Monday, August 22, 2011

Beyond Rainy Days & Mondays

I came into the office this morning, it was raining and overcast; I was reminded of a song sung many years ago by the Carpenters. I think it was written by Roger Nichols and Paul Williams and the words go like this:

Talking to myself and feeling old,
Sometimes I’d like to quit, nothing ever seems to fit.
Hanging around; nothing to do but frown
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.

What I’ve got they used to call the blues,
Nothing is really wrong, feeling like I don’t belong.
Walking around, some kind of lonely clown.
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.



I was reminded of that song and thought to myself: - sometimes our days and lives get to be like that. Things can get dreary, it can get to be routine – the same thing day in and day out, a monotonous kind of existence. Everything is predictable, devoid of excitement, zest, vigor, or any of those things that can really motivate us.

When we are in that kind of zone, we often get into a ‘maintenance mode’. We just do the things that need to get done, that have to get done and we are done. That can happen in our work places. We get there and we know that from this point to this point, I just need to do the things that I need to do and when it is done, I am out of here. And the same thing happens the next day and the next – we’re in maintenance mode.

I read an article by Jim Collins entitled ‘The Wizard, King and Hobbit of Business’. Basically, as he coined the title, he was looking for a kind of business trilogy, after Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. He found a trilogy that he offers in the form of this article from three books.

1. ‘The Maverick and His Machine’ by Kevin Maney
2. ‘Father, Son and Company’ by Thomas J. Watson Jr. and Peter Petre
3. ‘Who says Elephants can’t Dance?’ by Louis Gerstner.

In this article, he’s basically looking at IBM; how IBM started, how it rose and how it sustained and even jump-started, when it was losing about $100 million a week at one point. He talks about how Thomas J. Watson Sr. soon after his 38th birthday, woke up to find that he had been indicted along with some other people by the Federal Grand Jury. He lost his job and really started from absolute zero or less than zero, if that is possible. He then started IBM.

Looking at that, I thought that sometimes what we need in our lives is a calamity - something that comes and yanks the rug off from under us – for us to begin to think, see, and reach for things that are beyond us.

Watson built IBM from scratch but then the second book talks about the reluctant son and Jim Collins writes it so beautifully. He says, “The King had a Prince who didn’t want to be king.” Interestingly, Watson Jr. is talking to his commander (he was working for the Air Corps Major General Follett Bradley) and he said, “After the war, I plan to become an airline pilot.” Bradley responded, “Really? I always thought that you’d go back and run the IBM Company.” Watson Jr. was stunned and after a long pause, he finally asked the question that he never dared to ask. “General Bradley, do you think I could run IBM?” and Bradley uttered two words that would change the course of Tom’s life and the trajectory of industrial history, as Jim Collins put it. “Of course!”

We sometimes run our life in a kind of ‘nobody’ mode. I was talking to a group of young people a couple of weeks ago and was reading out of a book called ‘The Dream Giver’ by David Wilkinson. He talks about this land of Nobody, and everybody is happy doing nothing. Then the Dream Giver gives a dream to one of the nobodies and invites him to be a somebody. Getting out of this Land of Nobody was so difficult for this one nobody who was trying to be a somebody. The book tells us about how he manages to get out and follow his dream. Two words transformed Watson Jr. from a nobody into a somebody, as he took IBM to tremendous heights.

Finally, he talks about Louis Gerstner, who took over at the time that IBM had begun to plummet. Gerstner was not interested in the job. Jim Collins says that it took Jim Burke, former CEO of Johnson & Johnson, to convince him that IBM was not just a company; it was a national treasure and this was something that he needed to do. Gerstner took the job and changed IBM and it is said that ‘he became a leader with ambition first and foremost for the cause and company, far beyond himself’.

Sometimes that is the motivation that we need. Sometimes it’s not just about ‘me’, about ‘myself’, or the things that ‘I’ need to do. Sometimes there is a greater cause that beckons, that calls us and says, “Move out of the comfort zone. There’s an opportunity here to bring change that will be far reaching,” and that’s the call that must be on your life.

Rainy days and Mondays always make me blue. But within that is the land of opportunity. It could be that something has happened in your life; maybe you’re just wallowing right now. You need to use that as a spring board to get up and move. Or maybe you’re just meandering amongst a whole lot of people, not doing too much yourself, kind of a nobody. Maybe today you need to become a somebody; start making tracks for that. Maybe today you need to think far beyond yourself for the good cause; to make a great company.

There’s a word BHAG (pronounced BEE-hag) which actually means ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goal’ and this was coined by James Collins and Jerry Porras in their 1996 article entitled ‘Building Your Company’s Vision’. Basically, BHAG encourages companies to define visionary goals that are more strategic and emotionally compelling. They say that BHAG is an audacious 10 to 30 year goal to progress towards an envisioned future. It is a clear line – so you’ll know when it has been achieved and the goal has been reached.

I wonder my friends, what is your BHAG? Whether you have one or whether you ought to have one? Right through history, there have been BHAGs.

• Amazon had a BHAG that said ‘Every book ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.’

• Also, the earth’s most customer-centric company, Boeing, their BHAG was ‘Bet the pot on the B-17, the 707 and 747.’

• Disney: ‘Build Disneyland and build it to our image and not to industry standards to be the best company in the world for all fields of family entertainment.’

• Ford: ‘Democratize the automobile.’

• Microsoft: ‘A computer on every desk and in every home’

• Sony: ‘Change the worldwide image of Japanese products as poor quality.’

• Twitter: ‘To become the pulse of the planet’

They’ve all had BHAGs and see where it has taken them. Maybe this morning you need a Big Hairy Audacious Goal for the job that you have. Maybe you are in a position to change the course of your company or maybe it is just within the scheme that you have, the area that you have, to bring in a new kind of thing that will change the course of your work. Or maybe it’s a personal goal or maybe it’s something to do with your family. Whatever it is, you have a BHAG today – a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Maybe it’s time to get out of the cocoon and fly. Maybe it’s time to leave the harbor and sail. Maybe all the maintenance is over and you are ready to fly, but you need to have a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

The sun is shining right outside my window reminding me that rainy days and Mondays change to sunny days and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and days of opportunity. Maybe today is your day. If you don’t have a BHAG, ask the Dream Giver; ask Him to give it to you. The Almighty will birth it in you and I hope that happens today.

God Bless You All.

2 comments:

  1. Inspiring , thought provoking . Good read.

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  2. @venkat Thank you. If you would like to be part of the Tuesday Morning call, you can email your contact information to cecilclements [ at ] corporatecapsules.com

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