ROD WAS GREAT

One of the unique benefits senior executives with the Omnicom Group of companies have is the opportunity to attend Omnicom University. This is no slouch of an internal corporate training. In fact, it is the only corporate training program in the world which has an exclusive contract with Harvard Business School to provide all of the instructors. After an intense six days with the likes of world-class professors from HBS like Frances Frei, Nancy Koehn, Jim Heskett, and Tom DeLong, one really appreciates why HBS is such a renowned institution.

The administration from Omnicom Group of such an incredible program comes from Dean Tom Watson, former Vice Chair of Omnicom, and Associate Dean Rod Wright, the Chief Development Officer of TBWA Worldwide. (Rod is on the lower left in the picture above from our class photo last year, with Tom directly below me. Classmates Kevin Bell and Lucy Jameson are pictured with us as well.)

This isn't an advertisement for Omnicom or for HBS though, far from it. Craig Elston of TBWA in Denver (http://craigelston.blogspot.com/), another fellow classmate from last year, sent me a note on Wednesday that was the worst one I had seen in a while. Rod Wright had suffered a stroke and had passed away. I had only known Rod for less than a week, but his gentle nature, incredibly sharp wit, and especially the way he generally seemed to care about people made an impact on me.

TBWA Worldwide Chairman Jean-Marie Dru made some interesting comments in AdWeek after Rod's incredibly untimely passing at the young age of 51. "He taught us to be brave and smart and love the business...The best thing we can do to honor his memory is to try and do something great every day." I have a bit of a different perspective.

As I mentioned, in my prior post, this was a week filled with difficult moments and was stressful as could be. However, ever since I received this news, Rod's face popped up in my mind, and reminded me that I shouldn't be stressing so much over business.

I am no doctor, but by trying to "love...business" and do "great" things every day, how many of you are taking your health to a place it shouldn't be? Perhaps the focus should be on much smaller things every day...and that would be great for a whole different reason.