November 13, 2009

Yo DaVita!

Sorry for the long gap.  Two reasons — (1) I typically catch up on email on plane flights and weekends, and this week my plane flights have been filled with other work, and (2) I have a cold, which has cost me some time and positive energy.

The week started well with a healthy Monday am exercise session.   24 strong minutes on the bike, some weights and stretching, overall 35 good minutes.  1 diet coke in the all day meetings.  I was going south as the day progressed, and by the time my business dinner was over at 9:30 pm I knew I was in trouble and pushed back the start of the next day to 10 am.

I went home, went to bed, decided not to set the alarm to get up and exercise, and instead slept until 9 am the next day.  Usually sleep is my best way of nipping things like this in the bud, and it might have worked this time if I had not decided to stick to my schedule to fly to the Casa in Los Angeles that night.  We made sure I did not get close to any of the people I was meeting with all day.  We ended the meetings at 6:30 pm, I went home, finished packing, wolfed down some food and headed to the airport.  I worked with our CFO on the plane, and got to the hotel about 11 pm, and lights out about midnight.  1.5 diet cokes.

Solid exercise on Wednesday am, which may or may not have been smart, since I find that exercising when I am a bit sick can be a bad thing.  20 minutes on the bike, 10 minutes of other stuff, total of 30. I flew to LA for one reason only, that being to do a town hall with a DaVita University class, about 40 wonderful leaders in the midst of a 4 day class.   It was great to get their questions and comments, and made me feel better!

Then I flew on to Chicago to co-teach a class on Leadership at the Northwestern Kellogg Business School.   My doing this helps us get new ideas, and helps us recruit great new people.  DaVita is the only company in America being asked to speak at the leadership classes of each the three top business schools in America this fall, Harvard, Stanford and Northwestern.  The outside world is most impressed by what you guys have done, are doing, and aspire to do!  Please remember, leadership is not a function of position, it is a function of behavior.  Anyone can be a leader.

But physically I was going downhill.  The class went until 9:45 pm, and then I returned to the airport to fly to Washington DC.  The plane taxied out to the runway, and then we heard the dreaded words “We have a warning light on that is not supposed to be on, we need to check it out.”  One hour later they determined that plane was going nowhere that night.  Back to the terminal, into a car to a nearby hotel, lights out a bit after 1 am, and I was not feeling so well.

A sliver of good news for that day — zero diet cokes.

Up early to catch another plane to DC on Thursday morning, no way to do a workout before then given the late bedtime.  But what I did was cancel a meeting late in the day, right before my working dinner with one of the members of our Board of Directors, and raced back to the hotel and got in 20 minutes on the bike and 10 minutes of stretching and push-ups, etc.  Total of 30 minutes.

The dinner with the Director was over at 8:30, and I was dying to go to my hotel room for an early night, but it was a friend’s birthday.  He and his family had just moved to DC from Poland, and there were no other friends in the area … so 40 minutes of driving later I joined them in some birthday cheer, trying hard to avoid spreading any germs of course.  This made for another late night.  I imagine a lot of you face the same challenge of finding the time and energy to maintain close friendships.  I am glad I went to help him honor his birthday.  Only 1 diet coke on the day.

Which brings us to today, Friday.  I had to start working as soon as I got up this morning, and now I am on a plane to Denver.  I should be able to workout before Denise and I go out to dinner tonight.  We take possession of our new home tomorrow, which is exciting.  The only negative is that I do not have a bike to do one of my long weekend bike rides, we will not be near any dirt running trails and I cannot run on hard surfaces anymore,  and we will be scrambling big time to start buying furniture, winter clothes ,etc — so it will be hard to get in the big weekend minutes I am used to.

I hope you all had successful weeks.  My guess is my weight popped up a bit, but nothing major.

Let’s keep it up!

KT