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A Path Not Always Chosen
An Interview with Craig Leiser:
Consultant, Engineer
(August 4, 1998)
Meet Craig Leiser:
Craig Leiser has had the opportunity to try many different paths in life other than the one he originally expected to travel. From working in General Electric's atomic labs and the nuclear products division at 3M, Craig moved from back room engineer to front room customer technical support and later to product research and development in the traffic control business, only to wind up the electronic security industry. He has recently started a fruitful career away from corporate America as a freelance consultant.
Interview Excerpts
Swimming In Uncharted Waters
Quantifying Success
A Little Happy Here, A Little Happy There
Staying Optimistic
Never Give Up
If you jump into uncharted waters, you realize you can still
swim.
Swimming In Uncharted Waters
One thing to remember about change is that if you make the jump one, two, three times, the decisions keep getting easier. If you jump into uncharted waters, you realize you can still swim. You may have to use a different stroke, but you still swim and it's still water.
...success is not a singular objective, but a continuous objective.
So part of success is sharing it. Quantifying Success
The easy way is to define success is to try and quantify it. It's dollars or units or acres, but I think that's the wrong way. Success to me is: can you define a target or an objective and reach it? Can you reach it with the expenditure of resources that you thought you could. To me success is an identification of an objective that is worthwhile, and worthwhile is relevant, developing a plan to achieve that objective, and meeting that objective without overspending the resources. Part of this is a self-esteem factor. Do you feel good about yourself for accomplishing the objective.
One thing I've learned as an engineer is that, no matter how hard you try, when you achieve something you usually learn enough along the way that there was an easier and better way to have done it. That's part of the process. So what that says is that success is not a singular objective, but a continuous objective. So part of success is sharing it.
A little happy here and a little happy there and pretty soon
you've gone through the whole day happy. A Little Happy Here, A Little Happy There
I think it's important to have failures to balance your successes. I enjoyed myself playing golf today and it was a great success. It was good weather. Four great people were playing. I had a few good shots. But if you added up the scores, it was absolutely horrible. I think there's a great deal of that in life. Everything is relative and not everything has to be a big happiness. There are a lot of little happinesses like going out to the garden and eating the first raspberry of the year. A little happy here and a little happy there and pretty soon you've gone through the whole day happy.
There are so many things that can and should make you happy if
you just bother to look for them. Staying Optimistic
Part of it (staying optimistic) is the relativity. If you can only have big happiness or big success, it's $100 million deal or it's no deal at all attitude, you're going to have a long unhappy life. There are so many things that can and should make you happy if you just bother to look for them. I don't see the benefit of being unhappy.
Sometimes mistakes are more valuable than what you intended to
accomplish. Never Give Up
Never give up. The next rock you turn over could contain that nugget of gold under it. Be positive. If something doesn't work try something else. You learn from every failure so try something different. Sometimes mistakes are more valuable than what you intended to accomplish - look at scotch tape and post-it note to name just a few examples from my old company 3M.
© Copyright Chris Moeller & Brian Ardinger, 1998
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