I started writing my book “Pain Drives Change” on the day after Labor Day, 2015. I’m 4 chapters in and I’m really enjoying the process.
Today I talked with a publisher and we think we can get it published by January 1, 2016.
I’m very excited! I just obtained the www.paindriveschange.com and www.paindriveschange.org!
Stay tuned…I’m going to start sharing some of the unedited content here.
A week ago today I heard the news-my position at Microsoft had been eliminated and my last day was Friday. I wrote about this in my blog “Thank you Microsoft and Goodbye”. I honestly had no idea that a simple blog post from my heart would impact so many people. I’ve received more than a hundred emails, most from people I’ve never met, thanking me for the blog. Many people mentioned that my blog gave them a new perspective and re-energized them for their work. As a Master Black Belt in Six Sigma I love data. For fun, I pulled the statistics on WordPress. As of this writing nearly 25,000 visitors have seen my blog. I’m overwhelmed by the encouragement and response and I wanted to take a minute and thank everyone for their encouragement and support. Furthermore, I had multiple people ask for me to keep them updated on my journey so I’ve decided to blog about my experiences.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
A few years ago I asked my neighbor, former Huskies football head coach Jim Lambright, to speak at the men’s breakfast at our church. Continue reading Blessed beyond measure-what a week!
12 ½ years ago I made a “keystone” decision in both my professional and personal life. I began my career at Honeywell in Redmond and after 13 years I knew I had to change companies if I was going to continue progressing in my career. I also knew that leaving the Seattle area was not an option-my daughter, Monica, was 5 at the time and lived with her mom. Leaving would mean I would be leaving her…simply not an option.
God has an amazing way of working things out. A former employee of mine at Honeywell worked in Microsoft Hardware and saw the potential for my skills in Six Sigma to improve the way Microsoft designed and produced hardware. Before I knew it I was working for Microsoft, my office move was less than a mile. While in building 109 I often times reflected of the softball games we played at Honeywell in the fields where building 109 now sat. Microsoft was bigger than life and I had been given an opportunity that most people dream of. My first day was January 6, 2003.
On July 8, 2015 I rode my bike to the Pro Club to run on the treadmill (a “brick day” in my triathlon training regime). As I read the news and the emails about the restructuring I was saddened, but knew it was imminent. Would I be affected I wondered? With absolute certainty I said no. 2 hours later I mentioned it to my wife on the phone and she asked if I’d be affected. With absolute certainty I said “no”. Less than 5 minutes later I was in my boss’s office with an HR representative and was informed that my position had been eliminated. I was in shock and called my wife-her response was the same response I’ve gotten from almost everyone I’ve told “you’re kidding, right?” I had to tell her 3 times that I wasn’t kidding, my last day at Microsoft would be Friday.
I have built a habit into my life of using reflection to energize personal growth. Every year I reflect on my previous years and document it, using my learnings to set goals for my future. I guess you can say the Deming cycle of “Plan, Do, Check, Act” is part of my personal DNA and I use it to continuously improve. This blog post is my first reflection. My hope and prayer is that the readers of this document will benefit from it as much as I will.
“Consider it joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials knowing the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its perfect result so that you will be perfect and complete lacking in nothing” James 1:2-4
My strongest emotion since this new is gratitude and I want to express that gratitude in no uncertain terms. Microsoft is an incredible company to work for in virtually every aspect. On a personal note, Microsoft and my management have always done whatever they could to assist me when life’s trials came up. When my wife got cancer, Microsoft’s benefits paid for nearly all of her treatment and I was given whatever time I needed to be with her (she is now cancer free!) When my daughter was born I was given 4 weeks of paid paternity leave (one of the best experiences of my life). The same happened when my son was born. When my teenage daughter was struggling Microsoft benefits paid for 100% of her treatment (she is now doing incredibly well!). When I needed time to take care of my mom in the hospital I was told I could work remotely if necessary. When I was struggling with weight gain, Microsoft offered to pay for my membership at one of the nation’s best fitness clubs. Through this I discovered my love of exercise and began cycling to work. Microsoft once again reinforced this behavior and reimbursed me for supplies and tune-ups of my bike. I discovered the Microsoft Team for “Bike MS” and rode my first century at Deception Pass-Microsoft donated $17 per hour to the National MS Society for my bike riding time. When I decided to start coaching my son’s football team Microsoft paid the organization thousands of dollars for my donated time. When I was struggling with issues as a dad I discovered the “Microsoft Dads” alias and was introduced to thousands of dads with incredible advice. When I learned about the Dad’s leadership team my boss fully supported my time spent. These aliases are prevalent at Microsoft. When I shared that my wife had cancer the outpouring of love and encouragement was incredible. When I wanted to automate my home the insights were invaluable and the connections have opened a door to what could become my next profession.
Microsoft has invested tens of thousands of dollars in my own personal growth. Conferences, seminars, books, mentors, on the job learning, exposure to new ideas, and connections with the world’s brightest people. It is impossible to quantify the impact of this learning, but my life and future career will benefit immensely from it.
Thank you, Microsoft for the incredible pay and benefits. The stock options, stock, bonus pay and salary have allowed my wife to be at home to raise and homeschool our children. The financial stability allowed me to invest into what is arguably one of the finest vacation rental destinations on Lake Chelan, Marina’s Edge. The severance package I’ve received was incredibly generous . This benefit alone will certainly transform the second half of my life and give me time with my family that most people only dream of.
