40 Years Ago Only the Destination Mattered... I Was Wrong.
“It is all about the destination and not the journey.”
This is how I ended my kickoff company speech in January 1985.
In this speech, I recounted all we achieved. I told stories of the hardships and the challenges. I thanked the people who hit their goals and contributed to our grand achievement. We hit our numbers. Numbers that seemed so big, so out of reach, that there was only a remote chance we would get there.
But, as a team, we got there. We worked hard every day. Our eyes never left the goal. We never questioned it. We believed that if we worked together, we would hit it. The market was working in our favor when we started. Then, with four months left in the year, it became far less welcoming. But we never gave up. We knew someone would succeed in our market; why not us? We had to change plans. We needed to innovate quickly. We needed to change our day-to-day execution. What we didn’t change was our commitment to making the number. And we made it.
I then switched gears to what now lies ahead for each of our companies and us. I summarized it with the quote at the beginning of this article. Here’s where it came from.
I asked my boss at the time, Jim Porter, for help on my kickoff speech after such a great year. He gave me this thought to share with the company. “It is all about the journey and not the destination.”
When I heard it, I thought it was inspiring. I was thirty-one years old at the time. I was the General Manager of our great business. This quote was definitely the way to end my kickoff speech.
And then I screwed up the quote. I ended the speech, after recounting the richness of the journey, by saying what really mattered was the destination, hitting the goal.
I would call this a “Freudian slip.”
For me, at that time in my life, it was all about hitting the goal. I was so focused on leading our management team to achieve this goal that I walked right past the experiences we had together in getting there. I was young, hungry, and relentless. What mattered was hitting the numbers to achieve the earnout. Yes, the earnout. I had one chance at getting it. It was too much money for Richard and me, the former owners, to leave behind.
By screwing up the quote to end this kickoff speech, it was clear to me then, and crystal clear to me now, that the destination and not so much the journey was still important to me.
Today, forty years later, that is not the case. The memories from the team experiences of building companies throughout my career hold a richness of life. Yes. It is incredibly important to hit the goals, to arrive together at the destination. But whether we did or didn’t, the day-to-day experiences were still enjoyable because of the great people I worked with. We learned and lived life together.
I didn’t win in everything I did, with every team I worked with, or in every investment. But my stories are all based on the journey, not the celebration dinner. In fact, the celebration dinners were anticlimactic, fleeting.
I remember thanking my VP of sales as he was leaving the office on December 31, 1984.
I said, “You did it. Congratulations! Thank you.”
He answered, “When I come in on Monday, I’ll be behind quota.”
He’s right. But Monday marks the start of a new journey to a new destination.
What I learned is this: Keep setting destinations, but be sure to enjoy the journey. The destinations will be realized.
Keep going!
My dear reader. Here is a little background on this topic.
In 2002, I was on an Alaskan Cruise. We visited museums that described the Alaskan Gold Rush. One of the museums featured this poem by a former gold miner. He got me thinking about the importance of the journey in reaching the destination, whether it’s gold or startups.
The Spell of the Yukon
By Robert W. Service
I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it—
Came out with a fortune last fall,—
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn’t all.
No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it.
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe, but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth—and I’m one.
You come to get rich (damned good reason);
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kind of sinning;
It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it’s been since the beginning.
It seems it will be to the end.
I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow.
That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow
In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,
With the peace o’ the world piled on top.
The summer—no sweeter was ever;
The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness—
O God! how I’m stuck on it all.
The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
I’ve bade ’em good-by—but I can’t.
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back—and I will.
They’re making my money diminish;
I’m sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish
I’ll pike to the Yukon again.
I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight;
It’s hell!—but I’ve been there before;
And it’s better than this by a damsite—
So me for the Yukon once more.
There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.