Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Leaders Explain

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped the last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided emotional lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Leaders Explain:  Some of the mind-bending aspects of the adoption arrive in common events of everyday life.  For example, if I tell you I will meet you on Thursday and today is Tuesday your brain creates a container of time that you understand.  The concept of time is self-evident.  An hour consists of a certain number of minutes, a day of hours and a year of days. We may define time, but we rarely think about the fundamental nature of time.

Ancient cultures such as Incan, Mayan, Hopi, the Babylonians and others have a concept of a wheel of time, a non-linear view of time as cyclical and consisting of repeating ages.  The western world tends to follow the Roman concept that time is linear.  Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian Time.

Meskerem and Tarikua arrived with no concept of time; wheel or line.  They are from a small town called Areka in in the Wolaita Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia.  Did they know what a year was?  Nope.  A calendar?  They had never seen one.  Clock or watch?  Might have been a Eudiometer for all they knew.  Where do you start?  Fortunately that pliant organ called the brain seeks to understand.  If it was Friday and we talked about something happening Sunday the girls would say, “We eat?” Yes “We sleep?” Yes “We wake?” Yes “We eat?” Yes “We play?” Yes “We watch TV?” Yes…You get the picture.  The girls created time by counting events that would occur.  If they understood the events and knew the number of events, their brain could create a container of time.  We had to fight the curse of knowledge to explain a basic concept like time to someone who does not know the notion.

Chip and Dan Heath wrote a book called Made to Stick and outlined the danger of vague strategy statements.  They contend leaders love directives like “Delight Customers” or “Improve Sales Productivity” because of the curse of knowledge. A leader may have years of immersion in the logic of certain subjects.  When s/he speaks abstractly they are summarizing the wealth of data in their head. But to folks not familiar with the underlying meaning it sounds like Charlie Brown's Teacher.  As a result, strategies don’t stick.  “I want you to focus on the Customer Journey” to someone on my team can be as abstract as “I will be gone at work for three days” is to an Ethiopian daughter.

A leader can add an unintended accelerant to the curse of knowledge by blocking the ability for an employee to seek to understand.  I made this mistake at a software company a few years ago.  I started with a vague strategy statement, “I want us to focus on managing the pipeline, not just the forecast” and then increased the degree of difficulty for the team by inadvertently blocking their ability to ‘not understand’.  How?  When I talked to the team about the new strategy I used words like, “Really, this is not complicated…this is one of the most basic task of field leadership” My intent was honorable, I was trying to tell them it was easy.  Yet making statements like, “This is a low IQ task to master” built a barrier to their ability to understand.  If I thought it was simple, how could they come to me and admit they did not get it?

What does a wrinkle in time have to do with leadership?  The application is “Leaders Explain” A good leader takes the time end effort to explain issues, strategies and plans in language and stories that the team can understand.  And that leader will give the team the freedom to ‘not understand’.

“A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it”- Marcel Proust 

Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Leaders Tell Stories

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided emotional lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Leaders Tell Stories:  September 5^th, 2012 was a crisp evening for an al fresco glass of wine in Dallas.  Being outside in Dallas was odd; I live in Austin and spend a lot of time in Dallas – just never outside.  If you travel by air from Austin to most anywhere, all flights lead through sprawling DFW Airport.  Rumor has it that there are more top-tier AA Executive Platinum flyers living in Austin than any other city.  Could be; @AmericanAir is the Roman Road of the sky for those of us from the Keep it Weird city.

That evening was a gift to me, I was flying back through Dallas and needed to see a customer the next morning so I was able to have dinner with two of my oldest and dearest friends.  Over a great Malbec, we talked for a long time about the adoption process – at one point I apologized.  I apologize often when I talk to people because there are so many stories, “I am sorry you two, I have to stop telling you stories, I am turning this into a conversation about Remy and Tara”.  To which my dear friend said, “Alex – we want to hear these stories, they are all new to us and we have seen the pictures but we want to know about this”.  Was he just making me feel good?  I don’t know but there were a couple of times I looked at my bestie and thought I saw mist in his eyes.

What do the adoption stories do for these two close friends?  Truth be told, I really don’t know.  Only in their heart do they know.  Why do stories move us?   What stories move us?  Donald Miller, wrote a great book titled A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  In it he said, “If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to be meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either”

Many people, teams and companies set goals.  We are taught this in Business School.  Attention class, today we will learn how to establish specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-targeted (S.M.A.R.T ) goals.  We set goals we want to accomplish, but how many teams or companies live stories worth telling? 

