ARTICLES BY DR. ANDY NEILLIE, CSP
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A Critical Eye Without a Critical Spirit
CrossFit changed my life
If you read my last blog post, you know that since we all got off the road in the Spring of 2020, I’ve become more of a gym rat and have fallen in love with our CrossFit gym: UpReach CrossFit in Austin. One of the best things about discovering CrossFit is discovering the amazing coaches that come along with it. Coach Paige is one of those amazing coaches. She leads our twice-a-week Olympic Lifting class for members who want to work on these more technical lifts like dead lifts,…
Barbells, Community and Influence
Like quite a few of us, in early 2020, my wife’s and my work went from all travel to all Zoom almost overnight. Instead of frantically racing through airports each week, I was having to navigate the new world of virtual meetings. Cameras and microphones, breakout rooms, internet outages, learning to use “Speedtest.net,” – you name it – we dealt with it!
To help combat the hours of leading Zoom meetings each day,
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Grace for the Present
I recently went to a church service with some friends where the pastor talked through the age-old story of when Jesus walks on the water and calms his disciples during a storm. His point from the message? At times, there may be big storms raging, and big questions unanswered, but you just need to live in “Grace for the Present.”
Over the last two (!) years throughout this pandemic,
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Four Leadership Reflections from a Snow Day in Austin
It snowed in Austin on Sunday. Real snow. For hours. If you are from the Midwest or Mountain States, what we had may not qualify as “real snow” in your opinion. But for us, the flurries swirled for 6+ hours and the local weather reporting station declared an inch-and-a-half of total snowfall between 9a and 3p. Several Austin suburbs recorded 5 inches or more.
Such fun! We’ve lived in Austin for more than 20 years.
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It’s the Little Things That Matter Most – Two Best Practices for Leaders
Unlike any year since 1995, in the past nine months I haven’t been on a single airplane. But I have been in our kitchen. In fact, during this time I’ve gone from being our grocery-store errand-runner and prep chopper to full-blown chef (*with a pretty large disclaimer).
Indeed, one night last week I made “Creamy Pasta and Kale.” In addition to the pasta and kale, my recipe included garlic, rosemary, verjus blanc (BTW: if you have no clue what “verjus blanc” is,
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Mickey is Better, But Not Where We Wish He Was
Mickey is better, but not where we wish he was. And he probably never will be.
We rescued Mickey four years ago. He is rescue #9 for us over the last 30+ years. Like many rescued pets, Mickey’s story has some sadness to it. He was not given the vaccinations he needed as a puppy and developed distemper. While he survived, his neurological system didn’t develop correctly.
The vast majority of the time Mickey is just fine.
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Help! I’m running out of soap!
It has been more than six months since I got off an airplane. Normally by this time of year I would have well over 100,000 air miles as I criss-cross the US for client engagements.
And now I’m fast approaching a crisis situation: after stockpiling hotel soap for the past 20+ years – and avoiding the grocery store soap aisle since the 1990s – I’m down to just a few,
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Your Managers Are Costing You a Lot of Money
Your managers are costing you a lot of money. $360 billion dollars this year alone.
It doesn’t show up directly as a line item on any P&L. But your bad managers are costing you. A lot.
According to several recent studies by Pepperdine University, Inc. Magazine and other organizations, 50% of your people who work under a bad boss plan to look for a new job in the near future.
Three out of four employees say their boss is the worst part of their job.
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How Are Your Tomatoes Doing?
One of the bright spots for my wife and me in late March occurred when we realized: we could finally try our hands at a raised garden. After flying almost weekly for years, we now stared into months with no travel on the calendar.
A trip to Austin-iconic Shoal Creek Nursery and we were in business: four large-looking plastic raised gardens, instructions included, along with tomato, bell pepper and cucumber seedlings as well as two packages of green bean seeds.
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