Leadership Lessons Learned

On bluebird days we all can bask in it with cozy feelings on the chair and comfortable carvings on the slopes.  However, even on the ice coated coat days with glazed over goggles, we can still seize the day.

I’ve had the great pleasure and learning experience the last four months or so of volunteering alongside or perhaps better stated as behind a couple of really intelligent people to try and make a different on what would probably be described as an icy landscape.  We’re working on focusing on the social good, but doing so with the realization that we emanate from capitalist backgrounds, and not shying away from using those backgrounds as drivers.  While believing in the free market system despite many of its ills, I still to this day bristle slightly at the label of capitalist.  In trying to define my motivations or my memories of them (despite realizing it might be ego stuffed to do so and/or my memories may well differ from others in retrospect of them), I developed another label for what I believe others I was blessed to work alongside or behind drove me to be.  So how about scrapitalist?

In my hopes of days past and days to come, a scrapitalist is first and foremost scrappy.  Willing to scrap and scrape to make due, to support and assist others, and never be ruled by fear.  A scrapitalist would certainly not back down from bullies, but would also not boast, brag, or berate others, especially those of lesser means, talents, or strengths.  A scrapitalist fights to survive, and even to thrive, but takes the foot off the gas pedal with humility and never with intention of obliterating an opponent.  You play hard, you play to win, but you help others up when knocked down and you not only bring others along as part of the process and the victory itself, but you demonstrate how to win gracefully, how to win fairly, and how competing or fighting like a dog matters, but how you win and how you represent it matters perhaps even more.

Returning to the slopes, we’ve recently witnessed the incomparable Mikaela Shiffrin win an unfathomable 100^th World Cup ski race, a record that might well stand as long as Wilt’s 100-point game has for those of you who might not realize the significance.  Even more important however is that she did this after suffering an incredible injury that left her almost unable to walk at the beginning of the season.  The determination, grit, fortitude and strength to get back to even racing at all is amazing, and yet she took it even further by topping the podium once again.  On the way back to this however, she routinely has thanked everyone who assisted, and paired with a teammate to win a combined event that she said was the greatest victory of her career, because she did it with a teammate.  While recovering and scrapping through excruciating pain, she supported her teammates from afar and always was positive about all competitors.   When she won #100, the celebration of the milestone by teammates and competitors was not only obvious, it was robust.  They appreciated her scrappiness, her talent, and her helping bring focus to the sport, to the community and through using the milestone to help fund less fortunate individuals to partake in our great outdoors.

I appreciate all of you who scrap.  Some hills are harder to climb than others, just like some are harder to ski down than others.  Sometimes you are graced with bluebird days in business and in life, and sometimes we’re faced with cold ice, blurred vision, and even dicey or dire circumstances.  Scrap through them, honor your teammates, honor your competitors and even your enemies, and let’s all scrap together for a better tomorrow.  We not only can use it, we need it.  Thanks to those of you who choose to join me as being a Scrapitalist. I know it is in you.