Think About it -- Survive the Whirl and the Suck
There are times in business that are enjoyable and there are times pushing through hard things that try the collective resolve of those managing that business.
I have been a businessman dealing with others for most of my adult life. In any business you deal with growing pains, challenging new technologies, true attacks from enemy forces and plain old business navigation issues. I recently navigated through a particularly difficult, plain old business issue, where strong-willed leaders (me included) with varying opinions on the right way to do something, each had to accept compromises in what would have otherwise been their individual way of getting to the solution.
But this is the concept of strong men armed.
On the back side of those difficult times, we remain strong men armed, AND united.
4 years ago, I wrote of how when I was a young man (some 50 years ago), we would canoe a river that runs through my native area of Kansas. It wasn’t deep enough to canoe except when it was flooding, so that is when we would hit it. The closest I ever came to dying was a mishap from one of those adventures.
After our difficult leadership navigation of the issue recently, I thought back to those times of canoeing an angry swollen muddy river. There were times the guy in the front of the canoe would be yelling at the one in the back or vice versa. “Watch this tree root!” “Hard left!” “Beaver dam!” “Fence!” “Hard right”! “Back paddle!”
But once we were through the perilous parts, we would float peacefully through waters moving us fast and gentle towards the end of the trip. We couldn’t have gotten to that peaceful place had we not come through the perils.
Think About it
Johnny Cash wrote a song about navigating the Tennessee River. He sang,
It took a mighty good man with salty hands
And a mighty long raft to keep the fore before the aft
You take ten good men and guts and luck
And you might navigate the whirl and the suck
Success is never a sole effort. It takes good men and women working together for a common goal, not getting their feelings hurt by accepting the alternative ways of others that may be better for that issue.
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