“I Have a Dream, a song to sing

To help me cope, with anything

If you see the wonder, of a fairy tale

You can take the future, even if you fail

I believe in angels

Something good in everything I see

I believe in angels

When I know the time is right for me

I’ll cross the stream, I Have a Dream”  

The Swedish group ABBA released this song in 1979 and it quickly became a Worldwide hit.  The lyrics are quite simple and the message of hope and expectation, true and clear.  For people in business and especially entrepreneurs, dreams are classified as goals and goals defined as projections for the investors and banks who fund those “dreams.”

When I was hired for my first management job, I was a voracious reader.  I was determined to develop a competitive advantage through reading.  My process was reading a book a month, with a four month rotation.  A business book.  A novel.  A historical book (heavily Civil War).  And a self development book.  I was committed to this for 16 years and the benefits were exponential.  Sadly, I missed the crucial reading that would have blended all of this concisely and revealed to purpose in all of these efforts.  The Bible.  Another story.

One area that I learned and integrated into my personal development was goal setting.  As a young, 25 year old manager with zero experience and even less training, I crafted my first professional goals.  These goals were: Be promoted to Merchandising Manager by age 30; Vice-President by 35 and President of a company by 40.  ‘Linear thinking’ was the phrase often used and my thinking was very linear and laser focused before that term existed.  (I’m so old that lasers were what Star Trek caused us to dream about at that time.)

Life Lesson #1 – develop 360-degree goals that develop a well-rounded life approach.

So off I went in pursuit of the goals that I had set for myself.  Key word, myself.  I was methodical and committed to the achievement of these goals.  My suggestion here is be learning the requirements of the ‘next’ of your personal goals so that when you achieve that level in the process, you are ready to effectively execute.  I was ‘promoted’ to Merchandising Manager at 27 and made Vice President at 29, off the backs and stress of too many great people deserving a better leader.  Actually, they were just deserving of a leader who understood servanthood.  At age 33, I was again promoted to President & CEO with a 25% equity ownership. And I was in the process of failing miserably.

Life Lesson #2 – “You can get everything in life that you want, if you help enough other people get what they want.”  (Zig Ziglar)

So this little company that had taken a huge risk on a young and ill-prepared kid was flourishing.  We had grown from $7-million in sales to over $50-million and the upward trend showed no signs of slowing.  

I had set and was achieving professional goals that seemed the pathway to happiness.  I wish someone was in the path willing to tell me that happiness is fleeting and ‘stuff’ becomes junk very quickly.  One man’s treasure…. There were many wonderful people telling me this.  I wasn’t listening.  A wise mentor told me that “you’re fine until you start believing your own press.”  He was right.  I had decided that the successes and achievements of short-sighted, linear goals were the result of me, failing to understand that it is always ‘we!’

Life Lesson #3 – Drucker was right.  “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

Peter Drucker argued that the organization’s greatest asset is its knowledge base.  It’s people.  He petitioned that employees should be listed on the Asset side of a balance sheet, versus the standard accounting practice of listing them on the Liability side.  My view was that the people working so hard with me were rungs in the ladder that I was climbing.  And as we all know, those rungs are stepped on as leverage during the ascent.  

Life Lesson #4 – What goes up without firm foundation will come down.

Six months into my promotion to President & CEO, the company had turned around.  During a hiatus that I took because of a temper tantrum of a young man who had listened way too much to his own press, the company had fallen on hard times.  Losing 50% of its sales volume and even more of its profitability.  During those first 6 months, all sales and profitability losses were erased and we were posting solid month-over-month gains.

Then the chairman showed up.  I was psyched for the accolades I knew were coming of a job well done.  “I wondered how much my bonus would be at year end?”  He walked into my office, closed the door, looked at the Balance Sheet, Income Statement, Projections and said, “you are failing miserably.”  And he was right!

Life Lesson #5 – Promotions to leadership are the entrusting of the dreams to you of those traveling with you.

I barely knew the names of many of my employees.  I knew even less about their personal lives.  As they caused the company to achieve its purposes, they did so despite me, not because of me.  They questioned ‘why’ because they were not experiencing the fruit of their labors.  Morale was very low and commitment even lower.  This was about to change.

Life Lesson #6 – Failure is having the courage to try.  Change is the commitment to succeed.

I learned a new question to ask.  “Tell me about your dreams and how I can help you achieve them?”  And I meant it.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror;then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.  And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.But the greatest of these is love.”  1 Corinthians 13:11-13 (NIV)