Tag Archives: Great Depression

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Staying Forever Young

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung

May you stay forever young

Those lyrics were written by Bob Dylan around 1973. I was in the sixth grade when it was released, so hey, I fit the bill. If I could quote the entire song here without violating copyright, I wouldn’t have to write the rest of this blog post. There you go, blame the copyright laws for making me try to find the words to reflect on the inspiration of a Nobel laureate.

I’m experiencing a moment of sentimentality, but allow me to position that as a positive. Last weekend my wife and I saw the musical Girl from the North Country, which is a collection of more than twenty Dylan songs wrapped around a rather grim story of a boarding house full of exhausted souls during the Great Depression. It’s a a curious pastiche, but from what I can tell Dylan endorsed it. The penultimate number is Forever Young. You don’t need to know more than that — just that this song landed a powerful blow on me at an opportune moment, which is what an impossibly eternal song never ceases to do.

Dylan wrote the song for his children. It has popped up in every context imaginable over the ensuing decades. Google it, the impact is vast and varied. This month it is speaking to me.

A few weeks ago my niece got married on a beach in the rain. She and her fiance looked every bit the part of a couple starting on the next phase of their journey. You can’t help but see the light in the eyes of young love and remember when you stood where they stood. Your youth is your superpower. It is filled with hope, promise, aspiration, and authenticity. The older generations invited to share in the celebration see themselves in the eyes of the betrothed. We are aware of our age, but that isn’t what runs through our minds when vows are exchanged. We try to connect the now to then. In that moment, we remain forever young.

I happen to be on my way to a college reunion. It is a milestone that can be divided evenly by too many integers. The decades behind can’t help but denote age, it’s the underlying purpose of the occasion, to bring together in the present people who learned from each other in the past. Recently my classmates started posting photos of themselves from that time long ago, before mobile phones, digital cameras, and electronic image archives in the cloud. Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away! That’s borrowed from Paul Simon for anyone not of a certain age. Yep, those photos have been sitting in envelopes from mail-in film processing, pasted up in laminated albums stashed under beds, now succumbing to scanning technology and <gasp> social media. I look into the bright eyes of students I knew when Reagan was president and I am convinced they remain forever young.

I look at the conflict in our nation and as hard as I try I barely recognize the place I thought it would become. I talk to my dad about living through World War II as a child and his dreams as a third-generation American for the broadening perspective he believed was ahead for all of us. I’m not sure he realized how idealistic he was as a young man, not fully comprehending the scope of the Civil Rights movement as it emerged all around him, but certainly not expecting to hear so many of the angry expressions currently creeping back into the vernacular. When we sit together now at baseball games, I remember being a young boy also sitting with him at baseball games wondering if the world could be any more perfect than watching Al Kaline catch a deep fly ball to right field on the warning track to end an inning. Today at the games we share, I wonder if my dad in his mind sees himself the way I see myself, not our current age, but with the idea that the life then ahead of us would always be driven by imagination over conflict. In those shared moments of retained dreams, we remain forever young.

Age is real. None of us escapes it. Some of us navigate its trials better than others. It can be genetics. It can be lifestyle. I’d like to say it can also be attitude but like so many my age I’ve seen too much to crawl under that blanket. What I do know is that inside each of us is that very wish Dylan asked us to preserve. It’s there for as long as we remember it, revitalize it, rekindle it. Our bodies will slow, maybe even our minds will slow, but our vision of what we can be is ours to infuse with resonance, To see ourselves in those earlier years can carry us into a more profound, more hopeful, more caring, and more empathetic present for as long as it lasts.

That is the song I am hearing right now and it’s blasting on all channels in stereo.

May your heart always be joyful

May your song always be sung

May you stay forever young.

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Image: Pixabay

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5 Key Learnings in Crisis

Many of us are trying to decipher some level of meaning in the Covid-19 crisis. I must admit, I’m unable to find any. This is an act of nature, an act of environment. I see no message in either the depths of pain and loss this disease is causing globally, or the resulting social and economic havoc that is its byproduct. I think if you’re looking for a clear definition of existential occurrence, this is as clear as it gets.

For better or worse, the dialogue doesn’t have to end there. Like any shock to the system, Covid-19 does offer us some learning opportunities. I’ve been thinking a lot about this the past several weeks. Here are five modest headlines I believe can be some of our more instructional takeaways once we together find a way to cross the chasm.

Leadership and trust are inseparable.

In the absence of recognized authority, chaos will fill the vacuum. We are seeing this and suffering with it day after day. The issue is not whether we are politicizing a deadly disease, whether our polarization is obstructing more sensible activity. In times of distress, we all crave calming leadership around which we can rally. As I have written many times before, trust cannot be assigned, it has to be earned. Effective leadership cannot be mandated. Leadership is acknowledged by example.

