Hi Everyone,
I wanted to share this, Meredith Caliman gave this presentation last week and I thought it was wonderful. She gave me permission to add it to my blog.
FAN Member Presentation 4/25/08
“Think Differently.” That was the slogan of Apple Computers in the 1980s and 1990s. But how many of us can truly think differently, and even more, how many of us can go against the conventional wisdom believed by their community?
I want to tell you about someone from my youth and childhood who thought differently, and acted upon his beliefs. While perhaps not so rare in the larger community of middle class America, he thought very differently from every other adult in the neighborhood where I grew up.
The neighborhood where I grew up in the 1960s and 70s was composed of middle class people who called themselves “colored people” and later called themselves “Black people.” The civil rights era had brought them a measure of empowerment because now we could go to school wherever we wanted, live wherever we could afford, shop and eat wherever our green money could be spent. Women’s liberation did not mean much to the women, most of whom worked outside the home just as their mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers had done. Government jobs and some union jobs were now available to these people and they sincerely believed that the way to get ahead was to get an education, get a government job or a steady job that somehow had ties to the government (like in the aerospace industry that was so prevalent in the South Bay at that time), a job with permanence and a pension that would allow you to retire.
Louis Wilson did not think that getting that government job was the way to be secure. When everyone else was praising the blessings of civil rights, affirmative action and other government-backed programs, Mr. Wilson said that Black people had actually lost ground with these government gains. You can imagine that this argument went over extremely well (it is still not a popular argument). Mr Wilson talked to everyone who would listen about the need to be self-sufficient and own our own businesses – this was reminiscent of the pre-civil rights condition where we had to own our own businesses because the majority had the right not to allow us in their stores. His speeches fell on deaf ears throughout the neighborhood. Unlike my own father, he thought that women could and should be pushed to their greatest potential. He liked talking to me because I was willing to study hard and work hard and loved to argue with him, challenging his ideas.
Louis Wilson was an engineer by training. He was the first person I knew of who had a graduate degree. In his garage workshop, he invented some mechanical part that is used in taxi meters that allows for the meters to calculate the distance of the trip and keep track of the costs of the trip. He sold his idea to a company and made the seed money of his fortune. Even after making money, he stayed in the same neighborhood and his family never lived much larger than everyone else. Mr. Wilson took his seed money and quietly invested in real estate. The only thing that was visibly different was that Mr. Wilson retired from his day job long before the other men in the neighborhood. What Mr. Wilson then devoted himself full time to a non-profit that he had founded called “Impact” whose purpose was to teach poor and illiterate people how to pull themselves out of poverty by owning their own businesses.
Mr. Wilson had his theories about owning your own business, how to get there and how to remain successful. He called his theory “The POCEM.” POCEM was based on the first letters of the five pillars of being a business owner; the letters are P-O-C-E-M. The pronunciation is like “possum” because Mr. Wilson wanted the people to think of a possum, a fat cat, so they could remember his theory and imagine themselves as fat cats.
P stands for Plan. Before starting out, the business person must have a plan in place to describe the objective. Each plan must state how much and by when. This is not unlike the “Game” that FAN members have been discussing.
O stands for Organize. This is the action behind your plan. The business person must organize people, money and material for the sake of accomplishing a goal or a profit.
C stands for Control. The business person must establish controls not only within his business but also controls against any forces keeping her from accomplishing the Plan.
E stands for Evaluate. It is necessary to periodically evaluate the situation to see if the Plan is on track.
M stands for Modify. This is the most critical part of the Plan. As the business person is rarely the master of the universe, it is rare that the Plan performs precisely according to expectation because of the many things that affect us on a personal basis or in the wider world. Therefore, it is necessary to Modify the Plan by making changes necessary to push one back to accomplishing the Plan.
Mr Wilson could talk for hours about his “POCEM” and go into great details about each letter. I won’t go into those details here.
What I will tell you is that five and a half years ago when I was suddenly faced with joblessness, in the six weeks I had before my once secure job would end forever, I began to put I Mr Wilson’s POCEM theories into practice. It was unconsciously done and it was only later that I realized how those long ago words had stayed in my brain. I have never taken any business or management courses, yet I seemed to know instinctively what to do. It was Mr. Wilson’s words coming into realization because he had taught me to see possibilities and not to be afraid to seize opportunities.
These days, clients pay me to help them make business choices. Without directly preaching the POCEM, I try to get clients to focus on those points, especially Controls and Modification issues which are often overlooked.
Many of the parents from my old neighborhood are gone now, Mr. Wilson included. Alone among those parents, Mr. Wilson left his family with millions of dollars worth of assets. But more so than leaving those assets, I believe Mr Wilson would be pleased that he left a legacy of teaching at least one other person to think differently.
