Brendon J. Wilson

 by Brendon J. Wilson

Three Little Pigs

This evening I was down in the recycling area of our building, doing my Sunday duty of taking out the recycling. It’s a tedious job, but hey, it fits well with my obsessive-compulsive need to sort and organize stuff. That, and it’s always interesting to see what people throw away. There’s the usual magazines (I could save a bundle on magazine subscriptions if I were sufficiently motivated), shredded financial statements (think of the things I could do with a scanner and a good piece of software), and The Three Little Pigs. Huh?

WTF? There in the middle of the usual discarded junkmail and pizza boxes is a pristine copy of The Three Little Pigs, the kind that is targeted for bedtime reading to three year olds. Alongside it, a similar copy of Jack and the Beanstalk. Am I mad? Hell yeah.

First, I’m a big book fan. When I was a kid, I grew to love books through my overly-literate parents’ numerous Sunday visits to the library. One weekend in fifth grade I read a dozen Hardy Boys. Twelve. It’s safe to say, I like books.

Second, I hate to think that some kid somewhere has nothing, and here’s someone who has so much that they have to throw away perfectly useful items just to make room for more crap. My mother had the curious habit of forcing me to keep my Dr. Seuss books and Lego on the presumption that trees and plastic wouldn’t exist by the time I had kids. I don’t know whether that was an overly pessimistic statement on humanity, or simply a subtle hint that she didn’t expect me to have a child until I was 60. Either way, it was probably a smart plan; after all, have you seen the price of Dr. Seuss books?

Finally, I really like the library but cuts are forcing them to become shadows of what they used to be. Any time I’ve got a book I’m done with, I usually try to donate it to the library (same with my magazines). The clerks at the library always looked shocked that someone is donating books. I like that look.

I picked up the books, and took them back up to my apartment. After all, I’ll be going to the library sometime soon. And it’ll make me feel a little better about the whole thing.

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 by Brendon J. Wilson

Retirement Speech

During the first four months of my MBA program (the notorious “core” module), our organizational behaviour professor asked us to draft a retirement speech. The purpose of the exercise was to give us perspective on what we wanted to accomplish after the MBA. The following is the retirement speech I submitted:

When I first started my career forty years ago, I thought I had all the answers. Like many of my peers, my undergraduate education in engineering had made me an arrogant know-it-all. I had unrealistically high expectations. In my first few years in industry, I was both disappointed and frustrated to discover that companies and people never seemed to do the right thing. In my youthful impatience I attributed these failures to a lack of intelligence rather than my own inability to negotiate the facets of business that extended past the cold, hard facts.

It wasn’t until I got involved in small high-tech startups that I started to notice the abilities that created business success (or lack thereof that bred failure). These companies provided a fertile ground for conflict, their small size compressing and accentuating the personalities and confrontations that prevent businesses, or even societies, from being successful. Though many of these companies had the people, the finances, the technology and the ambition to succeed, they inevitably faltered. In this environment I learned the culprit behind these failures was a lack of three important skills: the ability to listen, the ability to be honest with yourself, and the ability to build a true team.

Once I discovered these keys to success, I constantly worried about how I would perform if it ever became my turn to lead a company. I was sensitive to criticism. I talked over other people. I was obsessive about details, and always wanted to do it all myself. I was lucky enough that, unlike many people, I managed to be honest with myself and realize these shortcomings, a realization that prompted me focus on learning not only to listen, but to hear. Through hard work, and conscious effort, punctuated by a self-deprecating sense of humor, I constantly worked to improve myself in these areas.

Most people start a business of their own to “be their own boss”, accountable to no one, ultimately in control of their own destiny. This is nonsense. You’re always accountable to someone, whether it’s your shareholders, your customers, your employees, or society at large, and you’re never entirely in control of what happens. By the time I started my first company, I had learned the only way to be successful was to bring people together, to understand their individual needs through thoughtful consideration of what they have to say, to keep improving yourself, and, when all else fails, to do the right thing.

I pass this experience onto you in the hope that you will be as lucky as I have been. On retirement from this company, the final of many business ventures I have created, I hope these pearls of wisdom will guide you to your own success. By doing this I hope I will be remembered not as the guy who signed the checks, or the man who got the job done, but as a leader who turned colleagues into teams; a visionary who turned ideas into businesses; a manager who listened with patience; a friend.

Oh, and that guy who signed the checks.

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