Musings

As 2025 winds down, here’s a simple gift.

I rely on a 12-week planning framework because it forces clarity, disciplined execution, and honest reflection.

I turned that approach into a one-page Weekly Planning Framework and made it into a printable PDF. No hype. No complexity. Just a clear way to decide what matters and follow through.

If you’re stepping into 2026 ready to lead your time and your work with intention, this is a good place to start.

Consider it a small nudge toward a strong start.

Wishing you a grounded close to the year—and a focused beginning to the next.

In September 2024, while filming a music video, Jon Bon Jovi saved a life.

The story: Jon was filming the video on a bridge in Nashville. Someone noticed a woman who had stepped over the guard rail on the bridge and was standing on a ledge with nothing but open air between her and the Cumberland River below. Videos and photos of Jon and a production assistant first talking to, then helping the woman off of the ledge, quickly made their way to the internet. After she stepped back over the barrier, Jon embraced the woman. He held her for a few seconds, then held her by the shoulders, and spoke to her.

Perhaps the woman might have decided not to jump. Perhaps she would have. That is unknowable. What matters is that celebrity and Grammy-winning, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Jon Bon Jovi chose to stop and hold space for another human being in pain. Where the story leads, what happens next…again, unknowable. And, I would argue, not as important as the lesson from that moment, from that day, on a bridge over the Cumberland River.

We are presented with opportunities every single day to stop and hold space for other human beings. Somewhere, someone, is in pain. The difference for them between life and death might very well be the kindness and compassion of one person. The stakes don’t have to be that high, either. Kindness and compassion from one person might be just enough to shift anger to calm, turmoil to tranquility, or sadness to hopefulness.

You don’t have to save a life to have an impact. A smile or a kind word might be enough to save a day. Like a hero in a movie.

Like that time Jon Bon Jovi saved a life.

Early in the post-pandemic days, I caught up with a friend that I hadn’t talked to in a long time. It’s always nice reconnecting. She is younger than me, and, as a result, she has younger children. My sons are young men, so the ups and downs of early childhood are just a memory for me now. My friend is living them, and she told me a story of a recent milestone. She took her four-year-old daughter with her to a friend’s house, and her daughter and her friend ran off to play while the moms sat down and hung out. Like adults do. With adult conversation and now toddlers to chase after and mind. She said the experience was fantastic and felt like something totally foreign and new. Between the demands of early parenthood and this pandemic that has kept us away from one another for so long, the milestone snuck up on her.

I remember having a toddler that wanted nothing more than to be included with his older cousins. The older kids would run off to the game room in my brother’s house, and my son would take off after them. I used to joke that it was a little like Lord of the Flies up in that space. So, I’d let me son go…but I would tag along. I’d hover, I guess you could say. I did this for so long that I forgot what it was like to sit with my brother, my sister-in-law, my parents…any adults, really. My wife and I would switch off, but there was always that distraction, the need to keep eyes and ears open for any sign that your little one was in peril.

Along came our second son, and, with him, a few more years of that hyper-vigilance.

One day, it ended. The youngest ran off with our oldest, and there we were, adult parents once again. My friend’s story really resonated with me for the obvious reason of shared experience, but it also hit me that I am, once again, in the same position. In fact, as I told my friend, this milestone, the feeling of letting go and letting your child run off to be themselves and do their own thing, is a repeating pattern. I told her she’d experience it again and again, in different ways. Regardless, the need to let go so that your children can run off and go do their own thing, be their own person, repeats itself. I can only hope and pray for her and her children that they can live through this painful cycle over and over again.

Yes, it’s a painful cycle because each time it comes, it means that your child is growing up, moving on, and taking their place in the world. While it is precisely what we wish for when we raise our children, it is a joy and blessing that is not without sacrifice. Ultimately, parenthood is about all the little sacrifices you make along the way to put your child on the path to their own adult experience.

So, here I am, once again finding myself confronted with the need to let go so both of my sons can run off to be themselves and do their own thing, this time as men, not little boys or big boys or teenagers. There’s still time to hang on to the stages my sons are in. The letting go, though, is inevitable.

To say that I’m rusty is an understatement. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to hyphenated the word “understatement.” Auto-correct (hyphenated) didn’t automatically correct it, so I assume it’s valid.

What I think and know and believe are also valid, at least as valid as the operation of any human’s mind. I still think even if I don’t write. I think, therefore I am, right? Yes, I am. I still very much am.

Just because I am rusty doesn’t mean I cannot grease the gears and start again. This isn’t a promise of rebooting or recommitting or anything of the sort. This is just a (public) acknowledgement that I am still very much alive and still very much interested in making a difference in the world. It’s also acknowledgement that I cannot make a difference if I remain silent and keep to myself.

Here’s to not keeping to myself, rusty or not.

