I’ve previously pointed out that in Scouting, as in life, things don’t always go the way you expect them to – and that, in fact, Scouting is designed to be a safe place to fail. Plus, Scouting is best done outdoors, where the vagaries of the weather also come into play. As a result, Scouts can either learn to adjust to reality and still keep their spirits up, or else get used to being miserable.

There was the May campout a few years ago where it fell to freezing, the wind was ferocious, and we got snow. Now, being in Michigan, we pretty much all came prepared for it to be cold even though it was supposed to be spring. Still, I really thought we’d have a lot of Scouts retreating to their tents and hunkering down.

But this particular outing happened to be one of our favorite annual trips, to the dunes along the Lake Michigan shore. So the Scouts were having none of that. Despite the cold, wind, and snow, they spent most of their time up on the dunes, having a ball. They build enormous campfires at our campsite and when they got too cold, they gathered around them until they thawed, then went back out to do it all again. It was marvelous.

On another outing not too long ago, we were “camping” aboard a WWII ship called an LST (“Landing Ship, Tank”) – a D-Day veteran vessel used to transport vehicles and troops to the landing beaches. It’s now a floating military museum. Part of our package was supposed to be a full day at a nearby adventure park. Unfortunately, there was a scheduling glitch and that part fell through. We decided instead to spend the day at our area’s BSA camp a short drive away, doing a bit of hiking but also performing some service work to help clear trees that had been downed in the campsites by a recent storm. The Scouts worked their tails off, but we still got back to the ship far earlier than we’d originally planned. Again, I feared some discontent over the whole situation. Instead, the Scouts shook off their fatigue, and with a mix of perusing the museum displays and exploring every square inch of the ship, they enjoyed themselves immensely. Some said it was their favorite campout ever.

With all the learning from Scouts adapting to setbacks and still having fun, I’ve worked to make my business world the same way. Too often I’ve seen leaders get upset and angry when things don’t go according to plan. In doing so they make their own lives, and the lives of everyone around them, miserable. Why? Our world is never going to be perfect. We may not make as many mistakes as young Scouts, but we’ll make them. When things go wrong, isn’t it better to do as the Scouts do – take a step back, make new plans, adapt to the situation and still have fun?

This pandemic is the perfect time to try. Even the Scouts are having to adapt in whole new ways – virtual Patrol meetings, home merit badge sessions, and distance advancement work, for example. And they still seem to make it all fun. Let’s do the same in our business lives.

The last decade or so has seen an accelerating decay in the popular notion of our national media as principled and dispassionate reporters of fact. That hasn’t happened because of any significant change within the news outlets themselves. Rather, it’s been the result of the Internet-fueled rise of media watchdogs and alternative news sources, which have laid bare the astounding but brazen partisanship and corruption of the national news networks and press companies.

John O’Connor’s book Postgate helps show how that recently-revealed corruption is nothing new. His story harkens all the way back to the Watergate scandal that began in 1972, nearly a half-century ago. It revolves around events and discoveries that arose from his becoming the late-in-life legal representative for former FBI agent Mark Felt, who was revealed as Deep Throat, the shadowy confidential source for much of the explosive reporting on Watergate during the scandal. He doesn’t challenge the popular story of conspiracy and criminality in the Nixon administration that led to the President’s resignation. But he adds a whole new layer of facts showing that we’ve only known part of the total story of corruption from those days. And one of his chief revelations is that a major US newspaper, and their star reporters who were central to the drama, played an active role in the wrongdoing in that scandal (along with other parts of the US government). Further, he shows that that media team’s same self-serving corruption continues right to the present day.

This book is critical for setting the complete record of Watergate straight, particularly as it reveals criminal wrongdoing that – previously unrevealed and unaddressed – arguably led to the treason we’ve seen just these past few years from the CIA, FBI, and DOJ. It should also serve to finally put a stake in the heart of any belief that our mainstream political reporters and their employers are to be trusted in any way.

