PIONEER SPIRIT

by Guillermo Ceballos Serra

For purely personal reasons, I recently visited the city of Grayling in the state of Michigan, USA. A small and beautiful city of the state. My first visit was last year during the northern hemisphere winter and now had the opportunity to see a totally different landscape in the summer, with green forests that contrast sharply with the whiteness of snow and freezing temperatures of winter.

Like many small towns in the interior of any country, we can find the natural goodness of people and the best virtues which characterize the state of nature, where human beings bring out the best to develop themselves and create prosperity for the individual, family and community.
During my stay, I was able to accompany my host to buy a cylinder of propane gas. There I met a gentleman of about 75 who monitored to some people and personally uploaded cylinders to a pickup truck and enjoy a conversation with him some few minutes.

I knew it was Mr. Charlie Ficks, company owner Ficks & Sons, a small company in global terms but significant for the local economy (http://www.fickandsons.com/index.htm). Fick & Sons, initiated in 1958 to pure lung, has approximately 200 employees in the area. The company operates in the market for propane gas, fuel oil, fuel transport, maintenance mechanic, service stations and a center for travelers.

There are many similar success stories in many places, even the largest corporations (Wal Mart, for instance) began similarly in small communities. The similarity is not the smallness of the locations that were born, but in the greatness of the pioneers who undertook the task to realize their dreams.

It is the pioneering spirit that we perceive clearly when we look at small scale, the mystique of the founders proposed dreams and commitment of those who engage with a leader who gives meaning to the task.

I speak not of exceptional leadership, of people for the bronze, I speak of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. People with passion and love for what they do, people have to his credit, with some now call "engagement". People who do what they must right the first time and try again if they are wrong, without blaming others.

We talked about people who "invented" the opportunities, people naturally nonconformist but positive. They are people dissatisfied with the "status quo" convinced that reality can be better.

I could certainly discuss the virtues I saw in this city, commitment to community, ecology, solidarity and many others and so worth the comparative analysis with the big cities where we live, but certainly would exceed these reflections that I want to focus on organizations.
Many times, these virtues or capabilities that we see in small, we lose sight of when we look at large organizations. Indeed, organizational charts, the conventional categories for unionized workers, job descriptions of managers, manuals of functions and responsibilities, segment, divide, endlessly some basic concepts to the point of distorting and transforming the "executives" of every single level in ordinary bureaucrats. Extreme manual followers of those precepts such as: "always was done in this way", "nobody told me, "not in my role" and many others, who know of the life of organizations.

What constitutes the pioneer spirit? Simply focus on the essential purpose of solving unsolved problems in an innovative way and persevere in the attempt. That is what has made great organizations and nations. That is the secret of the organizations that remain, in the words of Collins and Porras (1). That is the secret of the nations who feel players and not spectators on the world.

Basically, the pioneering spirit is to have the conviction that the future can build starting today. To have the certainty that we are able to get out of autopilot of our lives, personal and professional and resolve to take charge of our destiny.



(1) Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras.