Smaller Dose #5. It’s good that you came back for more…..
Reading Time: 4 minutes
Length: 900 words
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year! I hope this installment finds everyone doing well and starting off 2020 on a very positive note. It’s good that you came back for Smaller Dose #5. Something a little bit different, yet still contains lessons about life and leadership.
So here we go…..
My father passed away in April of last year. He was an interesting man, and some would say he was a great storyteller. Once such story came to mind recently. A story he would tell my younger sister about a place called “Canadialand.”
Let me start with some context. We grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo, New York. And anyone who knows something about the Western New York area, knows the following to be absolute truths:
It can and has snowed eight months of the year and the summers are simply amazing
Niagara Falls is only 30 minutes away
Wings, Beef on Weck and Genesee Cream Ale are key staples of the local diet
President McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo on September 6th, 1901 at the Pan American Exposition (World’s Fair) when Buffalo was the 6th largest city in the nation
Jack Kemp was more than a member of the House of Representatives; he was the quarterback for the Buffalo Bills from 1962-1969, winning the AFL championship twice
And Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada is just across the Peace Bridge (construction completed in 1927) which is in downtown Buffalo
Traveling to Canada as a kid was a memorable experience. Crossing the border from one country to another was much simpler than it is today. Not only was Fort Erie close by, Toronto was a mere 90 minutes away. And, in my opinion, Toronto was the cleanest and friendliest metropolitan area I had ever known for many years. Little things like exchanging US Dollars for Canadian Dollars was interesting. And buying gasoline in litres (note the intentional use of the Canadian spelling) instead of gallons was a novelty.
So, Canada was our travel destination, our vacation place in the 1970’s and 1980’s. And in our stories, my dad’s stories, we had Canadialand, which took the experience to an entirely new level.
One such story was about streetlamps. The very uninteresting and uninspiring topic of streetlamps. Things we take for granted today, but that was not the case some 200 years ago.
Imagine walking down the street in the 19th century to a saloon, a hotel, a barber or dry goods store in a world where things were much simpler and more peaceful (although peaceful is a relative term.) And as you were walking you notice something; streetlamps. But you don’t know what they are, and they aren’t lighting the way. You wonder why and so you ask one of the residents of this mythical place. You are told that streetlamps exist so that when electricity is invented, this place will be well ahead of all the other non-mythical places. Their homes have electrical outlets too so that when appliances and devices are invented, after the innovation of electricity, that they will be ready.
It’s one thing to read this simple story and yet it was another thing to hear my dad tell the story. Ridiculous in some ways, yet profound in other ways. Innovation. Second order thinking. Being able to see beyond the near future. Ignoring the facts and realities of the day and the history of the time. Electric streetlamps were first used in Paris in 1878 and by some accounts there were gas lights as early as 1810. But none of that matters in the story of a place known as Canadialand.
You might be wondering what made me think of such a story. And I would tell you, it was my good friend Donald Trump. You see, he gave a speech on Independence Day last year and mentioned airports during the time of the Revolutionary War (something obviously missing from all the history textbooks.) Perhaps President Trump was aware that General Washington knew that there would be airports because airplanes would be invented some 127 years later. Just like the people in Canadialand knew that electricity would be invented someday soon, and they would be the first to have visibility in the streets at night in their little mythical town. Washington was a visionary. Only until Donald Trump, we didn’t know the full extent of that vision. Profound? Silly? Insane? It doesn’t really matter. I’m sure dad would have had a funny comment about it or came up with a story to explain it. For now, we just have the memory of Canadialand, and that’s fine with me.
So, what does any of this have to do with leadership? A leader, a good leader, should be able to create a vision, a reasonable vision, and take people along for the journey. A leader should be able to paint a picture that people can feel and see themselves as part of the future state. Leaders who do this separate themselves from those who either don’t or can’t create that vision. Or perhaps they create a “vision” that is so unrealistic and unbelievable that people simply don’t buy in. And that is when leadership fails.
So, if you are a leader, and all of us are leaders in some aspect of life, consider this little story of what could be, and the role you play in creating that vision and bringing people along for the ride. You may not realize it, but people are looking to each of us for guidance.
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Until next time…..
Jerry