[Our grandson graduated from high school 2023 and married his high school sweetheart that summer. The following is my letter to him sharing with him my hints for a successful life.]
May 25, 2023
I have three ideas to share with you-
First, no one gives a damn about your potential, but they do
care about your best performance. Too many folks hide for various reasons
behind their potential and simply do not perform at the high standards expected
of them gleaned from the perceptions of their potential. Remember that delayed
potential is not performance- potential must be activated to become
performance.
Second, no one gives a damn about your feelings, but they do
care about the ideas you contribute. Often, we feel underappreciated,
undervalued, underpaid, and overworked with demanding bosses. Work through
those negative feelings and begin to contribute substantive ideas so your
organization in which you labor will be successful.
Finally, ultimately no one gives a damn about
your hedgehog, but they do care about your fox. The hedgehog and the fox are
metaphors about personal skills and competencies. First scarcely mentioned by
the Greek poet Archilochus and later in Leo Tolstoy’s great novel War and
Peace, the metaphors were popularly interpreted by Isaiah Berlin in the
appropriately titled The Hedgehog and the Fox. Essentially, a “hedgehog”
person knows one big thing as that person is highly skilled and competent in
only one field of discipline and a “fox” person knows many things as he/she is
not only an expert in their field but also possesses knowledge of other fields
of endeavor. (You will find that I have a fundamental disagreement with Berlin,
but I will leave it to you to discover where I disagree with this esteemed
philosopher through your reading.)
The point I am making is that “hedgehogs” are primarily
technical folks who rarely see past their own work. There are many hedgehogs in
our world, and many make valuable contributions but only within their
fields. They are valuable in their fields, but their value is limited
outside their work because they simply have not developed the mental models of
thinking and acting within other fields, and then contributing value to these
other fields. This is the world of “foxes.”
One historical example of a fox is Samuel F.B. Morse. He
conceived of an electric telegraph in 1832 unaware that it had already been
invented. Nevertheless, Morse worked on developing an effective telegraph
machine and also created the Morse Code, a set of signals used in representing
language in telegraph messages. After convincing Congress to finance a
telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore, Morse demonstrated the practical
value of the telegraph on May 24, 1844 by sending a message from the US Capitol
to a railroad station in Baltimore. Most people know this side of Morse but do
not know that he was an accomplished painter before becoming an inventor.
I offer myself as another example.
I have been an educator, minister,
historian, theologian, and military veteran having worked in agriculture, as a
short order cook, as a roofer, as a retail salesman, as a soldier, as a church
janitor, served on church staffs in Maryland, Virginia, and Missouri, as a book
seller, in market research, had written published articles in professional
journals on church ministries, consulted with secular and religious
organizations, trained teams and staffs, and was a classroom teacher,
instructional coach, department chair, school reform specialist, teacher
mentor, basketball and soccer coach, school administrator, elementary school
principal, and doctoral dissertation reader. I was also a published poet as
well served on state, city, and community boards and committees.
So, then, how does someone like yourself become a “fox”? You
begin by developing a competent skill-set in a field, Then you develop and feed
your curiosity about people and processes in other fields- read widely and ask
questions. When you have opportunities, meet with and get to know persons from
other fields, enter into their worlds of thought and action. Find points of
common interest and collaborate to solve problems of mutual concern. You will
find yourself a truly educated person who can effectively read, write, and
think across disciplines, making mental connections among aspects of divergent
fields, and in time you will become a “go-to” person for leadership
responsibilities.
Notice that I had stated that ultimately no one gives a damn
about your hedgehog with “ultimately” being highlighted. That is because many
folks will employ or elect hedgehogs in that hedgehogs are highly focused and
talented individuals. They will indeed make contributions to their
organizations to the limits of their talents, their glass ceilings. To crash
their glass ceilings hedgehogs need to expand their intellectual horizons and
morph into more like foxes.
Foxes also face their own set of challenges. The phrase a
jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of
one compliments foxes. Yet there are two dangers for foxes here. The first
is not to be skilled in any discipline. The second is to attempt to become a
“well-rounded” professional. So called well-rounded persons do not exist.
Everyone, including the best and brightest among us, has limits. So, as you
developed your multiple competencies, find your overall strength and wrap your
competencies around that strengths. I, for example, discovered that being an
educator was my overall strength so I infused that strength into my major jobs.
To assist you in your journey of becoming a fox, I have
provided you with a recommended extra-curricular reading list. Most of the
books on this list you will not read in your college classes. So it will your responsibility
to obtain copies of these books for your personal library to read and consult
with them throughout your professional career(s). You will need to find other
books to stimulate your “fox” thinking and actions to add also to your personal
library for reading and consultation.
Acceptance of and adherence to the above three ideas will
enable you to be successful in life and work. I will be praying for you to the
end of my life.
Love, Grampy
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