Thank you, Microsoft for the experiences and opportunities to live out my personal mission statement of “Adding value to people’s lives through serving others….” and accomplish more than I never dreamed possible. Here are a few of the accomplishments I’m most proud of:
Finally, thank you Microsoft for the friendships. It was literally impossible for me to identify all of the people I’ve met and known at Microsoft to include on my goodbye email. It was very interesting to me as I was clearing out my computer files. 12.5 years of work, nearly 25,000 hours of my life poured into my work (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, OneNote, etc….). All of it deleted from my hard drive. It’s almost unfathomable. All of this work gone. The only thing that endures are the relationships. None of my accomplishments during my time at Microsoft would have happened without these relationships. None of my memories would be there without these relationships. Life and work are about relationships. I used to feel guilty taking time during lunch to develop relationships or time during a 1:1 to ask “how are you doing”. Developing relationships certainly wasn’t “real work”. But then one day I realized that building the relationships are the work. Most of my career at Microsoft was about driving cultural change. People don’t want to change and resist change-unless someone they trust is encouraging them along the path of change. Trust is the foundation of all relationships both professionally and personally.
To all the people I’ve interacted with throughout the years I want to say thank you for the relationships. In all my interactions with you I tried to earn your trust. Thank you for trusting me and letting me be a part of your lives. My hope and prayer is that through these relationships I’ve fulfilled my personal mission statement of “Adding value to people’s lives through serving others that they may do the same”. If I’ve added any value to your life please take the time to do the same through the relationships you form during your time at Microsoft.
Thank you and good bye!
Damon
(425) 770-2522
Diana Savage recently wrote this blog post. I was humbled and honored by her words.
I’d love to hear your feedback on her article.
In my first blog I wrote about the power of memories and I challenged everyone to take out the video camera and record the kids sharing their memories from the prior year. I finally did the same with my family on Friday.
For those that don’t know me, I have four kids-a 16 year old step-daughter, a 13 year old daughter, a 5 year old daughter and a nearly 3 year old son. On Friday we made pizza together for dinner and went upstairs to record our memories…something I try to do every year with them.
I started doing this a long time ago with a vision of pulling up the recordings of my kids sharing their favorite memories from that year with their kids. Can you imagine? Sitting together at Thanksgiving with your children and their children? You pull out a video from 2010 of mommy Monica when she was 13. Her kids see her sharing about the time when she went sledding in the late evening on the fresh snow with her dad (grandpa) when it snowed Thanksgiving week of 2010. It kinda warps the brain to think about it. I believe that Monica will watch the video and the memories will come flooding back for her as well.
How about watching mommy Amanda sharing about walking around in Old Towne San Diego with her brother and sisters? For Amanda, the memories will flood back as if she were just there. Then there is mommy Noelle. She was only 5 in the video, but her memories are as vivid as the day she was camping at Keller Ferry with her family in the motorhome and playing in the wind with her best friend. Noelle’s kids now understand why the annual camping trip to Keller Ferry with the extended family is so magical.
Nathan will be sitting there with his wife and kids. He was not even 3 years old in the video and now he has a 3 year old son of his own. He’s sharing about the fire truck he got for Christmas and decides he’s going to give his son a fire truck this year for Christmas.
Debbie and I (e.g. mom and dad, grandma and grandpa) are filled with tears and joy as our family laughs, loves, and remembers the years that we became a family. We are thankful that we decided to record these precious memories.
Will you join me and make a video of your kids sharing their memories from 2010?
Those of you that know me are probably asking yourselves “What is Damon doing writing about elegance?” I drive a 1995 Maxima that I bought for $700 about 4 years ago, I wear jeans that I bought at Costco for $15. I keep my face unshaven at most times (my wife likes it that way!). So what am I doing blogging about elegance?
What do you think of when you think of elegance? My wife says she envisions a beautiful flowing gown. My mom thinks of a beautiful woman with the dress perfectly tailored ready for a special event. This is probably the way most people think of elegance. At work, we talk about an “elegant solution” to solve problems we might have. For example, on the Windows Phone 7 you don’t have to unlock the phone to dial a phone call. That is elegant!
Last year I read the book “who’s got your back”
. This was one of my favorite books last year as a few of the concepts in the book have dramatically affected my life. The author, Keith Ferrazzi was working 80+ hours a week, feeling stressed out and tired, and really not being as productive as he would like to be. He knew he couldn’t continue living like this so he called a mentor of his. His mentor invited him out for a “Long, slow dinner”. They went out and his mentor asked him a few probing questions (don’t you love it when your mentors do this to you?). The first question he asked was how his finances were with his business-how’s the balance sheet, how’s the cash flow, do you know your money goes down to the penny. Keith was shocked-what did money have to do with where he was in his life? He didn’t come to talk about money! His mentor then zinged him with a statement that struck him to the core. Keith-you know what your problem is? Your problem is your life isn’t elegant.” Of course, Keith had the same thoughts about elegance as most of us do-he thought about how he grew up poor and always strived to live a different life than he had. He remembered the rich kids teasing him for being poor. His mentor then explained elegance.
Elegance is putting out the minimum amount of energy to get the maximum result. It’s that simple. The rest of the book describes how he achieved an elegant life by surrounding himself with people that had and/or were like he wanted to be. His claim in the book is that who we are is the “average” of our five closest friends (but this topic is for a future blog post).
I’ve spend a lot of time thinking about this new definition of elegance. I’ve searched my own life to determine how elegant my life is, and I’ve found a lot of places that were very inelegant, and have made some changes.
These are a few examples of elegance in my life. I’m able to accomplish more with less effort by striving for elegance in every area of my life. I have a lot more peace, my relationships are better, I’m healthier, I have MORE time available to do the things I want to do. One of my goals for 2011 is to live an elegant life. I’m very energized by this goal as I’ve personally experienced the benefit and the effects are now impacting those closest to me as well.
How about you? What areas of your life could benefit from an elegant solution? I want to challenge you to pick one area and strive for an elegant solution. If you get stuck, let me know, I’d love to help!