Not Your Average Joe

Average-Joe

It has been a great week.  And for me that means I learned something as I try to do every week – every day is too aggressive for me.  It has been a week of reflection and hard work; of gratitude and perspective.

I was reminded today that I don’t work around your Average Joe.  I am, instead, surrounded by people composed of a different constitution and people that see the world through a different lense.  I am surrounded by … the very people I always wanted to be surrounded by.

I am surrounded by a group of people that don’t always agree but who are always willing to professionally debate the merits of all sides of the argument in order to find the right solution.  I am reminded the right solution rarely fits the square peg into the square hole.  Moreover, the right solution often demands a new structure to contain it –  new processes to facilitate it and new models to explain it.

I guess I was not made that way and I know I was not raised that way = status quo is not meant for me.  I identify when Pam says “culture eat’s strategy for lunch”.  I get that.  It still rocks my very being to this day.  The “customer has the right to be unreasonable”.  That is a cultural icon that I am happy to live beneath.  And “who do we hire to do the hard stuff” compels a different calling.  That sounds heroic.  Let me be clear – we are not the guys with courage that run towards the sounds of chaos and disaster to save the life of a stranger.  Those are the heroes.

But we are indeed marching to the beat of a different calling.  We don’t do the “race to the bottom”.  You can fall gracefully and win that race.

It’s been a good day, because I got my perspective changed today.  Thank you Alan.