Today, February 16th, is the thirteenth anniversary of ForeRunner. Like almost everything else in my life, it began with no plan or goal in mind. There was just the overpowering need to leave the now, the familiar, and just be free. Even now the memory of that wild rush of freedom that came with leaving my previous job has the power to intoxicate and enchant.
Viewed by a rational person, it was a stupid thing to do. I had a very good job with a very good organization. I had four kids, two in high school, one in junior high and a fourth in elementary school. In the coming fall, the oldest would begin college, with the thought of at least 12 years of college tuition payments following. The amazing fact was that my wife allowed me to quit. She gave up paychecks and health insurance. She much later admitted to how frightened she was. But she never let me know. So much for the myth that I have any sensitivity at all.
February 15 was the last day at my old job. February 16, a Friday, was the first day at ForeRunner. I had bought a new desk at Oak Express that was delivered to my new office that day. My new office was a 10’ by 14’, room with attached closet. But it had a window with a tree outside. While my old (bigger) office was on the 17th floor of a downtown building with multiple windows on an expansive view of the Front Range, I was very excited about this new place.
The next day, a Saturday, I built shelving for my new office out of 2x4s and plywood. It was a sight. The office building had a small landing outside its entrance. I can still remember plugging my saw in there, cutting the wood and using my DeWalt 12 volt battery screwdriver to put the pieces together. I am sure the other tenants’ in the building thought that Jedd Clampett had moved in when they saw what was going on. But they held their peace, at least that first day. It was an all day job, but Diane and the kids came over with McDonald’s for lunch. It was a great day.
Monday came and what I had done began to sink in. An office can be a lonely place. Time passes very slowly. It gives you time to think. After awhile you get tired of thinking. I used the phone to call people. I left a lot of messages. I learned a lot about receptionists and caller screening. I sent out mailers to the people I knew and the people I didn’t know. The silence was deafening.
A month passed. Then another month passed. Then four more months were gone. I had watched the leaves on that tree outside my office bud, leaf out and now in a few more weeks those leaves would be falling off. One day the phone rang and it was a client. They had a pipeline project in Texas and needed someone to help them. The downside was that I would have to work out of their office to do the job. I heard myself politely turning the job down and hanging up the phone.
For the next two weeks, I rehashed that conversation again and again. Against my taking the job was that I would have traded an executive position with a window office for a contract job in a cubicle was more than my pride could handle. Can you tell that I am status conscious? Also the job looked like it wouldn’t lead anywhere. On the other hand, our finances were in the toilet. As for going nowhere, how can you go anywhere when you don’t know where you want to go. More than once, I came within an inch of calling the client back. Calling him back and begging, if need be.
And then, miracle of miracles, the phone rang again. A large engineering company wanted to talk to me about specialized consulting on a large project they had. Actually, this sounded even worse. But it was “consulting” not “contract engineer”. Euphemisms were important. Also the thinking of the previous couple of weeks had brought home the depths of the financial hole we faced. So I went in and talked to them. If I am honest, I will say that I went eagerly.
On the Saturday over Labor Day Weekend, I sat down with three people I had never met before. They explained the project they wanted me to help them with; and amazingly, I realized it was the same project the client had talked about two weeks before. Yes, I would still have to sit in the client’s office. But my pride was beaten and I recognized that God was trying to get my attention. I accepted the humiliation of my fate.
The next few months were tough. Returning to a job level I thought left behind played on my mind. Yet those months were among the most important in my life. After doing projects as an engineering contractor for the entirety of my career, I now did a project from the perspective of an owner. It was truly an epiphany and forever changed my ideas about how projects should be done.
That project was where ForeRunner began. After a couple of months, the scale of work required more help. At a fateful lunch, Creg Hughes agreed to leave his budding career in financial services and join me. I met so many of the people, future clients, employees, competitors and friends, that were instrumental in the future of ForeRunner on that job.
From those humble beginnings, ForeRunner came to be. We have had our successes and our failures. But that first project created our foundation of respect, both for the needs of our clients and for our own people, as well as the vendors and contractors with which we work. Along with that respect, I came to understand humility, another foundation stone of our company. Humility is not something that comes easily, especially to engineers. Yet that was the genesis of the company, and being true to our beginnings requires us to remember from where we came.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
CEO's - The Genie of Accountability
It won't go away, nor should it. Tens of billions of dollars were given in bonuses to employees of financial institutions that went into the tank. The suspicion is that some of those billions were taxpayer dollars. The idea is outrageous. It makes our blood hot. The very people most visibly at fault for the economic meltdown are leaving the disaster scene with bags of cash, ala Scrooge McDuck. Where is the justice?
Our collective rage is focused on the leaders of those organizations, the CEO's, rather than the employees who were given outsize bonuses as well. I feel that these leaders, these CEO's, have failed as stewards of the resources which they managed. We trusted them to use their position and their knowledge to make this a better world. We expected that they would get rich from their position, but we also expected them to care about the good of the business they managed. In this, they have failed badly. We expected them to be greedy. We did not expect them to have no shame.
