Celebrating small

“Adventure is not always being in control” Paul Johnson

My old friend Paul Johnson arguably works harder in retirement than he did at Duquesne Systems/Legent Corporation. And he worked hard there, believe me. One of his latest missions is to sail all of the Great Lakes. He’s completed Erie, Ontario and Michigan in past years and just now has finished off Huron. Except this year he kept a journal and created a blog www.travelwithalbion.blogspot.com. Having spent a week with Paul canoeing in the wilderness of Canada I have wistfully lived this summer vicariously through his journal.

One of his later entries caught my attention with this thought: “There is a beautiful simplicity to a small sailboat. Big boats, lots of stuff, lots of problems, lots of things to fix and maintain. Big boaters are continually fixing and maintaining their stuff. They look on at Albions simplicity with envy. Frequently they will come up and tell me not about their big boat, but about that little boat they used to have.”

Companies have been compared to boats for a long time and here’s another great analogy. Big companies are like big boats, lots of stuff, lots of problems, lots of things to fix and maintain”. Also, I seldom meet a person who has successfully grown their company from small to big who don’t lament the early days.

So, if you’re one of the many who are beating your brains out trying to build your small “boat” don’t forget to enjoy the journey knowing that somewhere there is a big company CEO pining away for the days when life was smaller.