Not All Time is Equal

Most of our leadership happens in ordinary, everyday moments and days. We answer the emails, run the meetings, attend the events and generally keep the work moving. Then, without warning, a moment arrives that is anything but ordinary. A crisis breaks. A door opens. An outcome we've been waiting for is finally a ‘yes’. In those moments, an ordinary/everyday response would be the wrong response.

In What to Make of a Life, Jim Collins gives these moments a name: NATILIE moments, short for Not All Time In Life Is Equal. Collins traces the idea to his research with Morten Hansen, the same work that produced their concept of return on luck that I wrote on in an earlier blog.

Every one of us will face these moments. Collins writes that the question "is not whether you will get NATILIE moments in life" but "whether you meet those unequal moments with unequal intensity." Talking with Tim Ferriss about the book, he put it even more plainly: "it requires an unequal response to an unequal moment."

Collins tells how his mentor Bill Lazier framed one of these moments for him. It was, Lazier said, "like you unexpectedly got to pitch in Yankee Stadium." You don't get many chances to pitch in Yankee Stadium. When you do, you definitely don't throw the way you would in the backyard!

What This Asks of Leaders

Recognize the moment. NATILIE moments rarely come labeled. A struggling team member asks for help. A board member offers a candid warning. A community crisis puts every eye on you. The first act of leadership is noticing that this hour is not like the others.

Summon your best. Collins describes it as "summoning the best you have to give when the moment comes." That may mean clearing the calendar, staying late, or bringing your full attention to one conversation instead of half your attention to ten.

Build reserves in ordinary time. We can't give an unequal response from an empty tank. Rest, relationships and preparation in the quiet seasons are what make intensity possible when it counts.

Help others see their moments. As superintendent, I watched young administrators meet their own ‘Yankee Stadium’ moments. Sometimes the most important thing I did was simply name it for them: this one matters. Give it everything.

Don't treat every day as a NATILIE moment. If everything is urgent, nothing is. (This one is a challenge for me!) Leaders who run at full urgency and intensity all the time burn out themselves and their teams. The discipline is in knowing the difference.

Your Bit of Courage This Week

It takes courage to recognize when a moment is bigger than the day it lands in, and even more courage to rise to it.

This week, look back at one NATILIE moment in your leadership. Did you meet it with unequal intensity? And look ahead: what moment or moments might be coming that deserves your very best?