"When the ashes clear from this economic Armageddon, the leaders and organizations left standing will be the ones that stand for something. That have a clear purpose.
I’m sure of this because I worked with two CEO-founders who indeed stood for something: Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines (LUV) and Sam Walton of Wal-Mart (WMT). I worked with these iconic entrepreneurs on their companies’ advertising, marketing and internal culture. They taught me that performance is driven by the core purpose of an organization. This is true particularly when crisis is all around.
So what is purpose anyway? Purpose is the definitive difference you make in the marketplace and the world."
Roy Spence, Fortune, 2/18/09
I got what I wanted this week. I was offered the opportunity to join something really big. A big company. A big subject. A big group of amazing, professional, values-driven people. At a very big time in history.
I've never felt smaller.
For me, feeling small is a new sensation. My height has never earned me the "small" label. I can't think back far enough on my own to remember a time when I would have truly qualified as small. I was always kind of like a pony growing up. Mostly legs. A token bit of torso. Fortunately, a high-energy brain was attached to the end of all of it. And, a beating heart.
The brain is what earned me the opportunity to even be in the discussion about being big. But, that heart and the heart that is my heart got me the job.
I've learned about heart from my oldest daughter, now seven weeks from her 22nd birthday. 2009 will represent the first year since she was six years old that she will not be listed on somebody's soccer roster. Despite all of her best efforts, expectations, hard work, endless rehab, and long-term potential, career-ending injury overtook her last Fall. For the good of her overall well-being and the fruitful life that we hope lies ahead for her, she made the decision with her remarkable head coach and her equally-remarkable and compassionate surgeon that she must hang up the cleats. Not for the wearing of them as a coach or mentor, but as a competitive player. Something she's been for so long, she can't remember on her own when she wasn't that way.
She was like a pony growing up, too. The scenes of her galloping up and down the soccer field at an early age and scoring goals in bunches got her effectively booted out of the recreational league. We endured the glares of angry moms who thought the egalitarian AYSO games were about sharing the ball. Less about winning.
Turns out she was all about winning. All the time. She hated to lose more than she loved to win. Winning came easy. Winning was expected and became the norm. But, real life-learning came from both winning and losing.
Losing the ability to continue to compete on the field caused her to completely reevaluate what she wanted to do with her life off the field. And, she went after the subject with the same ferocity that vaulted her to national recognition in her sport by the age of 13.
Sometimes we spend so much time mourning what we have lost, we can't see what we might have gained in the process. I know that I have struggled with this challenge in recent months.
The only thing I can say with a certainty is that nothing on earth lasts. It's all fleeting. The good times never last. And, fortunately, the bad times generally don't last forever either. At least, not in their most dire, bottom-of-the-pit bad times form. You eventually come out of whatever you're in.
If you're paying attention, you know that you don't come out of the pit the same way you went into it.
As I plopped into the center seat closest to the front of the Southwest flight back to Denver from Salt Lake City yesterday, I thought that the resolution I had wanted for Friday, February 27, 2009 would not be forthcoming. I tried to make myself smaller in the seat so that the people who had fought for -- and won -- the right to the aisle and window seats wouldn't feel so cheated.
While my cell phone slept in the air, I was unaware that bigger and higher things than me were working on my behalf. Rapidly. Working an entire array of other phones. Lining up the pieces.
Making a big thing happen. Making it happen for little, 'ol me.
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