Author: Jason Cox

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Direction

“Direction is much more important than speed.” – Anonymous

Two weeks ago, I sent out my update from Walker Lake in Minnesota where we were visiting with family.  We were in the middle of our two-week 6,000-mile driving adventure across the US.  We passed through California, Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.  Whew!  That’s a lot of distance to travel by car, but thankfully we were able to travel at 70-80 mph most of the way.

With a family of five, as you can imagine, there were plenty of stops along the way.  For the most part, I have a good sense of direction, but the thing about a long drive is that the roads, exits, hotels, and fuel stations all start to look alike after a while.  If you’re not careful, you may end up getting turned around and going the wrong way.  I recall one particular bio-break stop where I ended up on the wrong onramp, heading East instead of West.  Thankfully there was a quick exit and turnaround.  If I had made that miscalculation in one of the Dakotas, I may have been stuck on that road going the wrong direction for 50 miles!

I love going fast!  Seeing the world move quickly beneath you as you arrive at your destination is exciting and rewarding.  But when you make a directional error and end up 100 miles off course all that excitement morphs into a sick feeling of failure.  It occurs to me how much that applies to our work, projects, business and life.  Sure, there are measured risks we must take when we need to explore new directions, but most of the time we can quickly assemble enough data to select the right bearing.  That’s engineering.  My dad used to say, “Son, with engineering you assume a point of beginning and proceed with great accuracy.”  Like the scientific method, you begin with a thoughtful plan, act, measure and make corrections.  My recent road trip reminded me how important it was that we plan, measure and correct when the vector is off.  Reaching the final destination demands that discipline.

What does your compass say?  Are you headed in the right direction?  Pull out the map and measure your position and trajectory.  Are you going where you want to go or do you hear the GPS suggesting a “next legal U-turn”?  It’s never too late to alter course, especially if your goal is to arrive at the right destination.  I challenge you all this week to think about your destination and the direction you need to go to get there. 

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Bitter or Better?

“You can be bitter or you can be better.” – Alice Zahnow

I love getting a slice of lemon or lime with my iced water.  Once I asked for a water with lime and the waiter brought out a water with a strong shot of lime essence. It surprised me and was extremely bitter.  I couldn’t drink it.  Thankfully the table was equipped with some sugary sweeteners.  Suddenly, the bitter water turned into a delightful drink.  

So much of the time, what you bring to a situation makes all the difference.  Imperfect things with a positive ingredient can become something even better.  As we have been traveling and celebrating my mother-in-law’s life, it occurred to me that one of her favorite sayings applies to so much of life, “You can be bitter or you can be better”.  Disappointment, loss, change, hurts, worries and fears can all become opportunities to become better.  The crucial ingredient is you.  I recognize that we are experiencing a lot of change in our lives, family and work.  How you react, the attitude you bring, the faith you have, the actions you take, all determine your destiny, how we do as a people and the impact you can make on the world.

We only have a tiny amount of years on this planet. Don’t waste it.  Things happen to or around us all the time.  We can be bitter, or we can be better.  You only need to change the “I”.

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See You Real Soon

“A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” – John A. Shedd

All lands, all attractions! With last week’s Disneyland Paris re-opening, once again the sun no longer sets on the Magic Kingdom. It’s hard to believe it has been over a year (17 months) since we could say that. And, as vaccination coverage increases and the COVID numbers improve, we are starting to see more restrictions lifted and some levels of “return to normal.”

My youngest is the last one in our family to be fully vaccinated. Tomorrow marks two weeks after her 2nd shot and we feel the relief and freedom that can bring. We are looking forward to traveling again and seeing more friends and family in person. While required safety measures at times, quarantining and isolation is not what humans are built for. It is amazing how well we adapted to make things work. We successfully deployed fully remote work. We adopted safe, masked and social distanced ways to safely and caringly pick up necessities. Things like Zoom and FaceTime became brilliant and sometimes lamented tools to stay connected with family and friends as well as work. But in the end, we all felt that missing part that even those of us who are introverted suddenly discovered we needed… in-person social interaction.

Humans are made to be with other humans. As a family of all sorts, strengths and sizes, as intelligent beings with our unique perspectives, personalities and pet-peeves, it turns out, we all need each other. I’m looking forward to setting sail once again on many more in-person voyages.