The leader owns and tells the story.  The story has a character; it is your team.  There is a plot.  There is desire – what is it the character wants?  There is a reason for the desire…a deep unquenchable ‘why’.  And there will be conflict – people and situations will conspire to keep your character’s desire from being fulfilled.  The more you overcome the greater the ending.

Leaders don’t just set goals, they ask their team to live a story worth telling. 

“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.” - Harold Goddard

Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Problems with Posing

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Problems with Posing:  Our older children, the biological boys named Will and Sam, have nicknames born of their personalities.  Will is Socrates, the enigmatic founder of Western philosophy and Sam is Lancelot, King Arthur’s greatest champion and the first to slay an injustice.  Lancelot started life as Caveman but in one glorious moment the caterpillar transformed into the butterfly.

On December 9^th, 2005 Disney released The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.  Brettne and I sat with members of our extended family in a packed theater watching good triumph over evil.  In the pivotal scene right after Aslan’s Christ-like resurrection, the good guys are losing the battle against the Witch and Aslan is playing with Susan and Lucy.  Caveman is agitated.  Caveman leans forward. The battle rages.  The lion gets tickled.  Caveman cannot take it anymore. 

Five year old Sam leaps up on the theater chair bouncing as if it is his own personal trebuchet and bellows in his new found Lancelot voice, “Aslan – Get in the War!”  To which Aslan dutifully complies.  Caveman came into the theater and Lancelot departed.  Since that day, Sam has become the expert on the greatest warriors of all time; Aztecs, Mamluks, Samurai and Spartans.  He knows them all.  He longs to be one with them.

Fast forward seven years.  The girls have just arrived from Ethiopia and the weather breaks in Austin.  With the mercury finally dipping below 107⁰ we are able to turn on the hot tub.  Neither girl knows how to swim at this point so the combination of the heat and head-high water has them tiptoeing about daintily. But not Lancelot.  He is provoking.  He is beginning the joust. He is testing his sister Meskerem.  Sam begins to make a series of highly choreographed moves reminiscent of Chow Yun-Fat in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

“Sam, esstoppit.  Sam, estoppit” Meskerem chants.  But Lancelot continues.  Samurai becomes Ninja and Ninja morphs to Karate Kid Crane Kick.  “Sam, estoppit!” Then Meskerem gets quiet, widens her stance, drops low, brings both hands out in front of her, beckons Lancelot to her with five fingers and lunges with a feline speed and fury.

“Whoa, Dad – what the heck was that” a wide-eyed Sam sputtered as he tripped over himself backpedaling.  “Well Sam, you learned to fight playing Assassins’ Creed on XBOX 360 and Meskerem learned to fight, well….fighting” Posing did not pay off for Sam.  The balance of power between brother and sister shifted ever so slightly.

Lancelot?  Hot tubs?  Kid’s judo?  What does that have to do with leadership?  The application is “Posing Causes Problems” There are all sorts of things your folks are better at doing than you are.  They do not need you to be better than them at the things that make them great.  That is not leadership; that is playground ‘one-upmanship’.  Don’t pose, lead.  Provide hope.  Define the future.  Set the tone.  Model the culture.  Reward the doers.  Own the ‘What'.  Delegate the ‘How’.  Lead.  Don’t pose. 

“Authenticity is the alignment of head, mouth, heart, and feet - thinking, saying, feeling, and doing the same thing - consistently. This builds trust, and followers love leaders they can trust” – Lance Secretan

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: To Die For

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

To Die For:  On December 5^th, 2011 my wife Brettne and I were at the AWAA Transition Home to meet with our girl’s doctor for the first time.  This home houses children in the process of an international adoption.  The home itself is an oasis; you cannot imagine how difficult it is to maintain a structure in Ethiopia.  Beyond just the home as a haven the staff is amazing; skilled in medicine, therapy, counseling and the greatest of all…love.

We sat with the girls in silence outside the doctor’s office as if waiting for the principal.  A stern looking woman in her late 40’s or early 50’s, white coat, hair pulled back tight and Granny Glasses perched on the tip of her nose walked in crisply.  The girls sat up straight.  The doctor began to mechanically read through the girl’s health report, medications they had been prescribed and results of visits.

As she chirped in a staccato manner I saw her eyes come across something.  She pulled off her glasses allowing them to hang below her neck. Her face broke into a warm smile and her body language moved from professor to mother.  She dropped the report, put both of her hands over her heart and said, “Oh – the girls are Wolaita, as am I; they are my people, my tribe…they are mine!” She started talking to the girls, switching from Amharic, the statutory language of Ethiopia to Wolaytta, the girls tribal language.  I watched the girls physically change at the sound of their language.  The immediate connection was palpable.  I wanted it.  I wanted tribe.

