Well it has been a busy day as usual. I was looking for something today and ran across this speech I was asked to give about a year ago at a UEI graduation ceremony. In attendance were a couple thousand graduates of various fields. Not an Ivy League school of course but a willing and excited bunch of people ready to hit the market. I often wonder what business will be like 10 or 20 years for now. I am sure some things will never change, but with technology moving to cloud computing and marketing moving to social media, it is going to be interesting. The picture here is of my little Aaron. Who knows what he’ll be doing in the future but here he is in his best CEO attire.
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UIE Speech 3/1/08
First I would like to congratulate all of the graduating students here today. I know that school is not easy and that many of you have spent long sleepless nights and a lot of hard work to get to this point in your education. And of course I have to congratulate the teachers and administrators for imparting their wisdom and, well, just for putting up with all of you.
As I prepared for this opportunity to talk to you, I thought a great deal about what piece of information I could pass on that would assist you in this huge transition from school, to employment into your new career fields.
I thought maybe I would talk to you about getting rich and wealthy, but, well I still haven’t figured that one out. I thought maybe I could tell you what it is like to be the CEO of a small company, but then I remembered taking the trash out the other day at my office at 5 in the morning and I remembered it really wasn’t that glamorous.
I looked around my office the other day and thought about some of my employees. One was clearly sick, one was late because of a car problem; one looked as though they were in shock, of course this individual just a few days earlier had been falsely incarcerated for 3 days for a crime that he did not commit, and one individual was giving me a bad look. One employee looked like he was going to pull his hair out and kept exclaiming things such as “Listen to me, no listen, no, no listen, no I do not want you to restart, no I cannot fix your email if the Internet does not work.” He was trying to help an employee of a client that did not know anything about computers and clearly did not speak English. And finally, I had a call on hold for someone who wanted to complain about their bill. So I saw all of this and thought wow, what a happy bunch. Maybe I should talk about happiness in the work place.
No, I actually love my employees, they are wonderful, they work hard, we have a lot of fun (sometimes) and I couldn’t ask for a better team of people to be associated with.
In the ten years I have been running Frontec, I have experienced a lot of highs and lows and have seen my share of individuals who were either not happy in their life or in their career. So I would like to share with you a few qualities that I think you should strive for in order to find happiness and success in your future employment. These qualities may not directly make you happy, but I believe that they will help you find satisfaction, and that they will help you succeed at any job or endeavor you undertake. This in turn will make your work more enjoyable. Which I think is what we all want in our employment, to succeed and be happy.
It has been said that Saint Francis of Assisi was a great naturalist. One day as he walked with a friend along a somewhat busy road he suddenly stopped, listened for a moment, and asked “Do you hear that? Listen. Do you hear that?” He bent over moved aside a small rock and some debris and revealed a small cricket underneath. His friend was impressed and exclaimed “That was amazing! How in the world could you hear that small sound when there is so much noise around us?” Saint Francis looked at him and said “Observe.” He took a coin from his purse and dropped it on the cobblestones. For some distance around, people stopped and turned their attention toward the sound of the coin. “You see”, said Saint Francis, “People hear what they are interested in.”
This story is about awareness. It is about being able to look at the positive when other things are demanding your attention. All of you at some point will go through an employee evaluation or will be told what you are doing wrong in a job. If you look at your boss as being a horrible critical person then nothing positive will come of it. You should take advantage of these opportunities and improve yourself. Knowing what you can do better at, will make you a better person, a better employee and a leader and ultimately if you improve on those negative aspects of your job performance, your employer will earn more and you will earn more and be promoted to a leadership position. If you focus on any one negative aspect of your job, it will take over any other positive aspect.
The second quality I would like to discuss is habit formation. In your life and in your careers you will have to learn many new habits and unlearn some of the current habits that you think might be ok. Many of you will have to learn new habits such as getting up at a certain time or dressing a certain way or you may have to get rid of certain words and phrases that you use.
There was a man you probably have not heard about, named N.C. Hanks. N.C. Hanks grew up in Utah in the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. At the age of 21 while climbing up to a mine at which he worked, the blasting caps he was carrying exploded. He lost both his hands and was blind for the rest of this life. After months of hospitalization his crippled body was healed, but he found himself a slave of the morphine drug. Determined to overcome his drug habit, he locked himself in a room for days until he overcame his craving. Another time N.C. Hanks made up his mind that he would learn to button his own coat and tie his own shoe laces. Now remember he could not see and he had no hands. Again, except to come out for food, he locked himself in his room for 5 weeks until he could do both tasks with his handless arms. Later he went on to attend Kings College, Stanford, Harvard and Columbia Universities. He kept his own classroom notes and took his exams just like everyone else.
When you are faced with a tough habit to change or to begin, I hope that you will remember the story of N.C. Hanks.
William James often known as “The Father of American Psychology” gave some valuable rules for habit formation. He taught the following 4 rules:
1. “In the acquisition of a new habit or the leaving off of an old one, a person should take care to launch one-self with as strong and decisive initiative as possible.”
a. In 2005 my company made an acquisition of a competitor in the computer services industry. The acquisition was a very stressful time for my employees, the employees of the company we were acquiring and of course for myself. During this time EVERYONE, had to get rid of certain habits, and begin new habits. Employees had to learn new methods of working with clients, new methods of scheduling, new methods of billing as well as many other things. It was extremely difficult for employees of the other company to learn new ways of operating after having worked a certain way for some time previous. The individuals that recognized that the new habits they had to learn were a great improvement over the old way of doing things; and the employees that QUICKLY launched themselves into these new habits got along great and prospered in the company. But there were individuals that resisted and whined and complained and of course they didn’t last. You cannot just recognize that there is a need for a habit change; you have to literally, explode into action.