I thank John O’Connor for two personal benefits from reading his book. First, I’ve long held myself as something of a rube, one who is far too trusting and naïve. It’s something I’ve always felt stemmed from my small-town upbringing far from the backstabbing world of our cities. It surely had to pain O’Connor to no end to reveal how completely he was scammed and swindled by the media outlets he dealt with. But it was somewhat heartening to me to see that a savvy lawyer well-acquainted with Washington, DC, could be taken in too. Maybe I’m not such a rube after all. Maybe we normal folks just can’t entirely insulate ourselves from evil people.

Second, for the longest time, I believed a conspiracy could succeed only if very few people were involved; otherwise its secrecy would be blown, it would fail, and those involved would pay the price for their wrongdoing. But the extent of the conspiracies revealed in this book, combined with the recent revelations of the scale of the “collusion” scandal, have proven to me just how wrong my notions about conspiracies have been.

Do read this book.

According to Jim Craig, goalie for the 1980 US Olympic hockey team, he and his teammates had no doubt they would win the gold medal. They did, of course, almost exactly 40 years ago, in a story that has now become legend. February’s milestone anniversary prompted Craig to write his new book, We Win! Lessons on Life, Business & Building Your Own Miracle Team. In his preface, he had this to say: “[Coach] Herb Brooks had begun planning this victory when he was cut from the 1960 Olympic team. He turned my teammates and me into a relentless, poised, red-white-and-blue-collar machine that earned a victory. The planets aligned and, with Herb as our North Star, we shocked the world. But we didn’t shock ourselves.”

Just why that was the case is the subject of Craig’s book, and along the way he tells us what we ordinary mortals can learn from what the Miracle Team accomplished. Craig’s decades of subsequent experience in the business world make it all tie together very well.

For the anniversary in February of the win over the Soviets and the subsequent gold-medal-clinching victory over Finland, I watched both full games on YouTube. Between the commentary and street interviews and side stories, it became very clear to me that a good many of the team members came from almost nothing money-wise. It was a rough economic time. All that comes through loud and clear in the book from Craig himself, as he tells his story of growing up as one of eight kids in his family on the edge of Boston. (When he “went away” to college at Boston University, it was the first time he’d ever been downtown, despite growing up just 29 miles south in North Easton.) His dad tended bar at night to earn extra money (and as I learned in one of those aforementioned Olympics coverage street interviews, so did the father of team captain Mike Eruzione). Those humble origins were a crucible that forged a unique hunger for sports success in Craig and the other boys like him. I certainly didn’t grow up rich, but for me the contrast between their circumstances and mine certainly helped with my gratitude.

So did the story about Craig’s mom (I was blessed to have my own mother with me until just a few years ago). It became one of the popular TV backdrop stories back in ’80 about how he’d lost her to cancer before the Games. We learn from him here that she became ill right as he was headed off to college; in fact, one benefit of his going to school downtown was being able to visit her in the hospital there. (If you can get through his story of how she saved her hospital meals for him without tears, you’re a hell of a lot flintier than I – and I feel sorry for you.) She became a key motivation for him, though also a potential stumbling block, as we soon learn.

Craig tells how his coach Herb Brooks grew up too. His recounting of the story of Brooks’s mentoring a young cousin early in life teaches us just what kind of man he was, and sets the stage for what’s to come. Of course, another thread of the coverage in 1980 was how Brooks was the last man cut from the 1960 Olympic hockey team, which went on to win its own gold medals. Craig tells us everything in between – how Brooks committed himself to another shot at the gold that he’d missed, and how he made it happen.

A lot of what he shares when he gets to telling about the other characters involved, and their preparation for the Games, many of us learned about in the marvelous movie Miracle. (But one salutary lesson from Craig’s book is just how faithful that movie was to the true story. It’s remarkable.) We see in the movie that Brooks didn’t make friends with his team members. In fact, he’s portrayed as playing a good cop – bad cop act with his assistant coach, Craig Patrick. There’s doubtless a lot of truth to that. Yet Craig shares about how Brooks got to know him well enough to learn that for a while there, he was trying to get himself kicked off the team, because he felt guilty about leaving his family for preparation for the Games right after his mother passed away. The five pages in the heart of the book sharing that story, and what Herb Brooks did about it, are another tear-jerker that – for those of you wanting the leadership lessons here – are worth a hundred times the book’s purchase price.

