{"id":64,"date":"2012-06-08T21:43:30","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T04:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hachiroku.ca\/dev\/project\/wordpress\/?p=64"},"modified":"2020-10-11T16:25:03","modified_gmt":"2020-10-11T23:25:03","slug":"it-doesnt-matter-how-you-start-it-matters-how-you-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/it-doesnt-matter-how-you-start-it-matters-how-you-finish\/","title":{"rendered":"It doesn’t matter how you start…it matters how you finish."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Back in the 90’s I worked at a summer camp called Sylvan Acres. The camp did not own its own property so it had to rent the Cowichan Lake Education Centre or C.L.E.C. to run camps. The camp director was a man by the name of Wayne Stewart. Wayne had what I consider to be one of the best approaches to camp and staff development. Wayne’s approach was to invest in his staff rather than the program. I remember him saying: “I don’t need to focus on ensuring the campers enjoy their time at camp. I need to focus on the staff and in turn the staff will ensure that the campers enjoy camp.”. It was somewhat revolutionary for a camp director to not focus on the program. Many other camps focused heavily on program; the water sports, wide games, campfire etc. Wayne however focused the vast majority of his attention on the staff. He believed that an investment in the staff would reap huge benefits for the campers. But I digress…<\/p>\n

Each summer was eight weeks long. One week of staff training followed by seven weeks of summer camp which completed just before Labour Day weekend. Each camp ran from Sunday to Saturday so there was just about 24 hours off for staff between camps. As you can imagine after 5 weeks or so people are tired, emotions are frayed and staff are thinking “Will this ever end?”. I know I was certainly feeling this in the summer of 1996. One day Wayne took me aside and shared with me a life axiom that I now share with you. He said “It doesn’t matter how you start. It matters how you finish.”.<\/p>\n

\"reunion_campfire\"<\/a>
Wayne Stewart speaking at a staff reunion in 2008.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Working at camp is not a sprint…it is a marathon. You begin all full of energy, you look your best, you are on your best behaviour. As the summer progresses your true colours begin to shine through whether you like it or not. It is then that you begin to understand what you are really like. It is in these times that we have a choice to make. You can be one of the following:<\/p>\n

a) part of the solution
\nb) part of the problem
\nc) part of the landscape<\/p>\n

Now I know some of you are asking yourselves: “Craig what does this have to do with project management or process improvement?”. It’s simple. We will all come across projects that are difficult. Projects that don’t go the way we want for one reason or another. The question should be “How are we going to finish?”. Are we going to throw in the towel? Are we going to raise the white flag and signal our surrender? In the end each of us must choose how we are going to finish. Finish our school, finish our work, finish our life.<\/p>\n

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How you finish says a lot about your character.<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n

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\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the 90’s I worked at a summer camp called Sylvan Acres. The camp did not own its own property so it had to rent the Cowichan Lake Education Centre or C.L.E.C. to run camps. The camp director was a man by the name of Wayne Stewart. Wayne had what I consider to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maxims","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themercers.ca\/OrderOutOfChaos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}