I recently spent a day and a half in our quarterly board meeting. Many more hours went into preparing for it. I have put more than 30 years of my life into pre-meeting stress and anxiety and post-meeting exhaustion and reflection. These meetings are almost miniature rites of passage. Days of reckoning.
With business up 65% in the first two months of the year, one might imagine that we would be spending our time in wild celebration. But the future is always uncertain. The pace of change seems to increase daily. Competition grows exponentially. One never knows with what strength the next hurricane will hit. Will your foundation, carefully built over the past twenty years, withstand the cynicism of one disgruntled journalist?
Our strength lies in the hearts and souls of the intrepid beings who guide this ship and show up to work every day with the passion and love that seems to weather every storm, rising above the most turbulent seas with new insights and capability.
Ultimately, we survive and thrive through the care and commitment of our consumers — those who seek us out among the thousands of other options. Who sense a connection to our purpose and mission, even though we sometimes fail to clearly articulate it. They honor the work that we do, even when we let them down. There is a bond that we have forged through the journey we travel together. Our simple hope is to do good work, to inspire new possibilities, to raise expectations, and to demonstrate that business can be a source of positive influence.
Somehow, these board meetings help me remember why I do what I do — and why I will continue to do it until my job is well done.