Dear Team:
About 4 months ago, we started having a modest lunch each month to welcome new employees from both companies who had been hired the past 30 days. If we are around, all the senior managers try to attend and introduce ourselves to the new people who have joined us. I have been able to attend all of them and I really enjoy doing it as I think they all do. Once we have all had a slice or two of pizza (the usual fare) I welcome all of them and in one fashion or another tell them how pleased we are they have joined us, what great potential opportunities they have and how much I have enjoyed my time here. As a gift, I pass out one of Herb’s final business cards for them to keep.
As most of you know, on the back of those cards are 8 initialisms that stand for ideas that Herb lived his life by. GUE, PTP, DWYA, EEIW, WID, SIS, L and C. Also on the bottom of those cards is the phrase “life is a measure to be fulfilled, not a cup to be drained” and it is that phrase I want to discuss with you this week. You see, that phrase speaks to two fundamentally different ways of looking at and living life. For some, life is a boundless experience to be enhanced, shared and allowed to expand. It is a life view that has something in it for everyone, not just a few, the concept of the more I give, the more I get. For others however, life and the things in it are viewed as a finite experience that keeps getting smaller and smaller, and so, every action we take is designed to make sure I get my share, because if I give to you, there is less for me.
I want you to ask yourself on which side of that life fence you sit and think about how that affects the success of our company, and the success of your life. I for sure know where Herb wanted us to be, he wanted us to harvest the abundance of life and the opportunities it affords us, not to hoard it and hide it from everyone else. So think about it and have a great week full of abundance, or not, the choice is yours.
Ed
