Learn to Fly Because You Can’t Outrun the Bear

This is the last of a series of 5 articles all going back 25 years ago to my first year as a consultant and the experiences and lessons that stay with me to this day.

You never know when your early life experiences will come back and reverberate as powerful lessons learned later in your career.

They say there’s no such thing as a dumb question. There’s a parable I love that goes like this: Question: How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator? Nine of of Ten people will reflexively start telling you their theory. The correct answer is yet another question: “WHY do you WANT to put an elephant into a refrigerator?” Some people might consider that a dumb question, while others will consider it an enlightened question. That parable rings constantly in my ears decades later.

As a teen in the late 70‘s I started my career in aerospace manufacturing as a machinist and quality control manager. I learned how to run a shop floor, and with a newfound skill and interest in computer software, eventually wrote some shop floor control programs.

In 1994, I took a leap of faith and started on a journey to a career in technology.

The Wings of Trust

It was near the end of that first year as a consultant. I learned so much and so many lessons that year. I had no idea that these experiences would take me in completely different direction one fateful day.

The small company I worked for had just hired a new consultant, I’ll call him Jim. His business card had more three letter acronyms than I had ever seen. I was a lowly high school graduate with a few credits from a community college. Of course the boss fawned over Jim, the golden child.

Jim was given a new project with another disk duplication company that was a 2-minute walk from our office. I had collected some project kickoff material over the year and put it into a Power Point deck. He asked me about it and if he could use it for the kickoff meeting with the client that morning. What was I going to say to the golden child? Off he went across the parking lot with my PPT deck in hand.

I was alone in our tiny office, when around noon I suddenly heard what sounded like the front door being breached by a police SWAT team. Tracy, the operations manager from our new client, came charging at me red-faced with steam coming out of her ears. She grabbed my arm and dragged me into the conference room, slamming the door behind us. She started screaming at me. “Get that S.O.B. out of there!” – referring to Jim. I got her to calm down a little and explain what happened.

Her company was fairly small, and most of the people that worked there were like me, HS grad, with little or no college. Jim, on the other hand was an MBA, and ABC, and XYZ… She said he insulted the entire room full of her people when he spent the first half hour bragging about all of his degrees and titles, MBA, etc., THEN literally read the content of (my) the PPT slides, word for word, to the room. She protested that he was implying he was smarter than everyone and that they did not know how to read. Of course, he had to read it because it was the first time he’d ever seen the deck himself -but that’s the subject for another article.

I asked her what I could do to help. “Get him out of there NOW and get us another project manager!!!” she yelled. I told her that he was our one and only project manager and we had nobody to replace him with.

Life was about to throw me a curve ball.

She said “I want YOU!” 

OK, I had met her and her team a couple times during the sales cycle, but I was no project manager. I told her I was only a lowly technical consultant. Here I should admit I did not even know what a project manager actually was at that time.

Then she hit me with another lesson of sorts.

“I DON’T CARE!!” She proclaimed vociferously. “We TRUST YOU!”

And just like that, I was a project manager.

25 years later people still ask me how I became a project manager, expecting to hear about the years of education and college degrees I had to earn to become one. I tell them this humble tale that leaves many in disbelief.

Lesson Learned

This experience SCREAMS a word and lesson that has resonated with me ever since.

TRUST.

How you earn someone’s trust is an ongoing debate with myriad opinions. Everyone has a different story. One thing remains constant.

TRUST gives you WINGS. Wings you can fly with.

The wings of TRUST however, come with a hefty price. Like Icarus, if trust is abused, your wings will surely melt. HUMILITY is a necessary companion to TRUST.

Epilogue

My first year as a consultant was the most exciting time in my career. I learned and grew exponentially. I’ve used these lessons, and of course many more since then, constantly in my 25+ year career in technology.

Today, I continue building on these experiences and lessons by honing these skills, as Tom Peters puts it in the title of his book “In Search of Excellence.” I was inspired by Tom over 25 years ago and lately have taken inspiration from Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, co-authors of “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win”.

In hindsight, my journey includes some pretty weird things, all different. One thing that has been constant all along is pushing myself, or occasionally being pushed, way outside my comfort zone. I can look back and see the growth spurts that happened as a result and also the corresponding increase in my confidence. What started as a career working with small, sometimes Mom and Pop businesses, has grown into earning the trust of some of the biggest names in industry.

Even after all these years, I still pull out the old question “how do you put an elephant in the refrigerator”, and predictably, people still jump right to the solution without asking WHY? This is probably the biggest lesson of all. Most of us in consulting are problem solvers, eager to help. Often this leads to missing expectations despite generous amounts of energy and the very best intentions.

Stop and ask yourself, “WHY am I taking the time to read this?” If you learned anything from these articles, I hope that won’t be the dumbest question you ever ask.