Just got back from my almost-daily early morning walk up and down the beach. Today looks like another overcast but pleasant day, but duty calls, and I’m off to the Boston office. Last Sunday, there was fog so thick that it was hard to see the ocean since it was just at that tipping point between fog, heavy mist and light rain-all of which made my daily search for sea glass impossible.
When I was kid, spending the summers about a mile down the beach from here, my brothers and I always relished in being able to present a handful of sand and water-scuffed glass remnants to Mom when we returned from yet another ten hour day on the beach. Today, shards of beach glass are still out there. It just takes more time to find them, but then I’m crunching those 10 hours as a kid into 30 minutes of speed walking time as a kid-at-heart.
What the beach really does for me-aside from my attempt to believe that a 30 minute walk on the sand will compensate for last night’s two classes of cabernet and the chocolate dessert at the University Club-is to refresh, even for a very short time, my perspective. Very similar to the walks in my Vermont woodlot which I try to squeeze into my time compressed weekends. When I take this type of break either at the beginning of what I know will be a difficult day or a tough assignment, I immediately gain perspective.
In Vermont, the boys on the bench at the general store tell me that those trees “ain’t goin’ nowhere”, which is why when I walk among these 40-60 year old giants that have survived some of the worst weather in the country, everything else becomes relatively easy to figure out. The experience on the beach is the same. The tides come in; the tides go out, and other than the daily movement of the shifting sand patterns, not much else changes.
What’s changed for me this summer is the shift from Vermont to the beach. What I expected would be a tough negotiation with my wife, who lives in Vermont full time, about which weekends we would spend time at which house thankfully did not happen. I was all ready to pull out my written instructions, (written by far smarter guys than me-which is why I needed to write them down) regarding negotiations with one’s spouse: “You can be either right, or you can be happy, but remember it’s much better-and always cheaper-to choose happy.” But then the opportunity for me to show how much I had grown my sensitive side was suddenly taken away from me, when she announced on Memorial Day that all of the mail was being forwarded to the beach until November 1st, which I guess was code for the fact that we’re now both living at the beach this summer. I, of course-remembering “The Rule of Right or Happy, congratulated her on her terrific idea.
As a result of the shift, among a host of other changes (not the least of which is commuting for the first time in my career) a small antique vase now sits on the sill of one of our kitchen windows collecting deposits of beach glass.
The ageless beach, the repetitious tides, the slowing shifting sand, the 30 minute power walks, and the daily search for beach glass put things into perspective for me. Many times, solutions to problems actually occur right there in real time, but most often, it’s the perspective of my reflecting on particular issues with the background of the sounds of the surf. If it’s a business planning problem, I gain perspective by thinking about the rhythm of where I and the company are in the ebb and flow of the year. If it’s a sales issue, the quiet of the beach allows me to sort things out with no access to email or my ever-present earbud.
Gaining perspective in business, especially at this time of year, is critical in figuring out how we should look at the second half of the year and begin to unfold 2011. Should it be more of the same as we continue to block and tackle our way through the months, or have we figured out this economy, and should we now step on the gas and really move the needle? And, in order to answer those questions, my experience is that we all need to gain perspective, which comes back to taking some quiet time by yourself and separately with your managers during the next 30 days to carve out a more detailed plan for the second half of the year.
Maybe it’s time to visit the beach or the hills of Vermont? Kick it around just a bit in next Monday’s staff meeting.
In the meantime, Good Selling for the last couple of days of this quarter. The very good news is that the quarter now is all up to you-and me. No one else can effect performance since the buck stops here this afternoon.
Just a minute more to thank the many of you who called in response to my semi-annual outreach for project companies for my marketing class at Tufts where I’m a professor. Great opportunities, great companies and great students-a winning combination. I’m still trying to sort out one more company-and, of course, I’ll be back in December looking for more for the spring semester. Thanks very much !
Jack
