Subscribe to the Three Star Leadership Blog

The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check Wally's Three Star Leadership Letter

Find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.

Find out more about Wally's coaching services.

I love this lead from Joe Guy Collier's story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution headed "Chick-fil-A founder opens pizza restaurant:"

"What will the cows think? Truett Cathy, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Chick-fil-A, is opening a pizza place. Cathy, 87, has made his name selling chicken sandwiches, backed by a popular set of advertisements that feature cows urging people to "Eat Mor Chikin." But in an interview Friday, Cathy said he was looking forward to opening a new venture called Upscale Pizza."

Disney used to run a series of ads where a triumphant ballplayer would be asked what he was going to do now that he had won the championship in his sport. The answer was "I'm going to Disneyland."

That might be Ok for advertising, but the great achievers don't go to Disneyland. They go on to something else that's productive and fulfilling.

When a reporter asked Linus Pauling what you do after you win the Nobel Prize, Pauling's answer was short and sweet: "Change fields." That's exactly what he did.

Even before winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954, Pauling began publishing papers on the atomic nucleus, but his second career really involved opposing the spread of nuclear weapons. In 1962 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for those efforts. He also researched extending healthy human life though, among other things, mega-doses of Vitamin C.

Or consider Malcolm McLean, one of my business heroes. He started what became McLean trucking company during the Depression with a single second-hand truck. The fleet was almost 2000 trucks by the time he sold the company for six million dollars in 1955.

He took the money and bought the Pan Atlantic Tanker Company, which owned a fleet of mostly rusting oil tankers. He renamed the company Sea-Land and set about inventing the shipping container. He sold Sea-Land in 1969 for $160 million.

He wasn't done yet. He went on to develop a way to move a patient from a stretcher to a hospital bed with less discomfort. He set up a hog farm that was a model of cleanliness.

This isn't just a habit of the highly successful. Human beings are wired to work best when they're busy and contributing. For Martin Luther it was simple: "When I rest, I rust."

What Cathy, Pauling, and McLean did may well become the career model for the future. There will be different careers and work. There may be sabbaticals along the way. Retirement as we know it, the big rest and the end of a career with only vacations, may disappear altogether.

My own father, the pastor, modeled this for me. He retired early, at 63, because my mother had cancer and they wanted to spend her last years near their grandchildren when they weren't traveling.

He and Mom took the train across the continent. We met them in Oakland. Dad had been, my mother told us, pacing up and down the train as he worked out what he would do with his "retirement."

He was bursting with possibilities. He might write a book about German military chaplains in the Second World War. He was thinking about getting a PhD in history to fulfill a dream of his youth. And he and Mom had an extensive "bucket list" of places they wanted to visit together. They made it to most of them.

My father lived 25 more years. My mother died and my father married Barbara who brought him joy for almost twenty years. During those years he took one part-time pastorate after another.

Each one was a new challenge. Each one seemed to give him life and purpose.

Like Truett Cathy, my father, lived his life according to a set of spiritual principles and values. He took what he believed and determined what it should mean for his life. Then he tried to do it.

That's why it's fitting that one of his final sermons was titled "No Stopping Allowed." It concludes with this thought: "even when we have what might be called transfiguration experiences, we cannot just stop there and pitch our tents, for there is always something ahead for you."

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

Request your free copy of "Meeting the Challenges of the Boomer Brain Drain: An integrated approach."

Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.