CHAMPION

Is a champion someone who beats others who are less able? Or is a champion someone who beats others even though they are more able? Or is a champion someone who keeps on trying regardless of the outcome? Or is a champion someone who keeps on trying regardless of the challenge?

When I think of someone who was a real champion, I think of Mohammed Ali, one of the great boxers of all time. During the period that he was the heavyweight-boxing champion of the world, he was known as a highly skilled boxer. But was he the best boxer? That depends on how you define "best." Many observers criticized Ali for his "rope-a-dope" practice. When his opponent seemed to be getting the best of him, Ali leaned against the ropes that surrounded the boxing ring, held up his hands to protect his head and body and took a real beating. When his opponent wore himself out without inflicting any serious damage, Ali got off the ropes and finished his opponent off. Did winning in this way make him the superior boxer? If we answer this question simply based on who was left standing at the end of the fight, the answer is "yes!" If we look at other factors, we might arrive at a different answer. Other boxers may have been stronger, faster, and may have had better technique. Yet, he won many championship fights. In a very real sense, Ali beat others who may actually have been better boxers than he was, at least in some important ways.

How did Ali beat other boxers, even superior boxers? His rope-a-dope technique, a strategy that he invented and used to maximum advantage, certainly contributed to Ali's success. So did his big mouth. Successful boxers are not particularly modest, but Ali made self-aggrandizement into an art form that may never be duplicated. As fast as he was with his feet, he was even faster with his mouth. Ali may have beaten other boxers with superior skills because he "psyched them out" in a way that no one has been able to duplicate.

After he retired from the ring, Ali continued to be a sought-after personality. People loved to see and hear him, and he became a successful "draw" for many causes and events. As the years progressed, Ali began to display significant physical limitations that his doctors attributed to the repeated head injuries he had sustained in the ring. As he deteriorated further, he became extremely limited physically and was barely able to speak. Everyone expected him to retire. What else could he do? Who wanted to see a seriously damaged former champion who could barely speak? Everyone! Even when he was "reduced" to making unintelligible sounds and using boxing gestures that were barely recognizable, people wanted to see and hear him. He was not a former champion! He was THE CHAMP!

Ali's will to live and to contribute in any way made him into a bigger champion in his latter years than he had been when he beat all other heavyweight boxers in the ring. Ali showed us that a real champion keeps on trying no matter what the challenge is, and no matter how small of an accomplishment meeting that challenge may seem to others. Ali was a champion, not because he beat others, but because he beat himself. He did more than anyone expected of him. He may even have done more than he expected of himself.

 

CAMELS

A camel cannot see his own hump, but he sees every other camel's hump. 

It is so easy to see everyone else's deficiencies. After all, they have so many. But me, I have no deficiencies. I am perfect. Just ask my mother!

On second thought, do not ask my mother. She will be very happy to tell you all about my many deficiencies. But ask her about her deficiencies, and she won't know what you are talking about. After all, she is perfect. Just ask her mother!

If you ask most people, they will tell you that they are much better than most people. I have never understood this. How can most people be much better than most people. Maybe it has something to do with the "new math." I guess I am just too old. 

Ask some people about their deficiencies, and they either become flustered or really can't think of any. I make a related request when I interview people for jobs. "Tell me three things about yourself that you would like to improve professionally," I prod. Many people just cannot think of any way they could improve professionally. As a last resort, many will give some variation on the following answer: I could learn more about “x” (with “x” being some topic that no doubt they really think they completely understand already). People think that is a safe answer since everyone needs to learn something. But if everyone needs to learn something, saying: "I need to improve professionally by learning something," means nothing.

If you ask people in a business environment about how others can improve, they also are very reluctant to answer. No one wants to sound like a "stool pigeon" and talk about their colleagues' deficiencies. But when people are on break, some seem to have unlimited bad things to say about others. Those others might even include me. Hard to believe!

Why can't a camel see its own hump? Because of where it is located in relation to where his eyes can turn. The same is true about you and me and everyone else. Our faults, as obvious and glaring as they are to others, are located in places where we cannot see them. This is not because we have a physical anatomy similar to a camel's physical anatomy. It is because we choose to hide our faults psychologically, not only from others, but also from ourselves. We do this with all sorts of "defense mechanisms." We are so afraid of knowing our faults that we cannot acknowledge that we have any.

But is having faults really so bad? Some of them might be, but most people's faults are relatively minor or innocuous. To the extent that they interfere with accomplishing our goals and our relations with others, they interfere with our being the best that we can be. Being less than the best that we can be is not so bad. In fact, only the Almighty is really the best that He can be. All humans fall short.

