So I told myself to let go of Tracker, since it’d be tremendously difficult to get him out of the Bay on a ladder, and I resigned myself to having a swim, just like in a pool.  Indeed, the tide was in and the water was deep, so it really was like falling into a swimming pool.  When I came up, a gentleman who was standing on the sea wall looking down at me yelled, “Virginia, I’m a friend of your husband’s.  How can I help?”  By the way, I was a little embarrassed since I was sure he’d heard the expletive that popped out of my mouth when I got my breath – understandable, but not my normal style.  Bobbing in the water, I looked up and said calmly, “Oh, why don’t we get a ladder so I can climb back up.”  That’s what he did, and I climbed back up to the sea wall, to the applause of a crowd of onlookers that’d gathered for the unplanned entertainment.  What a sight I must have been!  Someone was nice enough to walk with me and Tracker back to my apartment. Tracker had just stayed on the edge watching the show, by the way.  I thought to myself, “Virginia you’ve got to change your clothes pronto and get back out there and walk around.”  And that’s exactly what I did.  You see, Doug, for one thing I didn’t want to get scared and lose my confidence.  And I wanted people to see I was alright and not to worry. 

Virginia Jacko and I first met face-to-face on September 14, 2006, although we had talked several times by phone over the prior month.  When my taxi from the airport arrived at the Miami Lighthouse For the Blind and Visually Impaired at 8 a.m. that day, I was feeling uncharacteristically apprehensive.  The purpose of my first visit to the Miami Lighthouse was to officially kick off a major project – we called it the “High-Impact Governing Initiative” – aimed at strengthening the governing role, functions, and structure of the Lighthouse Board of Directors.  In a few minutes I would be meeting Virginia, who had been the Miami Lighthouse’s first blind president & CEO since June 2005, after serving in an interim, pro bono capacity for the prior four months.  Most consultants probably feel a slight tingle of danger at the prospect of working with a whole new cast of characters when beginning a new engagement, but I had an unaccustomed case of nerves when I got out of the cab that morning. 

In retrospect, I realize my trepidation had to do with Virginia’s being blind.  Although I had briefly interacted with a handful of blind people in various consulting engagements over the years, I had never worked closely with a blind chief executive in my twenty-five years of nonprofit consulting. So on the taxi ride from the Miami Airport, I found myself worrying about small things that seem a bit silly in retrospect.  Was the subject of her blindness off-limits, or would it be appropriate to ask her about the history of her losing her sight?  If we walked down the corridor together during my visit, should I take her arm?  During the buffet lunch that was being served in the conference room during my meeting with Virginia and her top executives, should I offer to fill Virginia’s plate?  Not knowing the rules of etiquette really bothered me, since unwittingly committing a faux pas is not my custom, and the last thing I wanted to do was offend my new CEO client.

This account of my meeting Virginia Jacko comes from my newest book, The Blind Visionary, which Virginia and I co-authored.  Due out in January 2010 from Governance Edge, The Blind Visionary tells the extraordinary story of Virginia’s gradually losing her eyesight while serving as a senior financial executive at Purdue University, starting over as a vocational rehabilitation student at the Miami Lighthouse in 2001, and becoming the Lighthouse President & CEO only four years later.  In addition to telling Virginia’s fascinating story, The Blind Visionary provides readers with practical guidance in overcoming whatever obstacles they face on the way to fuller, more satisfying lives and careers.

Be on the lookout for other excerpts from The Blind Visionary in future blogs. 

In my last blog, I talked about my son William’s momentous ’09 summer, which saw him receiving his MBA and law degrees from Case Western Reserve University and marrying his sweetheart Christine.  I also briefly mentioned William’s becoming my business partner in an exciting new venture, Governance Edge.  As president, William is in charge of day-to-day operation of Governance Edge’s publishing and web-based learning programs.  We’ve already brought out two briskly selling books, and we have a new one on the way that tells the fascinating and exciting story of a blind CEO, Virginia Jacko, who is my co-author.  I’ll be describing this new book, which we’re tentatively calling “The Blind Visionary,” in a future blog.

What an experience it’s been thus far working with son and colleague William – always educational, rewarding, and energizing and occasionally a bit stressful.  Governance Edge is without question benefiting from William’s entrepreneurial and technological savvy (Case’s Weatherhead School of Management is a major center for entrepreneurial research and education), as well as his energy and enthusiasm.  With his help, I’m becoming ever more comfortable with the today’s world of hyper-connectivity, with the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.   I may not be tweeting much yet, but I’m certainly on the verge, thanks to Will’s guidance and pressure.  I certainly clearly see the potential of social networking, especially for widely and relatively inexpensively getting out the word on exciting new products  like “The Blind Visionary.” 

