Father's Day Dust

Yesterday was Father’s Day. A Milestone day, where I became the Head of the Family. Or at least my house did.

Both my parent’s owned small businesses, my father (step father actually, but I never let that get in the way of being brought up) owned an electrical construction company, inside wiring—houses and such—and line construction—power poles. My mother owned a ceramics wholesale operation and taught china painting and ceramics. Both were on the property, Mom’s in an old turkey coop and Pop’s, well, everywhere else. (We had 6 acres.)

You might say I learned “doing business” early, like the absolute importance of taking messages clearly and accurately, and politely. I was up my first pole at 13, wired my first home at 14 (all but the panel). I hated it, working weekends and summers for nothing while my friends gamboled as young teenagers do. It was heaven whenever he “lent me out” to one of his friends: the same work but a princely $3 per hour!

Yes, I hated it, and never thought much of it after escaping into freedom (sic) by leaving home at 17. Imagine my surprise when I discovered 20 or so years later just how well I’d been taught. It was the late 80s and I was starting my management consultant career on the mean streets of Taipei, Taiwan.

I had impressed the Dutch GM of a Swiss drug/chemical company through teaching his top Chinese staff my 3-day Logical Thinking and Communication workshop, and himself and the top Westerners my Wearing Chinese Glasses seminar. After proving my cross-culture chops of course I had to know more, so he asked me, “Can you teach Quality Management to the top managers, and help us create and install a company-wide QM program?” I said Yes.

I don't remember much of our meeting after that, but can still vividly recall the elevator ride after it, my stomach falling from the 14th floor faster than I was. I had only the sketchiest idea what QM was, only that some author named Cosby or something was popular.

His name was Crosby, Philip B. The new guru of the quality movement of the day. I went to Caves (the only real English books store in the country) and, phew, bought a couple of Crosby books. Time to learn what it was I had just agreed to do.

It was a magical experience, literally life-changing. Reading the book was like my old man talking to me, the identical principles: how many times did he tell me, do it right the first time, and here was this guru saying the same words. Crosby went on, that a “quality job is the customer getting exactly what they wanted to get,” an almost word for word missive from my past.

Of course there as more to it, more to learn. But it all came easy, based as it was on bedrock principles written into my genome. I have used lessons from my old man many times since in speeches, workshops and exhortations to teams I was leading. The key principles from both father and guru, that results matter and you have to make yourself accountable for results. Everything else I did, business process improvement, reengineering, performance management and balanced scorecard, all were based on the importance of results and on accountability.

(Not to say I didn’t learn from Mom, far from it. My success as a human being is owed in large part to her examples. That you can do anything you want to as long as you try hard enough. That you owe those around you as much as you owe yourself. Lessons on how to be a good human, those were from Mom. But the business stuff came from Pop.)

Now, to bring this all together. I apologize for the lag between posts, and for the personal nature of the last couple of posts. The lag is because I’ve been so damn busy. My folks, now 88 and 86, retired 20 or so years ago, to a gorgeous 3,500 sq. ft. spectacular waterfront home that they built themselves. A FULL home.

Both inveterate pack rats, neither believed in throwing anything of any possible use away. Each had hobbies, passions actually, and each passion, woodworking or stained glass (to name just two), needed equipment and supplies, more crap into the house. It was getting hard to walk around, for example the huge garage and mezzanine floor were full of tools, hand and power, wood, and … things. Mom’s areas were as bad.

Pop has been sick. In-and-out of emergency and hospital five times from February to May, and … the experts, family and friends were sure living at home would kill him, and Mom. The problem was, we were sure he would never leave that house, or, to use his words, “would only leave it feet first.”

But, surprise of surprises, in just the last two weeks he and Mom decided they had to move, found an assisted care facility and take occupancy of their little, 750 sq. ft. flat July 1. To a person we are all amazed, but it turned out he loved life more than where he lived. I am still shocked.

And shocked at the crap they’ve accumulated. Wow! They must downsize, a word that pays little respect to the size of the down. I’ve spent the last week excavating the garage, and am now sick from all the dust. Tomorrow I wear a mask.

The job explains where I have been, awash in childhood memories made worse by my always-before invulnerable parents hovering on the sidelines, frail, weak, watching the accumulations of a lifetime casually sorted and tossed, often, into the disposal bin. While hopeful for the future—I thank Mom and Pop for my optimism: no pessimist ever starts a business—the days are seen through a melancholy sepia, from tears that don’t form and fall but are real nonetheless. The damned dust explains my sore throat and self-imposed laryngitis (my daughter loves it).

Making it even more a Milestone Father’s Day was what it all means to my family. Mom and Pop are still alive, but their house, the natural gathering place for family rituals, is soon gone. My sister is in the process of downsizing her life; smaller house, no husband and a soon 18-and-gone teenage son. My brother’s house is too small. My other sister has a big house but even bigger extended, and mostly alien, family. Leaving my house, which meets all the conditions: size, location and, dare I say, hospitality. Fitting, the oldest son and all that, but still a surprise.

Though not as big a surprise as when I discovered what I had learned during all those hated days in the dust, either digging pole holes by hand, bar and shovel six feet deep, or in an attic or crawlspace doing a rewire, big spiders and asbestos insulation. Damaged lungs aside, I had learned how to be a business.

This accounts for the personal nature of the last posts. I’ve been adrift in nostalgia, and am still far from shore. Nonetheless I have beside me a box from Amazon, unopened but sure to contain a book Dick recommended, The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value Through Global Networks, C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan,. As soon as I post this I open the box and get back to Acme business. A "no dust" business. Wonderful.