and playing just quarter notes or half-notes in one hand through an entire song. My focus is on making those simple notes land right “in the pocket”.

After a while a very cool thing started to happen. My sense of time improved greatly. I could feel a sense of groove and “pocket” better. Sometimes just playing these simple rhythms would give me goose bumps because they felt so good to play. I didn’t expect that.

Gradually I’ve added 8th notes, different stickings and patterns at faster tempos. And now I’m starting to allow myself to improvise using all of this. My focus is on playing smooth and in the pocket just on the practice pad. Nothing complicated unless it can be done smoothly.

I didn’t realize just how badly I needed to go through this exercise. It will probably be several more months until I practice at the drumset again, but when I do, the new foundation I’m building will make me a far better player than I was. I will be able to execute ideas I’ve known how to play for years, but with feel and groove. 

The lesson for work and life is probably obvious. Some may say “go slow to go fast”. The principle is to intentionally create a foundation for success by developing mastery of the fundamentals. The greater mastery you develop, the greater your ability to improvise and create and unleash your talent.

What are the fundamentals of your work? Of having the home life you want? Of the having the relationships you want? Identify those things and intentionally work to develop mastery of them, and let speed follow.

June 26, 2025

About Motivation and Trust

When I do keynotes I bring a live band on stage and we show people how to build and lead effective teams. It’s like an awesome concert where you learn a lot.

When it comes to teams, most of us are used to hearing about motivation, trust, and things like “buy-in”. And these things are very important - even critical - to a successful team.

A band is a team. And having played with excellent bands for a long time, I can tell you this - a band can get on stage and all the members can be oozing with motivation, dripping with trust, and full of buy-in. But if we don’t have or agree on a shared understanding of the tempo, what do you think will happen to motivation and trust?

With a live band, we can show exactly how a lack of tempo sounds - when everyone plays whatever tempo they want, or play with no tempo at all. You can imagine how bad that would sound, and you’re right! It's terrible. It so bad that we laugh about it, but so many organizations "sound" this way.

One of the best things leaders can do to develop motivation and trust is to make sure the team has clarity about the “tempo” of your project, or the purpose of whatever the team exists to do.

When the team truly has a shared understanding of this, motivation and trust are natural and the team's talent can be set free.

Clarity of purpose. Clarity of goals and objectives. Make them simple to understand and constantly visible. This is having a shared tempo. This is key to being in the groove.

You dig?