#LeadershipChat Meet Gert Boyle

Image by Jason McHuff via Flickr

Every Tuesday evening 8:00PM EST @lisapetrilli and @swoodruff co-host a live Twitter chat called #leadershipchat. It is always an interesting exchange. Tonight they plan to talk about The Accidental Leader. This chat may deal with political leaders or business leaders, but I thought today might be a good day to introduce my friends to Gert Boyle.

Do you know Gert Boyle?  I bet you know her company. Does Columbia Sportswear ring any bells? I would like #leadershipchat to meet Gert Boyle. Her colorful life story reads like a movie script and I hope you will read the full 2003 CNN Money article, but suffice it to say she was a stay-at-home mother and on December 4, 1970, her husband (then President of Columbia Sportswear) suddenly died of a massive heart attack.

"I had to go to work the next day. It was the fifth of December, just before Christmas, and we had all these deliveries to do. I was afraid all the seamstresses would quit. It was hard to find good seamstresses! We had just taken on an SBA loan. The government said that if you don't pay us back, what are you going to give us? Well, my husband had said that we'd give them our life insurance. He was 47! We'd also give them our house, our mother's house, and our beach house. How am I going to say to my mother, "Hey, you know that house you've been living in? It's gone." I couldn't do that. If you stay home and cry all day long, it isn't going to change stuff. And poverty was really not something I was looking forward to. So I went to work."

On January 27, 2011, Gert Boyle, now nearly 87(born around 1924)and still Chairman of the Board, participated in the conference call to announce Columbia Sportswear posting double-digit gains in quarterly, yearly earnings.

Maybe you are wondering why I even know about Gert Boyle. You see I first moved to snow country (read Alaska and then on to New Hampshire) in 1983. Until that time I had never seen snow fall. I had to learn quickly how to dress for the cold and lucky for me it was in 1986 that Columbia Sportswear introduced the Bugaboo Parka (a 3 in1 jacket).  The one you see in this photo was purchased in 1986 and you should know that just two weeks ago when the temperature in Tucson dropped to 18 degrees my husband was wearing this Bugaboo Parka.

But there is more to my story with Gert and her son, Tim Boyle. In 1983 they started an advertising campaign: "Before it passes Mother Nature, it has to pass Mother Boyle."  It was part of their entire campaign, even on their merchandise tags. It was the sort of campaign that stuck in your head. One day winter 1993 I drove to Attitash Ski Resort to pick up my two sons from a alpine ski racing event. It was a bitter cold day and I had to walk a long way from the car to the ski lodge. When I finally located Aaron and Daniel they were ready to go home, ski bags in tow.  We started towards the door when one of them discovered they had picked up the wrong black Columbia Sportswear ski bag. Now you can imagine trying to find the right bag in the confusion of a race day, many little boys and girls all with their black bags. One thing was missing from the bags...an outside clear pocket for a name and address card.

The next day I wrote a letter to Tim Boyle. It was a nice letter, I simply asked him if he were sure Mother Boyle had "passed" on the ski bags.  And guess what...about two weeks later Tim Boyle called me long distance, all the way from Oregon to New Hampshire. He liked my letter and he liked my suggestion. He also had a good laugh about how his mother might have reacted to a bunch of little skiers all with the same bag and no noticeable way to easily pick out their bag in a crowd. He said he was going to send my idea to his research and development department.

Columbia Sportswear Company is now in it 73rd year. I am pleased to introduce Gert Boyle to my #leadershipchat friends. Let me know what you think and in the meantime you can enjoy a photo of Dennis and me taken in Butte, Montana in front of the Berkeley Pit October 1997. Dennis is wearing the polar fleece inner jacket of his Bugaboo Parka!

Judy and Dennis October 1997

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Other interesting links about Gert...

Columbia Milestones (Here you can see a sample of one of their ads)
Our Company, Ourselves (April 1, 1998)
Gert Boyle Has a Vested Interest in George Bush's Fishing Fortunes (September 18, 1989)

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Too Busy to Write? My September 2010 Review

As usual, today Chris Brogan's post "The Discipline to Write Daily" was thought provoking and it reminded me that during the month of September 2010 I did not publish one single post here on my OP-ED page. This is not to say that I was on total radio silence for the last month, but just active writing for Webconsuls, working with our clients, commenting on others' interesting posts...

Today I thought it might be fun to point you to some of my favorite September reads. If you read these posts, you will see I left a comment, so take a few minutes and scroll through the comments, you will learn a lot about people.