I don’t understand how my mother ever let me leave the house. Her faith in God and other people must be that strong. I know that if I was raising children in a country where they were the minority, where their skin color made them stand out, immediately, the moment they walked out the door…well, I don’t know if I would have ever let my children leave the house.

I spent a lot of my childhood afraid. At home, we felt safe, of course, but that was at home. As I got older, though, I heard more and more stories about families like ours attacked in their homes. Women…mothers and daughters…raped as acts of violence against not just them but as warnings to all of us, those who were different. Men kidnapped at gunpoint as a means of extorting money and to satisfy a sick need to punish everyone like us. Boys killed on the street because of physical characteristics outside of their control. These things happened, and as I grew into a young man, my parents shared more and more of them. We needed to understand what we were up against, what kind of danger we were in simply because of what we looked like, the language we spoke.

When I was a small boy of maybe eight years of age, I got lost after getting off the school bus. We were still relatively new to the neighborhood, so I got off at the wrong stop. I knew was my address, but I could not find my street. I wandered for a while, slow dread rising inside me. I panicked when an aggressive dog in the street barked at me and started coming my way. I ran. Dread turned to terror. It seemed like the streets were deserted because I didn’t see a single person. If was just a labyrinth of roads, twisting and turning in ways I didn’t understand. I burst into hysterical tears. I walked for what seemed like hours to my young mind.

Then, a man approached me. I don’t know what he was really thinking, but I froze in terror. He was very different from me. His skin was a different color than mine. He spoke to me, but I could not understand his language yet, not entirely. He took a few steps closer, and I lost my shit.

That’s when he took a step back, and his entire demeanor changed. He must have understood how utterly terrified I was because he gave me my space and spoke to me more slowly, with compassion. Then I understood: “Where do you live?” I told him the street, not the home number as I’d been trained. He pointed. “That way,” he said. “Just walk that way. You will see it.”

Later, after I found my way home, I thought about that scary, different man. Different, I came to realize, does not have to be scary.

Over the years, I learned the language, the culture, and the customs. I learned to temper my own difference in an effort to fit in better. I made friends, had a few romantic relationships, and figured out how to navigate my world. But, always there was fear, just under the surface. The truth of the matter was that they weren’t different, I was different. It was their country, their culture, not mine. I was never allowed to forget that.

My parents knew a family that were burglarized, the wife and daughter both raped. Another family experienced a botched carjacking. Another man was kidnapped at gunpoint as he got out of his car to open his garage. A young man at my high school was shot dead in the street as the result of an altercation with another teenager. A group of friend witnessed a hit and run and watched the victim die in the street as the car that hit him sped off. I lost count of the number of times my school bus was attacked: rocks thrown at the bus; bus windows smashed with bricks; a man reached through an open window and punched a girl…a girl…in the face while the bus was stopped. For 11 years, we simply lived with these things.

When I turned 18 and graduated high school, I returned to the United States. For the 11 years I spent in Mexico, I longed for few things more than to simply return to the United States. Home. My country. Where I belonged.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t really belong here, either. I faced violence when I attended university in Miami, Florida. It was the early 1990’s, and Miami was a cauldron of racial tension the summer I started school. Although I spent only a semester in Miami, I witnessed racism aimed at black Americans, discrimination against Hispanic Americans, and, more intimately, was the victim of what we would now refer to as a hate crime because I proudly wore a flag around my neck that some local thugs confused with the Cuban flag. In Miami, the only thing worse than a black person is a Cuban, at least in certain parts of the city. At the end of that semester, I left Miami and did not return for over 20 years. Those few months in Miami caused me a lot of pain. It kept me away.

That pain was born in large part from confusion. I was confused. So confused. I grew up in a country, Mexico, that resented me and did not want me there. I was discriminated because of my skin color. When I returned to what I thought was my home, the United States of America, people seemed to resent me and did not want me in their community. I was discriminated against because of my ethnicity. Foreigners rejected me; my fellow patriots rejected me. I did not know how to react. I did not know what to think. I did not know how to feel.

I still don’t know how to feel.

I don’t know how to feel about my past and this present moment in my life as an American. My skin is white. I can hide in plain site. I walk in the room and maybe I’m Greek or maybe I’m Italian. Maybe I’m just a guy with dark brown (and graying) hair and, when the sun shines bright, olive skin. It’s easy to not notice me. I blend right in. Eyes sweep past me and focus on someone else, maybe someone who is black. Definitely someone who is black…

So I hide.

Hiding is painful.

On paper, though, I cannot hide because my name is undoubtedly Hispanic. Even my middle name screams “Mexican.” But I’m not Mexican. Remember: they didn’t want me? Besides, my family comes from somewhere else.

My blood is Boricua.

