How to Succeed in Business by Trying Really Hard
My grandfather is fond of telling my sisters and me a story about my father when he was young. In truth, he is fond of telling us many such stories, but this one gets repeated more often than others:
When my dad and his brothers were young, they and my grandfather moved to Switzerland where my grandfather worked as an educator and my dad completed his primary schooling. For the first two or so years, my dad, as my grandfather tells it, “got by on charm.” Over these years, Dad also fell in love with snow skiing, a big deal in Switzerland, I’m told. Any time he had for recreation, Dad was skiing.
Well, come second grade, Dad was quite behind on school, particularly math. And in that year, for the first time, he had a teacher who did not accept charm in the place of homework. She required that he do his work, catch up to the other students, or he wouldn’t be allowed to ski. Now, some of you might be thinking that’s kind of harsh, and maybe it is, but that teacher gave my father a gift: he worked hard; he learned his multiplication tables; he didn’t rely on charm to get by.
He learned the value and reward of working hard, a lesson he’s carried ever since. A lesson taught every day at camp. My sister Adrienne, who got more than her fair share of charm from our father, learned that lesson here from Lindsay. Anyone who has ever worked with or learned from Lindsay knows that charm gets you nowhere if it isn’t paired with an effort put toward the task at hand. Adrienne had never encountered such an obstacle. I’m not sure she’s encountered such an obstacle since, but the lesson Lindsay taught her stuck. She says it is the greatest gift she has ever been given, and I agree. She works hard. She earns any recognition she’s given. And she pairs it with her incomparable amount of charm which essentially makes her unstoppable.
I asked Adrienne for a quote or a story about how Lindsay made her into an unstoppable force, and she was happy to oblige. Adrienne, like me, was in stagecraft classes as a camper. Her first year on running crew, we were still taking the June Session show to High Hampton Inn to perform for their guests. It was always a challenge to move and rebuild the show in the new space within a couple of hours. On that day, Adrienne, in her own words, “was a disaster.” She had signed up for the pizza party that the cast and crew would have before the show and to be able to brag about doing something no one else got to do; she didn’t think she’d have to do any actual work. That year we had to delay the performance because we weren’t ready yet, and Adrienne, “being no help at all with getting everything ready to go,” was sent outside by Lindsay to talk to the people waiting. Despite not liking lemon squares, Lindsay has good ideas fairly often, and this was one of them. Adrienne helped the production by using her charm to get people not to leave. She says “that was the first time [she] used [her] charm to do something really beneficial for a large group of people.” Adrienne worked hard to be on running crew every camper summer after that. She learned that things worth doing, things that you can be proud of, take work, and Lindsay taught her that.
I use Adrienne as an example because I know her story best. She is by no means the only example of this lesson being taught at camp. Lindsay alone teaches it to at least forty cast members every summer. I imagine it’s taught in every activity area every day. No matter what you’re doing, nothing feels better than the moment all your work results in something you can be proud of. Learning that as a young woman surrounded by peers and teachers who celebrate your accomplishments with unparalleled enthusiasm is one of the finest things that occurs at Merrie-Woode. It is a gift we give generously. And though hard work does not always produce the results we wanted or anticipated (sometimes we get “shut down”), part of learning the value of working hard is learning how to pick back up and start again when things don’t go your way. Sometimes having to do so makes the final accomplishment all the more rewarding.
Whether they know it or not, every Merrie-Woode girl carries that lesson with them into their hometowns and everywhere they go. They teach it by example. They teach it probably without even realizing it. And imagine, it’s taught without the threat of not being able to ski.