Today is April 28 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “Do you help people understand?
FedEx founder Fred Smith knows all too well the time he was misunderstood.
While he was a student at Yale University, Smith wrote a paper on the concept of reliable overnight delivery. Such a concept was foreign at the time and hard to comprehend for many people.
A Yale management professor gave Smith a C grade on the paper and wrote “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
After graduating Yale Smith joined the Marines in 1966 and completed two tours in Vietnam.
He narrowly survived a Vietcong ambush after losing his helmet, grenade and gun. Upon returning home he returned to the idea he developed at Yale and founded Federal Express in 1971 after raising a then astonishing $91 million in venture capital.
Federal Express officially began operations on April 17, 1973, with 389 team members. That night, 14 small aircraft took off from Memphis and delivered 186 packages to 25 U.S. cities from Rochester, New York, to Miami, Florida.
Though the company did not show a profit until July 1975, it soon became the premier carrier of high-priority goods in the marketplace and set the standard for the express shipping industry it established. In his first 26 months in business he totaled $29 million in losses. Desperate to pay bills, he flew to Las Vegas, won $27,000 at blackjack and wired it back to FedEx. Although still heavily in debt, Smith had FedEx running more effectively by 1976 with revenues of $75 million. FedEx went public in 1978.
American essayist, lecturer, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote "Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
Smith was misunderstood yet went ahead and launched FedEx to help people understand.
When is the last time you were misunderstood; and then worked hard to help people understand?