POD announcement--NBC

An Interview with Sid Hopkins

Pete Canalichio interviews Mary Remoue

2010

Here we are a month into 2010 and many of us have already broken our New Year’s resolutions. You know what I am talking about, the ones we made in late December or early January when we promised we would get to the gym at least three times per week. We told ourselves we would eat more fruits and vegetables and stay away from processed foods – the kind with all that high fructose corn syrup, saturated fat and carbohydrate content. And we really would have kept those promises to ourselves, but it has been so damn cold outside and there were all those college bowl and NFL playoff games on TV that had to be watched. Everyone knows that when you are watching football, you’ve got to have the right kind of munchies to eat and plenty of beer to wash them down. Right? Oh well, maybe we can get back on track when the weather is warmer…

When you’re in your 20s or 30s, you can get away with making excuses about being young and not having to worry about all that healthy lifestyle stuff until later. But for many of us in our 40s and beyond, later is now and if we are really honest with ourselves, we’ve run out of time for excuses and we’ve seen too many of our family, friends, or friends of friends suffer from an “early” case of cancer, heart attack or stroke. Many are left incapacitated, or worse. Western medicine makes it pretty easy for us to be slackers. The obesity standards get a little more tolerant each year and so do the testing tables for cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure. Before, there was either “normal” or “obese”; now you become “overweight” before you become “obese.” The same thing goes with those testing tables. We now have normal, high normal and high. And when your test results finally do come back high because you are 20–30 lbs. overweight, you have a host of medicines to regulate you back to normal.

There’s just one problem with all of that. The added weight, lack of exercise and improper diet affect a whole lot more than your cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure. And those pills that help get you back on track have a tremendous number of potential side effects. They may help you keep your heart healthier, but what about what they are doing to your other organs?

Unfortunately, there’s no free lunch. We intrinsically know that, don’t we? Still, it is easier to make excuses until we get a small scare, like when a friend of a friend or a distant relative dies way too early. Hopefully then we start to make a permanent change to our diet and exercise. If not, we may persist in our bad habits until things hit a little closer to home. Maybe we lose a loved one or suffer a “minor” heart attack, as if there were such a thing.

This year I was due for my first colonoscopy. You see, my dad died of colon cancer. They say he didn’t die early, so I didn’t have to get my test early. Of course, I disagree and wish he were still on this earth to offer me advice and to keep my mom company. But that is another story. In any case, I have made it a point throughout my entire life to tell my doctors that my dad died from colon cancer and I’ve been awaiting the day when I would have to have one of them examine my colon to ensure it was free of polyps—or God forbid, something worse. For most of us, the prep for a colonoscopy is much more uncomfortable than the examination itself. For those of you who have yet to have one, I won’t go into detail as to why, just in case it may dissuade you from having the recommended test. And for those of you who have had the pleasure, there really isn’t much more to say, is there? Fortunately for me, my test came back clean and I am good to go until the next time. And despite a broken healthcare system in this country, my insurance covered the colonoscopy. I guess it must be financially beneficial for insurance companies to pay for us to get our colons examined.

In addition to cancer, my dad suffered from heart disease. He had a triple bypass in his 60s, which enabled him to live another 10 years. As a result, I have been wary of high cholesterol my whole life and have wondered if my arteries were clogging despite all my best efforts to keep them clear. Without warning, my cholesterol started creeping up about fifteen years ago. By the time it hit 200, the normal range went to 220, so I was ok. I committed to eating healthier and exercising more. Nevertheless, it crept up to 225. I got pretty worried until I found out that my cholesterol wasn’t considered high. It was only “high normal” so I was ok, sort of. I discussed a plan with my doctor and we both agreed if my cholesterol didn’t go down on my next test, I would begin taking a drug called a statin to reduce it.

Instead of going down, my next test came in at 247 and I had to begin taking the drug. After three months my cholesterol went down from high to high normal. While I felt better about my cholesterol, I was worried about what the drug was doing to my liver. I realized during this period when my cholesterol was creeping up that my weight had crept up as well. I had gained 20 lbs. Could 20 lbs. make that much difference? I guess so. Last year I got serious about losing weight and managed to shed the 20 lbs. Not surprisingly, my cholesterol is back under 200. While my doctor and I were pleased with my results, he prescribed a calcium scan to determine whether any build-up had accumulated in my arteries.

Given my dad’s track record, I was a bit worried. To check for calcium, they use an MRI machine. As I lay motionless inside that big circular magnet getting my arteries checked, I wondered if the weight, lack of exercise, bad food and bad genes had finally caught up with me. Before I knew it the technician said the test was over and I would hear from my doctor in two days with the results. I had 0 percent build-up. My arteries were clear, the best I could have hoped for. I had dodged another bullet, for now. Surprisingly, my medical insurance did not cover this test. Go figure. What if my arteries had become blocked, but I couldn’t afford to take the calcium scan to find out? It seems a bit counterintuitive. In any case, I am thankful that I am going into the second half of my life in relatively good shape and at an optimum weight. If I stick to a healthy lifestyle, I might even live a few years more than my dad.

If you are still reading this blog, you are probably wondering why I chose to title it the way I did and what the relevance is. If you are like me, you have seen a host of managers make the same kinds of poor decisions with their companies that many of us have made with our bodies. Weak management is pervasive. Very few managers are choosing to invest in their employees or to take a long-term approach to decision making. Like our bad habits with regard to eating and exercising, managers have cut corners in the workplace and lowered their standards. As a result, our global economy has stopped working properly, just like our bodies. Our financial system is in intensive care and our real estate market needs a defibrillator to revive it.

I remember not too long ago visiting my doctor for a routine test. Instead of the nurse asking me to stand on the scale to get weighed, she asked me what my weight was. I can only assume that the scale in the office was broken. How many of you would have answered the nurse honestly about your weight if you were in my shoes? How different is it to be asked by a lending institution to provide a “stated income” when applying for a home loan? No wonder our economy is in a state of emergency! Instead of improving our practices when the results of our “business tests” were out of the normal range, we looked the other way—or worse yet, we chose not to have our practices tested at all.

For those who have followed good business practices over the last 20 years or longer, I say, “Well done.” For the rest of us, let us learn from this economic crisis and resolve to manage our companies with an unwavering commitment toward long-term health and prosperity. And like our own bodies, maybe our companies will live longer than some of the giants of industry who ignored the warning signs for too long and died an untimely death.