A car pulled up with the window down: “Mark?” “Karen!” … and we were off!
This was pre-everything… no pagers, no cell phones, barely any internet. And yet, our little supercomputer-on-a-card was starting to get some notice across IBM. For our little “start-up inside the Behemoth”, I was assigned to go meet with customers, a role I eventually understood to be “Product Management.”
A sales rep out in Chicago was working with a very large publishing firm. Like all start-ups, we were just Hoping for any conversation. She had set up a meeting with one of their team, and I was flying out for that meeting.
I had enough conversations to think I knew her well, I realized that we had actually never seen each other. I emailed as I was leaving DC I would stand in the median at O’Hare with my coat off, and matching yellow suspenders and tie. I didn’t have to Hope she would be there… and within about 5 minutes… there she was.
…define reality, then provide Hope…
Most psychologists say that without Hope there is only despair, without Hope we cannot dream for a better future. This was the type of Hope that both Karen and I were working from, although we didn’t really know it at first…
Scott Eblin, a good friend, defines Leadership as 1) Define Reality, and 2) Provide Hope. But exactly what is Hope? Is it simply a wish for an outcome, as in “I wish I was 6 feet tall” 😉
Another friend provided me this: “Hope is a confident expectation of a future good. It carries with it the thought of a rope of good, anchored in the future, and running into the present, something that we can hold onto in a storm and aspire to in good times.”
…a 17-year-old engaged at the Fillmore…
Santana has a record few bands match: their first 3 albums all went Platinum. But it all started with him hanging around Fillmore West as a 17-year-old where Bill Graham drafted him to replace a drunk Paul Butterfield for a Sunday matinee show.
Once he had that start, his Hope was a work ethic that started in Mexico where he was born in 1947. He learned the violin at 5, and guitar from his father a mariachi musician at 8. His family moved from Autlan to Tijuana, where he started playing with pick-up bands in his teens. The family moved to the Mission District of San Francisco in his early teens, which was why he was hanging around the Fillmore for his “lucky break” he had been Hoping for…
…a standing ovation, twice…
… his music was such a unique blend of jazz, rock, and rhythms from Latin music, and came from his friends. The mixing bowl that is America put all those elements in front of him, and he started pulling all the pieces together. Getting a standing ovation for his substitute bill, Graham got them signed to Columbia where they had recorded some tracks through the early part of 1969 but nothing that was ready for release.
The festival schedule for 1969 included a new show in upstate New York who wanted to book the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane… also managed by Graham. He insisted that Santana be included, and much like his first set at the Fillmore, they were substituted for another band and played mid-day Saturday… to another standing ovation. The album was released just after that in late August, the perfect timing for one of the “overnight successes” coming out of that “new” festival… Woodstock.
One standing ovation gets you a chance. The second one is Hope with a work ethic behind it.
…a meeting worth engaging…
… on our drive out to the location, Karen opened up that just GETTING a meeting was a HUGE success. Whatever happened after that was gravy. She had been shut out because nothing else IBM had was even interesting enough for her customer to take a phone call. Something about our work was just interesting enough to get a conversation going.
My boss learned from his years at IBM Research that the leading edge computing work was not done by computer people, but by customers who had problems bigger than current computers could handle. This was one of those meetings… and I was used to it by now… and my Hope was one of these would eventually turn into a group that would take a risk with us.
…the rope, 6 years on…
I still quote him all the time… and have found that to be even more true. So many leaders continue to feel isolated – still working with a very challenging workforce. Remote work, without a plan for how to best interact with the team. Global competition is fiercer. AI now challenges both their own thinking and their teams thinking. Hiring and retaining top talent. All of the concerns are still present at all levels of my work.
Much of my own work has focused on helping leaders focus on 6 things that have gone ‘OK’ for every aw “s#!t”… DAILY. Building the muscle of positive Hope never goes out of style.
What is your own Hope… for you, for your team, and for the path forward? Is it a wish, or a rope to pull you forward? We engage this week with the song that provided Santana with 10 minutes of his Hope from Woodstock… and not his Soul Sacrifice…
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: Tonight, write down 6 things that went OK today for every one that didn’t, and leave the list where you will see it in the morning.
If the list comes up short, and you want help finding the rope in your own week, let’s engage it together. Schedule time with me here.
Turn it up, and give yourself 10 minutes of Woodstock and… Soul Sacrifice
