If you asked 100 people who were in there 40s if they were middle aged they would look at you as if you had a second head. If. You ask an 18 year old what middle age is they would pretty quickly say 35.
Who’s correct? No one is correct. Middle age is not a number; it is a feeling, a sense of where you life is and where it is going.
What difference does it make anyway? Every single one of us is going to the same place; or state should I say. Death. An accident victim at 20 was middle aged at 10. My great-grandmother was not middle aged until she was 50.
Why am I asking this inane question that has been pondered and pounded for years. Because I am at that place and time where I am middle aged but not middle aged.
If I thought that life was going to be just like it is today in 5,10, 15 years I would end it right now.
I still have the beliefs and hopes of an 18 year old.
My life still has meaning and my being still has life.
I don’t know what they are today any more than I did when I was 18.
I write all of this tonight because I’m tired of being being looked at as I didn’t exist. I walk by someone and I could be a pogo stick as far as they were concerned.
I don’t expect any changes. I don’t even expect to be recognized as a human being on the street.
However, writing down words and thoughts and feelings makes me visible again.
Culture, like brand, is misunderstood and often discounted as a touchy-feely component of business that belongs to HR. It’s not intangible or fluffy, it’s not a vibe or the office décor. It’s one of the most important drivers that has to be set or adjusted to push long-term, sustainable success. It’s not good enough just to have an amazing product and a healthy bank balance. Long-term success is dependent on a culture that is nurtured and alive. Culture is the environment in which your strategy and your brand thrives or dies a slow death.
I would say this even stronger: culture is what is implemented in the organization and in the head of the employees while strategies, plans and organization charts are incomplete and one dimensional sketches of what we want the organization to be. The problem is that we think that we can bypass the concept of culture to get directly from these sketchy plans to changed organizational behavior, when in fact the changed culture is what we really want to achieve.
