Looking Back - Do I miss ANYTHING?

Our home for 30 - 40 hours of the week.

Now that I have some down time, I've been looking back on the whirlwind that was work in the year or two before retirement. There's not much that I miss. Certainly not the all day operating committee meetings, or the all day division reviews, or the all day lab and marketing reviews.

One of the things I do miss is seeing the world from 40,000 + feet. Those last two years as part of the global management team afforded me near-stratospheric views of the world as it passed underneath our corporate jet at 500+ miles per hour. Every three months or so our business calendar had us visiting one continent or another. Generally the schedule had us leaving on a Friday or Saturday with a visit to one country per day for a week, returning on the following Saturday. In each country, we would arrive either the night before or the morning of the review date, spend a day in one of those all day reviews, and enjoy one dinner with the management team the night before or after the meeting. It was a killer schedule that left little time for sleep (or exercise), and made staying awake and interested one of our primary and most challenging objectives.

Here is a short story to illustrate this challenge as a common scenario we would often laugh and tease each other about on the departing flight.

The conclusion of each visit would include a presentation by our leader and Executive Vice President to the full management team of the subsidiary. In that presentation, he would review our global strategic plan, and summarize his views of critical issues and actions for that country to address as part of meeting that plan. As protocol dictated, his team would sit in the front row seats, along with the local executive team, followed by all the managers and supervisors of the business in that country - with anywhere from 20 to 120 people in the room, depending on the size of the subsidiary. Eighty percent of the presentation, adapted slightly for each country, would contain the same visuals and the same content. By the end of the week, each of us could give that presentation verbatim, having heard it so often. Feigning interest was a necessary talent on our part. Inevitably, however, one or more of us would be unable to prop our eyelids sufficiently, or maintain a stout enough posture to prevent our heads from dipping to our chests and snapping back into position. It became a sport to catch others in the act. If you felt your eyes droop or close, or your head snap, you'd quickly look around at your teammates. Inevitably, one or more would be smiling or pointing their finger at you. That let you know you were in for a rasher of harassment on the plane. Occasionally the boss would catch the dip. That was the worst, because you could then expect him to look at you and say to the audience, "so Jan, would you care to comment on that?" You had to make sure you knew where he was in the presentation to respond in a coherent manner.

Following the pressure of the day, and the good natured harassment that would some times follow, the most enjoyable part of the connecting flight was to look out the window as we passed incredible views available only to high flying aircraft, space craft, or satellites. Our trips to Asia provided some of the most panoramic and desolate views as we crossed the mountains of the Canadian Yukon and Alaska. It was particularly interesting when we descended into Anchorage for refueling because we could get a good view of the color contrasts of receding glaciers in and around the Canadian Kluane and U.S. Chugach National Parks or Forests,  many of which I'm sure are inaccessible by land.

A Glaciers End

Another fascinating fly over is the area around Equador and Peru, home to several very tall volcanic mountains and origin of several incredibly long and winding rivers (including the Amazon) that make their way across Latin America. The scale and scope of nature, climate, and geography becomes overwhelming from that perspective, especially when you're a bit sleep deprived.

Just over the top

Eventually flows to the Amazon

Trips to the European continent took us over the isolate tundra of Hudson's Bay and the vast ice fields of Greenland. Hard to image any of that landscape being occupied by humans, which of course it is. It certainly must be much more comfortable to view from the warmth of the aircraft cabin than on the ground in a motor vehicle or camp of some sort, hundreds or thousands of miles from anywhere.

So to keep you on your toes, the following picture is NOT Greenland. And it's not taken from the plane. But I include it as another view from on high. And a view that is very rare. Taken from the window outside our board room in Shanghai, it gives an indication of the enormous scale and density of this huge city that you almost never see because it is usually hidden in the thick smog. More commonly, you can barely make out the shape of the building next to you, let alone those down a few blocks.

Shanghai on a rare clear day

It was a privilege to be able to enjoy the world from this vantage point, both in business and in altitude.