Hope to see you all real soon!

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The Power of Relational Leadership

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” – Winston Churchill

Commonwealth Dignitaries were in the room from all over the world. Guests from the Royal Family, members of visiting delegations, politicians and notable figures from across the globe had arrived to the extravagant dinner. It was set in the usual state dinner ceremony with lavish place settings and silver dishes and cutlery.  The evening was winding down.  Winston Churchill spotted a distinguish guest across the room stealthily stealing a silver salt shaker from the table.  He had slipped it into his pocket.  Winston promptly took the matching pepper shaker and slipped it into his own pocket.  He approached the gentleman and pulled out the pepper shaker and put it on the table.  In a sheepish way he whispered to the guest, “I think they’ve seen us. Perhaps we had better put them back.”  The dignitary flashed an embarrassed smile and did the same.

What could have escalated into an international incident was gracefully handled by the extraordinary statesman.  Winston knew that leadership wasn’t just about giving orders and enforcing rules.  True leadership demands connection and shared experiences.  He knew the best way to teach and persuade was from the shared trench, not the ivory tower.  In our increasingly polarized world, it is easy to sit at our place settings, casting judgements and issuing decrees.  You may be right, but how will it land?  Humans have difficulty hearing even good moral principles and science when they can’t relate to the messenger.  There is an old adage, “speak the truth in love.”  We fail to listen to each other because we fail to love each other.  Winston’s act of love had a cascading effect.  It reversed a crime, provided a dignified recovery for the guest and taught us all an important lesson in leadership.

I don’t know about you, but some people frustrate me.  It seems I try my best to convince them but they don’t seem to listen.  How can they ignore the facts?  Data doesn’t seem to matter to them.  They don’t respond.  I have come to realize that my impatience and unloving approach is not productive or effective.  I need to change.

As Theodore Roosevelt said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”  Are you trying to persuade or convince someone?  Have you cast aside friends, family or co-workers because they seem unreasonable or unreachable?  As humans, we tend to dismiss anything that doesn’t come from our tribe.  That further polarizes all of us, our mental models and the ability to relate and work with each other. How do we overcome that?  Like Winston’s example, we have to go to where the others are, listen to them, learn from them and relate to them. 

This week, think about the opportunities you have to make an impact on others.  In what ways can you better connect with others, learning from them and teaching?  We are better together than apart.  Let’s do what we can to speak truth in love.  Strive to know other viewpoints, seek to understand and grow together in a positive way.

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Words Matter

“In diversity there is beauty and there is strength. We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of that tapestry are equal in value no matter their color.” —Maya Angelou

How do you visualize?  If you close your eyes and think about home, family and friends, can you see them in your mind’s eye?  I remember having an in-depth conversation with Ed Catmull who confessed that he can’t visualize mental images at all.  Most people can close their eyes and conjure up images.  But that’s right, Ed Catmull, the scientist who revolutionized computer 3D graphics and co-founded Pixar, has a blind mind’s eye.  It’s a condition called aphantasia.  Ed conducted a survey of artist and production teams across the studio and discovered he was not alone.  In fact, some of the world’s best animators have aphantasia as well.  Glen Keane, who created Ariel (The Little Mermaid), also has no visual imagery.  

How we represent our world in our minds does vary, person to person.  Some of us visualize, some of us don’t.  But we all model the world around us in a way that helps us interact with each other, relate to things and make decisions.  Over time, we construct mental models that help us filter what we see, hear and feel. We build synaptic short cuts that prevent us from being overwhelmed with sensory experiences and our daily work.  We enter our mind palace, even if it can’t be seen, and think about concepts, plan projects, solve problems and even practice interactions with each other.  How do we do that?  Have you noticed?  Well, similar to you reading this today, we do that through “words”.  Now maybe those words are symbols, lists or concepts, but they are a collection of mental Lego blocks that we use to construct our mental reality. How many of those atomic units we have collected and what they are, makes up our mental vocabulary. 

