"Just one thing..."

Raise your hand if you are old enough to remember the movie, City Slickers.  The movie came out in 1991 and starred Billy Crystal as a 39 year-old having a sort of mid-life crisis.  His two best friends take him on a two-week cattle drive that starts at a small ranch in New Mexico, where they are taught how to rope and round up steer as well as all the other things an amateur cowboy needs to know.  Crystal's character meets a wise-old cowboy, Curly, played by the actor Jack Palance (Palance won the Best Supporting Actor award at the 1992 Academy Awards for the role - he famously performed one-arm push-ups during his acceptance speech, which is what he apparently had to do in order to convince the movie's producers that he was healthy enough to play the role!).  There is a scene in the movie where Crystal and Palance are riding together to round up some lost cows.  Palance's character (Curly) tells Crystal's character (Mitch) the secret meaning of life:


Curly: You know what the secret of life is?

Mitch: No, what?

Curly: (holds up his leather gloved hand and points his index finger into the air) This.

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing, just one thing.  You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit.

Mitch: That's great, but what's the one thing?

Curly: That's what you've got to figure out.


The scene is powerfully performed by both actors and probably had a significant impact on Palance winning the Academy Award!  However, I am struck more by the significance of the message itself.  Especially as many of us (maybe all of us) at one time or another in our lives struggle with the questions "Why am I here?" and "What is my purpose?"  In the movie, Crystal's character, Mitch, figures out (with the help of a calf named Norman that he helps to deliver) that his purpose in life, the "one thing" that gives his life meaning, is his family (in this case, his wife and two children).  I do think that we struggle to find our passion, our "True North", our one guiding principle in life, both in our personal and professional lives.  And that is why I think it is important to develop (and even explicitly state) our personal mission, vision, and values.  A personal mission statement helps us find that "one thing" that matters to us most in our lives. 


The philosopher,  Viktor Frankl developed an entire philosophy and form of psychotherapy ("Logotherapy") in his book, "Man's Search for Meaning".  In this book about his Holocaust concentration camp experience, first at Auschwitz and later at Bergen-Belsen, Frankl elucidates three fundamental tenets of "logotherapy" - first, Life has meaning, even under the most miserable of circumstances; second, our main motivation in Life is to find meaning in life itself; and third, we are free to find meaning in who we are, what we do, and what experience.  If you are searching for that elusive "one thing", these questions are a great place to start.


There is a Proverb from the Old Testament (Proverbs 29:18) that states simply, Where there is no vision, the people perish.  I believe that is true for individuals, just as it is true for organizations.  The leadership expert, Jim Collins (of ""Good to Great"" fame) calls this organizational "True North" his "Hedgehog Concept".  The concept comes from a famous essay by the philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, entitled "The Hedgehog and the Fox", which in turn comes from a line in a poem by the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: "A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one important thing."  Basically, the explanation of this statement is as follows.  The fox is sly and cunning, using any one of a number of clever strategies to try to attack the hedgehog.  The hedgehog's strategy is far simpler - he rolls up into a tight ball so that the "spikes" on his back jut out and protect him from the fox.  The hedgehog always wins.  Similarly, Collins states that the most successful companies focus on their "Hedgehog Concept" - answering three simple questions in the process: (1) What can you be the best in the world at? (2) What are you passionate about? and (3) What drives your economic engine?  In other words, organizations, just like individuals, need to find that "one thing" that they are passionate about and that they can be the best at (and it always helps, especially if they are an organization that is trying to generate a profit, if they can make money doing so).


Today, I see organizations (and individuals) trying to be the absolute "best in the world" at everything.  As a result, they lose focus and end up being "best in the world" at nothing.  Organizations (and individuals) need to find their "True North", their "Hedgehog Concept", or that "Just one thing" that they can be the "best in the world" at and that they are truly passionate about - then, and only then, will they truly be the best that they can be at that "one thing."  Then, an only then, will they go from "good to great!"