My island is Puerto Rico. I never lived there, but, right now, it is clear to me that this little Caribbean island is the only place I can truly claim as my own…and that can truly claim me. I would fit in there. The language, the food, the music, the people…the very earth of the island itself is familiar to me. I could buy a house, move in, and just fit in. Yes, the island is a cauldron of racial tension. There is extreme poverty. Black skin and white skin and brown skin clash regularly. There is violence. Nobody is really safe. However, there, more than anywhere, there is a vital piece of me that belongs. My story would weave easily into the larger tapestry of the island. Those are my people.

This planet is covered in places where people feel they belong. Some places are far more dangerous, some places are far better off. All places, though, especially those with other humans, are flawed and full of risk. We are hardwired to seek out “same” and keep our distance from “other.” People say hatred and racism are learned. This is true, to an extent. We are taught who to hate, what to hate, but the wiring for hatred? It’s there at birth. It’s primal. It comes from fear. It comes from an instinct to seek protection from our kin, our kind.

Love is there, too. We are wired to love. Our first love is family, the essence of “same.” But we can also learn a greater love, and this is the point I wish to make. Love is in the wiring, but it is learned just as much as hate. Our jobs, then is to teach love. Love family. Love same. Love the tribe. Love the village.

And “other” because this is where the power, real power comes from. Love in the face of difference. Love in the face of hatred. Love in the face of hatred. I once heard a question asked of a Tibetan Buddhist monk who spent over 20 years as a prisoner of the Chinese government. The interviewer asked, “What was the one thing you feared most during the years you spent in prison?” His response was immediate, “I feared losing compassion for my captors.”

Compassion is love. If you want to know what you can do when you sit in a position of power and privilege, I think the only real answer is to love. When you are angry at injustice, love. When you are furious at racism, love. When you want to tell someone off because of how ignorant they are, love. Love and choose a better path.

I used to think that the best thing I could do for my teams in the workplace was to inspire and influence so they could innovate. For years, the words embedded in my email signature were simply: Inspire. Influence. Innovation.

There is a better option: Inspire. Influence. Love.

Beyond fear, beyond anger, beyond hatred, there is love. When other emotions burn out, there is love.

In all things, love is the only path.

I’ll admit, I’ve become a sucker for the idea of resetting for a new year.

Yeah, I know it’s the way we track time using this Gregorian calendar of ours is arbitrary in so many ways, but it’s there, with clearly delineated markers of progression through the time-stream. Why not just take advantage of it?

I don’t have a good answer for “why not,” so I’ll just go with it.

2020 is a new year, filled with new possibilities. This year, my vow to myself is to think about things less and do things more. Sometimes, I simply take too long to make a decision. Soul searching and serendipitous learning over the last several years lead me to the conclusion that there are many legitimate reasons to plan and not do, but there seem to be far more…illegitimate?…reasons to stall, postpone, and defer action rather than face the proverbial music. This year, I aim to face the music more often than I have in the past.

Here’s to more condensed periods of consideration in an effort to ship more good stuff out into the world.

“Who’s it for? What’s it for?”

I could hear Seth Godin in my head. He challenges us to ask those two questions of ourselves and the work we do frequently, especially in his podcast, Akimbo. They are great questions. I am glad that he asks them and that he asks us to ask them. I find myself coming back to these questions often these days, and I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of them when talking to others. Internally, those two questions are on high rotation.

It’s no surprise that they come to mind when I overhear conversations, especially in corporate environments. So many times, it seems to me that a lot of what goes on happens without a clear understanding of who it’s for and what it’s for. I’m not implying that nobody knows the answer to those questions, but I think that, more often than not, the people doing the work are unclear as to what those answers are. It makes it hard to do the job and do it well when the who and the what are unclear. It seems unforgiveable to me that most people don’t know because it’s their manager’s job to make sure those answers make sense to the people they are entrusted by the organization to lead.

Decades of experience and research have taught me something that I am heartened to see appearing in popular business literature with greater frequency now: the employee’s experience in the workplace is largely dependent on their manager. We’ve known this for years, but the language today is clear and the research to back up the idea is plentiful. In May 2019, Gallup released the book It’s the Manager by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter. Gallup’s research has shown for years that there is a relationship between manager quality and employee engagement, organizational effectiveness, and business performance. They are not the only ones, either. The idea is not novel.

And yet…and yet here we are. If Gallup is supporting a book on the subject, the market must be there. If the market is there, it’s likely because, collectively, we still have an issue. Managers matter, and we still can’t figure out what to do with that.

Who’s it for? What’s it for?

Managers need to be able to answer those questions, and they need to be able to answer them for more than just themselves. From their direct reports to their customers to even their peers, leaders should know who it’s for and what it’s for. Whatever “it” is, the mystery should never, ever exist in the manager’s mind. If it does, then something is wrong.

Answer the questions, and you’ll probably wind up finding the answers to a lot of other questions.