‘Gonna get along without ya now.’ The words no CEO ever wants to hear…and what you must do to make sure you never do.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. In 1952 Teresa Brewer sang a peppy little ditty called “Gonna get along without ya now.” It was bubble gum music, all bobby socks and pony tails. Sweet sixteen though it was, its lyrics perfect for the soda shop, there was yet a salient point here that none of us can ever forget. We are all expendable, replaceable, just a movable part in any organization. It is a sobering thought for any person, but it’s vital every CEO of every organization not only understand this essential truth, but build his administration on it and rule accordingly.
Before reading the rest of this article, go to any search engine and find this tale of comeuppance warbled by Ms. Brewer. Carefully read its lyrics, including this unforgettable couplet:
“Got along without ya before I met ya Gonna get along without ya now.”
What a CEO is and what a CEO must do… crucial aspects of the job you never learn at Harvard Business School.
For the last almost 20 years now, I have been a CEO, specifically CEO of worldprofit.com, which began its life in 1994 as an Internet hosting company, expanding since then into providing complete Web traffic and online services, tools for every kind of business organization. Let me be perfectly candid with you; the daily education I’ve had over the past two decades has been not only practical, exhaustive and timely, but hands-on and never-ending, as must inevitably be any training and instruction about e-matters.
The necessary training has included, but was never just limited to matters fiduciary, legal, product development, marketing, and sales. But the most important instruction of all has been what I’ve learned about handling people; in this case the other partners, employees, our unique online monitors, and, always, our customers worldwide for together these far-flung people constitute the vital essence of our business… as such people will constitute the vital essence of yours. Just how you handle them will determine not only the degree of success delivered by your administration but whether you will be allowed to keep your lofty position at all.
My father’s insight.
My father, Donald Marshall Lant, spent almost all his life in business managerial positions. As a result he came to develop a keen understanding of why some executives rise, whilst others stumble, fall, and pass as a matter of course into oblivion.
As sharp as a tack at age 86, he is still adamant on a significant point he insisted my siblings and I understand, a principle not only for business success but also for living the best lived life: “Learn to manage people,” he insisted, “and you can achieve anything.” Right as rain here as elsewhere, he reminded us (particularly at such moments when we seemed to have forgotten) of this crucial adage; at these times he also taught us clear, practical and field-tested admonitions, tactics, and the wisdom that only comes from experience.
Now, here, I am enriching you with as many of these people management insights as the space allows.
1) Know their names.
The first rule for successful CEOs is to know the names of the people, ALL the people, who are part of your patrimony. People like to know that you, Poobah of the Western Isles, know them…. and their names.
Hint: Make up flash cards with the names of people associated with the enterprise you head. This is a superb way to turn “scrap” time into stronger relations with your people.  2) Use them.
This ought to be self evident to every CEO; yet how many of you wonder whether your CEO knows you even exist, much less your name?
3) Know their families.
Family and all its elements are most important to the people most important to you. Make it a point to get the names of spouse and children. And when you’ve congratulated their proud mama or papa, send this intelligence to them, so that they understand just how valued their parent is and how essential their services to you.
4) Contact them when they’re ill.
This is a biggie. When those connected with your enterprise fall ill, each wonders whether this will adversely affect their relationship with you and their job. By calling and visiting you reassure them at a difficult time. And, remember, while sending flowers and a fruit basket is nice; they want to hear from YOU!
5) Pop up at their work stations… and never come empty-handed.
Do you know every nook and cranny, every department and project of the company you head? If not master the elements of your enterprise by stopping by the various work stations which constitute the parts of your empire. And never, ever go empty- handed. Bring gifts, gift certificates, checks. Remember, you are the deliverer of the loaves and fishes. Act like it.
6) Share your (particularly edible) gifts and treats.
CEOs by virtue of their high office gets lots of presents. Share these with some of the hard working folks in your business. They will never forget the gesture, your kindness and thoughtfulness. These are the memories that they’ll remember forever… and the person who made it happen — you.
7) Praise and congratulate… and (get the drift?) never come empty-handed.
No one is better placed in your organization to give plaudits and kudos than you are. Thus because you can, you must. Within your company you are, like the sovereign of England in hers, the Fountain of Honor. It is an evocative image, an image of liberality, giving, and above all the empathy that should epitomize your administration.
 Make impromptu invitations.
No particular plans for lunch today? Great! Select two or three of the essential people in your organization and invite them to share tuna fish sandwiches with you. Make it clear it’s a chance to get better acquainted and to share their views and informed opinions with you. You’ll soon grow addicted to these “come as you are” events, making friend after friend, supporter after supporter.
9) Deliver promotions, raises and bonuses personally.
When the news is good, make yourself its Mercury. When was the last time you saw your CEO deliver even the best of news? Exactly. That’s why when you get to the top of the corporate tree, you’ll perform this task yourself… and gladly.
10) Implement at least one of these recommendations every day you wish to remain CEO, or advance from your present position. Don’t miss a single day or opportunity. If you do that, Teresa Brewer will have a very different song to sing, for they can’t get along without you now. Boom Boom Boom Boom.

Thoughts on assisted living, aging, Dad, and guilt.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Here is the most important four-letter word in the entire English language: home. It conjures up and is connected to every element of the well-lived life: spouse, family, peace, comfort, security. Nothing can match its importance, nothing can duplicate its significance. Nothing is more powerful than our memories of home and their enduring pull, always tugging at our heart strings. Home and its rhythms, its well remembered aspects, its secrets, its traditions, its confidences, its ways so well known and carefully maintained… these have a power over us that never fails, never pales, never wavers, never diminishes, and are always clear, fresh, joyful, unforgettable, bittersweet, haunting, the sweetest memories of our entire life.
