Happy Birthday!
As always, lots of thoughts are going through my head. As always, the challenge is to capture my thoughts, transfer thoughts to fingers, then to keyboard, then, through the magic of The World Wide Web, to you, for your enjoyment, rumination, or perhaps annoyance and consternation.
“Thoughts for the Week” is celebrating its 2nd birthday! Instead of giving “Thoughts” a present, I am giving it scrutiny by asking questions such as:
What is this thing I now call “Thoughts For the Week”?
What am I trying to accomplish by writing this?
Why do this?
This weekly email was born out of the Covid 19 pandemic on July 4th, 2021. I will admit I was struggling during the pandemic. I felt I had lost connection with my personal and professional relationships. Holed up in my basement, I realized for the first time that the 8 billion people who populate this big dirt clod we call Earth don’t wake up each morning and think, “I wonder how Rich Perkey is doing today?” That is because they all have important stuff they need to do, like roll the garbage cans down to the curb, or brush their teeth or (at that time) sit their kids in front of a computer for online lessons. Our “normal” rhythms and patterns of interacting had been severely altered, and there was no telling when we would be able to engage in the way we had in the past.
So being a big fan of John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” (even before it was made famous in “Ted Lasso”), I decided to roll out Wooden’s “Building Block 8” - Initiative: “Cultivate the ability to make decisions and think alone. Don’t be afraid of failure, but learn from it.” In the chapter on initiative in his book, Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, Wooden translates this “building block” into an affirmation and an exhortation: “I commit to boldly press the boundaries of my life to reach my greatest potential.”
Geez, in July of 2021, I wasn’t pressing the boundaries of my life to reach my greatest potential! I was trying to dodge a killer disease and trying to figure out how to breathe a little life into my moribund executive search practice while trying to provide support to my wife Jill as she dealt with the transition of her elderly parents into an assisted living facility in Richmond, Virginia, 540 miles away from our home in Atlanta.
The operative word in that paragraph is “trying.” It was a trying time.
So as was appropriate in a trying time, I decided to try something different.
I decided to send a “message in a bottle” weekly to my mailing list, with thoughts on leadership, the executive search industry, and life in general. I would use email as the means of communication and send the messages to my mailing list that I had built up over 32 years in the executive search business. People could take the message out of the bottle and read it, but they could also throw the bottle in the recycle bin (by hitting delete.)
When I look back on it, the risks were not nearly as large as I had previously made them out to be. Okay, perhaps I would piss off or annoy some folks. I needed to make sure that what I wrote and the thoughts I shared reflected well on my employer, Caldwell Partners, who gave me their full support for this initiative. I wouldn’t do anything that would embarrass me or anyone else.
I wanted to ensure that this weekly email added value to you in some way, shape, or form. I didn’t want “Thoughts For the Week” to be all about me – the equivalent of an email “Selfie for a Boomer” (me). I wanted it to bring joy, entertain, inform, teach, and serve as a conduit for connecting with people who are important to me…
You.
So, thank you for letting me sneak into your awareness weekly over these past two years. Thanks for listening. Thanks for allowing me the chance to help you address your need for talent in your organizations.
And thank you for the lessons that I glean from all our interactions. I am constantly reminded that none of these lessons are original – and none of them emanate from Rich Perkey.
These lessons are yours.
In honor of its 2nd birthday, here is the inaugural “Thoughts for the Week” (or “Three Things for the Week” as it was originally known…)
1. Thank You, Pete Correll
This text showed up on my phone at 5:19 PM on May 25th: “Wanted to let you know that Pete Correll just passed away.”
The phone number from which the text was sent is not in my Contacts. Who is this?
I text back: “What a great man. I am honored to have worked with Pete on his passion, Grady Hospital. I really appreciate you thinking of me to share this news.”
The response gives me additional data as to the identity of the sender: “You are one of the key people in connecting me to Pete and this job. I do what I do to honor his commitment to Grady.”
I text back to John Haupert, the CEO of Grady Hospital: “Pete is very proud of you. We all are.”
Thank you, Pete Correll, for the lessons you taught me in 2011 during the Grady Hospital CEO search. You taught me about the myriad of political, social and economic influences on the strategy and mission of an organization. You taught me to focus on the character of the candidate, not their characteristics. You taught us all the power of selflessness, as you gave your time, resources and wisdom to the healing, renovation and rehabilitation of Grady Hospital – one of Atlanta’s most important assets.
And John Haupert, thank you for being such an incredible leader for your amazing team at Grady Hospital. Please hoist a martini in Pete’s memory this August when you celebrate your 10th anniversary as the CEO of Grady Hospital. Pete is proud of you. We all are.
2. The “Now Normal” for the Executive Search Business
Recently I was speaking to the President of The University of Lynchburg, Dr. Alison Morrison-Shetlar, regarding, among other things, life as we emerge from the COVID pandemic. She spoke not about the “new normal” but instead, about the "Now Normal" that we're experiencing.
The phrase “The Now Normal” – which Alison credits to former University of Lynchburg Student Government Association President Davion Washington Jr. - struck a chord with me. The executive search business has adapted a great number of changes and evolved over the course of the past 18 months, i.e. Board/CEO search committee meetings via Zoom, video interviews instead of face-to-face interviews, virtual onboarding. What was novel in 2019 is “Now Normal” in 2021.
This Wall Street Journal article expands on the “Now Normal” for the executive search business.
3. Rich Perkey Came Along Too Soon – Profiting from Name, Image, and Likeness
Are you kidding me? How much moolah could the guy pictured below have made selling shampoo and conditioner???
Share