Good to Great to . . . Crap

This week Circuit City announced they were going out of business. I find it interesting and mildly amusing that eight years after its publication, 2 of the 11 companies profiled in the book Good to Great have gone bankrupt. The other is a company you have probably heard mentioned lately in the news, Fannie Mae.

I would like to see the author, Jim Collins, do an autopsy on the firms to examine the inner dynamics that led to their failure in the midst of the macroeconomic collapse. Except that one can't help but question the credibility of his claims when these supposedly great and enduring firms didn't even make it out of the following decade.

Maybe when I grow up I'll write a management consulting book. It's a bit like forecasting the weather in terms of the acceptability of its margin of error in predicting the future.

That's A Man

I heard this song for the first time on the radio tonight. I dig it. It makes me think of my dad and grandfathers.

Jack Ingram
 
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That's Cold

So, the high temperature on Friday is supposed to be 17 degrees.

Without the wind.

It's actually going to feel like it's 6 degrees, at best, during the day with a low of negative 13 at night.

I am so ready for Spring.

Hope From The Pope

For Christmas I also received a copy of Pope Benedict's second encyclical, Saved in Hope. I have found it to be very nourishing and refreshing. I was particularly struck by his insights regarding "faith in progress." (Pastor Bo's recent sermons on freedom served as a helpful groundwork here):

The nineteenth century held fast to its faith in progress as the new form of human hope, and it continued to consider reason and freedom as the guiding stars to be followed along the path of hope.

He then develops how technical innovation and industrialization gave rise to gross class inequalities which would in turn lead to the Marxist revolution. Concerning Marx, he makes some observations which have a very contemporary ring given the current national focus on economic concerns.

He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man, and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains freedom also for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism; man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favorable economic environment.

While recognizing the ways in which progress may benefit humanity, Pope Benedict closes the section with an appropriate caution:

Without doubt, [progress] offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil - possibilities which did not formerly exist. We have all witnessed the way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world.

Rethinking Failure

Recently I have been plowing through my copy of John Maxwell's 3-in-1 book on leadership. There are a few good nuggets in the midst of hundreds and hundreds of platitudes and obligatory anecdotes. Here is one of those nuggets:

Mistakes mark the road to success. He who makes no mistakes makes no progress. Make sure you generate a reasonable number of mistakes. I know that comes naturally to some people, but too many people are so afraid of error that they make their lives rigid with checks and counter-checks, discourage change and, in the end, so structure themselves that they will miss the kind of offbeat opportunity that can send their life skyrocketing. So take a look at your record, and if you come to the end of a year and see that you haven't made any mistakes, ask yourself if you have tried everything you should have.

It is a cliche to say that we learn by our mistakes, so I'll state the case more strongly than that. I'll say you can't learn without mistakes. On reason some people never grow through change is that they can't stand failure. Even the best people have a lot more failure than success. The secret is that they don't let the failures upset them. They do their very best. So let the chips fall where they may, then go on to the next attempt. - John Maxwell

This was like holding a mirror up to me. I tend to be a perfectionist and so to me a "reasonable number of mistakes" would be about, oh, one or preferably none. I am admittedly rigid with "checks and counter checks."

This is going to be a difficult area for me to change and grow in. I mean, I'm an accountant for a reason. I appreciate the beauty of things tying out perfectly. But I also instinctively recognize the internal fault lines that are there with this fear of failure.