• September 1, Chris Brogan wrote about "Selling Wool or Yarn" ---I have done both!
• September 8, Ridgely Johnson talked about "My Kindle, My BFF" --- I don't have a Kindle.
• September 16, I published "Rose Knows What to Do When Novelty Wears Off"  --- A lot of people enjoyed meeting Rose!
• September 17, Allison Boyer writing for Blog World chatted about "Twitter Chats: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly"  --- for those who join in chats this is a great primer.
• September 22, John McLachlan asked "Why Blog?" --- Why indeed?
• September 22, Jorja White talked about "Empathy 101 and Adam Braverman" --- Jorja is busy with family and writing an e-Book, but on September 29 she did a follow-up  "Misunderstanding and Adam Braverman"
• September 22, Julien Smith wrote  "Your Happiness is Not Your Own"
• September 23, Lisa Petrilli talked about "How I am Measuring My Blog's Summer Harvest" --- I was honored to be mentioned by Lisa.
• September 29, Chris Brogan started an interesting discussion "How Not to Have Mind Numbing Office Meetings" --- to which I commented...

Chris,

I have known some employees/workers who just love meetings. You know why? You can easily fill up your whole "workday" with meetings and not open your brain or your mouth. I promised on Twitter that I would give you a couple of funny meeting anecdotes, so here you go.

I was a banker for many years. In the old days, many banks were required to have standing committee meetings for things like commercial loan applications, directors and officers, etc. One day I realized that I was going to be in three consecutive meetings with just a 30 minute lunch break. It was a cold winter day in northern New Hampshire (Littleton). The meeting room was cold and uncomfortable. So during the break I walked across Main St into a wonderful store and purchased a Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgown. I went back to the bank, put the nightgown on over my wool business suit, walked into the empty room and waited. The rest of the "committee" arrived and it took 20 minutes before the bank President looked at me and started to crack up with laughter. I told him I was preparing for a long cold day into night. The meeting was wrapped up quickly.

Many years later I was working as a Senior Business Analyst on a high profile project for a casualty and property insurance company. The CTO was directly in charge of this project, even though there was a "project manager." The CTO had a habit of answering many direct questions by saying: "We'll see." I must add that when we had our weekly project meeting on Friday mornings we each had name cards, so one day I created a name card with the name "Will Cee" and placed it at the chair next to mine. The meeting started and about 15 minutes into the "agenda" the CTO asked if Will was coming to the meeting, to which I responded "We'll see!"

In closing, I will be pretty busy over the next few weeks. Don't worry, I will take plenty of photos. And, don't forget I will be meeting some of you in person at Blog World Expo 2010.

In the meantime, you can enjoy my wedding photo album that covers family weddings from 1901 through 1978.

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Do You Know Scott Adams?

You know Scott Adams. He is the creator of DILBERT. A while back I wrote a blog post about Dilbert 2.0 and I said: "Most working people found this cartoon to be really very funny and perceptive, to the point that it was almost as if Scott Adams was secretly infiltrating corporate America to obtain material on which to base his cartoon." It turns out that I wasn't too far off. According to a 2004 Design Boom Interview: Adams "worked at Crocker National Bank from 1979 to 1986, in a number of humiliating and low paying jobs: teller (robbed twice at gunpoint), computer programmer, financial analyst, product manager, and commercial lender."

This past week my friend Lisa Petrilli wrote a three part series called The Introvert’s Guide to Getting Promoted. Do read Step One, Step Two and Step Three. No, Lisa did not discuss DILBERT!

Here's my OP-ED to Lisa's Part One
June 22, 2010

Lisa,

I think if you asked most of my family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances they would probably tell you that I am more of an introvert than an extrovert. On the other hand, once I am inclined to step out of my comfort zone, then I become the go-to person in the organization.

Here are a few things to know about me: My husband and I actually met our current business partner (of 10 years) at an Executive Leadership Training seminar. It was 1981 and both my husband and Dick were part of middle management of Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO). The training took place at ARCO’s Executive Training facility in Santa Barbara, CA. It was a two week course, with employees flown in from all over the world, the second week of the course they brought in the spouses. Yes, indeed, I needed to be trained on how to be a Corporate Executive’s wife!!!

I am familiar with the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator. I worked for company that actually made all of their new hires take this “test.” It sometimes bothered me that the test results could control your chances of promotion for the rest of your corporate career with that company. I think sometimes corporations don’t realize that not everyone wants to listen to or follow an extrovert.

But here is my best life story about how I made myself visible in an organization. It was 1978. I was a consumer loan officer for Crocker National Bank in Los Angeles, CA. I worked as a "floating" loan officer, which meant that I would fill in for loan officers that were going on vacation, sick leave, maternity leave, etc. It was a fun job, I was able to meet a lot of different people and I never got bored. At the time I was assigned to a branch in Altadena, CA. I was filling in for an Assistant Branch Manager who had suffered a heart attack. About five weeks into this assignment the branch was robbed, with the masked bandits jumping the counters wielding sawed-off shotguns and ordering everyone to get on the floor.

