Great Purple Cheese

I read an interesting article yesterday while getting my hair cut. Normally, a hair cut entails reading People or some other brainless, sugary nonsense. But yesterday, I grabbed Fortune and read an article by Jim Collins - the Good to Great guy.

Now, I don't normally make a practice of reading books like Good to Great, Purple Cows, Cheese Moving, etc. In my last job, the executives would constantly drop those books on my desk and say, "Figure out how we can be the purple cow." 

And I'd enthusiastically (though sarcastically in my head) respond* that it sounded like a great idea and I'd get right on reading all about it. The problem was that they thought this kind of transformation needed to happen in the marketing department with no real backing from anywhere else in the company. So, I basically didn't waste my time with these books because by the time I would have finished it, there would be the new greatest business idea and the old one was long forgotten. Oh, and the real change/remarkableness/corporate identity espoused by the books? Wasn't going to happen.

So now I believe that these business-focused books are the guys version of self-help books. Change the book subtitle from 'Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable" to "Transform Your Life by Being Remarkable" and the whole concept would be shunned as self-help shenanigans for women. (Which in full disclosure, I love.)

Back to the hair salon - I saw Jim's name and photo and thought I'd give his article a shot. After all, he went rock climbing with a college friend of mine and then proceeded to write a grad school recommendation for him (and yeah, the academic world fawned over that letter). So Jim seemed like a good guy and the least I could do was give his article a shot.

The article talked about what businesses should be doing in the midst of the economic crisis we are facing. It was probably the whole Good to Great book distilled down to 2,000 words or less to concisely fit in a magazine format. But it definitely got me thinking.

You see, I don't know about you, but the current economy is freaking me out. I'm paralyzed about what to do. Do we sell the house or not? Do we plan a vacation or not? Do we invest money or save money? Can I count on having a job for the next 6 months? Dear God what happens if I don't have health insurance?

According to Jim, I need to snap out of it or I will die on the mountain because a mountain lion will eat me. I think somewhere in there is the lesson that there's huge opportunity here to make a difference, to be great, if you will. I just wish I could go rock climbing with Jim so he could tell me exactly how. But I will be looking out for mountain lions in the meantime 'cause I think they are hungry.

* I worked with a dear friend, Perrin, who was the master of this technique. I learned from the best. It isn't that either of us were bad employees - we were actually quite awesome. We just needed some coping skills at this job to keep focused on the really important things because otherwise we could have worked 100+ hour work weeks and still not accomplished anything.