"Good" Ideas

“When people tell you that idea will never work, most of the time they’re gonna be right, but you have to say, ‘Not this time.  I’m going to figure this out, there is a right solution and I’m going to get there.’” – Marc Randolph, the co-founder and first CEO of Netlflix

“Good” Ideas

Its partially because of the way we’ve been trained.  We’ve been trained to look for problems.  When someone does have a new idea, everybody takes aim and pokes holes in it.  I had just finished such a hole poking session with my engineering firm.  We’ve been looking for solutions to some design issues for months.  Lots of design issues!  At some point I lost count of all the design options we had discussed.  Now, after months of work, I felt like throwing my hands and arms in the air while yelling, “I give up!”  Gratefully, this seemingly futile meeting was over and I was walking toward the lobby.

When I turned the corner from the hallway to the lobby I saw a familiar face.  It was my friend Art Boyce.  He was sitting with his back to the window, sun streaming across his shoulders and a calm, smile creased across his face.  He greeted me warmly and then gave me some of his well-learned advice.

“You just have to keep working at it every day.  And, don’t give up!” He said with a warm, heartfelt hand shake.

Art would know.  I’ve watched him expand his business over many years and every time I drive past it, I can’t help but smile at his success as I see customers there.  I also smile because I suspect that when he started his business people told him that it would never work.  Yet, he did precisely the opposite of what all of those people said and his risk taking is what ultimately paid off.

I stepped out of the building, with a friendly wave, and into my car where I sat to think for a moment.  My brief talk with Art reminded me of something Marc Randolph, the founder and first CEO of Netflix said.

“When people tell you that idea will never work, most of the time they’re gonna be right, but you have to say, ‘Not this time.  I’m going to figure this out, there is a right solution and I’m going to get there.’”

He also said, “Is it that I was smart?  Well, no. . . .  Almost all my ideas were bad ones.  Maybe it’s that I’m persistent.  Well, I will take a little credit for being persistent.  But there’s actually something I’m even more proud of.  I’m proud that I’m an optimist, and I’m not a glass half (full) optimist, I am a glass overflowing optimist.”

Now there was a calm smile creasing my own face as I mentally grouped Art and Marc together.  I felt a warm sense of gratitude fill my heart’s glass to overflowing for learning from these two great people.

Living a successful life is not always about having good ideas.  It’s about getting comfortable with learning lessons from trying lots of bad ones.  The key is to challenge yourself to persist in quickly, easily and cheaply trying out as many “good” ideas as possible.  That’s what wise people call “seasoning.”

Seasoning comes because of the way life trains us through offered experience and wading through lots of not-so-good ideas.  Living trains us to overcome problems.  So, next time someone pokes holes in your new idea and you feel a little discouraged, let Art’s words fill you with optimism.  

“You just have to keep working at it every day.  And, don’t give up!”

Until one sees its Beauty

“To look at a thing is quite different from seeing a thing, and one does not see anything until one sees its beauty.” – Miss Mabel Chiltern, An Ideal Husband

Until one sees its Beauty

The evening sun, the “golden hour,” was just beginning to slip behind the Stansbury Mountains, on its way to seemingly take a dip into the Great Salt Lake.  This exceptional light made it so the green of the grass was remarkably vivid and bright.  And, it was a brilliant contrast against the tall, dry, yellowed grass just over the fence.  That was the look of the pastoral scene right in front of me and it surrounded the reddish colored gate standing as a doorway to a stockade.

Once I passed through this portal, I saw anxious black, furry faces turning toward me and then toward an adjacent manger in anticipation of dinner.  I slipped through one, other gate, slid the barn door open, gathered hay, walked back to the manger, and threw the hay in.  At that moment, moist, broad, back noses reached toward the food and were soon covered in flakes of green, as was my shirt.

I turned away, brushed the green flakes from my shirt, with my gloved hand, and ambled through the gate, back into the corral.  My eyes were fixing on the reddish gate as I walked, the fading sun to my right.  That’s when movement in the tall, dry, yellow grass across the fence beckoned my eyes.

“I wonder what that is?”  I whispered to myself as I walked right up to the fence.

My own dinner was calling me, so I hesitated to linger.  It moved again.  I stood still and focused.  The light was waning.  It was hard to see.

“It looks like two sticks moving above the lightly waving grass.”  I thought.

But, its rhythm was in contrast to the grass’ dance.  I looked harder, more carefully.  Doing so exposed a small delicate head, a petite narrow snout and two antlers.  It was a young, buck mule deer.  Its unexpected beauty captured my presence.  I gazed to absorb it.  To see rather than to just look.

That evening, for the first time, the tall, dry, yellowed grass just over the fence came alive.  Six more heads, sensing my concentration, rose almost in harmony above the grass.  They wanted to see me as well.  They were a brilliant contrast of life against the above-ground-dead grassland.

“This truly is the golden hour!”  I said, right out loud, to the small herd of deer in front of me.

I turned reluctantly to my right, toward the reddish colored gate, so I could leave the stockade and walk through the pastoral scene toward my home.

“To look at a thing is quite different from seeing a thing, and one does not see anything until one sees its beauty.”

Full-Blown Grins

Weight and balance calculations

Full-Blown Grins

There was a shrill, screeching sound as a forklift worked to position the pallet of landscaping material on the truck.  The driver was trying to stop another sounding alarm.  It was the truck’s squawking over-weight alarm.  All this caused another attendant to pull her calculator out and rush her fingers across the screen, so she could calculate weight & load numbers in the midst of this bothersome noise.

In moments, she reported that the numbers worked and that weight tolerance & safety were not going to be a concern.  In response, the forklift driver nodded his head in understanding.  Then, he jumped down from his machine and lowered the right-side truck-bed-side-boards so he could try a different approach.

He had been working from the rear of the truck and now recognized that he couldn’t solve this problem from that position.  His actions announced a subtlety he recognized through personal experience.  Weight was only one of two issues we were dealing with on this load.  Balance, though hidden from my inexperienced eye, could make the load manageable and secure.

The screeching happened anew as he lifted the load and then pushed it toward the front end of the truck’s bed.  When it arrived in his intended position he began to let the truck assume the entire weight of the pallet while holding his breath.  The screech from dragging the pallet ended and the weight-alarm’s squawking remained a memory.  The three of us gave each other hopeful glances and then our mouths moved into a full-blown grin at the welcome silence.

I strapped the load in, climbed into the truck’s cab, started the engine and began driving to the drop point.  Our work of calculating load capacity and actuating balance allowed my drive to be uneventful.  That was the good news. 

The bad news was that the forklift didn’t make the drive with me!  Upon my arrival I had a new weight and balance issue.  I parked the truck, climbed into its bed and began to unload the two tons of material, one heavy bag at a time.

“Weight and balance problems seem to persist everywhere I go!” I muttered to myself as I worked.

After two days of struggled labor, I stepped back to survey the results of conquering weight and balance issues.  The completed landscaping project had softened, balanced and beautified my yard.  My ears remembered the shrill, screeching sound made as a forklift driver worked to position this landscaping material on a truck just a couple of days earlier.  And, my heart remembers the lessons I learned about weight and balance.

Perhaps you and I could remove lots of bothersome noise from our lives by completing some of our own weight and balance calculations?  Who knows, maybe doing so would allow us to enjoy our life’s journey with a few more full-blown grins positioned on our faces.