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Foreign I'm David Henson and I serve as Campus CIO with Bolden Networks for Higher Education. Welcome to Control Alt Lead. When I'm not being dad or thinking about technology and all things higher education, I do try to go out and carve some time each week to get out and perform with my guitar. Regardless of where I happen to be in the world. It certainly beats sitting around a hotel room all by myself in a strange town many hundreds of miles away from home. And it's a terrific way to go out and make connections and uncover places well off the beaten path. People in places that I would otherwise never discover. I'm happy to say that my avocation has made me many friends across the country, from St. Joe to Philly to Chicago to D.C. to Knoxville and all points in between. One of my go to stage banner lines is by day I'm an evil college administrator. This music thing is just my fallback in case higher education doesn't work out for me many days. I certainly feel this a lot more than others. I recently played at an industry event inside of our company's booth. I was asked afterwards, how many songs do you know? And how many could I perform on command? Truthfully, I answered four to 500 songs, and I could possibly fake my way through several more if I was asked or paid. You see, when I play, I don't have music in front of me. It's just me, a mic, an amp, and a guitar. Less to go wrong and much less to interfere with me connecting directly with my audience. Over prepared? Yeah, maybe. But you never know if you're going to walk into a room where all they want to hear is Morgan Wallen or Tyler Childers or Jason Isbell, or if they just want to hear Radiohead, Pink Floyd and the Cure. Regardless, you gotta be ready to play like it's your job. In the last episode, I spoke of the need to successfully navigate change and the necessity to plan and design for change. Inherent in that premise is being prepared. Overly prepared. Ready to work and ready to play. Now, for as long as I can remember, I've always been the first one to show up. Sports meetings, presentations. My wife is overly fond of reminding me that the punctual man is actually the lonely man. She's not wrong, and it certainly makes me a less than popular party guest, but thankfully I'm rarely the last to leave, so it all balances out. But my quirky habit of being chronically early and overly prepared has served me in extremely good stead for well over a half century. Over preparing and being first has enabled me to hold my own in situations where, by all rights I really shouldn't belong and much less succeed and thrive. But I could and I did, because I was ready often when others weren't. When I am mentoring up and coming leaders, one of the first things that I have them focus upon are specific practices of mindfulness, intention, and preparedness to become better leaders and better colleagues. Because when you show up prepared, your meetings are more efficient. Because when you show up early and ready, you demonstrate to others that you value their time and have made them a priority. Because when you give yourself the time and space to address the unexpected with options, if not grace, then it makes others see you as competent and confident like you've been there before. Because when you are mindful and intentional, you're more focused on the task at hand, planning for what is needful and what could potentially go wrong. Thinking proactively, thinking left of bang. Because being ready puts you and keeps you in the game when you otherwise would not be I'm sure you've all heard some variant of this proverb usually attributed to Ben Franklin for want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For the want of a rider, the battle was lost. For the want of a battle, the kingdom was lost. All for the want of a nail. So here are my nuggets of wisdom that I cultivate with my mentees to help them structure mindfulness, intention and preparedness into their nascent professional development practices. At the end of each day, ask them to look ahead to the next day's calendar to see what's first up when they hit the ground so that they're mentally ready and have all the tools at hand that they will need to succeed. Before each meeting that they conduct, I asked them also to share an agenda well ahead of time with their anticipated outcomes. Clearly stated the meeting invite. I tell them be early to work with everything that they will need ready to work when the whistle blows. I highly encourage them to be early to each and every meeting and then try to finish on time because it shows respect to everyone in the room. Show up early, find the room, bring more gear than you'll ever need, know how to receive and ask for help and double check every equipment, contingency your clickers, screens, mics, batteries. Don't simply show up expecting everything to be perfect because it never will be. Finally, I'd like to add one additional bonus help that I give to my mentees for preparedness, and that's to prepare and maintain a personal type 5 that is a topic or subject that you can extemporaneously riff upon without any notes for up to five to 10 minutes. I used to work for a president that would call upon me consistently on the regular to speak to any number of topics on the spot, unprompted with students, faculty, trustees, donors, you name it. I learned that I needed to have my type 5 always at top of mind for that unexpected but honestly expected presidential command performance. Normally this would be the place where I would simply say that luck is where preparation meets opportunity. Instead, I would ask you to think of those times in your life, personally and professionally, when something amazing happened. When you were in the right place at the right time. Was that attributable simply to blind luck, or were you just ready for the moment? What would you do to greatly multiply the number of right places, the number of right times that you were there for, if it could mean the difference between success and failure? Last week I was out at a club listening to some friends play and perform some music. They began a song in particular and got a few bars in and it became quite clear that the vocalist didn't know or had just forgotten the lyrics. Up from the stage. Someone saw me out in the crowd and asked me to join the band because I knew the song and they had heard me play it before. So I went up. I was game to play and for the next few minutes we made some musical magic together because I was ready. Ready to play. Be ready to play. Be ready to make your own magic. Be ready to go out and create your own luck. Thanks for listening and I'll see you soon.