to grow my capacity to love.
It takes me everywhere. Beginning within.
“Pay attention, and share,” it guides.
“Serve those who hold a noble aspiration.
Do your best to be enjoyably useful.”
Fruit
Twenty year-old Pharos Systems was a brand new company. It had just merged with another firm to strengthen its ability to help huge organizations like Coke and Bank of America manage their vast printing requirements. A new positioning statement articulating the company’s promise to the world was my first task. Then the real fun began: collaborating with their enlightened CEO to create, and bring to life, a vision that would guide the company’s sustained vitality well beyond the present generation of leadership. Rooted in action and timeless principles, this vision may be one of the world’s most powerful statements of common intention. Its first formal articulation was a brochure titled, The Seed: Essence of a Noble Aspiration. Since it is potentially useful to virtually any person or institution––today, or at any time in the future––I would be glad to share one with you.
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One of the few U.S. electric utilities to go bankrupt, Public Service of New Hampshire was widely reviled. No surprise considering its customers (80 percent of NH) paid among the highest electric rates in the nation. But my research suggested the company was a lot more than its high rates. Over the next six years PSNH became one of New Hampshire’s most respected companies. Its president was named the leader of the decade by the New Hampshire Chamber of Commerce. Four years after the campaigns I created were no longer being run, they remained the communication that customers remembered most from the company. All under the positioning umbrella: “Supporting Your Life in Every Moment.”
The senior executives of Canon USA, all Japanese, wanted to develop greater rapport with their counterparts in America’s Fortune 100 companies. Cultural mores prevented them from simply picking up the phone and introducing themselves. More appropriate was the creation of the “Future Office Forum,” a gathering of some of the world’s leading thinkers on the evolution the office in the 21st century. The guest list was limited to Fortune 100’s top executives.
An inspiring professional success story is Sabina McCarthy, a woman who, in 15 years, went from being just about destitute––40, no money, single mom, three kids, one of them severely disabled, joining Merrill Lynch at an entry level position––to becoming one of the most influential and well-respected people in the firm. One fall, her new husband asked if I would write a portrait of Sabina that he could give to her as a Christmas present, and that she might use professionally. The only caveat: the portrait was to be a surprise, so I had to write it without speaking with Sabina. This was new for me. Usually, the portraits I paint in words are based on any number of interviews with the subject. This portrait would be, instead, solely a reflection of Sabina through the eyes of those who know her best: her husband, her children, her brother, her father and two friends. On Christmas morning, Sabina sat and listened as two of her children read to her the 25-page narrative, “Sabina McCarthy: A Clandestine Portrait.” Sabina’s daughter, Liz, emailed me, “It was as though you had been living with our family for years.”
For nearly a decade, the Computer Store of Rochester, NY led by a beautiful man named Doug Laymon, exemplified the best of those retailers who introduced America to the utility and magic of personal computers. I was privileged to guide the creation of the store’s branding, positioning, strategy and communication campaigns.
“Come Build Your Dreams,” a film I wrote and produced, was named the nation’s outstanding college student recruitment film. One reason was Tom Rizzo, the composer I hired to write the original music. Tom was an L.A. pro who’d played in the Tonight Show band and had composed and arranged for any number of film and TV projects. I, meanwhile, can neither read nor play music. So Tom surprised me when he said I was among the best music producers he’d ever worked with. “You’re able to articulate the vision you’re attempting to achieve, and how what you are hearing and seeing meets that vision.”
Roots
Among my dad’s gems of advice was, “When it doubt, go to the top.” So when I finally decided to go to college, my first call was to the president of Harvard at his home one Saturday afternoon. This wasn’t the first time my apparent genetic instinct for creative problem solving manifested itself, but it was one that changed my life rather significantly.
“Sure,” the president said in response to my inquiry whether Harvard would consider talking to a 26 year-old news reporter at one of Boston’s radio/TV stations who wanted to retire and become a college freshman, “we take a number of non-traditional students every year.” Not wanting to test his definition of “non-traditional” until the moment was right, I didn’t mention that I’d graduated next-to-last in my high school class.
“Tell you what you do,” he said, giving me the name and number of the admissions’ dean, “tell him I suggested you and he have a chat.” This was exactly what I wanted. With my tepid academic pedigree and oddball resume (including the seminary to be priest and Special Forces to be a trained killer), I needed a face-to-face with the person who could say yes to my candidacy without asking permission.
I was on a mission to get myself a first-rate formal education. Ambition, curiosity, fear of failure and a certain innate talent were no longer enough to navigate the world in ways that would satisfy my life-long itch to explore “What’s going on?” in every sense of that query. Plus, I was working with a lot of broadcasting professionals at the top of their game. I needed a more disciplined mind, or at least a better sense of whatever mind I had. And to get it, my strategy was to pester the top schools in New England until I found one or more that would open its doors and give me a free ride.
Why not? The universe had taken care of me so far.
At 20 (before computers became ubiquitous), I spent nine months selling accounting machines despite never being quite sure of the difference between a debit and a credit. I have no idea how I came to be my branch office’s top performer other than the grace that is sometimes afforded those who have nothing to offer but dogged persistence. It sure wasn’t the suit, white shirt and hat we were obliged to wear. At 22, I became the sports director of a television station in Elmira, NY, despite having never been on television before, or written about sports. (After my accounting gig, I had been a disc jockey, talk show host and creator of Dragon Durak, a weekly radio program for children.) Two years later at 24 I beat out maybe 75 other candidates for an announcing job at one of Boston’s major radio and television stations––not because I was so wonderful, but because I’d purposely moved to Boston from Elmira, taking the entry-level position of TV floor director at the station just so I would be more than a voice in the crowd when the next auditions rolled around.
