I love to read, especially mysteries and historical novels. While opening the Mirage, I read The Pillars of the Earth, a historical novel by Ken Follett that tells the story of the building of a cathedral in 12th century England. It was the first time I’d considered the magnitude of such a project and couldn’t help thinking about how that applied to what we were attempting on the Las Vegas strip, and how these sorts of huge projects happen one building block at a time. Like the volcano and siting 3500 palm trees. Like the struggle I was having handling and processing 55,000 applicants and all the attached paperwork. I often tell the story of how we either couldn’t read the handwriting on the applications or misspelled it making labels for the file folders – both contributed to the loss or misfiling of nearly 20% of them. A real nightmare. And therein was the genesis of my early creative dreams of alternate systems that eventually lead to our innovative paperless systems nearly 14 years later. An iterative process that was seemingly one building block at a time. I’m no smarter or stronger than the next guy, but I learned that persistence pays off. So:
· If you’ve got an idea, hold tight, keep trying and learning, and remember to take it one step at a time. Big or small, that’s how innovations happen.
· If you’re managing people and they have ideas, create a trusting environment where they’ll tell you and you’ll support them. That too is how innovations happen.
That’s when and how a pile of rocks ceases to be a rock pile because someone sees it as something very different Looktoday.
Antoine Saint-Exupéry (1900 – 1944), French writer, poet, journalist, and aviator.
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