Accepting that I am less than perfect (OK, much less than perfect) is necessary to start any self-improvement process. The more I can accept my human failings, the more I can accept that I can be a better person. Self-improvement starts with self-awareness. Self-awareness involves knowing my strengths. It also involves knowing my deficiencies. The biggest paradox of the human condition may be that not knowing one's deficiencies may be the greatest deficiency of all.

Nothing is innately valuable. All value comes from scarcity.

As a youngster, I struggled to understand what makes something valuable. Is there something special about gold that makes it so valuable, I wondered? Actually, there are many things about gold that are special. Gold is the most "malleable" of all metals. This means that a skilled goldsmith can create a large sheet of gold leaf from a small quantity of gold. Even though gold is so expensive per ounce, it is relatively inexpensive per square foot because it can be made so thin. Gold leaf is so inexpensive that it is used to cover the domes of mosques and other important buildings. Is this the quality that makes gold so expensive? No. This quality is one of the many characteristics that makes gold so useful. What makes it expensive is the fact that there is just not enough of it to go around. Gold is scarce. Scarcity is the common denominator among all valuable items. If gold were lying around in everyone's backyard, it would be cheap despite its great usefulness.

This rule applies to all valuables, not just commodities like gold. Skills are also valuable because they are scarce. Doctors do not make a lot more money than most other professionals in the United States because healing the sick is such an admirable profession. They make more money than other professionals do because there are not enough doctors in the United States. Doctors in Israel, in contrast, make about the same salary as bus drivers. This is due to the dramatic oversupply of doctors in Israel. As the supply of doctors in the United States has increased, their relatively high compensation has begun to decrease as well.

Many years ago as I searched for a job after being awarded my doctoral degree in psychology, I learned quickly that psychologists are not particularly scarce. Nor are they highly compensated compared to other professionals. What could I do to make my professional activities more valuable, I wondered.

As I have explained in greater detail in the early chapters of my book, "A Beautiful Business," I decided to specialize in supporting people who have severe mental retardation and behavioral complications. There were not that many people who fit that description, but the number of psychologists who were expert in their care in the mid- to late-1970s when I started my career was even less. By specializing in an area that almost no one else was interested in, I made myself a scarce and valuable professional.

This approach has become a primary principle that makes our organization special. We provide many services to many different types of people. The common denominator among all of our activities is that we serve people with the most serious and complex disorders. Most of our competitors serve people with more common - less scarce - disorders. This commitment and our exceptional success in fulfilling it are very scarce. That is the primary reason we are such a valuable organization.

 

CREDIT

Easy money is expensive money.

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, there were many small local stores that were patronized almost exclusively by people who lived in the neighborhood. When I walked into any of the several stores that my mother shopped at, the owner always greeted me by my first name. I always responded respectfully and called him Mister followed by his last name.

I never had any money when I stopped at any of these stores. The owner always was willing to let me take several items. All I had to say was, "My mom will pay you later." You might think that my mother was a wealthy woman who had a large credit account with the store. She wasn't, and she didn't. We actually were very poor. I never took anything expensive. Nor did I ever take anything that I did not need. Most important, my mother always paid … eventually.

Getting credit in any of these stores was not that easy. Credit was based on personal relationships that were built over years. It took my mother a long time until all the local storeowners knew her and her children. Once she got this credit, however, it came with very easy terms. She did not need to pay interest, and there was no deadline to pay. As long as she paid somewhat regularly, her credit remained good. When times were bad like when she was between jobs, the store owners even "let her slide" until she could get back on her feet.

When I got a little older, a supermarket opened in the neighborhood. I did not know the owner of the supermarket. He certainly did not greet me by name when I entered the store. I doubt that the owner even worked there. If he did, he must have been in some office away from the shoppers because we never met him. We never did get credit at the supermarket. Worse still, the lower prices charged by the supermarket eventually put all of the local stores out of business. Within a few years, there was no place for my family to buy on credit. When we did not have money, we did without.

When I became an adult and got a job, I became credit worthy in my own right. This credit, however, was totally different than the credit my mother had received when I was a child. It was not based on any relationship. Instead, it was based on some formula calculated by an impersonal corporation that tracked credit worthiness of people they knew only "on paper" and eventually only "in the computer." This credit was not particularly hard to get, provided that you really did not need it. It did include very high interest payments. It also had steep penalties if you missed a payment or simply forgot to pay by the monthly deadline.

I do not miss being poor, but I do miss the trust that made the relationship between local shopkeepers and local families possible. Those days are long gone, and I suppose they will never return. Life is almost certainly much easier now, but it seems like it was so much simpler back then.

