“I can come to the funeral any day but Thursday.” … “It’s Thursday”
My college roommate Wes, who introduced me to Kansas, died over 10 years ago… so when the writing calendar noted the 50th Anniversary of Leftoverture by Kansas is this week, those memories came flooding back… and the Time that has passed…
…a full calendar, and almost nobody in it…
Open last week’s calendar. The staff meeting, 9 one-on-ones, the vendor review, the board prep, the call that ran over and “ate” your lunch. Every hour has a name on it. You can account for every hour of the week, and almost none of them were spent in a room with someone you would miss. The Time went where the invitations sent it.
Nobody plans it that way. The urgent things send meeting requests, and the people who matter most to you never do. They wait for you to show up, and they keep waiting, until one of them stops.
…the drummer who engaged a band, and came home to it…
Phil Ehart started a band called Kansas in Topeka in 1970, then left it and went to England to look for better musicians. He found the scene cold and came home, and in 1972 he put together the players he already knew men we will meet this week: Dave Hope, Robby Steinhardt, Steve Walsh and Rich Williams, with Kerry Livgren joining in early 1973.
That March they rented an opera house in a small town, put up signs for free beer, charged a quarter at the door, and played for Don Kirshner’s man from New York. They got the deal. Ehart drummed for them for 50 years and managed them for 40, until a heart attack took him off the road in February 2024. The band went on without him behind the kit, with Ehart still its manager. In his words, Kansas is still a band.
…Time engages you… by default…
I had a good reason for saying I couldn’t make it Thursday. I was teaching at JMU in their relatively new Leadership and Innovation MBA. I had a partner – you know I rarely do anything by myself – and of course it was my night to lead the class. If you know “The 10 Year Rule” it applies here. I do not remember what that class was – I do remember being one of the 6 chosen to carry Wes to his rest in North Texas.
Raised in Oklahoma, Wes felt a kinship to the high plains of Kansas. It was more just being in the room with him … and my other roommate Joe… both very large people (6 ‘3″) and having a good Time together. Wes always drove in his 1970 Monte Carlo – a very fast car… for such a quiet and plodding guy.
The Time you spend in the room is the Time you keep.
…what it takes to engage the people you would miss…
To engage is to start something and bring other people into it. Most leaders are good at it at work and terrible at it everywhere else. The skill is the same: you name the thing, put it on a date, and ask. A friend you have not seen in 3 years needs the same invitation a project kickoff gets.
The trap is waiting for a better week. There is no better week. The calendar refills faster than you empty it, and the people who never send an invitation are the ones who quietly drop off it.
…a title nobody could spell…
The album was Ehart’s idea before it was a song. He came up with the title Point of Know Return, with “Know” where everyone expected “No”, and Steve Walsh wrote the song around it. The album came out in October 1977 and went to No. 4 on the Billboard 200 in January 1978, the highest the band ever reached.
The title track went to No. 28 as a single, and dropped out of the Top 40 the same week Dust in the Wind came in. In 2013, BMI honored its writers, Walsh, Ehart and Steinhardt, for more than 2 million plays. The drummer who left home and came back gave it its name.
…the hour I would give anything to engage again…
“Some day, we will pay for this”
… 1978. Wes, Joe, and I went to a “practice show” in Dallas in the late 70’s. Their sound company was trying out the sound system for a stadium tour. We had 4th row tickets in a very small hall and nearly lost our hearing 😉 The guy in front of us finished his whole bottle of Jack Daniels during the show. Wes quipped, “We will at least be better off than that guy.” The show was amazing…
… and the group itself is slowly aging out so they are touring but with a lot of members are stepping aside as being too old and a few dying like Wes. And it will happen more now as all of us are reaching our late 60’s and our heroes like Kansas are in their 70’s Reminding me of another great saying – “Always go to the funeral.”
This week is about where your Time actually goes. 7 days, 7 angles, 1 practice, and a band that has been on the road for 50 years. It starts with a count.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: Print last week’s calendar, circle every hour you spent in a room with someone who matters to you, and count them.
If the count surprises you, and you want help deciding which rooms to walk back into first, let’s engage it together. Schedule Time with me here.
Count the hours, then go find the people you missed, before you sail past the… Point of Know Return
