Simply The Best

What a strange and wonderful weekend.  Tom Watson‘s wonderful performance, Walter Cronkite‘s passing, and an anniversary (not mine!) that shows what we can accomplish if we all think “can” and not focus on “can’t”.  So much inspiration, some sadness, but mostly amazement along with a few lessons.Watson first.  Professional golf has become a game where brute physical strength, married to technology, has taken too prominent a role.  “Bomb and gouge” (meaning hit it a long way no matter where it goes and then use the great wedge technology to gouge it on the green) and not a lot of rough in the typical Tour event has replaced some (but certainly not all!) of the skill.  The one thing Watson showed this weekend is that thinking one’s way around a course can overcome lesser physical abilities.  He kept talking about the “spirituality” of Turnberry and displayed, until the playoff, an aura of calm and a certainty about his game plan.  What great lessons!

We tend to depend too much on technology and too little on our own innate brain power in business.  As I watch a lot of senior, experienced folks (read that as expensive) get shoved out, I can’t help but think about the brain power that’s marching out a lot of companies’ doors.  Even though Watson had the great technology at his disposal, he used it wisely, often choosing to hit a shorter shot to take advantage of better, safer positions.  Interestingly to me, his one failure was the lack of a professional caddy on his bag, maybe one whose experience would have reminded Tom to hit one less club going into the 72nd hole since he was pumped up with adrenaline.

Walter Cronkite was and is the standard by which reporting should be measured.  There are too many ridiculous voices out there now.  While I’m certainly in favor of allowing everyone to participate in the conversation, news is different since it’s supposed to report facts and not rumors or things the reporter has made up out of whole cloth.

When Cronkite said it, it was true.  He had no agenda other than to inform.  There are hundreds of clips available on the web and what strikes you as you watch them is how factual and balanced they are.  No anonymous sources, no guess work.  I’m sure he had strong views on what TV news has become and I hope they’re written down someplace so we can see them.

The lesson here is that we can’t just listen to what we want to hear as business leaders.  We need to find out the real facts and give credence only to those sources that are unbiased and real.  Walter never deluded us, kept his humanity (and showed it), and the news has never been the same since he left the air.

Finally, the moon landing.  I was at camp when Armstrong walked out on the moon.  They woke us up to watch on a little TV and it was unforgettable.  Not even 10 years earlier, President Kennedy challenged us as a notion to do this and we did.  The question wasn’t “should we” but “how will we” and out of that challenge came inspiration, a ton of new technologies, lots of heroes, and a sense that anything is possible.  Imagine what might have been if some subsequent president had issued that same challenge on energy, the environment, or any of the other problems that face us and the rest of the world and we had responded in the same way.

When challenges face your business, is it about “how will we” or a list of 100 reasons why NOT to do something?

Sorry for the longish post – I could go on about each of these topics for pages but what have you taken away from each one?  What a weekend!