2. “One should seize upon every first possible opportunity to act in the direction of the habit to be acquired.”
a. Don’t wait a month to begin or don’t wait for someone else to start the habit. You have to make the decision, stick to it and begin working on it.
3. “One should never suffer an exception to occur until the new habit is securely established.”
a. I have a habit I have been working on. You see I love cookies. I love all kinds of cookies. Well the scale showed I had been eating a few too many so I decided to cut back and only have 2 cookies a day if we had cookies at the house. But too many times I arrive home and I am tired and stressed and I say to myself, “Self you deserve 4 cookies after a day like today” or I’ll say “these cookies are kind of small so how about 3 cookies” Well as you can imagine, I let too many exceptions occur until the goal of changing that habit was actually just a wish. You cannot let exceptions occur or you will travel down that path also.
4. “To keep the faculty of effort alive one should perform some gratuitous exercise daily.”
a. “Faculty of Effort”, basically means “Will Power”. Of this rule, William James states the following: “Be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two, something for no other reason than, that you would rather not do it.” Essentially you are doing things that you do not want to do for the sole reason of strengthening yourself. William James goes on to say: “So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower, when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.”
The third quality that I would like to mention is the willingness to ask for help. Many, many, many times I have seen individuals at work try to perform a task, and because they were too proud to ask for help, they ended up causing much pain and grief. I cannot tell you of the many sleepless nights I have spent fixing a problem, which could have been avoided had someone just spoken the simple words “Can you help me?”
Arturo Toscanini was a famous Italian musician in the early 1900’s. He was considered by many critics, fellow musicians, and much of the classical listening audience to have been one of the greatest conductors of all time. At some point during his career he received a letter from a lonely poor sheepherder in the remote mountains of Wyoming. It said “Mr. Conductor, I have only two possessions of worth, a radio and an old violin. The batteries in my radio are getting low and will soon die. My violin is also out of tune and I can’t use it. Please help me. Next Sunday when you begin your concert, sound a loud “A” so I can tune my “A” string; and then I can tune my other strings. When my radio batteries are dead, I’ll have my violin. At the beginning of his next nationwide radio concert from Carnegie Hall, Toscanini announced; “For a dear friend and listener back in the mountains of Wyoming, the orchestra will now sound an “A” the musicians all joined together in a perfect ‘A’.
Many times you will have a task that you cannot do on your own, take the initiative to ask for help or research to find the answer you need. And when things happen in your life that may cause you to be a little “Out of Tune” with your employment, ask for help, you would be surprised at how often people are willing to help if you just ask.
The last quality I want to mention is about determination. The first great B-29 strike flown from a land base during World War II was led by an airplane named “City of Los Angeles”. Aboard the aircraft were twelve men, eleven regular crewmen and a colonel flying as squadron commander for the mission. They were to reach the rendezvous point fifty to seventy-five miles off the mainland of the enemy, then to assume regular fighting formation and fly in on target, which was a complex of high octane gasoline plants feeding the enemy war potential. The rendezvous point was reached as scheduled and Colonel Sprouse ordered the dropping of the phosphorus bomb which was to mark the point. Sergeant “Red” Irwin skidded the bomb down the chute as ordered. The act was loaded with death. The flap at the end of the bomb chute had somehow become stuck.
When the bomb struck it, it exploded prematurely and burst back into the cabin of the airplane and into the face and chest of Sergeant Irwin. Dropping to the deck it began to swiftly to burn its way through the thin metal flooring separating it from the incendiary bombs stored in the bomb bay below. In moments the “City of Los Angeles” and its crew would be blown to bits far out over the ocean in enemy territory.
Sergeant Irwin, tragically wounded, got to his knees, picked up the bomb in his bare hands, cradled it in his arms, and staggered up the passageway. Crashing into the navigators table, he had to stop and unlatch it with fingers that left burnt marks in the wood. By now the aircraft was filled with acrid fumes blinding the pilot. The aircraft was wallowing less than three hundred feet above the water. Irwin staggered into the pilots compartment shouting “Window, window.” He could not see that it was already open. He threw the bomb out the window and collapsed to the deck. Two hours later, Colonel Sprouse having ordered the “City of Los Angeles” back to base, in the slim hope that Sergeant Irwin’s’ life might be saved, arrived in Iwo Jima. Irwin’s flesh was still smoking with imbedded phosphorous when he was removed from the plane by comrades who had to avert their faces from his tragic wounds.
Sergeant Irwin lived to receive this nation’s highest honor for extreme bravery, and to survive nearly fifty plastic surgery operations which restored him to a somewhat normal life. He lived to marry and to become a father. And with him there lived eleven other men who but for his almost unbelievable courage and determination would be dead. Eleven men, spared for their lives and work and families through the decision and courageous act of one man! When Sergeant Irwin picked up that bomb, he knew that it was burning at 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, 1088 degrees hotter than boiling water!
Often it takes a story of great determination to inspire us to have small acts of determination ourselves. This last principle which I believe is important to succeed and find happiness in your employment is determination.
It takes determination to be aware and to be positive. It takes determination to change your habits. It takes determination to ask for help and to get yourself “back in tune” during rough patches.
Life is tough; it takes determination to get out of bed every day early in the morning. It takes a lot of determination to brave the Southern California traffic. It takes determination to get out of your shell and begin a new career. It takes determination to have to learn new things and ways of doing things that you might not be used to. It takes determination to look for a new job and to go to interviews. It takes determination to meet new people and have to make new friends and acquaintances at your new places of employment. You will be asked to perform tasks that are very hard. And if I know one thing, that is that you, the graduating students of UEI will carry with you an overloading amount of determination to meet those tasks head on.
Congratulations, Good Luck and God Bless You.
Thank You.
Todd Nielsen
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