When I was learning Spanish in high school, I remember the moment when I had gained enough understanding of the language to begin creating mental models in Spanish. Up till that point, I realized my mental models were all in English and I was passing all of those models through a “translation function” in my mind instead of thinking natively in Spanish.  “Gran mesa roja” became atomic in my representation of a big red table. I never achieved full model (immersive thinking in Spanish) but it gave me the insight into how we think.  Words and patterns of words are the building blocks of how we see and interact with the world around us.

Words matter.  Because words make up our perception of the world, the words we use affect us and those around us.  How we think, evaluate and relate with things is shaped by our words.  Sometimes the words and phrases that we collect and use to build mental models can be harmful.  For example, technological phrases like “blacklist” and “whitelist” are often used to denote things that should be denied or allowed.  While the connotation of “whitelist” is generally positive, something that you want included and accepted, the inference of “blacklist” is predominately negative, something that should be shunned, blocked or denied.  The general concepts make sense, but the words used can subconsciously create a mental association that anything “black” is bad, negative, a threat or an object that should be denied or avoided.  Tragically, this can shape our model such that a “black person” is unintentionally connected with the same connotation.  This is the danger.  Words shape our reality and words can project unintended meaning or reality onto others just by simple association.

I’m proud to say that as part of our inclusive efforts, Disney technology leadership is taking on this issue so that we can level up.  Technical words and phrases that are culturally insensitive or can threaten our inclusive efforts will be replaced with more inclusive terms.  In many cases, these are actually better descriptors for the intended concepts anyway.  Using phrases like “allow-list” or “deny-list” not only encapsulates the concept but describes it as well.  Now, to be fair, I know this isn’t an easy transition.  A lot of these words are deeply ingrained in the industry and our mental models.  But it is the right thing to do.  We don’t want unintended association to negatively impact us or any of our fellow team members.  Everyone is a welcome member of our human family and we are willing to reshape our language and mental models to help enforce that love for each other.

Join me in helping raise awareness on this issue.  Call me out if I accidentally use words that are non-inclusive.  To reshape tomorrow, we need to challenge each other, our teams, our vendors and ourselves to use this more inclusive language.  If you have any ideas that might help, please let me know.  We can create a better more inclusive world.  Sometimes it is as easy as changing one word at a time.

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Keep Learning

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler

As a kid, I was inspired by movies like TRON to explore computers.  I caught the bug as soon as I saw how easily software could be used to shape reality and improve things.  I spent 6 years skipping around between computer science, mathematics, physics, electrical and civil engineering.  I even invested a year working toward a masters in divinity until I realized Koine Greek wasn’t a new computer language.  

My dad was a civil engineer with crazy mad RPN calculator skills. He could crank out and tabulate thousands of calculations per day.  But one day I wrote a bit of software and suddenly a week’s worth of tedious error prone work was done in minutes.  He immediately hired me to “computerize” the rest of his business.  With my educational background, I thought I was set… I could change the world (or at least my corner of it), one program at a time… but I still had a lot to learn. I soon discovered I didn’t know enough about statics and dynamics for the structural engineering work I needed to do.  I also needed to dive deeper into 3D geometry and computer graphics for modeling complex systems.  I went back to school.

There is a thought that education is just a box you need to check to begin your career.  You may get certified, degreed or licensed and now you are done, right?  Nope! Those are all great, but they are just visible footprints on the stairway of continual learning.  Learning expands the mind and prepares us for more learning.  Each step along the way reveals new vistas of knowledge to explore, new puzzles to solve and new mastery to obtain.  We are forever on this learning adventure, growing and thriving on the food of knowledge, discovery and experimentation.  Every new cognitive challenged unlocked is like an awakening.  It is the physics of life.  Each discovery expands who we are and carries us to a new level.  We are alive and growing when we are learning.

Learning can be fun, but it isn’t easy.  It takes work.  It can be exhausting and even frustrating at times.  Because of that, there is a temptation to become comfortable with our current state.  We may find we can get by with what we already know, often for years without having to learn something new.  But we aren’t growing.  We become stale.  Our capacity to move ourselves, our teams and our organization forward, withers.  Like physical exercise, mental exercise is required to stay healthy, vibrant and alive.  Just as we should plan to exercise our physical bodies to stay healthy, we should plan to exercise our minds as well. 

