Category Archives: Growing up

November 7, 2013 · 11:30 am

Oh, The Places You’ll Go

Anyone who thinks Dr. Seuss was writing children’s books didn’t read them very carefully.

Cover of "Oh, the Places You'll Go!"

I was reminded of that a couple of times recently when the same book – Oh The Places You’ll Go – came up.  It was the last book of his that was published before he died in 1990 and it’s a favorite of mine.  I thought I’d point out a few of the business lessons the good doctor teaches us in that slim but important volume.

First, the importance of self-determination:

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.

Too often, we think of ourselves and/or our businesses as just pawns in some game being played out by an unseen hand (to use an economic term).  While packing up and leaving a job or changing the fundamental nature of a business is never a decision taken lightly, it’s an equally bad notion to be miserable or in a business that’s doomed to fail.

Next, he reminds us of the importance of setting priorities in both business and life as well as the importance of being a good person:

So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.

Twenty words that say hundreds!  Next, one thing the book cautions against is delusional thinking:

On and on you will hike
and I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

That’s one of the more important business points that is most widely ignored.  How often does a staff listen to a boss’s motivational speech about how well everything is going and snicker because they know the reality looks nothing like what he’s saying?  How many executives interpret numbers in ways that always make them seem better than they really are?

Finally, another point I see all the time – negotiating against ourselves:

I’m afraid that some times
you’ll play lonely games too.
Games you can’t win
’cause you’ll play against you.

It’s a no-win game and we often talk ourselves out of proposing new ideas or better business terms because we tell ourselves “that will never work.”  It might not, but what ever it is definitely won’t happen if you talk yourself out of trying.

If you have a copy of the book in the house, the 5 minutes it would take to read it again would be time well spent.  Even better – if you have an older child, do something you haven’t done with them probably since they were 5 or 6 – read it to them.  After all, it’s not a book for children! Then let us know what they said.

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October 8, 2013 · 10:31 am

My Reunion – Part 2

Today is TunesDay and for our song today I’m using the tune I had as my quote under my senior picture from high school.  I’m going to use it as the jumping off point from which to finish yesterday’s thoughts about attending my 40th high school reunion.  The song – a very brief one – is Simon and Garfunkel‘s Bookends:

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you

Way back in 1973 this was music (from 1968!) that was a quiet reflection on old age and loss that was very much NOT on the minds of my generation at that time.  It sure was the other night as we read off and remembered the names of our classmates who had passed since we graduated.  It will probably take a lot longer to do so at the next reunion…

The song tells us to preserve our memories and as we discussed yesterday, technology has made that incredibly easy, as it has to do so in a collaborative way.  The hundreds of photos snapped Saturday are already all over Facebook and I’ve exchanged messages with some folks with whom I really didn’t get to spend enough time.  But there are some business points I thought about as well.

First, customers’ memories are being preserved.  More importantly, they’re out there for everyone to see so you want them to be really good memories.  Just as I was able to improve the quality of my exchanges with people I hadn’t seen but knew about from the web, customers coming to you will probably have expectations that are created in large part by the memories of others.

Second, the conversations at this reunion were different.  Most of us were parents at the last one; now some of us are grandparents.  While we used to talk about our new jobs and our aspirations, the conversations now turned to  other topics:  health and retirement being among the top ones.  Your relationship with your customers changes over time as well, so the manner in which you interact as well as the nature of the conversation needs to morph.

I had a few other thoughts but I want to leave you with this one.  Some of the people I saw over the weekend were close friends then.  Some were people I barely knew and rarely spoke with outside of a classroom.  A very few were even people I didn’t particularly like back then.  Now, my close friends are closer and the other crap is long forgotten.  The 100 people in the room Saturday night had way more in common than any of the millions of other folks we’ve encountered in our lives no matter what differences we may have had 40 years ago.  I think many of us appreciated that.  As we gathered for photos with our elementary school class, we hugged people we’d known literally for over 50 years.  A time of innocence indeed, and we’d all transitioned out of it together.  I didn’t know at the time I chose that quote how spot on it was to be.  I sure do now.

Oh – are you waiting for the business point?  OK – it’s this: business is transitory.  You can change careers and companies over night.  You can’t, however, change the people with whom you grew up.  Your shared history is what makes you what you are.  Preserve those memories – you have the tools and the collaborators.  You’ll regret it if you don’t.

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October 7, 2013 · 10:23 am

My Reunion – Part One

Over the weekend I attended the 40th reunion of my high school class.  There were about 100 of us which represented about a quarter of the graduates.  A few folks came from very far away – Australia being the longest distance – although many of us still live within an hour’s drive to the town where we went to school.  We’ve had these before but this one was very different.  Over the course of today and tomorrow’s TunesDay post I’d like to point out a few things I noticed and which might be helpful to you from a business – and personal – perspective.

The biggest difference seemed to be Facebook.  10 years ago when we did this Facebook had not yet started.  There was social networking but it wasn’t really widespread and my generation is generally late to the tech game anyway.  Communication of the event came via email (to some) and snail mail (to most) and by word of mouth from classmate to classmate.  The planning wasn’t very collaborative – a committee did the planning with very little guidance from the rest of the class.

The event itself was fun.  While many people took photos, I’ve seen only a few of them over the years.  After all, they had to be developed and printed and either mailed or scanned for me to have seen them.  I spent much of the evening catching up – finding out about families and careers and sharing what I’d been doing.  It truly was a reunion – a reuniting of a group that had been separated.

Fast forward to last weekend.  Much of the planning was done via Facebook.  A small group began as invitation only and we all added classmates it grew rapidly.  Decisions were taken with input from the group.  Moreover, there was already a Class of ’73 group that was non-reunion specific (we’ve all had reminders to find people we went to school with on Facebook, I’m sure).  We could “friend” the group as well as the individuals within it.  What that meant was a few things.  First and foremost, the physical transformations most of us have gone through were less jarring since we’d seen them already.  It also took far less time to figure out who was whom (the trick by the way is to look into people’s eyes – they really don’t change that much and it call comes back to you).

I had the experience of shaking the hand of a guy I had not seen in person in 40 years – literally since graduation.  That said, we picked right up as if I’d just seen him last week – and I had.  We’ve been Facebook buddies for a couple of years.  I know about him, his family, and his business and I had that experience many times over the course of the evening.  Given the limited time of the evening, it was possible to speak with far more people in-depth since we didn’t need to spend time on catching up and making small talk.  I probably spent more time with the folks NOT on Facebook or who aren’t my “friends”.  Many people came up to me unsolicited to talk about what I’d been up to – they already knew quite a bit from the screed and LinkedIn and elsewhere.  It was very different!

Tomorrow I’ll talk about what this all means as well as add a few more thoughts.  Feel free to weigh in during the interim!

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