Meaningful Returns

I meant no harm. I most truly did not.
But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got.
I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads.
I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads
of the Thneeds I shipped out. I was shipping them forth
to the South! To the East! To the West! To the North!
I went right on biggering…selling more Thneeds.
And I biggered my money, which everyone needs.

This lovely bit of poetry comes from none other than Dr. Seuss in his classic (and my son’s current favorite) The Lorax. The “I” in the selection refers to the story’s greedy villain, the Onceler. And though the Onceler is greedy and makes a huge mess of things, we must at least admit that the last four words of his manifesto–“money, which everyone needs”–are true.

But it’s not enough just to have money, is it?

You know, going into this weekend’s amazing Ryder Cup win by the Americans, Phil Mickelson made an interesting comment about their past failures as a group against the Europeans. What he said was, basically, of course you can’t win a Ryder Cup without talent and executing well when it counts, but it’s a mistake to just look at the three days of golf during the Ryder Cup and attribute all the success or all the failure to simple statements about the performance of individual golfers during that time. Because it’s not just the performance that matters, but the preparation, the time preceding the performance spent thinking through how to put those individual golfers into the best possible positions for their performances to count.

And maybe we can think of our money and the decisions we make with our money like golf talent and executing golf shots. Having the money is important, and making the right decisions in the moment is important, just as talent and execution in golf are important. But too often we place too little weight on the importance of preparation, of thinking intentionally–and well in advance–about how to put ourselves and our resources in the best positions possible to do the things we most want to do.