What are you learning?  May I suggest, if you aren’t learning anything new right now, pick something new and start learning it today?  I know it isn’t easy, but embrace the constructive discomfort and expand your knowledge and skill.  Tackle it.  Imagine yourself thriving and growing.  Don’t limit yourself. Set a goal to upgrade your knowledge every week.  Study, grow and keep learning!

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Embracing Grief

“What is grief, if not love persevering?” – Vision

I was standing outside the tent addressing the small crowd of family and friends that had gathered by my dad’s graveside. The June sun was hiding behind the clouds but some of the rays glistened off of the nearby fence surrounding the cemetery.  I opened with my dad’s favorite joke, “Do you know why cemeteries have fences? It’s because people are dying to get in there!”  He loved that joke.  I went on to talk about my dad, forever the engineer, who taught me to “think ahead,” plan, tackle any problem and always leave things better than you found then.  I miss him.  That was 2015 yet even to this day, grief of his loss visits me.

Grief is a tricky thing.  For those of you who have lost loved ones, you know how it doesn’t play by the rules.  It will wash over you at the most inopportune times.  It isn’t logical.  It would perplex, frustrate and annoy me.  I would wish it away but that usually meant it would only hide for the moment to build more energy for the next unannounced round.  Instead, I have come to realize that grief is not an enemy or adversary, it is a friend.  It is the echo of love that endures the separation of the source and object of that affection.  It is the mind and spirit refreshing that cherished connection and celebrating the memory of that loved one.  It is, as Vision from Marvel’s WandaVision put it, “love persevering.”

As we bid farewell to my wife’s mother a week ago, I am reminded how bad we are at taking care of ourselves during sorrow and loss.  I wanted to jump back into work, bury myself in tasks.  But instead, we spent time as a family going through my mother-in-law’s affairs.  Sorting, cleaning and remembering.  Sure, there was sadness, but there was also times of laughter and happiness.  I’m glad we did that.

So many of you reached out with sympathy, kind words, encouragement and even help. Thank you! It was overwhelming and encouraging. I know many of you have also suffered the loss of loved ones in recent years and even shared your own journeys with me.  Our human journey is not without suffering.  This recent chapter in my life reminds me how important it is to give ourselves time, permission and care to remember, to grieve and even to heal.  My advice to all of you who have suffered loss, and for the rest who will, make sure you give yourself that time and grace to mend.  Embrace the fog of grief and welcome the memories, no matter how difficult they may be to bear.  They are just visiting friends, reminding you that love does not die, it perseveres.  Cherish it!

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Begin Again

“Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s Party!’” –  Robin Williams

A blue California Scrub Jay just landed outside my window.  His beautiful white beard and bright blue feathers seemed to glow in the early morning sun.  He hopped across the fence and suddenly dove down and picked up some seeds he spotted on the ground.  He jumped back to the fence and then soared into the sky.

Spring!  I know it started a couple of weeks ago, but this weekend finally felt like Spring.  Having been safe-at-home inside for the past several months, there is something wonderfully hopeful about the budding, blooming and greening debuting outside our windows.  When I take a walk outside, I see new life emerging from the death of winter.  Fresh new green leaves are unfolding on the ivy and trees.  Seedlings are poking their heads toward the sun. Tiny flowers begin to pop color across the faded winter landscape.  I look up and see birds like my early morning blue Jay visitor, swimming through the new Spring air, singing and dancing across the sky.  I hear and see the  squirrels running across the yard, darting gracefully over fences and up the trees with renewed vigor and determination.  Spring is here!

It is easy to be busy.  We all have planning to do, tasks to complete and meetings to attend.  But before you get too lost in the hustle, I encourage you to take some time this week to enjoy Spring.  Go for a walk.  Grab a cup of coffee or tea and sit outside and relish the melody.  Listen to the sounds.  All creation sings, “We begin again!”  Drink in the new colors.  Smell that new life energy.  Breathe in the cool April air and embrace the warming sun, peeking over the housetops.  Don’t miss it!  We are all part of this springtime party.  Enjoy it!