After the culprits left the bank it was my duty to call "Headquarters" to report the robbery and to ask for a robbery team to be dispatched to meet with the FBI. As luck would have it, the gentleman that took the phone call was the Executive Vice President – Consumer Lending. I had never met him, but I knew of him.

In my telephone conversation, the EVP finally said to me: "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I responded: "I want your job or I at least I want to work directly for you!"

Within two weeks, he personally visited the branch, sent in internal auditors to check my work quality and then made me an offer to work directly for him. New position: Assistant Vice President, District Retail Banking Specialist. (Before I transferred to downtown Los Angeles, my branch was robbed again.)

I agree; great CEOs are always on a talent search. So you need to know who is in your molecule and who interacts with those in your molecule. Be available to get involved and be supportive. But, as one of our mutual “friends”(Chris Brogan) said: sooner or later you need to "Make the ASK!"
Judy
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Here is Lisa's reply:
June 23, 2010
Judy,
I just know you and I are meant to meet and share all kinds of amazing stories some day! Kudos to you for your smarts and your boldness. As usual, you are way ahead of me – we’ll get to “asking” tomorrow…!

Thank you, as always, for sharing your experiences and insights with me and the other readers!

Lisa
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It seems bank robberies can be real career boosters. I am just "sure" I must have met Scott Adams when we both worked for Crocker National Bank. What do you think?  Can you share some of your promotion stories?

Lisa Petrilli Wants You to Have a Clear Vision

Lisa can help you define your vision!

I first met Lisa Petrilli on May 14th. She was just launching her new blog C-Level Strategies & Awakenings. I was curious to read her blog and I left a comment and Lisa commented back to me.

Lisa's post this week, The Business-Altering Difference Between Vision and Mission interested me as a business owner and as someone who works with other business owners on a regular basis.  I hope you will take a few minutes to read Lisa's ideas. Here is what I had to say.

Here is my OP-ED...
June 13th, 2010

Lisa,

I think I have it: a mission statement is a given, whether it is spoken or not; however, a vision will drive the engine of success.

Now the questions, as I see them, are:

1. Why do people (business leaders) struggle with these concepts and their subtleties?
2. Once they get through the struggle and actually define their vision why are people (business leaders) reluctant to publish their vision statement?

To me it all comes down to accountability and a word that, at best, is fuzzy… vision. I mean if you just take out an ordinary dictionary and look up the word “vision” most of the definitions are filled with verbs like this: sensing, anticipating, hallucinating, perceiving, imagining, discerning, seeing. The word “vision” doesn’t seem concrete.

Maybe if we started very young to think of life with mission statements and vision statements it would be easier for the new entrepreneur to articulate both. I remember being a fairly young executive and we were having a workshop with Human Resources. Someone asked us to write down our five year and 10 year goals. How far do you think this exercise went before the HR person had lost control?

You see, if I state a goal with a vision and I announce it to my world (parents, sibling, peers, high-school counselor, mentor, professors, spouse, business partner, friends, neighbors, relatives), then not only will people know when I succeed, they will almost certainly know when I fail.

This is a scary proposition. Publishing a vision statement forces one to be accountable, for better or worse. Or at least it should.

LG Life’s Good

"LG’s vision is to deliver innovative digital products and services that make our customers’ lives better, easier and happier through increased functionality and fun."
 
This is a great vision statement, but LG does not always execute the mission to achieve the vision.

I was not having fun the evening I discovered the casing around the refrigerator light was melting and it smelled funny. When I called customer service they demanded that I pull the fridge away from the wall and unplug it. When I questioned why, they said it could start a fire! Imagine if I had not been home. It took over a month for them to agree to fix this 18 month old refrigerator. Mine was not an isolated case and they knew it.

On another note and back to your main topic, last evening I came across a quote:

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

This quote is often attributed to Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) and also to Jack Welch (1935…)

Do you know who really said it first?

P.S. I would love to feature you and this post on my new blog Judy’s OP-ED.
What do you think of that idea?
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Here is Lisa's reply:
June 15, 2010

Judy,

My concern is that part of what drives this is the very short-term focus on results and the fact that many executive tenures are so short. This may inhibit an ability to think boldly about what the organization can really become if it challenges itself to an audacious vision.

You are also right about fear of failure – if I tell you what I’m working towards and I don’t seem to be making any progress towards that vision will you judge me harshly? Is it safer just to follow the mission and hope it gets me somewhere?

My experience is that a mission with no vision leads organizations to walk in circles…

I love the quote – absolutely embrace it! Thank you for sharing it. And yes, I would be honored to be featured on your blog.
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I don't need to know if you own an LG refrigerator, this really is not a blog about kitchens. But if you own a business, will you share your VISION?