Musings at Altitude

I mentioned in an earlier posting that my hopes for one of my children to go to the Air Force Academy were dashed when my daughter said “just shoot me now” when I suggested she focus on making it to the Academy.  I’ve somewhat recovered from that major setback in the last few days, and I’m focusing now on getting one of my kids to follow me into some form of business entrepreneurialism.  My oldest has just received her nursing degree and just yesterday got word back that she received her nursing license for the State of Colorado.  That’s awesome, and I’m very proud of her.  But she probably won’t go into business anytime soon.  My middle son is now talking about enlisting in the Air Force since he hates school and really does want to see the world in a sense.  He hates being in any form of leadership or overseeing role, and he probably doesn’t realize how most of the Air Force critical missions and services are led and then performed by the enlisted corps, so he may be in for a shock if he does indeed pursue this path because he will be in a leadership role at some point during his time in the Air Force (just a guess…but probably a good guess).  But he certainly doesn’t see himself in any form of leadership position in business right now.

That gets me to my 14 year old again…maybe my last chance for someone to get passionate about business too.  I’ve got sparks of hope with her on the business side right now.  While we lived out in the Washington DC area, she and a couple of friends started a “we’ll do anything” business and got a few jobs cleaning garages and raking leaves.  Her advertising strategy was word of mouth and leveraging Dad’s friends back then though, so she never really turned the corner into a knock on doors and experience some rejection type of business.  Since we moved back to Colorado, she’s listened closely at times to my business conversations, and specifically focused in on one where I was talking on the phone about my struggles with certain team members that weren’t pulling their weight and thus getting paid much more than they really deserved.  In her typically blunt way, my 14 year old asked, “if they aren’t working then why are you paying them at all?”  Oh if it were that easy.  But what a great way of simplifying the issue to what should really be done when folks aren’t capable of or aren’t motivated to do their part in achieving mission success.

This morning I received an overnight mail package from one of our operating companies with their annual operating plan inside.  My daughter asked who it was from and what it was, and then she went off on the pundits who are picking the Colorado Avalanche to finish way down in the Western Conference standings in hockey this year.  She of course bad mouthed Detroit in the midst of her spew (what good Avs fan doesn’t) and then came to her own conclusion that the Avs would be awesome this year (what good fan wouldn’t)regardless of what the critics and supposedly experts are saying.  When she was done spewing, she looked at me and said, “so that operating plan is sort of like a game plan for hockey”.

I wish I had her ability to look at things and so simply and perfectly compare the business stuff to anything else in life that’s important to her.  I believe she has a chance to be a good – actually great – business leader.  Business is so much about passion, so much about simplifying complex things into things others can quickly grasp and act on, and so much about shared planning, aggressive practice, and then focused execution.  She’s got all of those down even at 14 years old.  Hopefully, between now and the time that she launches big time into some revenue adventure she’s excited about, those that surround her will spike that passion and build on her early excitement for team work and business success. 

That would be cool.  That may be my only hope!