Aside from the saying "All marketers are liars", I am happy with my current position. More than happy actually, but the circumstances are rare (we are not just upgrading, we are completely creating anew). If I could just shake the "liar" moniker.
As part of our work, we are in the process of generating our new marketing scheme, our new branding identity, and the like. During a recent meeting between our marketing leadership team and our CEO, she (our CEO) mentioned the book Good to Great. Normally, I shun these books, thinking I won't get much, but as I have become a family man, (and found the career that I truly love) I have started taking my career a bit more seriously and decided it could be good for me.
Being one who can tear a book apart in an afternoon (I read J.R.R. Tolkien's Return of the King in a day...the last Harry Potter book took me about 5 hours, non-stop), I dove into it last night. Granted, I only made it through the intro, and this mornings coffee only got me past the chapter on level 5 leaders, it did bring to mind the whole concept of leadership and succession.
For lack of a better understanding (or enough coffee...he had me up at 6AM this morning...and 5AM...and 4AM...and...), when we create a family, we are setting up a succession. Perhaps we have a family business that he can run someday, perhaps not. Regardless, we are setting up a structure, a family structure that we will build upon the foundations and teachings of our families past and pass on to him to continue.
Now that I write this, while thinking in terms of business, it seems extremely elementary. Duh, of course you are building on what your parents taught you. My mother, the caring and loving one, my father the focused and driven one (not that each are not more than these two descriptors, but you get the idea). Therefore, I should be caring but driven, loving but focused. Balancing the greatness of my parents, I can help Mason to become even better than me. And with Audrey's help, better than the greatest of our two parts.
We aren't building a business (that I know of), but we are building a legacy, and although we don't look at that legacy as to how it will portray us in the future, we are building a legacy none the less. We are building it through teaching him what we feel is right and true. We are building it through taking everything we have ever learned, taking the best of the best teachings, and instilling in him the understanding of all the possibilities.
Now if only he understood what we were saying...