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Epilogue – Eternal Dividends

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” – Steve Jobs

My wife’s mother, Alice, has myelodysplastic syndrome.  It is a disorder that disrupts the production of healthy blood cells and is related to leukemia.  Some of you had the opportunity to meet Alice at one of the annual Christmas parties we host (prior to COVID).  She enjoyed the holiday treats and the opportunity to meet many of you and your families.  She always loved to tell the stories of her 87 years.  She came to live with us about ten years ago and has been on many adventures with us this past decade.  Last week, at her request and the advice of her doctors, we put her into hospice in our home.  She is ready.  Our goal is to keep her comfortable and allow family and friends to safely visit, commemorate her pending graduation and bid last farewells.

As the final paragraph of my mother-in-law’s life is penned, sadness and joy crash against our hearts.  Like the tide, those feelings and memories rise and fall.  Those of you who have lost parents, siblings or other loved ones know the complex fog that sets in as grief and mortality arrive with powerful force.  The emotions and the moments begin to refine the matters of the heart.  There is a clarity that surfaces.  What’s really important begins to emerge.

How will we end?  We will all face and journey through the valley of death at some point.  We all have the pending task of writing the epilogue to our life.  What will be in that final chapter?  How shall we sum up?  Will we have regrets?  What would we have changed?  These powerful questions are really a gift. It’s life’s housekeeping angel that reminds us to examine what we are doing, reflect on our priorities and focus on what really matters.

I often say, “We should focus on high value targets.”  Don’t get busy with being busy, apply your talent, time and energy to what matters.  Understand the outcomes you want to achieve and trim away everything that doesn’t contribute to making that happen.  Keep the faith.  Don’t settle.  Pursue your dreams.  Love with all your heart.  Care for your loved ones and invest in others.  Eternal dividends are not measured in dollars and pounds, they are measured in the moments, the people and the legacy we leave behind.  Today begins the first day of the rest of your life.  Optimize for greatest impact.

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A Sonic Revolution

“We knew it could become big but could have never imagined it would be a revolution.” – Lou Ottens

Magnetic tape was genius!  A ferric oxide placed on a thin plastic film allowed the world to record, store and playback audio.  It revolutionized broadcasting, radio and especially, music.  In 1960, the portability of that music was still captured in a clumsy 7-inch reel.  It wasn’t easy to play. You needed a hefty machine the size of a small suitcase.  Lou wasn’t happy with that.  

Lou loved technology.  He was ever the engineer and loved solving problems.  As a teenager during World War II, Lou made a radio for his family so they could listen to programs like Radio Oranje.  To avoid the Nazi jammers, he even constructed a primitive directional antenna.  Just as he had made those freedom broadcasts accessible to his family, he now turned his attention to democratizing music.

The 7-inch music reel was too bulky and awkward for the general population.  He wanted music to be portable and accessible.  He thought a lot about what it should be like.  Trying to envision something that didn’t yet exist, he began shaping it into a small wooden block.  It needed to be small enough to easily fit in your hand and more importantly, fit in your pocket.  His “compact cassette” tape came to life in 1963 and quickly became a must-have sensation across the world.  It unleashed a multi-billion dollar industry but also taught us how to use our own voice.  The cassette became an audio canvas for the masses to self-create their own albums or compile their own mixtapes to share with others.  For those of you who don’t have as many candles on your cake as I do, mixtapes were basically the playlists of the 1980s.

The cassette tape was a raging success, but Lou wasn’t happy with it.  He complained about the noise and distortion that would eventually plague the aging tapes. In his mission for higher fidelity, he worked with his company, Philips and Sony to co-develop the digital optical storage system, the compact disk (CD).  As he had done with the cassette tape, Lou championed a portable disk size that could be easily held and used.

Lou Ottens passed away earlier this month, at the age of 94.  He sparked a worldwide sonic revolution, but humbly dismissed his role as nothing special, instead crediting other engineers and designers for bringing his ideas to life.  Lou reminds us that making science and technology accessible is just as important as the discovery itself.  

Do we make our complex technical inventions and solutions accessible?  When technology is done well, the technology itself fades to the background and becomes “indistinguishable from magic”.  That is to say, it provides a human experience and value and doesn’t get in the way.  My challenge to us this week is to examine the solutions we deliver and ask ourselves, can we make them more accessible and magical?  

As Lou taught us, the genius of a great idea is not just in the science, it is making that technology portable and accessible.