There is no such thing as alternative facts. A fact is a fact. While scientific practice can be revisited by disproving the conclusions around previously applied data, it can only be done so with more disciplined inquiry and even more rigorously evidenced data. An intelligent, educated population hungers for touchpoints of agreement that can be demonstrated empirically. without hype, manipulation, or ulterior motives. Our nation and our planet have indeed managed through historical crises worse than Covid-19. If you look back at how those triumphs occurred, you will likely see the link between leadership and trust on grand display.

Investing in readiness is not a luxury.

I wish I could find the words to express my dismay in how flat-footed our nation has proven itself in addressing a severe threat to our fundamental health and wellness. Even the most basic understanding of chain of command is absent in our adopted strategies and tactics. Many wonder if our collective investment in government will be there to protect us when we need it most. Today we turn on the television and hear wailing debate, not cohesive response. In a nation as wealthy and with as much advanced expertise as we have, how is it possible that medical personnel are making their rounds wearing plastic garbage bags rather than professional scrubs?

Few enterprises can survive a substantial blindside without some playbook on the shelf. If you have worked in a well-run company, you have been a part of scenario planning—deep discussions and studied research around abstract calamities. Sometimes teams immersed in these simulations consider the use of resources inefficient. If you’ve ever come out the other side of a whirlwind attack, you know how important having most of the debate behind you can be. Game theory developed with care is how bad problems become less bad, and opportunities become apparent in the fog of war.

We are more resilient than we may think.

When I think about the crises that have come before—our Civil War, the Great Depression, two world wars, nuclear proliferation—it’s hard to understand how we are still here. When you listen to survivors of monumental suffering talk about how they endured the unbearable challenges of their lives, it becomes clear that perspective and context are necessary to frame whatever tests may be interrupting our current plans.

We can handle more than we think we can. We can solve problems that at any given moment seem unsolvable. I’m not sure this crisis is as much about Covid-19 itself as it is about how poorly we are addressing it, and yet, the losses we will suffer will not be the last losses we endure. To lose a family member or loved one is untenable. To lose someone unnecessarily is impossible to rationalize. To lose one’s livelihood is a level of devastation we likely all fear and some of us will inevitably experience. As we work our way down the scale of loss, the true strength inside of us may as yet be untapped. Called upon to continue, we might see that the historical odds suggest there are brighter days ahead if we bolster the fortitude of resilience.

Bonding ahead of distance allows shorthand.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we have been asked to work at home in a time where technology makes that proposition possible. Could the notion of sheltering in place two decades ago without broadband internet even have been an option? That said, not all teams were ready to work remotely, particularly leadership teams. If you were working well in a shared space there is a good chance you are succeeding with distance. If there was tension, anxiety, and aggravation before you had to communicate through a screen, I can only imagine your turmoil without in-person connection.

I know in my company it would be a lot harder to manage our way through daily operations with a newly assembled management team than with teammates who already know each other reasonably well. Of course the timing of crisis doesn’t come with the convenience of established tenure. To the extent you believe something like a novel coronavirus will interrupt us again—and how could it be otherwise—I would suggest we use the ordinary times of our work to prepare for the extraordinary times that might otherwise derail us. This starts with the bonds we establish in normalcy.

All behavior is consequential.

I think about the difference between the business partners who are working cooperatively in this havoc to achieve long-range, positive outcomes and those who are shortsighted and only see the coming weeks ahead of them. Asserting one’s will, even asserting the letter of the law in a contract, is not how relationships are formed. Give a little now and you may have a customer for life. Insist on taking all that is rightfully yours and it might be the last speck of gold you extract from the mine.

Tone matters in a negotiation. Listening matters when opinions differ. If you choose to assert leverage because you think you can get away with it, if you believe that bullying tactics are how you protect the fort, you’re unlikely to enjoy a long and lasting impact on your industry. Business is a rollercoaster of cycles, and we aren’t all going up or down at the same time. Never forget that old cliche: Jobs in context are relatively brief; careers may be long or short depending on how you manage your timeline.

When I was circulating an early draft of this post for feedback as I often do, I was reminded by a wise friend not to miss the obvious lesson before us, the simplicity of appreciation. He reminded me that gratitude is profound, and it is always powerful to celebrate the goodness in what we have, the majesty in sharing each new day where the gifts within our reach should not be taken for granted. I think that’s good advice. I wish you the wellness that will return us to a revived global community.

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Image: CDC

 

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A Beguiling 20%


This month our nation celebrated its 242nd birthday. As I was sitting in the stands at Dodger Stadium on July 4 watching a spectacular and patriotic fireworks display (following a wonderful midseason win) something quite obvious but strange occurred to me:

I have been alive for over 20% of our nation’s history.

