Will you be useful? Are you driven by a gigantic Question?

Professor Jim Collins is a giant in the world of Business literature.  Shortly after leaving a prestigious post at Stanford University to pursue a path as an independent researcher and business author, he met and made friends with another giant of the field, Peter Drucker.  The Austrian business thinker was already 86 years old but would still go on to write 6 more books before his death aged 92.

In a recent interview with Tim Ferris, Collins recalled two lessons he learned from his friendship with Drucker.  The first came shortly after the two first met.  Collins had just left a stable and tenured position at Stanford, a move he described as his "Thelma and Louise" moment.  If you've seen the movie, you'll remember the final scene when the two desperadoes drive headlong over the lip of a canyon in order to evade capture by the law.  "I was genuinely scared," recalls Collins.  "All we had was $10 000 in our bank account and there was no going back."  

The author of "Good to Great" recalls his first meeting with Drucker.  Indebted to the sage for so generously sharing his experience, Collins asked if there was any way he could repay him.  "I don't need anything," replied Drucker "but I do have a request - change your question a little bit.  It seems to me you spend a lot of time worrying about IF you're going to survive - you will probably survive.  It's the wrong question.  The question is how to be useful".  It was, said Collins, the last thing Drucker said that day.  "He just got out of the car and closed the door and walked away".

Another gem that emerged from Collins' association with Drucker was more of an observation than a piece of advice.  According to Collins, a careful reading of Drucker's formidable body of work (some 40 books over a 70-year career), reveals the mind of a thinker devoted to answering a "single, beautiful and gigantic question" namely:  "Can a society become more efficient and more humane at the same time?"  That's what inspired him, fed his curiosity, fuelled his extraordinary work ethic.

Collins has unquestionably followed suit:  Look at the sub-text to some of his great titles:

• Why do some companies radically outperform their peers?  (Good to Great)
• Why do some companies thrive in chaos and uncertainty?  (Great by Choice)
• Why do great companies fall? (How the Mighty Fall)

I have always been inspired by Jim Collins.  His insights are piercing, his writing engrossing.  There is a timeless wisdom to his work that few of his contemporaries can match.  I'm sure there's way more to his success but for now, these two nuggets will do:

• It's not a case of if or when I will succeed, it's a case of whether what I do is useful to others

• I am not a mercenary who takes on the highest paying job on offer.   My life is a single and epic quest for the answer to a beautiful and gigantic question.  Now it's just a case of figuring out what that is

Leaf by Niggle - my tribute to a great allegory

In the autumn of 1988, I passed up an opportunity to watch Pink Floyd live at Denver’s Mile High Stadium.  It was, so far as I know, one of the band’s last world tours and it headlined their most recent album “A momentary lapse of reason”.  The next day, after hearing the excited chatter of classmates who’d been there, I knew I’d made a mistake.  By all accounts, the iconic song “Learning to fly” had brought the house down.  It wasn’t just the jaw-dropping light and laser show for which Pink Floyd was famous – it was the song itself: 

A soul in tension that's learning to fly

Condition grounded but determined to try

Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies

Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit

Looking back I can imagine the spectacle.  A stadium full of young people – just barely out of life’s starting blocks, drunk with dreams and thrusting ambitions yet, at least for now, straining against the gravity of circumstance.  The words ring true of our condition regardless of age: our dreams are limitless but the years are few.  We embark on life’s journey with such high hopes only to be beaten back repeatedly by the waves of reality.  We are like Gatsby’s “boat’s against the current”, caught in the undertow of a future that year by year recedes before us and eludes us. 

About 45 years earlier, JRR Tolkien, though well on in years, was beset by a similar dilemma.  For almost a decade, he’d been meticulously crafting the epic that would one day be ranked amongst the greatest novels of the 20th Century.  Torn between his academic commitments and his great vision for “The Lord of the Rings”, Tolkien had nonetheless succeeded in breathing life into an ensemble cast of captivating characters and people groups.   He had also developed an elaborate tapestry consisting of 5 major storylines and at least 6 mythical language systems of the various peoples of Middle Earth.  Though the story was unfinished, it was technically a masterpiece already.  But then two things happened that threatened its completion.  The first was a bout of severe writer’s block.  How was he to resolve this welter of characters and storylines in a way that was both convincing and satisfying for the reader?  The second was the onset of World War II.  Would he, and for that matter his work, survive what was to become the greatest conflict of the 20th Century?  It was enough to send him into a deep depression.

Sometime later, Tolkien had a dream that would flourish into the now famous allegory.  Leaf by Niggle tells the story of a fastidious but only modestly talented painter who has realised he will not live to complete his artistic vision.  Though he dreams of a great tree on a majestic landscape, Niggle is permanently distracted by the needs of those around him.  He also knows that a great journey is imminent and that there will be no return ticket.  As the hour of his death approaches, Niggle works harder and harder to complete his work.  Despite many late hours and much painstaking work, death comes before the canvas can be completed.  The fabric ends up being used to repair a leak in his neighbour’s roof and only a small corner of it – a picture-perfect rendition of a leaf - finds its way into the dusty corner of a local museum (which later burns down). 

What, if anything, is Niggle’s legacy?  What discoveries await the little artist as he journeys into the afterlife?  From the vantage point of eternity, what does he learn about those many frustrating years as an artist in the old country?

In one of the most majestic portions of the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews reflects on a similar theme.  The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a tribute to the faith and perseverance of many Old Testament stalwarts who died long before they could see God’s promises come true in their lives:

“All of these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth…”

And then in a verse that would not be out of place in the conclusion to Tolkien’s stunning allegory, the writer adds

“…for those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return.  But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them”

Pastor Tim Keller – whose book “Every Good Endeavour” is, at least in part, inspired by Tolkien’s allegory, has shared “Leaf by Niggle” with many frustrated creatives and entrepreneurs.  Some are believers in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and some are not.  All are moved and comforted by its message.  I hope you will be too.  (Tolkien himself acknowledged that the interlude was one of the main contributing factors to the completion of “The Lord of the Rings”).

The consoling truth for any Christian is that our pursuit of beauty, order and transcendence on this side of eternity is but a shadow of the real thing that resides on the other side.  And so to echo F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway in “The Great Gatsby”, though this beauty might partly elude us here “that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning….

So we beat on, boats against the current…”