What is a tribe in Western Society?  The Encyclopedia Britannica defines a tribe as “a notional form of human social organization having temporary or permanent political integration, and defined by traditions of common descent, language, culture, and ideology” We don’t have that here.  What must it feel like?  To die for; I think that is how you might describe a tribal feeling.  Your tribe is the people for whom you would willingly die.  Family yes.  Who else?  One of the most famous lines in history is greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

But you say, “Alex – die for our tribe?  Die for those we lead?  What does that have to do with business?”  Hang with me for a minute.  I am not in the military and I therefore never risk it all as do the men and women in the armed services.  But there is lesser way you have to be willing to ‘die’.  One of my favorite books is The Book of Five Rings – by Miyamoto Musashi.  It is a book on strategy, tactics, and philosophy that is still studied today.  Through the book Musashi defends his thesis: the one who conquers themselves is ready to take on the world.  My main take away from this book has always been, “Live your life as if you are already dead and you will always take the right risks”

“Die?  Live as dead?  Five Rings?” The application for us is “Are you willing to be fired?”  When you lead you have to be willing to lose your job every day or you will never make the right decisions for the success of the organization and the people under your authority.  Tribe.  We can have it, but only if we are willing to ‘die’ for it.

“I am a member of a team, and I rely on the team, I defer to it and sacrifice for it, because the team, not the individual, is the ultimate champion” – Mia Hamm

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: Navigating Scars

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the voyage has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

Navigating Scars – The return flight from Addis to Austin may not be the longest flight in the world but it is close. Addis to DC is the first leg.  Wheels up at 10PM, which puts you at the airport at about 8PM.  Better eat before that, as there is no McDonalds at Bole Airport.  You land at Fiumicino at 3AM for fuel and then arrive at Dulles in DC the next morning, a short 17 hours in a metal tube.  Wind your way through immigration and customs to an empty airport and sit in the Admiral's Club for about an hour waiting for the next leg to Dallas followed by a short hop into Austin Texas.  All in, counting airport time, it is about 28 hours en-route.  Try that on your first ever plane ride.

The trip started with the girls’ first ride on an escalator, which was a doppelganger for a scene from The Lost Boys of Sudan.  It ended through the back door of our house with a welcome by the family Labradoodle, Copper and then all hell broke loose…let me fill in the gaps.  Children are scared of dogs in Ethiopia, in Addis alone there are an estimated 250,000 stray dogs and our youngest daughter has scars on her back that until a few weeks into her arrival at our house were a mystery.  Sense a slow motion train wreck?

When sweet Copper wiggled up to Tarikua, my daughter became terrified and climbed up me like a pacific islander scaling a palm tree.  This surprised us as we knew about the dog terrors and had spent time showing the girls pictures of our dog and watched both girls hug and kiss the picture.  What was going on?  I attributed it to nerves and kept trying to press Tarikua to be next to our dog so she could see Copper was no threat.  For some reason this was an accelerant to her terror and for 72 hours her feet did not touch the ground if Copper circled.

About three to four weeks into the girls’ American journey my older daughter Meskerem strung together enough English to tell us the story about Tarikua’s scars.  It seems that at some point a couple of years ago, the girls were playing and a wild dog crashed through the underbrush.  The kids ran, except Tarikua tripped and the dog attacked her.  She tucked into the Pillbug position defending against the mini Cujo.  The dagger in my heart?  The dog that attacked Tarikua was the same color as our dog Copper.  As Paul Harvey would say, “Now I knew the rest of story”

Cormac McCarthy wrote, “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”  The moment I learned of the copper colored attack I understood a past.  As leaders we sometimes ask our folks to do something logical and doable but they do not move or they scamper up the palm tree to safety.  Before we write them off as incapable we should take the time to look for scars.  It may just be that we have to help them navigate their scars to get them to where they want to be.

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: Stimson’s Sagacity

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

Stimson’s Sagacity: On April 4^th, 2012 I walked my oldest daughter into Bridge Point Elementary School.  I was feeling guilty.  Since our kids go to public school and Meskerem is my daughter the school could not say ‘no’.  At this point the girls were about six weeks in the States and their vocabulary was only up to about 50 words; this was clearly not going to be your normal ESL situation.  I had my English: Amharic Cheat Sheet prepared for the teachers; they all had my mobile number in hand.  But I still felt remorseful, like I was dumping a decision my wife and I made upon a decidedly non-volunteer army.

I could not have been more wrong about the situation. 