That may not seem curious to you, but it does to me. No one in Russia, China, or most of western Europe can say that.

It is only because we are such a young nation that our lives constitute such a significant portion of our nation’s entire state of being.

I have been trying to put that in context. I am over a half-century in age, and the nation is less than five half centuries in age. For sake of context, I have tried to segment those de facto quintiles into what I have experienced as current events (the most recent 20%) and what I must study as history.

Latest 20%: Age of economic triumph, the information age, and age of civil rights.

Prior 20%: Age of two world wars, one Great Depression, and vast immigration.

Middle 20%: Age of Civil War and Reconstruction.

Second 20%: Age of Manifest Destiny & Industrial Revolution.

Initial 20%: Age of our Founding Fathers, American Revolution, and the visionary foundation of secular democratic governance.

It doesn’t seem like a whole lot of time for all that to have happened when you think about it. I guess that’s because it really isn’t. What’s 242 years? These days, it’s about three full lifetimes. If you time them correctly, you could talk to someone who talked to someone who knew someone who experienced Independence Day as current events.

That’s just wild. Mind-boggling! And look how far we’ve come!

Or have we?

Well, we have sent humans to the moon and probes to Jupiter and Pluto. We have air conditioning, spiffy kitchen appliances, and running water in our homes (when we don’t run out). We have lots and lots of TV channels. We have supercharged computers in our pockets we call mobile phones. We have this Internet thing that has eliminated almost all barriers to information access and makes globalization a reality.

Yet we still fight a lot, among ourselves and with faraway strangers. It seems that in every one of those quintiles we fought a lot. Maybe fighting is a constant in almost every nation’s evolution. History would seem to reinforce that recurrence.

We haven’t had all that many U.S. presidents. Our current office holder is only number 45. Many recaps of U.S. presidents show that many of the individuals who held the office weren’t very good at it in hindsight. Luckily, there are a few most of us agree regardless of political affiliation will always be American heroes. There’s Lincoln. There’s Washington. I think it might start to get controversial after that.

I wonder if the top people in charge of running our nation day-to-day in all its complexity—whether elected officials or policy makers or military leaders or business executives or educators—are in awe of their 20% stage time. I doubt it. The truly influential people I know and the many I study from afar seem to like their gigs a lot, but in my observation very few of them seem in awe.

I also wonder how many of the leaders guiding our 20% are good listeners. Do they hear the studied voices among us? Do they listen for the quieter voices who choose not to enter the knock-down, drag-out drama of overpowering influences and powerful, conflicted mandates? Do they immerse themselves in understanding the previous 80% of our time as a nation where we might have emerged a winner but didn’t necessarily embrace a sense of humility and real justice in establishing a fair set of rules? Do they strive for a true sense of vision or just winning for bragging rights and lovely take-home prizes?

I also find myself thinking about things I have lived through largely from inception, particularly the rapid compounding of computer technology. I imagine this is how people felt who went from horses and buggies to the Model T, having seen automobiles take over roads that were created for drawn carriages. I can’t remember a time before air travel, but my dad can. When I think about his lifespan, the numerator and denominator tell me he has lived through almost a third of the nation’s history. He may achieve a beguiling 40%!

I thought life was breathtakingly scientific when I sat in front of a black-and-white CRT eating Space Food Sticks while NASA astronauts blasted into orbit. Now I write about that as nostalgia while pretty much every public document in human history is available to me by typing on this keyboard into a conceptual framework of storage we simply refer to as the cloud.

Why take pause on the magnitude of a quintile? I guess for one reason because I am naturally sentimental about milestones. All forks in the road of consequence inspire my introspection, giving me excuse if not reason to try to put into perspective the meaning of our timeline.

Yet more than that, I am particularly absorbed in trying to make sense of the coming quintile, which by all stretches of the imagination I will not see resolved. I suppose if lucky I may live to see our nation on its 275th birthday, but there is not chance I will see our Tricentennial.

Am I worried what we might become collectively between now and then? If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know the depth of my concern. I guess that will give me much to write about as we walk forward together through future milestone celebrations. Between now and then, I can only hope that the nation’s leadership does embrace the gravitas of our current context.

America is an idea more than anything. Promising ideas need to be nurtured, not battered.

Speaking of milestones, this happens to be my 200th blog post since I launched CorporateIntel in 2011. Along the way I have met hundreds of interesting new people both virtually and in person. Writing is a solitary endeavor until you push the Publish button on your text editor. This magnificent innovation has opened my life to so many minds I would never otherwise have encountered. When we share ideas and swap stories, technology goes into the background and our human thoughts take precedence over the engineering that facilitates our interactions. As long as human interaction and exchange overrides the technical wonder of its creation, you can count on me for another 200.

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Photo: Pexels