Category Archives: Reality checks

September 10, 2013 · 9:59 am

You Don’t Have To Cry

Today is TunesDay and so it’s into the world of music for a little business insight. I was driving the other day and one of “those” songs came on. You know them – tunes you adore and can’t get out of your head but you never hear much any more. It was Crosby, Stills, & Nash‘s “You Don’t Have To Cry,” which they will tell you is the first song they ever sang together. Its harmonies are the personification of ethereal and it’s a lesson in blending individuals into a unit. But that’s not our topic today!

First, have a listen:

Here are the words that spoke to me:

Are you thinkin’ of telephones
And managers and where you got to be at noon?

You are living a reality
I left years ago, it quite nearly killed me
In the long run it will make you cry
Make you crazy and old before your time
And the difference between me and you
I won’t argue right or wrong but I have time to cry my baby

Having lived the life of telephones and noon meetings, I can tell you that it is a reality that can kill you.  The business point today is that we all need to find that “time to cry” or laugh or sing or do whatever returns our breathing to normal and our frenetic brains to a state of calm.  It’s harder now.  Mobile devices are always at our sides (or on our heads and wrists!) and the pressure to participate in the social stream that engulfs your friends and family is big.   Something is “always on” and pleading for our attention.

It’s not easy to disconnect – maybe impossible other than in limited doses.  But unless “crazy and old” is your objective, you need to find that figurative time to cry, even in brief segments.  That’s how our business lives remain what we do to live and not who we are.  You with me?

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September 6, 2013 · 9:06 am

The Sous Chef

Foodie Friday! I’ve been watching Top Chef Masters (I know – huge surprise) again this season. The twist this year is the presence of a sous chef brought into the competition by each of the masters. For those of you unfamiliar with the pecking order in a kitchen, a sous chef is, literally, an “under” chef. They’re the number two person in kitchen. While the executive chef or chef de cuisine sets the menu, it’s the sous chef that make sure that menu is executed daily to the chef’s standards.  The sous chef also creates the daily specials but this is a real understatement of their responsibilities.  Frankly, the main task of the sous chef is to keep the kitchen from falling to pieces.

The competition this season revolves around how well the sous chef performs in a series of contests  among the other sous chefs.  A sous chef not doing well can dramatically impact the master chef’s chance in the main competition.  Conversely, their sous chef winning can give the master chef immunity from elimination without them having to lift a finger.  Pretty sweet when your subordinate can throw that kind of protective wrapper around you!  Which is of course, the business point.

Throughout my professional career I was blessed with incredible sous chefs.  Of course, in the business world they’re called something else – assistants, secretaries, whatever.  They made me look good when I was having a bad day, they kept me on task and on time, and when I wasn’t able to handle a task directly they had the knowledge and intelligence to step up and get things done as I would have.  In a kitchen, the sous chef’s role is to back your chef, no matter what, at least to the rest of the world. What we would discuss or fight about was for us and never (to my knowledge) made it to the rest of the staff.

The best assistants were of the rest of the team but not really in the rest of the team.  Everyone loved them but respected their positions as well as the fact that they could speak for the boss when the boss was otherwise occupied.   Why do I bring this up?

Too many executives underestimate the value of a great right hand.   It could be your assistant, maybe it’s another executive on your staff.   No matter what, every great executive I’ve known has someone who can stand in their stead and make sure things run smoothly until the boss can step back in.  If there is no one with whom you work that can do this, you need to do one of two things:  find someone, or get ready to get replaced.

Here’s to sous chefs everywhere – in kitchens and in cubicles!

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August 28, 2013 · 8:32 am

Having A Dream

Today is the 50th anniversary of the “I Have A Dream speech Dr. King gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  I began to write about him and my memories and then I realized I had already done so in 2009.  In reading it again, the thoughts seem appropriate to today as well so here is it once more, albeit slightly edited.

I’m old enough to remember Dr. Martin Luther King and while he didn’t light the fire of the civil rights movement in the US (I’d say Rosa Parks is that hero), he certainly brought the fire to life and tended it well until his assassination (and I remember that as well – how horrible a day it was!).

Martin Luther King, Jr.

What inspired me, a young (then) white kid was his notion of bringing a dream to reality. OK, the words and delivery were pretty inspirational too, even when you read them off a page. Yesterday the Inauguration Committee had a concert on the very place where Dr. King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech to celebrate, nearly 46 years later, a big piece of that speech coming to reality. One can’t help but wonder what Dr.King would have felt and said – he certainly should still be alive – he’d just be turning 80.

Robert Kennedy said “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”  I think that’s great business advice as well, even if George Bernard Shaw had the notion before Bobby.  Mark Twain wrote that “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

So today, I celebrate Dr. King’s dreaming of a better world and making it happen.  Tomorrow, we can watch it become real.  What are you dreaming of?  Can it be real?  Why not?  Or better – why not!!

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