We Win! is a fairly short book, and a quick read. But the rest of it is jam-packed with other illuminating parts of the story you won’t get anywhere else – about the rest of the characters involved, about the team’s Soviet nemeses, and about exactly how the team prepared and executed their plan to take the world’s previous best hockey team off their game and beat them. “Tonight we are the greatest hockey team in the world,” exclaimed Coach Brooks in his now-famous pre-game pep talk, reenacted word-for-word in one of the most marvelous scenes in the movie. He was right.

In the end, after telling what all the coaches and staff and teammates have done for the past 40 years, Craig distills the whole thing into his 13 Principles for Leadership. Those, too, make the book well worth its price. Pick it up. You won’t be sorry you did.

PS – Jim Craig, I watched the Finland game right to its very end again in February, for the first time in 40 years. And I saw another way the movie, in one of its closing scenes, was wonderfully true to the real-life story. Exactly as you recounted in your book, at the end of that game, your wildest dream had come true and you had clinched that gold medal you and Coach Brooks and all the rest had worked so tirelessly for. And the very first thing you did after you got free of the crush – American flag draped famously around your shoulders – was search the crowd and ask the girl next to you, “Where’s my father?” That tells me a hell of a lot about exactly what kind of man you are.

This lovely little piece by Dennis J. Pittoco brought some long-ago memories rushing back to me, and awoke me to realities I was largely unaware of at the time.

Dennis’s stories about contact with older people and spending some time listening to them made me think immediately of Mrs. Marie Walesewicz (wall-uh-shev-ich). She was an older widow who lived a couple blocks away from the house where I grew up in little Ironwood, Michigan. (I can’t bring myself to call her “elderly,” though she probably was. She was so bright and spry and lively, that word just can’t apply to her in my mind.)

At some point in my early teen years, my parents connected me with Mrs. Walesewicz because she needed help with lawn mowing and shoveling. If I had ever met the woman before that time, I don’t remember it. But when I started helping at her house, we quickly struck up a several-year friendship whose memory brings tears to my eyes now.

Whether it was snow or grass I was taking care of, that work itself was very straightforward, and I’d show up and knock it out on a regular basis. Usually I’d get right to work without really even talking to Mrs. W. The jobs never took all that long – hers was a small house on a small lot, so the mowing was easy. And she had someone plow out her driveway, so shoveling was just clearing the walk from the front street to her front door, around the house to the back door, and out to her separate garage. I was usually done in any case in an hour or less.

But whatever job I was doing, and whether I was hot and sweaty or cold and snow-covered when I was done, Mrs. W. always invited me indoors when she paid me, and had me sit and chat and have a can of pop (or two). Now, decades later, I have no idea what we talked about most of the time. What I do remember is that she was always happy to see me, and that she spoke to me not as though she was addressing a child, but more as if I were a fellow adult. That was pretty special, back in those high school years.

I realize now she was probably at least a little bit lonely. She had family in the area, but I don’t recall ever seeing them. Oh, I’m sure they were around; it’s just that any grandparent living alone like she did just simply has a lot more time alone than with others. So I’d like to think that my visits after I finished my work brought her as much pleasure as they brought me. I look back on them now as a very special time.

Eventually, I graduated high school and went a thousand miles away to college. Though I did some more mowing and visits with Mrs. W. during the first couple summers at home, soon after that I was off with my own increasingly adult life, and rarely made it back to Ironwood. Mrs. Walesewicz passed away many years ago, and with the deaths of both of my parents over the past several years, I no longer have any really solid connection to my old hometown. Time moves on.

That makes me especially happy to have had this reminder of one of those small but very moving bits of my growing up that mean so much to me now, so I thank you for that, Dennis! And I’ll reflect on your little essay, and think of ways to use this interesting time we’re going through now to create those same kinds of special friendships for my family and myself where we live now.

And tear up a bit again as I remember a very, very wonderful lady.

PS – as a total aside, I remember one Saturday night when we were struck with a blizzard the likes of which you simply can’t imagine if you’ve never lived in a place like Ironwood. I knew Mrs. W. would be wanting to get out for church the next morning, so I headed to her place well after dark without even being called, while the snow was still coming down pretty hard. Well over a foot had fallen already, and the wind was fierce. I found myself digging through drifts as tall as I was, and I was over there for hours. About halfway around the house, I heard someone behind me and turned around to see my Dad. He’d gotten worried because I’d been gone so long. He started taking turns on the shovel (and thank God for that, because I was awfully tired at that point). Together we cleared the rest of the walk, and this was one visit where I just grabbed my pay, exchanged a few words at the door with my friend, and headed home as the snow finally tapered off.

Dad wouldn’t take the part of the loot I offered him.

We just welcomed our new Crossovers to our Troop. Those are the former Cub Scouts who, having achieved the highest rank in that organization, the Arrow of Light, have now “graduated” into Scouts BSA, and moved from their old Pack into a Troop.

As part of their welcome, a group of our adult leaders took time to describe their various roles to our new Scouts’ parents. All of those roles, mine included, had at their core the set of services each of us provides to the Troop to carry out its mission. Scouting, when operating properly, is Scout-led. Each Patrol (a group of about five to ten Scouts, usually of similar age and rank) has a Patrol Leader and Assistant Patrol Leader, and the entire Troop has a Senior Patrol Leader and Assistant Senior Patrol Leader(s). Then there are various other Scout leadership positions focused on particular functions (Quartermaster, Webmaster, and so on). Generally speaking, older Scouts who’ve been trained and learned through (sometimes harsh, but most of the time enjoyable) experiences, and who step up to leadership roles, shepherd the rest of the Troop in all our activities.

By serving those various Scout leaders, and the Scouts they lead, the adult leaders serve the whole Troop, helping it achieve its mission of “fun with a purpose.”

Nowhere in any of our adult leaders’ job descriptions is there anything resembling command or control. We guide, educate, and provide resources. Yes, as the adults responsible for youth on outings away from their parents, we assume a certain authority, but to the extent that leads to constant orders, criticism, or expectations that Scouts serve us, is also the extent to which we’ll drive Scouts away from Scouting and undermine its aims and purposes.

That’s exactly how it should be in the business world too. People are finally starting to recognize that – have you noticed the nearly constant references to “servant leadership” and accolades for folks like Simon Sinek? And yet, doesn’t a lot of it appear to be window dressing? There’s a whole bunch of patting selves on backs, and a lot of mandatory training too, but precious little actual changing of behavior that I see so far…

Think about your own leadership style. Do you think you have all the answers, or do you provide the resources for your people to reach and execute their own solutions? Do you guide, or do you direct? Is your priority developing those in your “troop,” or is it developing your own career and climbing the corporate ladder? Do you serve your people, or do you believe they serve you? When things go wrong, do you think first of who’s to blame, or do you focus on how to provide support for your people to fix the problem?

There’s a fundamental shift happening in the business world today. Where my generation and previous ones took a lot of abuse and accepted a lot of bad behavior from our bosses, young people today just don’t – and God bless them for that! They have lots of options we didn’t have, what with remote work opportunities and lots of small businesses that are actually toppling yesteryear’s seemingly indestructible corporations. They’re also more apt to simply opt out; the abandoning of company loyalty by the business leaders of recent decades has boomeranged badly, and the resulting new near-total absence of loyalty in the workforce is now a business reality that leaders grapple with in the workforce constantly. (Did superstars like Jack Welch and his emulators really think they could so completely and constantly dump on their people and that it would never come home to roost?) All that makes the changing of behaviors I mentioned earlier a business requirement, just to have a fighting chance of retaining the talent you’ve brought on board and developed. The sooner you start, the less pain you’ll have.

But there’s a much better reason for doing it. We should serve our people because it’s the right thing to do. Pretty much every company touts integrity as a core value, along with “treating people with dignity and respect,” or some variation of that. But do we really act with integrity if we belittle people, yell at them, or publicly humiliate them? No, we don’t, and we certainly fall far short of that “dignity and respect” goal.

Plus, there’s this: We aren’t the experts. The real experts are the ones closest to the work, not the ones with big titles. As leaders, we may be more experienced in general, and positioned well in that regard to guide the big picture – but we should never mistake that for the day-to-day up-close expertise that only those running our machines or doing our hands-on work quickly acquire. They’re the critical components of what we accomplish, along with their “older Scout” leaders who are hands-on right along with them. If we’re not serving those folks by providing them the resources and the guidance to deliver what we expect them to deliver, it’s time we found something else to do.

Nobody, Scout or adult worker, should have to put up with childish behavior from supposed leaders. I’m pretty sure that if I start throwing abuse at my new Crossovers, their time in my Troop will be very short indeed. That would be just plain stupid of me, wouldn’t it? And yet we still see it in the business world pretty routinely. Why?

Y’know what? Business should be “fun with a purpose” too.

Scouting is just like any other organization in one important way. It’s made up of people – people of varying talents and abilities and moods and personalities.

It’s obvious that those people, whether the Scouts themselves or the adult leaders and parents who support them, share a lot of common interests and values. That fact, along with training programs, organizational materials and role descriptions from the national organization, help make things operate in a pretty orderly way. And most of the time it’s a lot of fun.

But all of that certainly doesn’t preclude frustrations and conflicts from developing among Scouts, leaders, and parents. As with any group of people, there is unavoidable friction that leads inevitably to disagreements.

As Scoutmaster, one thought I try to keep in front of myself constantly, and especially at those times when disagreements arise, is that all of these people are involved in Scouting voluntarily. Sure, parents will push their kids to become involved and stay involved in our program if it’s something they themselves value highly. And of course, everybody has paid membership fees, so there’s some skin in the game that way too. Plenty of Scouts are working to achieve the vaunted Eagle rank, and that ultimate goal will help keep them around through difficult times.

But even with all of that, if things got too ugly or unpleasant, people will start to opt out. If I’m frustrated with a fellow adult leader, and I choose to chew him out, exactly how long do you think he’ll put up with that? Or similarly, if I’m constantly screaming at the Scouts when they get out of line, do you think they’ll keep coming to meetings and campouts? Or will they quietly fail to re-enroll when annual sign-up time comes around again?

I’m not claiming to be perfect. I’ll sometimes get short with the kids, and I’ve had some serious episodes of misbehavior to deal with when I got rather heated. I’ve had a few tense discussions with fellow adult leaders, too. But one of the things I set for myself as a goal when I took over as Scoutmaster was the simple objective of giving out ten positive comments for every critical one. If I can hit that target, then I know my Scouts and fellow adult leaders are hearing praise a heck of a lot more than they’re hearing criticism. Plus, focusing on that level of positive feedback tends to keep my mood pretty even, I think.

Now let’s swing all that thinking over to the workplace. “That’s a totally different situation,” you might say. “We pay really good money for our people to come to work, so I’m completely justified in losing my temper if they aren’t living up to expectations.” Yeah, only here’s the problem: those people are all volunteers too. Sure, they make their living from what your company is paying them, so most of them can’t just up and quit. Plus even if they can afford it, job searches are tough and frustrating – who would want to put themselves through that?

And yet people do just up and quit, don’t they? Oh sure, there are a lot of reasons for that. A worker might simply get a better offer, or a better work schedule, or a better location for where they live, and on and on. But while it may not be 100% accurate every time, there’s a good reason the saying, “people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses,” resonates with so many folks.

If you don’t treat people like they’re doing you a favor by being there – whether it’s in Scouting or in the workplace – before too long they won’t be there anymore. It’s as simple as that.

I’ve had an interesting dust-up the past few days over a comment I made about a LinkedIn post. Now I’ve been challenged with a follow-up question that I believe warrants an extended answer, so I decided to write it up here.

It all started when a female VP at a large financial services firm posted a photo with colleagues from a women’s empowerment conference, along with some standard rah-rah commentary. But she also included the hashtag #thefutureisfemale. I publicly challenged the propriety of that, asking her point-blank whether a male executive could equally make use of the hashtag “#thefutureismale.” She didn’t respond.

I’ve since had a couple of comments directed at me from other female leaders challenging my viewpoint, the latter of which drives this post. That commenter saw nothing involving superiority or exclusion, problems I called out in the back-and-forth on the matter, in the original post.

I find it sad and distressing that I’m the one doing this education for people already in the position of leading others. If they’re in such a role and don’t already get this, the company has a huge problem. (Plus, as with all such consultants on this topic, I should be getting huge compensation for this effort.) Regardless, I recommend they (and all companies, for that matter) institute basic respectful treatment training for all levels, especially executives. Because there’s nothing respectful about “#thefutureisfemale,” for anybody.

The basis for that hashtag is a slogan dating back to 1975 coined by a radical feminist separatist who encouraged women to cut all ties with men. It was rooted in the basest of misandry. I wouldn’t expect people today to know that offhand, but perhaps a bit of introspection and research might be expected of an executive to find that out for herself, before foolishly making use of such a phrase. I sincerely doubt the corporate empowerment event that spawned this discussion favored separating from men completely, so why then use a phrase so freighted with such hatred and bitterness?

But let’s put the history aside and simply look at the impact of the words themselves. I fail to see an honest way to view them as anything but exclusionary, or as implying anything but superiority. If the future is female, it pointedly is not male. And it therefore logically follows that in that future, the female will be superior to the male.

Now what is the impact of those words, coming from a VP, on her workforce? First let’s discuss the men under her purview. If I put myself in their shoes, I certainly wouldn’t believe I’d get a fair shake from her or the directors and managers under her direction. I’d assume that I’d be discriminated against as a matter of course – it being clear to me that actively driving that female-superior future is part of my executive leader’s objectives. Quite frankly, I’d be looking for a new job ASAP.

For the female portion of the workforce, this leadership by example sets out a clear and dangerous double standard. Nobody I challenged or who challenged me in the exchange of comments answered my original question about whether a male could do something similar. But we all know the answer; he couldn’t – or at least he couldn’t without almost certainly losing his job. So it tells female employees that they live under a different set of rules, and are free to treat their male coworkers with disrespect and scorn, just as their VP does. Meanwhile, though, they’re to demand the opposite treatment from their male counterparts, who face the termination of their employment for any transgressions.

On the careers page at the website of the firm in question, it says this: “At [this company], we value the unique perspectives and experiences of every individual, as we work hard to maintain our reputation as a welcoming and rewarding place to work for people of all identities and backgrounds.” I would assume that they have a fundamental expectation for their leaders to live by those words. If that’s the case, there’s no place for them to be using the hashtag, “#thefutureisfemale.” And there should be consequences for doing so, the same ones as there would be if someone used “#thefutureismale.”

Indeed, that should be the case at all companies trumpeting their respectful treatment of all employees.

Meanwhile, I’ll also be challenging LinkedIn as to why that hashtag is a recognized one on their supposedly respectful platform. They’ve failed in that regard in the past, so the fight goes on…

The always-intriguing Don Peppers published an excellent piece on LinkedIn today about the new focus on customer experience, and why it took so long to get where we are. His thesis is that it all came from the marketing approach of Jerome McCarthy dating to 1958, which put the emphasis on “product, price, place, and promotion.” Do read the whole thing – it’s a compelling combination of “how we got here” and “how best to proceed.”

I’m going to expand a bit on this statement by Don: “In essence, the mass media and mass production technologies available in the 20th Century pushed companies into a supply-driven, mass marketing strategy,” and approach it from my specialty, manufacturing. I think a big driver for where we are with so little focus on the customer experience was driven by the industrial revolution, and especially the 20th century’s explosion of mass-produced consumer goods. Interestingly, I learned the best background for all this from a beer book – and it focused on bread to explain everything. Hang with me…

In their superb 1989 book Beer: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best, Christopher Finch refrained from caustically dismissing American beer as so many beer critics at the time were apt to do. Instead, he explained how it made perfect sense when you looked at history. Back in the early 20th century, manufacturing technology had come to favor huge plants that did the same stuff day in, day out. Rather than explain directly how that affected beer, though, he used the analogy of bread, a product very closely related to beer. Just like beer, bread has countless different varieties and styles, and yet what was primarily available when Finch was writing? Plain white bread. He explained how that cake-like product was designed not to appeal to anyone in particular, but to offend as few people as possible. Rye? Pumpernickel? Soda bread? They’re all popular with some folks, but not with the masses. So it was that combination of burgeoning ability 100 years ago to pump out huge quantities of a given product, and the reality that to grow best with both the media and the production systems and the distribution channels available at the time, it made perfect sense to make a bland and uniform one-size-fits-all offering. And it worked, like gangbusters.

Same with beer. English bitter and German Kolsch and Belgian Lambec and Irish stout all took a backseat to the scarcely-hopped, over-carbonated plain old American lager, a watered-down, adjunct-y version of a perfectly refreshing offering from Pilsen, Czech Republic.

For beer specifically, there were other factors that played a part. Before Prohibition, there were countless local breweries around America, all making their own special versions of the many different styles of beer that had come here primarily from Europe. But only the biggest survived our experiment with making alcoholic beverages illegal – the big ones. So for beer in particular it became a double-whammy for the little guys – if they managed to survive Prohibition, they were killed off by the marketplace Zeitgeist. Still, you can look across the marketplace landscape and see numerous examples of similar products that became bland and less-than-satisfying thanks to the reality of 20th-century manufacturing.

So if you’re in one of those lagging industries still dominated by a bland central product, you should definitely read and internalize the great article by Mr. Peppers. Then you should also study what’s happened in the past couple decades with bread and beer. Hey, the big players are still around – but they’re losing market share steadily. And look at what all the little guys are doing, by focusing on the variety that we can now offer, and on the experience the customer has been screaming for all these years.

The passing of rock drumming legend Neil Peart of Rush wouldn’t seem to fit in with this month’s ruminations. But it does – trust me on this. I’d already decided to write about questioning your own experience, based on a passage from a book I read recently. Peart hitting the news reminded me of how he exemplified this very thing – in a positive way, unlike the story from my book.

First let’s talk about the negative example. The book is The Greatest Search and Rescue Stories Ever Told. It’s chock full of tales that have lots of direct ties to what we do in Scouting – and lots that are tangentially tied to what we do in business. One in particular leaped out at me in both regards. Chapter eight is called, “Experience Is No Guarantee.” It’s a collection of shorter stories about very seasoned mountaineers who nonetheless fell victim to the dangers of the mountain. The particular saga subtitled, “Almost Old and Bold,” tells of the final ascent of 58-year-old Norwegian climber Arvid Lahti. On March 26, 2016, he and fellow alpinist Monique Richard, 41, reached the summit of Mt. Ranier and were headed down when a winter storm struck. The two had planned to be up and down that day, and carried no gear for an overnight stay or the frigid conditions they faced. Despite attempting to shelter from the wind and cold among rocks on their route, Lahti died of hypothermia before morning. Richard was rescued by other climbers after daybreak.

For Scouting, the lesson is to follow the Scout Motto and be prepared for unplanned events and conditions. As we spend lots of time outdoors in potentially risky situation, and in possibly dangerous weather, it pays to think about the worst that might happen and pack along some extra gear just in case. Even very experienced Scouts might find themselves, just as Lahti and Richard did, surprised by situations out of their control – situations that can be life-threatening for the unprepared.

Similarly, in the business world, even the most experienced businessman can find himself in the midst of an unanticipated setback. Even if you’ve made similar deals or managed similar project a hundred times before, it always pays to question whether those experiences cover all possible eventualities. Making preparations for problems that are far out of the ordinary, just in case, can be the difference between ultimate success and failure. Or even between business survival and bankruptcy.

On to the more positive side, starring the drummer for Rush. By 2007, Neil Peart had already been regarded as one of the best drummers in history for three decades. What could he possibly have had to learn at that point with respect to his instrument? Yet, invited to play at a tribute concert for legendary jazz drummer Buddy Rich, he chose to… take lessons. He signed up to attend the Peninsula Conservatory of Music in St. Catharines, Ontario, for instructions from jazz drumming great Peter Erskine. “…I wanted to take my big-band drumming up a level,” Peart later wrote. “I went over to Peter’s house with my sticks, feeling like a 13-year-old again.”

Again, always be willing to question your experience. Peart could doubtless have performed at that tribute concert with no additional training and had no detractors – except for perhaps himself. It was he who set himself a higher standard, and who, despite being a legend of rock history, submitted to lessons to raise the bar for himself.

For Scouts, there’s always the opportunity to get better. To get to Eagle, Scouts work through six lower ranks, learning new things and taking on new challenges at each step. And an Eagle Scout can continue to earn Merit Badges and get an Eagle Palms award, potentially three times over, for each additional five merit badges beyond the Eagle requirements.

It’s the same in the business world, isn’t it? There are always new things to learn, skills to be refined, classes to take, books to read, mentors and proteges to help develop us. Always challenge your experience. If Neil Peart could learn something new about the drums, you can learn something new about… well, pretty much anything.

Those unfamiliar with Scouting are usually surprised to hear that one of its core values is that Troops are Scout-led. “What exactly does that mean?” is a typical question.

It’s pretty self-explanatory. In a well-functioning Troop, the Scouts lead everything: Troop meetings, outings, service projects, and short-term and annual planning. Adults are there to facilitate and to help, but ideally only when the Scouts need them to.

But a separate key part of answering that question goes to another value of Scouting that far fewer people are familiar with. Scouts is meant to be a place where our kids can make mistakes without it being the end of the world. For Scout leaders, that means letting them be unprepared sometimes, flying right in the face of the Scout Motto – at least up to a point. (As my predecessor as Scoutmaster says, we’ve had kids be cold, but nobody’s ever frozen; and we’ve had kids be hungry, but nobody’s ever starved.)

It’s a bit of a balancing act. Since Scouting is supposed to be Scout-led, the Scouts have to be allowed make bad decisions along with their good ones – so long as those bad decisions won’t be dangerous. The purpose of adult leaders in the Troop is to guide and safeguard, not to lead, direct, or control, so they provide that oversight to make sure everyone stays safe.

The Scouts learn from every decision they make. Good decisions lead to good outcomes and should be repeated in the future. Bad ones lead to discomfort and probably some good-natured ribbing from peers, and will be avoided down the road.

Good Scout leaders develop the youth leaders at every level and make sure they know their responsibilities, then get out of their way. They intervene if asked and if the decision-making by the youth leaders would put anybody at risk.

In the business world, adult Scout leaders demonstrate the difference between management and micromanagement. At its best, management is all about hiring the right people, putting them in the right positions, building the team, and letting everybody do the job. Micromanagement is about the manager always believing “I know best” and making every decision, with the team performing as mere lackeys. It’s demoralizing, particularly to highly motivated team members and those who aspire to greater responsibilities. But even worse, it doesn’t allow anybody to learn, at any level – even the micromanager!

Scouts, meanwhile, demonstrate how things should work with your business team. They’re at varying levels of experience and ability, and the way they’re all developing is by making decisions for themselves and their teams and learning from the outcomes. The more you give them freedom to do just that, the better and more quickly they’ll advance in becoming adept at what they do.

Your business team should be allowed to make mistakes. Obviously, if it’s something that’s going to bankrupt the business, executive veto power should prevail. Otherwise, just like the Scouts, your work team will learn from the decisions they make, both good and bad. With the right support, they’ll succeed AND they’ll fail, with more and more of the former as they learn.