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Last week I wrote about Geronimo and the Apache's unwritten rule that forbad anyone from inheriting the property of a deceased relative. It elicited quite a lot of responses including this one from Harlan Helgeson, Manager of Manufacturing with Northrop Grumman. I thought the lessons in it were so rich I wanted to share it with you in its entirety. Note especially how the tendency to coddle our children can lead to a destructive nepotism in business. It's a little rough as he just reeled this off to me, but it's poignant nonetheless:
Doug,
Once again a mind stimulating article.
It brings me to the place of my last employment before I came back to Northrop Grumman in 1987 (25 years).
The family owned corporation, I worked for, was very successful in the propane business. All of their propane dispensing stations (plants as we called them) throughout western North Dakota were flourishing. Competitive prices and above average service with guaranteed satisfaction.
The patriarch of the family made a statement to my co-worker several years before I started work there. He said: "Each year I'm alive is one year longer my business will last." When he was asked why he felt that way, his reply was: "I failed my sons when they were just getting started in the business. I put them in charge of a propane plant to manage, without teaching them about the business end of doing business."
He said when they would "cry" that they were losing money, he would bail them out. They never learned how to make a business work because they did not have a vested interest (money invested from their own pocket) in the business.
So we see the ramifications of today's spoiled ones: Kennedy's; Rockefeller's; Vanderbilt's; and etc... The Hollywood dream of big money, fast cars, fast women and booze and drugs is, yet, another example of such waste of human off-spring.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of people don't fit in these examples, they are just the most visible. When we think of greed and want, we do not think of it on the home front, but yet we have politicians that go to Washington (or even the local governments) and power seems to overwhelm and overtake them and, if they have not received an upbringing that would keep them down to earth, they succumb to it.
I have asked friends of mine that like to run their grown children's lives, what would your kids do if you passed on today. Some have said they would not know what to do. My response was and is (if ever asked the question), "is it not our jobs as parents, to train our children to survive without us? We cannot let them be dependent upon us until we die, or they will die (not physically-um, maybe) too."
That is the worst kind of teaching that us as parents can give to our children. What we can do is guide them in the direction to succeed in life then turn them loose, let them fall, pick themselves up and that is how they learn. Just like riding a bike (scraped elbows, knees and face--my experiences).
The key is to forever watch but not to interfere, then pray on your knees (notice how the knees are sometimes the learning aids we need) that you made the right choices in your life to be an example for your children. In my opinion, that is what Geronimo was teaching.
Thanks again.
Harlan
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