In a previous post I talked about how you can’t drive forward by always looking into the rear view mirror. However, I also want to stress that there are times that you need to look back and celebrate how far you’ve come, or question what is not working.
In this Forbes post, Steve Denning reminds us why it is so essential to look back and count your sunny days.
His post was a call to action to managers and leaders to pause and take pride in the great work of the late, great Peter Drucker and to pay special pay special tribute to Doris Drucker, Peter Drucker’s wife, who passed away on October 1 at the age pf 103.
Doris Drucker—an entrepreneur, author, avid sportswoman and a mountain climber—set out to not only honor Peter Drucker’s legacy, but to build on it. At the age of 97, Doris was a visionary behind the evolution of what became the annual Global Peter Drucker Forum in 2009. Doris Drucker kicked off the opening of the forum with 330 participants in the opening session.
In 2005, at the age of 93, Doris Drucker was asked by the Fairleigh Dickinson University magazine for her secret on how to age well. She replied: “Stay as active as you can and keep learning. Find something that engages you, and avoid sinking into the daily routine! There’s an old German saying I like very much. No matter what difficulties may arise, ‘Count only the sunny days!’”
That quote prompted me to pause and think about all of the fabulous sunny days for Vested—both behind us and ahead. We set out to create a movement based on the simple idea of changing companies’ mindsets about how they work with business partners.
Today we have a robust methodology and business model that works where anyone, anywhere in the world, anytime of the day can learn about and begin to apply Vested in their own organization! We have more than 150 companies and 400 people who are actively exploring Vested at some level for their organization. People can learn from amazing case studies, we also have and a wonderful open source library for individuals to expand their minds as they seek to apply higher degrees of collaboration with their business partners.
As I count the sunny days, I want to step back and thank all of the wonderful people in our Vested ecosystem who are helping bring Vested to organizations around the world. This includes the co-authors of each of our five books and our six Vested Centers of Excellence around the world and the wonderful Certified Deal Architects that are in the trenches changing the hearts and minds and contracts one deal, one relationship at a time!
Image: Sunny Days by Lion Towers via Flickr CC