One of the requirements of consulting is travel. Depending on your point of view and your ability to deal with airports, this may or may not be viewed as a positive for you. Early in my career I traveled a lot. One year I “racked up” 150 segments and believe me in hindsight that was not something to brag about. As one of the younger consultants on staff, I was always assigned the the accounts and locations that no one else wanted. One assignment in particularly took me to a remote location in Louisiana. The client location was about two hours to the closest airport so when I landed I still had quite a drive ahead of me. Additionally, weather delays set me back several hours so I arrived at my hotel about one o’clock in the morning. Here’s a couple things I noticed as I pulled into the town and subsequently into the hotel. First, this was the only hotel in the town and all the rooms opened to the outside which always give pause to business travelers. Second, the only restaurant was a Huddle House next to the motel. I think you’re starting to get the picture of just how remote this was.

So, as I checked in there was a nice gentleman behind bullet proof glass who had a think southern accent. He proceeded to slide the key, yes the key not the key “card” to me under the glass. My exhaustion outweighed my concern for the accommodations. As a road warrior, you learn habits that make business travel easier. One that I always followed was to remove the comforter from a hotel bedroom, it’s full of germs and housekeeping never washes them. Another one is to never eat sushi in Johnson City, Tennessee, but that is a story for another blog post. So, as I entered my room I set my luggage in the corner and immediately removed the comforter and threw it in the other corner. As I removed the comforter, I immediately noticed four to five ants scurry across the bed. I quickly swatted them off the bed and assumed the comforter was the culprit. Again, my exhaustion was obviously affecting my judgement. I quickly drifted off to sleep. Throughout the night as I moved in and out of deep sleep, I kept dreaming about ants crawling all over me.

My alarm went off promptly at 6am, I showered, dressed and headed out to the client. Before heading out, I left a note for housekeeping to remove the comforter because it had ants in it. I actually finished up a little early at the client and was heading back to the hotel. I was happy because I was going to catch a workout before my fine dining experience at Huddle House. As I turned the corner toward the entrance to my room, I noticed everything was out of my room including my luggage, mattress, and furniture! Additionally, I saw two dudes that looked like they were straight out of Breaking Bad sporting full hazmat suits! I stopped in front of the room absolutely speechless! Out came one of the men and stopped and with a deep southern drawl behind a mask said, “Man, is this your room? There were ants all over the place, in the wall, under the bed, in the mattress!” Let’s just say my excitement for a quick workout and Huddle House quickly went away. Then he directed to the manager’s office with my luggage because my room was now off limits due to the infestation.

As I walked into the office, the manager immediately met me at the door apologizing for the situation and was happy to inform me that he was able to upgrade my room to the honeymoon suite because of the inconvenience. I paused, because I was quickly trying to assess my options, take the honeymoon suite because I was only in town for one more night, or travel to the closest hotel which was more than an hour away. I’ve got to be honest, the older me would of made that drive, but the younger me grabbed the key to the honeymoon suite, ordered take out from Huddle House and took a bath in the heart shaped jacuzzi!

I know that was a funny story and true by the way, but it was really used as an illustration to set up some key areas of learning that I have developed over the years. It’s all around trusting your instincts as a leader. The parallel to the story is around, if I would have trusted my instincts early when I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel and dealt with the extra hour of drive time, I would have avoided the “ant apocalypse”.

Where this applies in my day to day leadership:

1. Trust your instincts but validate with data other people you trust. All I needed to do was check the Google rating or call the client, and I would have easily found out this hotel was not up to standard.
2. With tough decisions, there is usually not just one and as a result there are multiple points for you to relay on your original instinct to make a pivot if necessary. There were multiple times I could have left and checked out of that hotel for a cleaner one, but I let fatigue and convenience take precident.
3. Last point is an extension of number two. Once you acknowledge your instinct and verify, the change or pivot is typically a more difficult path. If I had chosen to check out of that hotel, I had an hour drive in the middle of the night when I was travel weary and sleepy.

As I reflect on my career there are a couple of areas where I routinely lean on these three key points from above:

1. Talent and culture: People in most organizations are the product or make the product. Never compromise in this area, recruit the best people and treat people the best.
2. Sales: Fancy slides, tag lines and email follow-ups only get you so far, there is a certain level of instinct that is required to get to the close.