Shame. What an old fashioned word. Has anyone heard it used in the last twenty years? It is so old fashioned that it is quaint. Before we all got so smart, before we all became educated and modern, the word spoke to our sense of community. It was a word that recognized we all had responsibilities and obligations to the world that we lived in. We are only human, and so will fail on a regular basis. And as we fail, we will exhibit all those traits that make us lovable, i.e. greed, as well as her sisters, lust, gluttony, laziness, anger, envy and pride. But our sense of shame drove us to say we were sorry when we failed. Sometimes it even drove us to be noble rather than self serving.
But then shame can only exist in the company of humility. Humility is another word that has fallen out of use. To be ashamed requires one to be humble, to recognize that you have let your fellows down. But I see no sign of that on the national stage that these titans of industry stride across. They are smarter than we are, they are better connected than we are and they know it. Even as they are on camera before Congress,the righteousness they feel can be seen. They know that as soon as Britney Spears or Tiger Woods make news, we will forget. Then they can return and resume their mastery.
But are CEO's so different? How many athletes on your favorite sports team have left or arrived because of a more lucrative contract? As it happens, I have been a Yankee fan all my life. I trace my love of the Yankees to growing up far out in the sticks and watching baseball on tv. It is exciting to be a fan of a team so committed to winning. But even I am uneasy about the naked power of money used by the Yankees. I watch Alex Rodriguez and the other "best in class" talent fail in October, again and again. I cannot help but compare their smooth superiority to the heart shown by Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill and others when they did win World Series. But seeing an old scratchy news reel of Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech makes my eyes mist up, for it shows how far we have come.
And yet it is our modern age. We are awash in consultants who tell us how to have great organizations. These business masters tell us that we must have metrics and we must have accountability to be successful. We must measure things and then hold people accountable to deliver those things that can be measured. And we follow the advice of these masters. We do measure things and we do hold people accountable. CEO's get to be where they are by consistently delivering those things that are measurable. Alex Rodriguez, A-Rod to us fans, got his $ 400 million dollar contract by consistently making and exceeding the numbers. I expect that A-Rod shows that emotionless sense of superiority because he is delivering. He is doing what he is paid to do. His numbers are fantastic.
I am reminded of the many stories about the genie who grants three wishes. You have heard them I am sure. Some wandering soul finds a lamp and rubs it. A genie appears and grants three wishes to that person. The person asks for those things we all aspire to, wealth, position, love. But each request has an unforeseen flaw that frustrates the meaning of the request. So after three failed dreams, the genie returns to the lamp, satisfied that he has been accountable. He met his metrics and granted the three wishes The wandering soul returns to his wandering, worse off than before.
Our collective rage is focused on the leaders of those organizations, the CEO's, rather than the employees who were given outsize bonuses as well. I feel that these leaders, these CEO's, have failed as stewards of the resources which they managed. We trusted them to use their position and their knowledge to make this a better world. We expected that they would get rich from their position, but we also expected them to care about the good of the business they managed. In this, they have failed badly. We expected them to be greedy. We did not expect them to have no shame.
Shame. What an old fashioned word. Has anyone heard it used in the last twenty years? It is so old fashioned that it is quaint. Before we all got so smart, before we all became educated and modern, the word spoke to our sense of community. It was a word that recognized we all had responsibilities and obligations to the world that we lived in. We are only human, and so will fail on a regular basis. And as we fail, we will exhibit all those traits that make us lovable, i.e. greed, as well as her sisters, lust, gluttony, laziness, anger, envy and pride. But our sense of shame drove us to say we were sorry when we failed. Sometimes it even drove us to be noble rather than self serving.
But then shame can only exist in the company of humility. Humility is another word that has fallen out of use. To be ashamed requires one to be humble, to recognize that you have let your fellows down. But I see no sign of that on the national stage that these titans of industry stride across. They are smarter than we are, they are better connected than we are and they know it. Even as they are on camera before Congress,the righteousness they feel can be seen. They know that as soon as Britney Spears or Tiger Woods make news, we will forget. Then they can return and resume their mastery.
But are CEO's so different? How many athletes on your favorite sports team have left or arrived because of a more lucrative contract? As it happens, I have been a Yankee fan all my life. I trace my love of the Yankees to growing up far out in the sticks and watching baseball on tv. It is exciting to be a fan of a team so committed to winning. But even I am uneasy about the naked power of money used by the Yankees. I watch Alex Rodriguez and the other "best in class" talent fail in October, again and again. I cannot help but compare their smooth superiority to the heart shown by Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neill and others when they did win World Series. But seeing an old scratchy news reel of Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech makes my eyes mist up, for it shows how far we have come.
And yet it is our modern age. We are awash in consultants who tell us how to have great organizations. These business masters tell us that we must have metrics and we must have accountability to be successful. We must measure things and then hold people accountable to deliver those things that can be measured. And we follow the advice of these masters. We do measure things and we do hold people accountable. CEO's get to be where they are by consistently delivering those things that are measurable. Alex Rodriguez, A-Rod to us fans, got his $ 400 million dollar contract by consistently making and exceeding the numbers. I expect that A-Rod shows that emotionless sense of superiority because he is delivering. He is doing what he is paid to do. His numbers are fantastic.
