Lesson 4: Don’t miss a moment
Tom Lutz. Tom Lutz has changed lives. Hundreds of them. So I can’t possibly capture all of Tom’s wisdom in a single post. The thousands of BCG’ers around the globe who’ve worked with Tom will testify to this fact. So I won’t even try. Instead, I’m going only to recount one of the most impactful lessons for me.
It was 2008 and I was on my first project for Tom. (I was lucky to have a couple.)
It was the beginning of the great recession and things seemed to be getting worse everywhere. In consulting it was as bad as it could be. When the world is falling apart, no one wants to spend money on contract work. As we all panicked, Tom was steady. He continued to dole out his textbook wisdom to those of us around him preparing to make the wrong choices. One of the most common failures people were preparing to make was rushing back to the workforce after graduate school.
For context, BCG hires a horde of young business people every year out of the best business schools and undergraduate institutions in the world. When the world is falling apart, even these recruits feel the pressure. They worry about their debt. They worry about their job security. They worry about every decision. And with their worries, they rush back into the workforce and fight tooth and nail to ensure they aren’t the ones at risk.
But for those that met Tom, these worries disappeared. Tom reminded people that their careers would span many economic cycles. While things seemed bleak today, they’d get better. But they would never get the time they spent worrying about the crisis back. That was lost forever. Instead, they should be doing the work they enjoyed, spending time with family and friends, and savoring the moments they could. Tom was especially transparent about this to the students who were returning to BCG from school. In Tom’s mind, they had the unique opportunity to travel the world, to intern with professional sports teams, to spend time with aging parents. Rushing back to BCG out of fear was a rational response; but it was also a response that would lose them a once in a lifetime moment.
I recall eating dinner with another of Tom’s disciples, Michael Stutts. Stutts, has since gone on to become a partner at BCG and now is the Chief Customer Officer at Bloomin Brands. Stutts had been considering, at the time, rushing back to the firm to weather the crisis or pursuing a passion project. Tom told him that his job would be safe and that he should think deeply before passing up the opportunity. With confidence in Stutts’ talent, he mentioned that later he would “have all the money to do what he desired, but none of the time to make it a reality.” Tom didn’t want Stutts to miss a big moment. He gave Stutts the flexibility take as much time as he wanted. Stutts decided to take him up on it and follow his idol — Bruce Springsteen — on a world tour before returning to the firm. I’m positive he’ll never regret that decision.
The best people I’ve ever worked with understand the importance of specific moments. They understand that time moves in one direction. And if you don’t take the unique opportunities you have, when they come, you miss them forever. Delaying a return to the workforce during a crisis may seem like a small example of this. It’s not. The anxiety of that decision is no different than the decision to buy a company, to strike or end a partnership, or to change career focus. To make the right decision you need to recognize that you can’t miss the moment. You have to keep your decisions in perspective. You have to be steady.
When I impart Tom’s ethos to my teams, I tend to simplify it in saying that life is too short to drink bad wine. Time is short. Keep it in perspective. Understand your moments to savor. Understand your moments to work. And no matter what you do, don’t miss a moment in a panic.
