香蕉视频

No regrets, none at all. Over the last couple of years I have read a number of retiring CEOs asked by various newspapers whether they have had any regrets, all that I read said they had no regrets.聽 My initial reaction was to roll my eyes; I found this a bit much because in my career, I have and have had many regrets.

I made this comment to a friend of mine who recently retired from a management post at Standard Life.聽 He said he too had no regrets at the end of a 35-year career.聽 I also asked Bob Brown who recently retired as CEO of CAE, a 7,000 person high tech firm, he too felt he had a good and satisfying career. This made me stop and think, I respect both these men too much not to pay attention to what they said.聽聽

The conclusion I came to was that the difference between the retiring executives and myself, and the reason why I feel regrets is that I still have a number of years to go before I retire (at least I hope so). They are at the end of the matter and are looking back and summarizing their careers.聽 They were all CEOs, so had gotten to quite senior positions, so an admittedly biased sample. They have come to peace with their failures, setbacks and mistakes.聽 They feel that, overall, they provided for their families, and did some good in the world, that their work lives had meaning and significance and they could retire in peace.

But I am not there yet.聽 With 12 and 15 year olds at home, I still have 15 years or so ahead of me, particularly, if our youngest goes on to Graduate School.聽 That leaves lots of room for regrets I would like to mention and Frank Sinatra's My Way not withstanding, that is good thing.聽 Why? Because I still have sufficient runway ahead of me to make up for mistakes, to turn things around, to choose a different path. In other words, I can still change.聽 I am not at the end of it, but in the midst of it and that makes all the difference.

It strikes me as a healthy thing that those of us still in the midst of the game, that are still in the arena, are willing to see our errors and shortcomings.聽 We still can do something about them, we can still rectify at least some of our regrets.聽 We will live another work day, work year, work decade. We will have many opportunities to improve, to learn, to strive to do better, to be better.聽 I believe it is healthy for us, those in the middle, to not be content, to not be fully satisfied, to continue to strive.

At age 52, President Theodore Roosevelt gave one of the most memorable speeches of the 20th century.聽 He spoke at the Sorbonne, one of the world's great universities. To this august academic audience he choose to speak of a more modest person, he spoke about the person in the arena.聽 Contrasting them to the critic (a frequent and largely appropriate role for academics) he spoke movingly of the person in the arena, "whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood...who errs, comes short again and again, because there is in no effort without error and shortcoming".聽 This resonates with me. Evidently Roosevelt was someone all too well acquainted with mistakes, a few regrets in this spectacularly well lived life! That is, for better or worse, where I am today. Not at the end.聽 Perhaps, dimly, I can see the end from where I am, but there is, of necessity, a long haul ahead.聽聽 Our children look to my wife and I to provide. And God willing and health allowing, we will.

Each year I can and do have regrets. A sample few from this year:聽 getting overly聽 upset with a colleague in a way that was unfair to them,聽 turning down an opportunity to write with a colleague (I let the urgent crowd out the important), missing an emerging business segment聽 in my consulting activities, travelling too much for too little return and so missing out on never to occur again moments with the children, trying to get on big company boards to no avail, 聽not taking a family vacation because of time and money. These are all things I would have done differently, but this is largely healthy, because I can then face the next year with lessons learned, mistakes to be apologized for and different approaches to be adopted.聽 聽To me, this is exciting.聽 I can be better, do better.聽 I can become more like that person who, in Roosevelt's terms, "actually strives to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause".

If I do this, perhaps in 15 or so years at my retirement party at the Faculty Club at McGill as I reflect back on my career, I will then feel that I can honestly, deserve to finish off with the rest of that famous quotation, "who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."聽 Then I too perhaps can say, "All-in-all, I have no regrets."

-Article by Karl Moore

Read full article: , April 25, 2011