Now, the fact that I’ve been the sole boss who’s used to getting his own way for 20 years has made the transition to a partnership rocky at times, but we’re working out the kinks.  Looking back over the years, I can see a number of decisions that would have benefited from William’s insightful counsel, so I’m sold on the idea of collaboration as we move forward.  Well, theoretically anyway.  The emotional thing does every so often get in the way.  William, who graduated in the top 10 percent of his law school class at Case Western, can hold his own in debate, and he’s not about to back down when he believes his position is sound.  That’s what I need, no question, but now and then his being so challenging throws me on the defensive.  But that’s normal, I assume, and we’re working through the issues.

We did have a funny run-in his first week on the job at Governance Edge.  William and I had agreed on Monday that he needed time to settle in and find his sea legs, without pressure, and that I should step back and give him space, resisting the temptation to hurl “suggestions” his way.  I was sincere, I really was, but I couldn’t resist peppering him with 10 or 11 emails over the next couple of days, sharing my thinking on this and that issue.  Mea culpa!  Will’s response to this unsolicited advice was succinct and a trifle brutal, involving his deft use of the delete key.  I was appropriately chastened, if not completely cured, but I’m getting there, day by day.

I welcome hearing about similar experiences – father-son, mother-daughter, father-daughter……..Oh, and I’d like to know if anyone out there is aware of a 12-step program for recovering bosses!

Like many Americans whose parents lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s, I’ve been thinking lately about that economic and social catastrophe.  It was never going to happen again, we were told, and certainly believed, but…….Anyway, this morning, the ninth day of the new year, I arrived at my desk feeling somewhat tired – which has been the case now and then over the past few months, as our once-booming economy has pursued its alarming downward course.  I’m not a pessimist by nature, and I try to keep things in perspective.  I’m keenly aware that these aren’t by any measure the worst of times, not when you think about 1860, 1930, WW II, and I’m really optimistic that the new Administration in Washington will provide the leadership we need to dig ourselves out of the economic hole we’re in.  But that doesn’t mean I’ve been whistling a happy tune on my way up the stairs to my study in the morning lately, especially after my customary hour with the New York Times and its steady stream of dismal economic tidings. (a typical article head in today’s business section, “For Stores, a Lump of Coal”).  My wife Barbara refuses to read the morning paper at breakfast these days, instead re-reading passages from Wayne Dyer’s The Power of Intention and thumbing through the various interior design publications she takes.  But I’m addicted to news, no matter how negative, and ignoring the morning paper is one trick this old dog isn’t capable of learning.

So there I was this morning – seated at my desk, mustering up the energy to fuel my day of mapping out business strategy, writing client reports and answering emails – the usual drill – and my eyes began wandering over the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that cover one wall of my study.  I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just browsing while waiting for the adrenalin to kick in, when I lighted on a book my parents had given me for Christmas some 40 years ago:  the first volume of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr’s trilogy, the Age of Roosevelt:  The Crisis of the Old Order.  I turned to chapter 1, “Prologue:  1933.”  Schlesinger sets the stage:          

The White House, midnight, Friday, March 3, 1933.  Across the country the banks of the nation had gradually shuttered their windows and locked their doors.  The very machinery of the American economy seemed to be coming to a stop.  The rich and fertile nation, overflowing with natural wealth in its fields and forest and mines, equipped with unsurpassed technology, endowed with boundless resources in its men and women, lay stricken. . . .Saturday, March 4, dawned gray and bleak.  Heavy winter clouds hung over the city.  A chill northwest wind brought brief gusts of rain.  The darkness of the day intensified the mood of helplessness.  “A sense of depression had settled over the capital,” reported the New York Times, “so that it could be felt.”

“Well, things may not be that bad now,” I thought to myself, “but we really are in a mess, and I can pretty easily relate to that ‘sense of depression.’ ”  Then my thoughts turned to my parents’ all-time hero, FDR, and how, as Mom and Dad told me countless times, when they heard his words on the radio on March 4, 1933, their hearts were filled with hope for the future.  “We just knew,” Dad once said, “that things would be OK, no matter how terrible they were.”  So, I Googled “FDR inaugural 1933,” and – what a world we live in! – up came a link to that wonderful speech.  I actually felt a surge of positive energy just re-reading it.  Here are a couple of excerpts that I think will resonate with you as they do with me:

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.  Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.  This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.  So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. . . .

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance.  We are stricken by no plague of locusts.  Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we still have much to be thankful for. . . .

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well . . .

Re-reading these wonderful words, feeling the strong emotion they kindle in my own heart at a remove of 75 years, I am reminded of the tremendous importance of words – not as a substitute for resolute action, to be sure, but an essential prelude to action, supplying the inspiration and the energy that pave the way to action.  I’m looking for that inspiration on January 20, 2009; I’m sure you are, too.  Meanwhile, if you’re feeling down, you might want to Google “FDR inaugural 1933.”