This week’s focus point…Taking the Stairs?
This past weekend, I attended my niece’s wedding with my whole family. It was a fun event with lots of laughs, food, fellowship, and dancing. The DJ did a terrific job of balancing the music to hit all the different age ranges in a group of about 100 people. As the evening closed and the final song came on, something funny occurred to me.
Over 30 years ago, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven was the quintessential closing song. Through 8 minutes and 2 seconds of increasing tempo, volume, and emotion, the song was the culmination of either a glorious evening or heartache. It didn’t matter because it could work both ways. I recalled vividly dancing to that song countless times with my then girlfriend and future wife, Barb.
On Saturday, Barb had left the building to drive the bride and groom off to their hotel, so my dance partner was my daughter, Kelli. Instead of Stairway to Heaven, I found myself dancing to Macklemore’s Can’t Hold Us. While I knew the song and the artist, it’s not a song you will find in my collection, however the chance to dance and have fun with my daughter was worth it.
If you’re not willing to step away of the “old songs” in your career and business, you’ll be doomed to wallflower status, and that’s a precarious place to be. It’s very easy to be comfortable in what made you who you are and put you in a position of strength, however that strength might be fleeting. Like the DJ did at the dance, you have to find an effective balance of what worked in the past so you can keep doing it, with innovation, new ideas, and the vulnerability to implement them.
It’s your choice. You can either sit in the corner content with the same old songs, or you can climb that stairway to heaven because the “ceiling can’t hold you.”
© 2015 Toro Consulting Inc. All Rights Reserved
This week’s quote –
“Music is the mediator between the spiritual and sensual life.”
~ Ludwig van Beethoven
No Weedin Unleashed today due to Columbus Day. The next broadcast is on Monday, October 12th.
