(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: http://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mass-Blog-Book-Review-Extra-Leadership-for-Engineers.mp3)
I’m reading a great business book that has equally valuable life lessons. The book is “Leadership for Engineers,” by Mike Kotecki (whom I got to know when I interviewed him during my career in the business press). His book is worthwhile for anyone to whom life has granted responsibilities and blessings beyond their pay grade.
It concludes with advice for anyone contemplating that time in life when they’re looking back on what they accomplished with those responsibilities and blessings. He recommends compiling a “Hospice Report Card,” to examine the learnings they’ve accumulated, the values that resulted, and where those values will lead them. On his checklist are:
–did I do good work?
–were people better off for having known me?
–when given the choice, did I take the high road despite the potholes and scattered human remains?
AND MOST IMPORTANT, IN MY OPINION:
–Was I at least as good of a parent, sibling, friend, offspring, spouse, or partner as I was an employee?
He advises his reader to periodically re-examine their Hospice Report Card to check the health of their values and the harmony in their life “while you still have time to modify your actions … and you are not yet wearing a catheter.”
That long preamble brings us to the above cartoon, which demands a good caption. The situation involves people who’ve advanced past hospice to a place that strips them of the scant coverage of their backless gowns. My entry in this contest advises, in such a situation, you should accentuate any positive:
“Better reception than I expected.”