Happy Birthday, Chip Perkey!
1. Happy Birthday, Chip Perkey!
January 22nd marks yet another birthday for my big brother, Chip Perkey. I am dedicating this section of “Three Things” to Chip, and will give it to him as a present. Once I get my printer at the office to work, I will print out this version of “Three Things”, stick it in a box, wrap it with two other copies of “Three Things”, and mail it to Chip. How thoughtful and kind am I?
Very thoughtful and kind!
I was born when my mother and father realized they could improve upon their quality of children if they just kept practicing having them.
Saying “Happy Birthday!” has always bugged me. Why should you wish that someone only have feelings of happiness for 1/365thof their life? Chip should be happy every day, as he is in the 40th year of a wonderful marriage, and he has two great kids, who have enabled Chip to be a grandfather two times over. This means that I have officially achieved greatness in my life as I am the great-uncle of Chip’s grandchildren, Price and Zella. As I am now “great”, anyone reading this may now feel free to address me as “Your Greatness”.
Chip was and is the best athlete in the Perkey family, and could have played the role of Roy Hobbs in “The Natural”. His winning the Lynchburg, Virginia “Punt, Pass, and Kick” contest as a nine year old was just a sign of things to come. His athletic feats include:
Throwing two no-hitters for his high school baseball team, Brookville Fightin’ Bees (“Sting ‘Em Bees! Do it for the Hive! Don’t Be A Drone!”)…
Hitting two doubles off of future New York Yankee pitcher Kenny Clay, with 15 Major League Baseball scouts sitting behind home plate – one of them being Danny Murtaugh, the former manager of the Pittsburg Pirates…
Blasting an 86-yard punt that pinned the Rustburg Red Devils on their own goal line;
Quarterbacking the Brookville Fightin’ Bees to the regional football playoffs;
Scoring the winning run in the Virginia 2A High School baseball championship game, just hours before he walked across the podium to receive his high school diploma.
Amazing.
As if to prove to the world that his “glory days” achievements were no fluke, Chip sports a four handicap in golf.
I do want to let you know, Chip, that I forgive you for the time that we were wrestling on our twin beds, and you put that “Wahoo McDaniel ‘Wide World of Wrestling’” move on me that enabled you to rip my underpants off my body and stuff them in my mouth so I couldn’t scream to Mom.
It was then that I learned that “Fruit of the Loom” underwear were not edible.
Happy Birthday, Brother… Every Day!
2. The Ambition of Franklin Roosevelt
The third of the four presidents whose motivations are studied by Doris Kearns Goodwin in her book Leadership in Turbulent Times is Franklin Roosevelt.
What fascinates me about the leadership journey of Franklin Roosevelt is how lackluster his resume was until he was well into in his 20s. Where do we see ambition in Franklin Roosevelt’s early life? Goodwin observes the following:
Franklin’s ambition was not cultivated in him as a child. Instead, the responsibility of making decisions and being the “man of the house” was thrust upon him on the death of his father when Franklin was a freshman at Harvard.
During his college years, Roosevelt began to assert his independence and chart his own course. Goodwin describes Franklin’s assertion of his independence as somewhat of a reaction to his overbearing but well-meaning mother, Sara, who had taken an apartment in Boston to be closer to Franklin during his college years at Harvard. (Hey, I love my mom as much as the next person, but I can only imagine having to turn to Ginnie Perkey at a frat party and saying, “Hey, Mom, do you mind going over to that keg and pouring me another beer?”)
His wife, Eleanor, is seen as having played an important role in instilling a sense of social consciousness in Franklin. It was Eleanor Roosevelt who exposed her husband to the challenges faced by the underprivileged. To his credit, and to the benefit of all Americans today, Franklin found meaning and purpose in bettering the lives of the poor, instead of hiding behind the trappings of wealth.
That Roosevelt was “all in” when he jumped into the political fray at the invitation of the New York Democratic Party after a rather inauspicious start to his legal career, is thought by Goodwin to be indicative of the fact that he “craved adventure” and had “a desire for freedom from the confines of his insulated world”.
What are the key takeaways from all of this?
The call to leadership may come at any time. We do not control it, we only receive it, whether we are ready for it or not. Some rise to the occasion, others do not.
Leaders give of themselves to others, motivated by the desire to help their fellow man.
It is not necessarily how you start the race – it is how you finish the race!
3. The "What" of Board Service
As my Caldwell colleague Kelly Blair and I have looked into “the who, what, when, where, why, and how of board service”, we have asked ourselves: what are boards looking for in board members in 2023?
There is no doubt that sitting CEOs are still very much in demand. Executives who have P&L experience at scale, and strategy experience that is relevant to the company’s “end game” are highly valued. Financial expertise, risk management expertise, digital competencies, technology fluency, and cybersecurity are competencies that are highly sought after in board candidates.
But boards today are looking well beyond traditional skill sets. Boards are viewed as not just having a business purpose; institutional investors are insisting that companies play a larger role in society and that they have a broader responsibility than merely producing a profit. The demand by institutional investors that social responsibility be a duty of boards is requiring that new experiences and new attributes be sought in director candidates. As such, the board member who brings a broader perspective to board discussions of the civic, social, technological, environmental, and cultural impact of business decisions is a highly desirable.
This bodes well for all you liberal arts grads out there!
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