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Go to any cemetery and look at a headstone. You will see a birth year. You will see a death year. And between those two dates, there is a little dash. That dash is the whole point. Nobody remembers the birth year. Nobody remembers the death year. What people remember is what happened in the dash. That is where you lived. That is where you loved people, worked hard, made mistakes, and hopefully made things right. I spent a lot of years chasing the wrong things in my dash. I se

A while back, I took my grandkids bowling. We put the bumpers up. Every ball made it down the lane. Every kid cheered. Nobody threw a gutter ball all day. It got me thinking, and not just about how bad my own score was. Bumpers exist for one reason. Gutters are real. The lane does not care how good you think you are. Even strong bowlers throw gutter balls when they get tired, distracted, or overconfident. Leaders are no different. I learned this the hard way. In over 40 years

Years ago in the Army, I pulled a lot of night duty. Standing post at 2 a.m. is not exciting. Nothing happens most nights. You just stand there, awake, watching, while everyone else sleeps. But here is what nobody tells you about standing post. The job is not really about staying awake. It is about staying faithful when no one is watching. That is the whole job. And it turns out, that is the whole job of leadership too. Most leadership advice talks about the big moments, the