I walked into the main office area to check Meskerem in for the first time and by coincidence most of the school’s leadership team was there, “Meskerem, we have been waiting for you!”  There were five adults in the room and they were bursting with joy.  But it was a unique joy…a joy I did not recall seeing prior to this moment.  I am sure you’ve had moments when you were happy for someone else, “I am so happy you won the business!”  Or you’ve also experienced happiness when someone did something for you, “Wow – that was so nice of you, that makes me so happy!”

But this was different; they were filled with joy based upon the part they were going to play in the restoration of an orphan.  They were getting to do what they were trained to do, what they love to do and see it make an incredible, indelible mark on someone’s life.  It was an inner joy that they could not contain.

Henry Stimson, Secretary of War under President Taft and FDR said, “The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him”

People will rise up or sink down to our level of expectation in them.  I am an optimist and believe that the 96% of humanity who are not sociopathic want to work hard and do the right thing.  But there, in that school office on that date in April, I underestimated the staff at my daughter’s school.   I thought I was handing them work; they believed they had been given a gift.

Don’t deny someone the opportunity to do something great.  One great lesson in this adventure is that work is not a four-letter word if someone is convinced that what he or she does makes a difference and they have the opportunity to be proud of their work.

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” ― Mark Twain

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: Stockdale Paradox

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

Stockdale Paradox:  A great friend and former boss Chip Nemesi had many truisms; one that always stuck with me was “You can’t learn to swim in the front yard”

The agency we used for the adoption insisted that we pursue the adoption in a manner consist with the Hague Adoption Convention even though Ethiopia has not ratified this treaty.  This meant quite a bit of on-line education, books to read and counseling from very gifted social workers.  All of the pre-work instilled in me a belief that we were ready, but in reality we were just doing the butterfly stroke in the tall grass.

One can read all the material they want and then they are face to face with two young children aged 5 and 9 from rural Ethiopia with no English, no real concept of indoor plumbing and an ability to look at a fork as if it was some sort of mystical ancient Jedi talisman.  Mix that in with a couple of American boys and all hell broke loose. 

Napolean said, “A leader is a dealer in hope” The leader’s job is to paint a picture of a better future but how do you bring hope into difficult situations?  In  Good to Great, Jim Collins writes about a conversation he had with Admiral James Stockdale regarding his time in the Vietnamese POW camp. “I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

When Collins asked who didn't make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied, “Oh, that's easy, the optimists. They were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

Stockdale then added, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

See the truth, but not for worse than it is.  One great lesson in this adventure is that we were always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks the reason for the hope that we had…but it was hope grounded in the reality of the moment.  

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.” - Emily Dickinson

Leadership Lessons from an Adoption: Judge Not

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided poignant lessons; some of them even apply to leadership. 

Judge Not:  On November 29^th, 2011 we left dinner at the Habesha Cultural Restaurant and headed back to the Yebsabi Guest House for our first full night sleep in Addis Ababa.

The dinner was great, although I felt my alligator arms sprout as I parted with 400 Ethiopian Birr (ETB).  Seemed expensive until I did a quick calculation, it was only about $25 at home.  I was congratulating myself on the dining bargain when the reality of what we just spent hit me.  According to the World Bank, the average wage in Ethiopia is $30/Month.

As I am contemplating the reality of spending a month’s income on dinner I got hit with a profound one-two punch.  Our route back to the guesthouse took us through the red-light district of Addis.  After meeting our daughters for the first time that morning, the sight of girls standing on the corner waiting to get into a car wrecked me.  What kind of terror must that be for a girl that age?  Why are they doing this?  Did they volunteer?  Is someone making them?

The life expectancy in Ethiopia is about 60 years, which puts it at 150^th or so in the world.  The top two causes of death are influenza/pneumonia and diarrheal diseases.  For perspective those are number nine and thirty-eight in the United States.  This means a lot of young adults die and leave widows and orphans behind.  Add to that a 47% literacy rate for women and you being to see the challenges in just making it to tomorrow.

Who has the right to judge other people?  Whom should I judge?  To judge is to form an opinion or estimate.  But to observe is to see, watch, perceive, or notice, especially so as to learn something.  Judge = subjective.  Observe = objective.  When I judge someone by default I am putting myself above him or her.  Is it possible to observe the facts of what they have done without placing them in a lesser position then me?  Can we hold someone to a standard of performance without judging?

When we were at the orphanage meeting our girls we saw a mom arrive with a baby and wait for a couple of hours.  We did not know what was going on.  Then we saw her walk in and leave with empty arms; sobbing.  She had dropped her baby off, likely to never see the child again.  Ripped my heart out watching her make a choice for the child to be somewhere else.  Who am I to judge?  I have never tried to raise a child on less than a dollar a day.