BASICS

The success of our organization is based on superior attention to the basics, not on superior esoteric knowledge or secret techniques that we have developed.

I was talking about our organization, my favorite topic of discussion, to a very sophisticated individual not long ago. After describing the variety of services we provide to the different populations we support, he surprised me by saying, "You know, you are all over the place!" He meant that unlike other organizations that focus on one or at most several activities for a given population, we do many things for many types of people.

 

I have thought a lot about his comment. Overall, he is correct. We are not focused on one type of service. Nor are we focused on one population of people. That does not mean we are "out of focus." In fact, I believe we are very focused - on the intersection between serious and complex challenges. I have always sought out the greatest challenges I can find. Meeting those challenges in an excellent manner has been the standard I have set for our organization. We do not always succeed, but we almost never fail completely. I say "almost" because over the past 30 years, there have been a few individuals whose challenges have proven to be more than we could handle. Clearly, we can be excellent in many ways for many people, but we cannot be everything for everyone with serious and complex challenges.

How do we succeed with excellence so often in meeting these serious and complex challenges that other organizations cannot or will not meet? Do we have superior knowledge of the most current and sophisticated techniques in our respective professions? I know that many of the professionals we employ are among the most knowledgeable and skillful in their fields. These professionals certainly contribute to our success. But many other organizations employ quality professionals. Yet, they are not committed the way we are, nor do they accomplish what we accomplish.

Have we developed secret techniques that no one else knows about? If we do, they must be so secret that even I do not know about them.

What is the "secret" to our success in meeting so many serious and complex challenges? There is no secret, just a strong and ever present commitment to the basics. Our shorthand for this commitment is summed up in just a few words: "First, we do the right thing!" Because our first and primary commitment is to "do the right thing," we are able to accomplish near miracles for many people with the most serious and complex challenges.

We do have other commitments, of course. We must meet regulatory and contractual requirements. We must maintain our financial health. We must communicate with many other organizations, individuals, and the community at large. All of these and other commitments are very important to us, but they are secondary.

"First, we do the right thing ..."

REVENGE

 

Enjoying life is the best revenge.

I was talking with an older woman who was a survivor of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. As is typical with older people, we started to talk about family, particularly the pleasures of grandchildren. At one point, she turned to me with a smile on her mouth and a tear in her eye and said, "For me, grandchildren are not only a great pleasure. They are the best revenge!"

At first, I was taken aback. Here was this sweet, frail old lady who was a grandmother and great-grandmother many times over. Talking about the pleasures of grandchildren seemed to come so naturally to her. But what did she mean when she equated her beautiful babies with revenge?

As a young girl, she and her family had hidden from the Nazis in a small town in Romania. Unlike most other Eastern European Jews, her family was still alive and well in 1943, four years into the war. One August day, in the early hours of the morning, they were awakened by loud, harsh banging on the door of their modest farmhouse. Had someone betrayed them to the Nazis? They did not know. They soon found themselves in a packed cattle car without food or water for three blistering hot days. After what seemed like an eternity, they arrived at Auschwitz and were lined up for the infamous "selection" process that would determine who would be sent to the gas chambers immediately and who would become slave laborers until their strength ran out.

When her father was sent in one direction and her mother and younger siblings in the other, she and her older sister did not know what to do. In a split-second decision, they decided to join their mother. As they struggled to catch up with their mother and siblings in the confusion that was an integral part of the "selection," a Jewish "capo" grabbed them and screamed at them in a language that they did not understand. Finally, he screamed in Yiddish, "You have time to die!" and he dragged them screaming and kicking to the other line where their father had previously disappeared in the confusion.

She and her sister were the only members of their family to survive to the end of the war. After a year and one-half of living hell, the American Army liberated them in April 1945. The two of them combined weighed less than 145 pounds, but somehow they regained their strength and made their way to Israel where they joined a kibbutz, married, raised families, and lived in side-by-side cottages for the past 60-plus years. Nothing had separated them in the war. Nothing has separated them since. Death may separate them soon, but only temporarily.

How much psychological angst did she experience as she worked hard to recreate a normal life after the war? More than I can imagine. Did she think about revenge for the unspeakable horrors that she and her family had experienced? No doubt. As the years passed, she gained the wisdom that some are privileged to acquire with age. She realized that inflicting pain on others, even others who may be very deserving of that treatment, could not undo the horrors of the past. If there is revenge, it is only in enjoying life, and what greater life enjoyment can there be than watching one's grandchildren grow and develop as good human beings.