Motivational Minute #2: Are You Thinking Big Enough?

Thoughts precede actions. Big thoughts lead to big actions. How big are your thoughts? In this article "big" and "great" will be used interchangeably.

Here's the answer: your thoughts could be bigger. You could achieve greater success.

One example is Nido Qubein, CSP, CPAE. He came to this country unable to speak English and made one of his early fortunes as a professional speaker. He leveraged that success into the presidency of some major companies, board member of even larger companies and a recipient of the Horatio Alger, Ellis Island and other awards. He leveraged that experience into becoming, simultaneous with the above, President of High Point University. All along the way he taught us that to be a great man you must walk with great men.

No secret there, right?

It comes down to an understanding or a definition of "great". Nido is great because he hangs out with greater men. They are greater because they run with even greater men - big dogs, as we say in the South.

On it goes. Who are the great ones who are your role models? And how do you define great? Should you raise your sights?

Here are some examples of even larger thinkers who, after failure, achieved some great successes.

Imagine this. At one point in our history every home had a fireplace for heating, a wood stove for cooking and kerosene lamps for lighting. Someone came up with the idea to replace all of them with clean natural gas. All they needed to do was to lay a pipe along every road in the country, convince every homeowner to invest in the new technology, appliances and installation charges and to pay a monthly bill. At the time, it sounded absurd; maybe even impossible.

Mr. George Westinghouse was a major league thinker, a man with great thoughts. Not only would he build the pipelines, he would also build and sell appliances in an early example of "vertical integration". His critics said that there would be gas explosions and people would be afraid of the new technology. They were right.

What the critics had not counted on was Westinghouse personally show up at the accident sites, holding town meetings and reassuring people of the safety and benefits of using natural gas.

Then he came up with another big idea. Electricity promised to be an even more versatile energy source. Devices could be made using electrical power that were impractical to run with gas. In fact, the electric light would produce more light at a lower cost than the gas lights. Westinghouse was willing to cannibalize his own business because he knew a better solution when he saw one. Rather than trying to defend his turf, he moved ahead in embracing the superior technology. He would set poles and string wire along every road in the country. That's thinking big. It is also an early example of the value of utilizing multiple energy sources to solve a problem - something that is popular right now.

The most famous pioneer in electrical technology has to be Thomas Alva Edison. You already know the story of how he built some huge number (some people say 1,000; others say 10,000 - who really knows?) of light bulbs before he found one that would work. He would stand to make a fortune selling light bulbs.

So it may surprise you to learn that Westinghouse's number one adversary in his plan to wire America was none other than Thomas Edison. Edison's position was that people would electrocute themselves and, to dramatize the fact, built the first electric chair for executing criminals.

Why would Edison do such a thing? He was heavily invested in DC current technology and Westinghouse was pushing AC current. Both had advantages and disadvantages - ask any electrical engineer. AC won out, obviously, and Edison went on make great fortune in light bulbs by embracing the superior technology and building AC bulbs.

Westinghouse had big thoughts: a gas pipe network all over the country, an AC power network. But his ideas weren't really original; people had already laid water pipe all over their communities so everyone would have access to clean water and Westinghouse simply built on their idea. Later, Alexander Graham Bell would use the same concept - and the same poles! - to build a telecom network. That would be followed by the cable industry, and on it goes.

So the real geniuses were the water people, right? Maybe. They were Romans and called their pipes aqueducts.

Fast forward to September, 2008. Now there are some really big thinkers who think really small. In a feat that could only be achieved through the best in international cooperation, the particle accelerator has become a reality. We are learning more about atoms now than has ever been possible before.