I am reminded of the many stories about the genie who grants three wishes. You have heard them I am sure. Some wandering soul finds a lamp and rubs it. A genie appears and grants three wishes to that person. The person asks for those things we all aspire to, wealth, position, love. But each request has an unforeseen flaw that frustrates the meaning of the request. So after three failed dreams, the genie returns to the lamp, satisfied that he has been accountable. He met his metrics and granted the three wishes The wandering soul returns to his wandering, worse off than before.
Monday, February 2, 2009
We Are to be Chastised
It is a dangerous thing to be the black sheep in the family. Some members of families just don't fit in. Whether in a family or a company, there are individuals that just seem to always go their own way. There is something in their psyche that makes them contrary, needing to push away from the rhythms that most people follow. They are outriders, following their own version of the truth, their own path to the future.
Reactions to the black sheep by those safely within the flock range from bemused tolerance to avoidance to indignant confrontation; that confrontation usually being handled by those keepers of the family tradition, the elderly aunts. But that is in normal times. When disaster strikes, the gods must be appeased.
There is in the human being, and in the societies that he creates, a realization, an understanding deep in his heart, that there is a power greater than himself. Most of the time we are able to ignore this if we so choose. Going to church on Christmas or pledging solidarity when a celebrity champions the cause of world peace on an awards show allows us to keep this knowledge hidden from ourselves. But then disaster strikes. We come face to face with our own powerlessness and it scares us. And when we are frightened, we lose the civilized part of our consciousness. We fear and we will act on that fear. If disaster strikes, it must be because we have angered the gods. In common with our ancestors who gathered around smoky fires in dark caves, we look for a sacrifice that will satisfy the rage of that which is greater than us.
If the gods are angry, it must be because someone among us has angered them. Which brings us to the black sheep. The meltdown of our economy is a disaster in search of scapegoats. While bankers and financiers have come in for their share of public anger, they have not been black sheep. They have just been greedy, but we understand that, we are all familiar with greed. If that makes the gods angry, then we are all in trouble. Damp that thought before it gets too far.
But the oil and gas business is another matter. We drill into Mother Earth and scar her with our pipelines. We cause the air to be contaminated with carbon dioxide. We use chemistry, mathematics and other black arts. No one understands what we do or how we do it. And we have been making way too much money over the past couple of years. Surely we are the reason that the gods have made flipping houses unprofitable. We are the black sheep. And the others around the fire are looking at us and their hands are searching for their clubs.
Like the black sheep who have gone before us when sacrifices needed to be made, we are about to be chastised. Henry Waxman has replaced John Dingell as Chairman of the Energy Committee. Carol Browner is the "czar" for energy policy in the new administration. Stephen Chu is head of the Energy Department. Ken Salazar is head of the Interior Department. The oil and gas industry looks around for a friendly face and sees only executioners.
It is dangerous thing to be the black sheep when there is fear in the cave.
Reactions to the black sheep by those safely within the flock range from bemused tolerance to avoidance to indignant confrontation; that confrontation usually being handled by those keepers of the family tradition, the elderly aunts. But that is in normal times. When disaster strikes, the gods must be appeased.
There is in the human being, and in the societies that he creates, a realization, an understanding deep in his heart, that there is a power greater than himself. Most of the time we are able to ignore this if we so choose. Going to church on Christmas or pledging solidarity when a celebrity champions the cause of world peace on an awards show allows us to keep this knowledge hidden from ourselves. But then disaster strikes. We come face to face with our own powerlessness and it scares us. And when we are frightened, we lose the civilized part of our consciousness. We fear and we will act on that fear. If disaster strikes, it must be because we have angered the gods. In common with our ancestors who gathered around smoky fires in dark caves, we look for a sacrifice that will satisfy the rage of that which is greater than us.
If the gods are angry, it must be because someone among us has angered them. Which brings us to the black sheep. The meltdown of our economy is a disaster in search of scapegoats. While bankers and financiers have come in for their share of public anger, they have not been black sheep. They have just been greedy, but we understand that, we are all familiar with greed. If that makes the gods angry, then we are all in trouble. Damp that thought before it gets too far.
But the oil and gas business is another matter. We drill into Mother Earth and scar her with our pipelines. We cause the air to be contaminated with carbon dioxide. We use chemistry, mathematics and other black arts. No one understands what we do or how we do it. And we have been making way too much money over the past couple of years. Surely we are the reason that the gods have made flipping houses unprofitable. We are the black sheep. And the others around the fire are looking at us and their hands are searching for their clubs.
Like the black sheep who have gone before us when sacrifices needed to be made, we are about to be chastised. Henry Waxman has replaced John Dingell as Chairman of the Energy Committee. Carol Browner is the "czar" for energy policy in the new administration. Stephen Chu is head of the Energy Department. Ken Salazar is head of the Interior Department. The oil and gas industry looks around for a friendly face and sees only executioners.
It is dangerous thing to be the black sheep when there is fear in the cave.
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