Keep on walking
Over the years, business books have grown in the number of titles and followers. To millions of book lovers around the world, these metaphorical tomes have become great alternatives to learning, accepting and embracing business principles using a mixture of fictional and non-fictional elements in an easy-to-follow format. They communicate definitive business and life philosophies, and give their multitude of readers an opportunity to get educated, informed, as well as entertained.
The most popular business titles this writer has read and reviewed include Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese, Kenneth Blanchard’s One Minute Manager, The Way of Ping by Stuart Avery Gold, the Fish series of Stephen Lundin, John Christensen Harry Paul, and Richard Whiteley’s The Corporate Shaman, among others. They come bearing lessons in leadership, character building, gratitude, change or any issue that relates to running a business or connecting to people. They are increasing in popularity, and as such have given their respective authors the awareness and recognition they deserve.
Don Jones’ Walk Softly and Carry a Big Idea adds to my growing list of business allegories. It is a story about a man named Scott, a manager fraught with the increasingly muddled demands of professional and personal existence. He has just transported his family to Toronto, Canada, has taken a new middle-management job at a company called Replico, and has knowingly thrown himself into a web of endless deadlines, late nights, deliverables and mounting pressure. He goes through all these shifts while recognizing that he has lost his enthusiasm, his reason for being and his self-significance.
In consultation with his wife, he agrees to invest a great deal of extra time at his new employment and accepts that this would mean time away from her and their young son Jim. In his attempts to be super-efficient in what he does, he tries to be in the office as early as he can, times his short walk from where he parked his car to his desk, and even takes a shot at improving or matching his best time each working day.
Scott’s professional team in his new post delivers a lackluster performance, as his father-and-son relationship deteriorates. As the story develops, it becomes apparent that he is an exceedingly hands-on worker and a scheming manager who does not trust his employees’ abilities to perform good work. Not long after, he starts to see their resentments build up, and as expected, he does not get their best efforts. It’s a pity that Scott is clueless as to why it is happening, and worse, he is helpless and doesn’t seem to know how to fix the problem. It takes a late-night meeting with a supposed antagonist-turned-friend — a baffling janitor named Eric — for Scott to come to grips with the basic business and life challenges he faces in a world that has become progressively more uncertain.
As the author says, Scott’s tale “is about the soft skills that make the hard difference.” It proffers comprehensible instructions on how to build strong and dynamic work relationships and teams, and how to ascertain “what is real in your life before you lose the very thing you are searching for.” The story is written lucidly, letting the readers see the decisions that Scott implements, and making it clear to them what mistakes he commits and what lessons he learns.
Eric comes into the fable as a strange and unlikely counselor to Scott. He soothingly helps him come to grips with what a good manager can and should be doing. In their major conversations and consultations, the two characters are able to effectively bring home the overall message of the story, manifested in this sample dialogue: Scott says, “It is not my job to provide meaning to my staff. I just need to get the job done. That’s it. That’s what I’m paid for.”
Eric replies, “Every one of them, without exception, yearns to feel that their work has meaning, Scott. That the way they make their choices, direct their tasks, infuse their energy, spend their minutes, hours, days — their lives — makes a difference to others — to their colleagues, their employer, their customers, their families.”
Walk Softly provides profound lessons that you can apply immediately to improve results and relationships in your workplace and your home. It provides clarity to some of today’s most troubling questions — leadership amidst increasing complexity, finding order in chaos, becoming a part of a larger community, discovering balance in your work and home life.
• Business is not just about numbers, and life is not just about facts. Soft is hard because soft skills create hard numbers. Manage yourself first before managing others. You will learn this through people, wisdom and experience. It is your choice. Search for clear guidelines that create powerful and productive work relationships and teams, and discover what is real in your life before you lose the very thing you are searching for. Edmund Burke says, “No men can act with effect who do not act in concert; no men can act in concert who do not act with confidence; no men can act with confidence who are not bound together with common opinions, common affections and common interests.”
• When your can is full of garbage, dump it out. You have reached the place in your life where you have to change yourself and your view of the world in order for the world to be changed by you. The stuff that you have always believed about the world is precisely what will hold you back from experiencing it for what it really is.
• Stop, look and listen — to yourself and others. You can’t control what others will do. Your power is won or lost in how you choose to react, or how you fight adversaries and challenges. You can adopt Herman Melville’s viewpoint, “What I’ve dared I’ve willed … and what I’ve willed, I’ll do.”
• When you are surrounded by chaos, ask yourself one question and one question only. Are the choices you are making leading yourself and others toward meaning? If they are, continue; if they are not, stop. You need to feel you are moving from relative levels of chaos and isolation toward higher levels of order and community. In the combinations and permutations of those movements you can find meaning.
• It takes great courage to jump into the dark, and you need great confidence to do it. But jump if you must. You wish somebody could help you and gently lead you back from the edge. At some point you will find yourself standing on a cliff, your toes curled over the black edge of darkness. You know that you must either jump or find yourself less than you are capable of being. Ask yourself: “What is my cliff? What do I have to jump into? Will I take the plunge?” “Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing, ” Helen Keller declared.
• Business and life is all about creating a sense of wonder. You have to walk softly and carry a big idea. Bring in the “wow” factor in whatever you do. Craft and implement big ideas that will give solutions to your problems. Constantly look for the “Wow Leap,” a clever, brilliant, out-of-the box concept and execution that persuades and captivates. Skip, hop and bounce to generate attention, interest, desire and action, and more importantly, to make a difference. Be clear about your thoughts on what your future should be, remembering what Keller said: “Worse than not having sight is having no vision.”
• People are real. Whatever figments or hints or spirits or ties connect people or life itself — they are real. Whatever meaning people find in their relationships, work, and in their own unique experience of living — that is real. Everything else is an illusion. Connect and find meaning in your life. You will gain much from your encounters with people. “It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test,” Elbert Hubbard proclaims.
Keep on walking softly. Keep on carrying a big idea. You will go far.
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