This is an article on the moment that comes to each of us… when this home, our very special, irreplaceable place, must be given up because its proprietors can no longer maintain it, now needing particular care themselves. This is an article about a moment poignant, sad, dreadful, irrevocable. It is about the people who take this step first, our parents… then about their children, us, who will trod the difficult road, too, but not yet… and what they must do today, a day of emotional turmoil, distress, a day for which all preparation is inadequate.
For this article I have selected the song “My Old Kentucky Home” (1852) by America’s first great composer, Stephen Foster. It is one of the most wistful, longing songs of our country… and whenever one hears it one thinks, and tearful too, of one’s own home, now gone, far away, never to be replaced, always to be remembered, the more so as the destination you are now going to can never be a home like the one left behind. Go now to any search engine. Find and play it at once. It is the perfect accompaniment to this article.
The call.
The call we all fear, cannot bear thinking about, but must think about — comes the day our aging parents first consider assisted living, whether outwardly calm and willing, or fighting the hopeless battle to avoid this fate, roiled by turbulent emotions deep within, so clearly visible without.
Assisted living.
The words “assisted living” are two of the most frightening and disturbing in our language. It is easy to see why. Assisted living is mostly the province of the retired, the ill, the aging, geriatric survivors of better times. As such it is a venue to be put off and avoided whenever possible, for as long as possible; as much so as if each assisted living facility had posted at its front door this immemorial admonition from Dante’s “Inferno”: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
Such institutions are perceived as the final way station before cosmic extinction; the place one enters unhappy, angry, misunderstood, and which one leaves dead; the place for the irremediably old, those who are past it, marginal, unconsidered, beyond the care and concern of anyone other than those paid to care and be concerned; lonely people of the Eleanor Rigby variety.
All of life…
Assisted living, with its implied inadequacies and dependence, is always and often indignantly compared to the joy of independent living, where you do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, in just the way you want; in other words the kind of living each of us desires, insists upon, and does everything possible to maintain. Assisted living, of course, is widely perceived as the antithesis of the desired independent living.
But this is wrong.
ALL living is assisted living. For unless you are rabidly antisocial and determined to remain that way, alone, isolated, happy and contented in your aloneness, you are assisted — every single day — by people whose aim is to make you reasonably happy, reasonably content, and reasonably comfortable. Thus, in truth, when one moves from living regarded as independent to living regarded as assisted, one is evolving from one kind of care to another kind of care; one is tweaking circumstances the better to ensure the maximum continuation of your desired life style. One is not undergoing metamorphosis, but comparative and necessary improvement.
Sadly, most people undergoing this process are unable to see this, or at least to state it to guilt-ridden relatives who are thus distressed by the painful thought that Aunt Martha is being cast off rather than moved to an appropriate level of care, concern, and consideration. Most assisted living facilities these days resemble college campuses or resorts; they know the grief, anger, recriminations and distress which new residents bring and work hard to create an atmosphere that is at once attractive, even beautiful; livable, practical, and serene, factors which soothe the guilt of those recommending assisted living to those near and dear but are often dismissed as inadequate or unimportant by those being recommended into the facility.
Receiving the intelligence.
Twice in my life, so far, have I been a participant to greater or lesser degree, in conversations surrounding the movement of one near and beloved to assisted living. The first such conversations involved my mother; the second set involved my father. These conversations could hardly have been less similar — or more instructive about the principals involved and affected.
My mother, student of Dylan Thomas that she was, did not, nor could not, go gentle into this good night. She raged, raged against what she was sure was the dying of the light. Despite weakening health and the myriad of problems stemming therefrom my mother fought hard, strenuously, vociferously, painfully against the notion of “incarceration” in an assisted living facility, thereby branded as penal institution, not comfortable necessity. Her transition from living deemed independent to living deemed assisted was therefore protracted, painful, packed with imprecations, denigrations, accusations, maledictions which made Emile Zola’s famous declaration “J’accuse” look sniveling.
My father handled the matter entirely different… and I suspect this was partly because he will have with him his wife Ellie; to be alone at life’s end is painful; to be partnered with a loved mate lessons the pain while increasing the means to combat and to live with it.
Sad, wistful, practical, accepting.
When my father called yesterday to inform me that he and Ellie had made arrangements to share their dwindling, most precious days together in assisted living, I felt a lump in my throat. He extolled the grounds, their private apartment, the food, the friendly residents… but whether he believed all this as stated or was just trying out what would become the stock reason or their move, I cannot say… for I was reflecting on a few words that he had said.
Entering the dining room where they would find their daily meals, he was surprised to find it peopled with the old, feeble, and infirm. Could this be he at 86, Ellie at 87? Or had some mistake occurred? She, knowing how difficult it had to be for him to transform his independent life to one “assisted”, took his hand and reassured him that no mistake was made; they were in the right place, which he would soon know, if he did not know already. And thus these proud, fiercely independent souls, more used to assisting others than being assisted, move into the next phase of their lives, together, facts faced, practical decisions made, gently, calmly, with love and care. And I admired my father so, not merely as son to father, but as man to man. For he faced the difficult, the fearful, the unpalatable, with grace, quietude, reserve, with good judgement, good humor, and a good wife, well stocked and ready for the journey ahead… which they will travel similarly and with kindness, above all with kindless and the help of those glad to assist them, and with kindness too.
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