Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

One of my bosses at the early stages of  my professional career shared his belief that no matter what decisions you made, you would end up at the same (or similar) finish to your career (position, compensation and degree of satisfaction). 

A very successful business friend worked her way to CEO of a $Billion + business then went into a successful second career as a politician. She created incredible value and enjoyed what she did. She argued that work-life balance was not her goal. She might be the epitome of “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

A strategic advisor who I hired, while running one of the businesses I was provided the opportunity to turn around, said more than once, “You make your job as hard or as easy as you choose to.” It has taken me decades to begin to accept that. I felt there were easier jobs and harder jobs and I was drawn to the harder ones.

I was taught as a child in our family businesses to :

•Do the right thing, not the easy thing

•Leave things in better condition than I found them

•Idle hands are the devil’s workshop

Therefore, I don’t idle well. Does that mean that I made things harder than I needed to? Does that mean I don’t know how to relax? Does that mean I could have taken more time off, spent more time with my family and ended up in the same place at the end of my career?

Today, somewhere between the start of the fourth quarter and the start of the ninth inning for me, I think … it depends. 

It depends on the type of effort-was it working smarter or was it working harder? 

It depends on the choices-I sacrificed many, many, many nights away from home to perform work my peers elected not to.

It depends on the amount of integrity-I’ve been accused of coming across as righteous. I see things pretty black and white, it’s right or it’s wrong. No short cuts. The gray always felt like a convenient way to describe when someone applied a liberal amount of discretion instead of following the law or sound business judgement.

It depends on the actions- doing what you said you would, sticking to your convictions, understanding that, especially in a leadership role, you must put the needs of the many over the needs of the few. I believe if I do my job well and take care of the company, the company will take care of me.

Has my approach to my earning years been more idealistic than realistic? Perhaps. 

I live with the choices I made. I work hard to improve on the choices that weren’t as successful as I’d like, and practice gratitude regularly for the countless blessings I’ve received.

Wherever you are on your career path, you’ve experienced elation and disappointments and a whole lot of things in between. You make choices every single day that support where you’ve been, where you are and where you are going.

As you start this year, I encourage you to go through the mental exercise of visualizing your career path. If you could fly a drone with a high definition camera so high that you could see the starting line, the point you are at this very moment and the terrain you’ll need to traverse to cross the finish line, what choices will you make?

-Easy route?

-Hard route?

-Fast pace?

-Slow pace?

-Pay it forward?

-Grab all you can before the music stops?

My advice…

Make a graceful exit. The longer you have to plan, the more graceful, altruistic and exemplary it could be.

Have a blessed weekend!

Eric