My seven-year-old daughter celebrated her birthday this weekend with a pool party with several friends. We held the event at the indoor pool at the local LifeTime Fitness Center, where the staff does a great job of orchestrating a two hour fun-for-all.
After the swimming and water slide, the whole party moved upstairs for pizza and cake. The room upstairs is more like a board room than a kids birthday party location (obviously it is used for more professional gatherings). During the short break between pizza and cake, all 12 kids jumped up grabbed the dry erase marker pens and begun doodling on the white board, leaving behind a mural of art and names.
One of the dads in attendance is a successful local entrepreneur. He and I both noticed that grown ups do not do this when there is a short break in a meeting. Have the executives in your company ever crowded the white board and illustrated small drawings and written their name in big letters just for fun?
Kids have that spark to create things just because. We need to be more like seven-year-olds! Success follows those who can imagine and visualize things that others do not see. I was reminded to be more playful. Later this morning when I arrive at the Monday morning meeting at vcfo I plan to illustrate something silly on the white board!
Have A Great Day.
thom
2 comments:
YES! Thank you for echoing something I've been saying for some time: Treat business decisions through the eyes of a seven-year-old.
I use former Magellan Fund chief Peter Lynch as the model. He wrote a few books on how his Wall Street pickings were the best in the industry and it stems down to picking stocks that a child can explain the mission statement of in a sentence.
Think about that. Think of firms that are involved in M&A or go bust. Most are pharmaceuticals or in technology. But one of Lynch's best-performing stocks was a car repair company. Another involved funeral caskets. Tell me a child who can't say that. But nanotechnology? Huh?
Here's a recent blog post I wrote about the issue: http://ariwriter.com/2009/01/are-you-watching-the-watchers/
Great Post!
The tip on how to pick stocks is interesting.
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