The Flame Of Inspiration

Two's company but is three really a crowd? Three in this piece is INSPIRATIONAL. My focus this week is on success. What better way to examine success than to center on three extraordinary men. I am choosing my picks from the world of business. Equally, there are remarkable individuals in all walks of life including, government, theology, entertainment, and your neighborhood and mine. Women are certainly not excluded. Maybe in my next piece I will find feminine "Fortune 500s".

My tried and true trio of Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch, and Bill Gates are mere fragments of the whole, and they do happen to be all men. They are men with answers. They are part of the solution, not part of the problem. Courageous visionaries who "Just Do It". They rise above the crowd and in so doing have caught a critical tomato or pie head on. You can't deter that kind of determination. They know that timing is everything and what doesn't work today will reinvent itself tomorrow. Using a "don't quit" philosophy, that if it caught on, would obliterate negativity and change the world. They are invinceable.

Lee Iacocca is widely known for his reign at Chrysler and the book, Iacocca, a manual for all MBA wannabes. He classically "wheeled and dealed" getting himself, Chrysler, and his union laborers a government bailout. A loan he repaid 7 years before the due date. He cut salaries and adjusted his own compensation to $1 a year, refusing to cut the secretarial wage because: "they deserved every penney they received." He rode the Chrysler roller coaster, fearless of the twists, turns, highs, and lows rolling to a triumphant stop with the successful K-cars which took the company back to profitability.

Jack Welch, top gun at GE for 20 years, earned the admiration of the world, yes the world, with a gutsy, unique, humble approach, unafraid to laugh even at himself. Just to listen to him is soothing. He has a relaxed demeanor and a sincere message. Michael Eisner, Disney CEO and Chairman, says this about Jack:

"Jack Welch gave team leadership new meaning as he took an industrial giant and turned it into an industrial colossus with a heart, a soul, and a brain."

Bill Gates, the youngest billionaire in history, is a dot.com success story. In schoolyard rivalries, the jocks ($bucks$) and the
mocks (-skids-) have been divided by invisible chalk lines. The popular jocks ravaged their wallflower mock classmates. It was an academic based conflict. The computer generation filtered out of this environment in an "all's fair in love and war" strategy. Enter Bill Gates and his Microsoft miracle. The clear winner in the information highway drag race. An internet innovator. An entrepreneur par excellence. The jocks are angrily pitching their grocery bags of tomatos and pies at Bill Gates. Who will win the techie war? I'm betting on Gates and his inventive bounce-back mentality. Stay tuned for this one.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic