Career Lessons Learned – Watch the Road

One of the many lessons learned in my early Cerner Experience was looking through the current set of seemingly insurmountable problems and being able to keep the long-term vision in perspective. I recently read a book called The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Horowitz) where the author uses a car racing analogy to make the point.  If you were in an auto race, would you focus on the road or the wall? If your answer is the wall, you will likely crash. Through all the ups, downs, and endless lists of problems, it was easy to lose sight of the long-term vision and end up with a caution flag.  It takes tremendous faith, commitment and fortitude to do so. Furthermore, there are repetitive cycles over a career that start to fog the vision of the road.  So what am I saying? One of the hard lessons and career challenges was to be able to work through the overwhelming problems and still feel good about the long-term path.  People often ask me why I left after a very successful 15-year career there.  The answer is complex but the largest driver was the Y2K wall.  As the Director of Y2K, there were thousands of systems across the globe that needed to be remediated. The wall smacked me, and I did not have enough view of the road to stay on it. Mistake? Maybe, but the lesson I wish to convey is, don’t lose site of the road when the wall is so close. The wall will pass but the road ahead is long and rewarding. Are you Far Sighted? What do you do to keep your eyes on the road?