Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Look Forward Beyond The Past

Consider these three scenarios:

 

Yesterday I was watching a video of a little doe, must have been a yearling, caught in quagmire. It must have wandered into quicksand and a passerby who worked with a JCB operator, managed to bring this deer out to safe ground. It was a 1 or 2 minute video and it showed somebody on the cell phone directing the JCB operator as to how to do it and to be careful that the deer wasn't hurt while getting out. But at the end of it all, this little doe just shrugged off all the muck and ran off, probably to try and find its family. But it was so nice, watching humaneness  at work.

 

But, as I thought about that, and it kind of percolated through the evening and this morning, it brought home to me the fact that so often we are in places where we need something like that. Maybe an outside source to come and help us out of the place that we're in onto another place and a fresh start. The doe wouldn't have made it without the JCB operator.

 

I was also watching the BBC video on Steve Jobs, "Billion Dollar Hippy." In that, there's one scene where the company was just beginning to take off, and Steve Jobs was saying that they needed to get some professional people in here to help market the computers that they were making. He travelled to meet John Sculley who was then head of Pepsi at that time, and was very successful at Pepsi. He was almost taken aback by Steve Jobs when he asked him to come and join Apple, which was nothing at that time. John Sculley was amused, or bemused by this. But one line caught my attention. Steve Jobs looked at him and said, "Do you really want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?" John Sculley says, "That grabbed my attention!" Then he made the move, took on the marketing, and the rest, as they say, is history. That was the second vignette that caught my attention.

 

The third one was an article that I was reading, by Vijay Govindarajan, entitled "Let Go Of What Made Your Company Great." He talks about how companies need to move on from successful points in their life. Very often, they don't. To move out of that is like getting out of quagmire or quicksand. You need to jump start it with something. He talks about an interview he did with Anand Mahindra, and how they used a ploy to get their employees fixed on something new. It was to get the company to forget the past and to move out of the torpor that they had settled into. They removed the Diwali bonus and he says that it was a huge thing for them because 'it was like shooting a rocket through the company.' Anand Manindra, in an interview, says, "That was a major turning point. That is how we were able to make the entire organization begin to forget the past."

 

All of these three incidents came home to me this morning. Sometimes we land up in a situation where we don't have any forward momentum. We are doing a lot of flailing, but we are really not moving into the future or even making inroads into the present that we have. Either it's because we are doing something that's not worth it, it's not working or we are reveling in the past or stuck in the past and we've allowed that to color all that we are trying to do in the present.

 

Why do we always look back to the past and get our highs from the past? It's because we cannot really believe that moments like that can come again. It's often difficult to get off the mountaintop, because it's so wonderful up there. It's an achievement and we don't want to come down into the valley because we're not sure that the next mountaintop experience will come soon. And yet, that is the problem because the moment we begin to think about the mountaintop experiences, we are letting go or ourselves and our vision for the future. We are settling into the past. The thing that happens, as Sharon Good says, "Staying stuck in the past saps the energy you could be using to create new ones." It fatigues you, whether mentally or physically or emotionally. Staying on the mountaintop for too long takes away the energy that you need to be able to move on to new ventures.

 

I saw this hard decision that Willow Creek Association took at one point. Its once-popular nondenominational training conferences had declined in attendance and revenues. The management then took a drastic step: they dismantled two-thirds of their employees. They let go 100 or their 150-member staff. The reason: they wanted to get rid of obsolete knowledge. Knowledge that is rooted in the past is obsolete. We take the experience for what it's worth, but we don't stay there. Because the moment you stay there for too long, then we begin to start thinking in those categories. No fresh perspectives come our way.

 

Samuel Johnson once wrote, "It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, that the mind might perform its function without encumbrance, and the past might no longer encroach upon the present."

 

I wonder whether, as you've been reading, you get a sneaky feeling that is saying, "I am kind of sitting in the past. I am allowing the past to decide who I am." That's not who you are. That's an achievement. Who you are is different from the things that you do. Maybe today it's a bit of a quagmire and what you need is to hear a challenge from a Steve Jobs saying, "Do you really want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life?" Do something! Get out of this! Move into something that is challenging! Maybe it is the shock treatment that you need, as Anand Mahindra brought in at Mahindra's.

 

But, if you're in that place today, something needs to be done, because where you are is not productive, where you are is not going to bring you any joy, where you are is not going to help you face the challenges of life. It will only pull you down. Don't revel in the past; enjoy what has happened, but then turn around that move to the next mountaintop experience which is right around the corner.

 

My prayer is that that's how you will move today.

 

Almighty God, on each one of these on the call, if we need to be turned around today, if we need to be gently helped out of the quicksand, if we need to be set on solid ground, do that for us today. Be that push that we need to send us into the future by embracing the present that we have. Inspire us as only You can Lord Jesus, and it's in Your name that we pray. Amen.

 

       Vijay Govindarajan, "Let Go Of What Made Your Company Great," https://hbr.org/2016/04/let-go-of-what-made-your-company-great

       Young Deer Rescued from Mud by Excavator Operator, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8a74qXibyo

       Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy, BBC Documentary.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2132457/

       Sharon Good, "Living The Creative Life," http://www.goodlifecoaching.com/CreativeLife67.html

       Samuel Johnson quote: http://www.goodlifecoaching.com/CreativeLife67.html                                                                

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