Judge Not. Many things at work drive me nuts.  Stupidity, laziness, lack of ethics, lack of motivation, sloppiness, sloth, poor treatment of a customer…the list goes on.  But if I call you lazy, I have judged you.  The leadership lesson to me is to navigate the tension between observing, having expectations, holding people accountable, calling them out when they don’t get something done AND not judging.  For that is what I want to do: Judge Not

Deepak Chopra, “If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very important to be aware of them every time they come up.” - Ah Deepak, without these three, what would I do all day long?  Lead?

Back to the blog

The last time I wrote in this blog was over three years ago and at that point I merely pointed to the Eloqua Blog.  I left Eloqua on Friday the 13th and am now returning to this blog.  I thought I would start with my goodbye letter to my 'Feloquans' and then will probably move on to some musings on the adoption of our daughters which has been the greatest adventure of my life

Feloquans,

“My wife and I have been together for 26 years and she tells me that my clothing comes back in style about every eight years.  My sons tell me I went to school ‘back in the day’.  The TSA laughs at the shoehorn I pack in my carry-on”  If you weren’t here three years ago you probably missed that opening line in one of my favorite blog posts, Am I Old School?

While I did get the double pleats out of my pants, I still wear cuffs and the most played song on my iTunes account is Boston - Don't Look Back, “Don't look back, a new day is breaking, it's been too long since I felt this way.  I don't mind where I get taken the road is calling, today is the day”

My iTunes is screaming Old School at me.

The little band out of Boston reminds me that today I say goodbye to you.  But unlike the ode to the future by the incomparable Tom Scholz, I do want to look back.  A wise person once told me when leaving an organization you should contemplate three questions.  What have you learned?  What do you believe will happen in the future?  What do you hope for the people on the team?

What have I learned in my time at Eloqua?  Culture matters.  Culture really does eat strategy on a cold plate for breakfast.  Culture is the shared values of a group of people and when those values are good and right teams do amazing things.  Eloqua was, is and will always be about our customers and Getting it Done and Doing it Right.  Why Eloqua?  “We really do care about our customers being proud of their work.  It is why we exist and it is Doing it Right” – I wrote that to you after Eloqua Experience one year.  It was true then and it is true tomorrow.  My greatest lesson at Eloqua is that people want to be in an environment that honors honorable values.  When each of us believes deeply that doing the right thing matters we become incredibly motivated, passionate and achieve greatness

What do I believe will happen in the future?  Charles de Gaulle said, “The graveyards of the world are filled with the tombstones of irreplaceable men” Eloqua is bigger than any person.  The world of marketing is changing and Eloqua has the technology the world needs.  Oracle touches every corner of the earth and over 300,000 customers.  Through Oracle, Eloqua can impact marketing more than it ever could by itself.  I know that Oracle will continue to invest money, time, people and technology and greatly expand Eloqua’s impact.  Every legitimate business request we brought to Oracle has been funded enthusiastically.  Oracle is the accelerant to the goal we always had; to change the way the world does marketing.

What do I hope for the Feloquans?  Many people set goals worth attaining…few people live stories worth telling.  To quote Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, “Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life” I hope you live a story worth telling and you are passionate about what you are doing.  The path to passion is to know what you are doing, know why you are doing it, believe that it matters and be proud of your work.  Don’t ever settle for anything less.  Don’t ever be willing to let someone else write a boring story with your life.  Insist that the story you live has passion and remember that the greatest stories ever told are ultimately about someone who overcomes something to get what they want.  Run toward the obstacles and the challenges; if there is nothing to overcome; the story is dull.

I want to leave you with one final word.  Kinship.  Seven months ago at our kickoff meeting in Toronto we talked about kinship and I defined it as ‘when the things that hold us together are stronger than the things that can tear us apart’.  Ultimately at Eloqua what we have is Kinship. 

Kinship is Old School.

Thank you for letting me be a Feloquan.  This has turned out to be one of the greatest experiences in my life and I am grateful.  I have to bring this to a close or Nick Bell will start charging me for excess words…so I’ll end with some Old School Tom Petty off of Into the Great Wide Open,

“You and I will meet again when we're least expecting it.  One day in some far off place, I will recognize your face.  I won't say goodbye my friend for you and I will meet again”

PS – Many of you have asked me, “Alex – what are your plans?”  I have big plans.  On Monday, I plan on driving two little Ethiopians princesses that call me ‘doddy’ to school.  If you want to stay in contact I welcome the opportunity – I can be found at ashootm@mac.com or on mobile at 512.968.4503.