THE ENTERPRISE
We just wrapped up the Ninth Reunion Conference "A World of Change and Opportunity." This is an invitation-only roundtable event I started nine years ago. Many of the recipients of THE ENTERPRISE have either been invited in the past or have attended one or more conferences. At or near the conclusion of this year's conference, I was struck by a conclusion so important I decided to share it here.
---THE REUNION CONFERENCE
I started hosting this conference planning to invite friends and associates, which usually yielded an eclectic mixture of practicing executives, former executives, owners/entrepreneurs, educators and consultants (many of whom occupied one or more of those categories during their career.) The purpose was to provide a brief but fun interlude and a stimulating/thought-provoking experience. For busy executives, it was an opportunity to stop, pause, think and seriously consider the important aspects of the their life and career--job, company, strategies, priorities and lives
This year we had fewer "practicing executives" than ever before. Several of those who fell into that category were the owners/principals of their companies--usually smaller companies than ever before. It seems that many others who were invited were too busy to take the time to stop and think about the direction they are heading. In his best selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey wrote about the P and PC balance. P was "production"--of desired results. PC was "production capability" or the preparing, learning, adding ability and assets that are instrumental in getting the results. If either one gets badly out of balance, the quality and quantity of a manager's performance declines. But how often do most executives even consider this concept?
---TOO BUSY TO STOP AND THINK?
Covey also wrote about a related topic that changed my life forever. He wrote about how often we struggle to climb the ladder of success, never stopping to see if it is leaning against the right wall. And yet, managers and executives are too busy to take a break to actually think about their job, their company, their career, their country and their life. How sad it made me. And how grateful, that I was fortunate enough to be able to share the 2-1/2 days with 20 diverse and brilliant people--and how much richer I am for the experience.
A specific topic of discussion was a frequent lack of leadership (in a variety of settings) and the role of CEOs/Top Executives that we knew--and others we observed from afar. Unfortunately, few CEOs were there to defend themselves against criticism or to add their breadth and depth of perspective to the discussion. Perhaps next year can be different. For those who are interested in The Reunion Conference series, you can learn more about it at this site: http://www.shape-shifters.com/reunion.shtml If you think you might enjoy attending it, contact me by email and let's discuss that. Next year's date is not set yet, but it is likely to be in the 2nd or 3rd week of Sept., somewhere in Central Ohio.
I'd like to close this edition of THE ENTERPRISE with something you may have seen before, but was so good, and so moving, it bears repeating.
STEVE JOBS TELLS IT LIKE HE MEANS IT
Earlier this year, Steve Jobs spoke to the graduates at Stanford. His profound and moving comments are presented in FORTUNE (Sept. 5, 2005, pp. 31-32). For those readers who either don't get FORTUNE or didn't read this, I'd like to choose a few of the most memorable things he said. These are incredibly thoughtful words from a man whose life and career has both plumbed the depths of failure or despair and tasted the heights of great success.
Jobs relates three stories from his life. The first is about “connecting the dots” and figuring out what to do with his life. He recounts dropping out of college rather than waste his parents' life savings, and “dropping in on the ones [classes] that looked interesting.”
---“It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk 7 miles across town every Sunday to get one good meal at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.”
He describes how dropping in on a calligraphy class influence him to add the beautiful font capabilities in the first Macs. But he also points out that you can't “connect the dots” looking forward-just by looking backward.
His second story is about how much he loved creating the Mac and the impact of getting fired from Apple-which he says,
---“…it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could ever have happened to me…. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” It was in this era that he started NeXT which ultimately was sold to Apple and was the basis for the current Apple renaissance. He also started Pixar, the first, and so far, most successful computer animation studio in the world.
His third story is the one that moved me. It is about facing death from pancreatic cancer just over a year ago. (It turned out to be a rare form of the cancer, which was curable by surgery. Most forms of pancreatic cancer are fatal.) Here are some of Jobs' words.
---“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything-all the expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure-these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”
He describes the emotions of realizing that he had what was likely a terminal cancer, then after a day of living with the diagnosis, the relief of learning that his cancer could be cured. His next words were moving and profound.
---“This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you… No one wants to die. … And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. …It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
Clearly, his close brush with death caused Steve Jobs to be much more introspective, and it is this introspection that we can all learn from, as he goes on speaking.
--“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
His final conclusion comes from a reflection on the final issue of The Whole Earth Catalog, a publication that he greatly admired.
---“On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early-morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
We are all tempted to do just the opposite: to stay secure and well-fed; to stay serious and responsible. I am certainly controlled by this conservative philosophy too much of the time. Every time I get thinking too much that way, I somehow recall the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay “Self Reliance.”
----------"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius." … "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness."
I guess that means I'd add a little to Jobs' advice: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Stay True to Yourself. Live, love and leave a legacy. You only go around once in this life. " And in the context of my comments on The Reunion Conference, "You owe it to yourself to stop and think about just how you are "going around" that one time."
It could change your life forever--for the better.
Best, John
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