Thursday night I went to visit my oldest son Jordan who is a junior at OSU. I got to his rental before he did so his roommate, Toby, and I caught up. Toby is recently out of university and working his first “real” job in design. Here’s how the conversation went.
T: Hey man, did you do one of your seminars today?…starts to clean the kitchen.
C: Yea, sure did.
T: What’d ya talk about today?
C: Today we talked about PURPOSE and how powerfully it causes high performance in individuals, teams, and leaders…I’m tired.
T: Cool. Hey, Do you like Bob Dylan?…as he plays the CD.
C: Yea. He’s a great example of what we covered today. Watch his concert when he decided to go “electric” at the Newport Festival.. I think it was.
T: What’d you mean?
C: When Dylan went electric his fans HATED it. They booed him off the stage. They had fallen in love with his acoustical sound. Here’s the cool part. He stoped the concert and told them he wasn’t going back. He was going electric and they did not have to follow. The guy had a PURPOSE, PASSION, and PROCESS..he was going to play guitar. He was going to play the electric one.
T: Wow…stops cleaning.
C: Here’s another. Johnny Cash told the record executives at Columbia that he was going to Fulsom Prison to cut his album after recovering from his demons. They told him he was crazy. They offered him compromises. He told ’em ‘me and June and the boys are going to Fulsom…you play the tapes, don’t like ’em, throw ’em in the trash.’ Columbia wanted Johnny to go “electric” and, in fact, sited that even Dylan had recently gone electric. They offered more compromises. Johnny Cash did not even hear them. It was all noise. Johnny, June, and the boys went to Fulsom. He played guitar. He played the acoustic one. He had a PURPOSE, PASSION, and PROCESS too.
T: Looks me in the eye… Now I see why companies hire your company. Why doesn’t my company offer us training like that? Everytime we talk it’s about stupid stuff that nobody really cares about. We need to understand our purpose…if we even have one.
What are your CORE PURPOSES that answer the question of why you live and work?
What are your “training programs”…building or boring? How do you know?
Keep refining them for yourself, your team, and your leaders.
Here’s the melody line…
Keep TALKING with the Toby’s on your team. The next generation is not a problem to be solved. Toby gets it. Lots of them do. Build them and let them build you.
Find your CORE PURPOSES. Play them. It really does not matter if it’s electric or acoustic. What matters is that you BELIEVE. Leaders are believers.
BUILT TO LEAD 