Plus, and this is nub of things, I was born with something a lot more useful than brains. Luck. Specifically, the luck of insightful people who appear in my life at just the right moment to give me a kiss on the cheek or boot on the fanny. In this case, a lovely girlfriend who did both. She’d graduated from Smith. One day she said, “Why don’t you think about going to college?”
“I’ve never had a very good time with school,” I said.
“Maybe you’ve just never known a good one,” she replied.
“Let’s not forget I brought up the rear of my high school class,” I persisted.
“Well, it wasn’t because you were dumb,” she said.
I chose Amherst because when the admissions dean, Ed Wall, got around to asking how I did in high school and I told him, he nearly fell out of his chair laughing.
Then he asked the perfect question.
“How come?”
My answer suggests why, today, I help others address just about any issue that benefits from being very clear on what is essential, on who we’re committed to being, on the problem we’re really trying to solve, on understanding ourselves wherever that takes us, on communicating powerfully, and on not taking ourselves seriously. These are characteristics of true genius. Not the stratospheric I.Q. genius, but the genius we all can cultivate––the genius of unquenchable wonder that resides in a grounded, playful heart. I call it the genius that actually gets things done, for its gifts include the ability to dream, and the confidence that, somehow (even though we may not have a clue how at the moment), we have the capacity to bring that dream to life.
I don’t know how or why, but I came into this world feeling that life is this amazing playground of infinite diversity; all of it––the painful, the glorious––here solely to help us grow our ability to love. Further, that love is the essential “stuff” of the universe; everything is made of it, including us humans. I don’t claim to understand this, nor am I trying to get anyone to agree with me; it’s just the sense of things that has always vibrated in my bones. The harm we do, I feel, is the result of ignorance, not our basic nature.
So when it came to school, what fascinated me was why were we there? Since the world was so vast, with so many things and people available to learn from, why were these subjects the most important way we could spend our time? And who were you, the teacher, that I should pay special attention to your understanding of life? I wasn’t being a smart-ass; I was curious, naively so. I had no language to bring these ideas forward; they just sort of thrummed away deep inside me.
My passion, I realize today, lay in any of the million different ways one could ask the question: Why are things the way they are? And not only ask, but also experience the enjoyment, the intoxication, even the frustration, of exploring possible answers. Why would anyone want to spend a great deal of their time doing something they weren’t deeply interested in? Why did so many people feel that the best way to get someone to do something was to threaten to cause them pain if they didn’t do it? What was the person thinking who designed the roadside billboard I passed on the school bus every morning? Why did a tree grow in the particular way it did? Why were some cars popular and others not? How come so many people believed both that God loved everybody and that citizens of other nations were inferior to Americans? What is the purpose of life, and how does the universe operate?
Somewhere around 5th grade, I began to find it almost impossible to do things I wasn’t really drawn to. This was not a conscious decision; it just sort of happened. It was as though my heart were channeling Rumi: “Be patient. Respond to every call that excites your spirit.” Or, since this was parochial school, Jesus: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Swiftly I became a good kid who wasn’t living up to his potential. That was painful. I wanted approval. I wanted to do well. In wanted to fit in. So I would buckle down, try harder. But soon I would find that I just couldn’t get over the hump of doing stuff without enthusiasm. “Follow your bliss” wasn’t the world’s everyday response to my dilemma, though my parents did their best. My father, a successful man without the benefit of higher education, daydreamed that right after high school he’d be sending me off to some snazzy college in a sports car. Lucky for me, while he and my mother may have wished that my relationship with learning were different, what they said mostly was, “You can do anything.”
At 27, a decade after high school, I entered Amherst, one of the nation’s most selective colleges. Word was I was the oldest freshman the school had ever admitted. Amherst's president welcomed me, saying, “You’re where you belong. Enjoy yourself.” Six weeks later my father died of a heart attack. I graduated with honors.
Graduate school was a five year mentoring by the principals of an equally rarified marketing and communications firm in Rochester, NY. I joke that my blood type is Fortune 500, the scars on my back spell “entrepreneur,” and the names of my children are Research and Strategy. This firm, Saphar & Associates, was where that quip originated. When she and her husband hired me, Audrey Saphar said, “Steve, you’re brilliant, but you don’t have enough discipline. I will be your discipline.” There are many reasons I consider my life with awe; the mentoring of this remarkable woman and her husband is among them.
For the past 20-plus years I have been an independent counselor, strategist, creative director, writer and speaker. I’m also an essayist celebrating what I like to call the most fear-provoking point of view the world has ever known: Everything is a gift. A collection of my essays, published by St. Lynn’s Press, is titled Cool Mind Warm Heart.
The introduction to Cool Mind Warm Heart ends with a supposedly true story that expresses how I feel about my work in the world. Some 20 or 30 years ago a lovely old monk had the job of training postulants (the new kids) in an ashram of Paramahansa Yogananda. This monk and a bunch of his young charges are hanging out one day when one of the youngsters says, “Isn’t it wonderful that we have the opportunity to be here, together, in this life, as devotees of a great master, an incarnation of God? It is a privilege. But it is also a great responsibility.”
To which the old monk shakes his head and says, “No. It is only a privilege.”
This piece is an example of a 21st Century Resume,
a term I coined to represent the professional portraits I write
that convey who you really are.
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