Musings on a Monday Morning from Mike Mullin…

The weekly Newsletter of Without A Vision Consultancy LLC

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July 29, 2019 – Rain

Good morning!
A cooler, wetter Sunday (yesterday) started the week while getting us ready for Monday.
Among my favourite things to do on a rainy summer Sunday is to savor each word of a superbly written book while listening to light classical music out in the back porch.
Did you know it was a Russian who christened the world-famous acoustics at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1891?
The Leopard Lilies are exploding with color as the pink phlox finish their flowers for the season.
Here at this latitude we’re now gaining almost four minutes of darkness each day.

• On one of the recent hikes I observed a man in an alley disassembling one of those giant indoor gourmet cat climbing towers.
• • As he deconstructed the substantial contraption he deposited each carpet-covered chunk into a government recycling bin.
  • • Here’s the thing: Should I have offered my sympathy for the (presumed) death of his cat, or…
    • • … should he have been admonished for introducing contraband into the recycling?
• On the same hike I heard the lifeguard exclaim, “Somebody pooped in the pool!”
• • Metaphor or actual? Probably doesn’t matter.
• I was talking with a senior partner at McKinsey, famous for investing in its people.
• • Fewer than one percent (1%) of all formal applicants to McKinsey are hired, but…
  • • … it’s in dedicating enormous resources to identifying and on-boarding those rare gems that sustains McKinsey in its top position worldwide.
• More from McKinsey:
• • Eighty-three percent (83%) of CEOs say silos exist; 97% say they’re a problem.
  • • From the Without a Vision perspective: “They’re a big problem, not just a problem.”
    • • “Overcoming silos requires end-to-end operating models and a strong dose of transparency, accountability, and coordination. But are these crucial moves enough?”
      • • “Go further by tackling the fragmentation in your company’s (organization’s) networks, which comes about when employees neglect relationships with colleagues outside their regular work flow.”
• More on relationships, in case you’ve been following along:
• • …That being said, and shamefully abbreviated, why are relationships an important, perhaps the most important, ingredient for success?
  • • John Donne might have said it best in 1624: “No (wo)man is an island, entire of itself; every (wo)man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
    • • Because of the very nature of being human we are inexorably connected to each other.
• We are loathe to prune… even while knowing it will produce double and triple the fruit. (Without a Vision)
• “Even the best team, without a plan, won’t score.” ( Hayes)
• “A courtyard common to all will be swept by none.” (Ancient proverb)

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past. (Maurice Maeterlinck)

A Nickel for your Thoughts

By Michael A. Mullin

Is finding a battered nickel on the street

equivalent to discovering five lucky pennies?
Os it it worthless because it’s not

even made of nickel?

Of course neither is a penny clad with copper anymore.

Is it the copper that’s lucky or the penny itself?

Once I found thirty pennies in a Fargo parking lot

scattered like seeds among the gravel and stones and debris.

Someone had flung them as if they were worthless.

No one else had thought to pick them up.

I picked up every single one, but I might have missed one.

If I did miss one, what if it was the lucky one?

©2017 Michael A. Mullin

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