THINK / What's Next

What Matters Most…Commentary by Jim High

Right after I graduated from Mississippi State University several of my college fraternity buddies were hired by IBM.  I went home to take over the operation of our family’s insurance agency due to my Father’s illness.  But my friends and I shared one thing in common, IBM’s famous one word slogan – THINK.

I truly thought it was the best slogan I had ever heard, and in those early days of television everyone heard, or rather saw, the single word, THINK, at the end of every IBM commercial.  Only one word, but it said volumes about what IBM as a company was all about.  And for me it helped me to stay on track to accomplish the enormous task in front of me.  Twenty two years old, my Father with cancer and unable to get out of bed, trying to learn, operate, manage and maintain a customer base that included the City of Tupelo, both the city and county school systems, the largest bank in town at that time, as well as the insurance program for the North Mississippi Medical Center.

After the death of my Father, I also became the provider for my family that consisted of my Mother, Grandmother, brother and sister, as well as the two ladies, and several sub-agents that worked for the agency, so you can understand how important that word –THINK – became to me.  I even cut it out of magazine ads and taped it up in my office.

You see most every problem or challenge you have in life can be handled if you allow yourself to THINK, because it is acting without thinking that causes all the problems.  It worked.  The agency grew and prospered, and so did IBM.  I always wondered why they dropped that slogan.  I’ve never dropped thinking about solutions.

Not too long ago one of the top rated TV shows was West Wing staring Martin Sheen as President Bartlett.  It was on for several years and I watched every episode.  President Bartlett was a President we could all rally around and he must have followed the slogan – THINK – because he always did the right thing, which I’ll admit is easy if you are just following a script, but at least the script writer was thinking.

President Bartlett had a famous phrase he said at least once every episode – “What’s Next.”   I always thought it was a great way to live your life, to accomplish your goals, to get things done.  “What’s Next” – says I’m finished with that, let’s move on.  It was the moving on to “What’s Next” that made the show exciting.  They solved the problems of the country and then moved on.  They never sat and rest on their laurels.  They never worried over the past, or worse lived there.  “What’s Next” says let’s go forward.  So I would suggest that you think about what’s next in your life, your business, your religious beliefs, your family, your health, and every other area of your life. 

Let me apply some of this philosophy to some of Tupelo’s most pressing problems at the current moment realizing that if we – THINK – about them, we can solve them all, and then asking “What’s Next” moves our city forward.

Let’s be realistic and honest when we think about how the Tupelo Public School System lost its excellence.  Let’s fix the problems where ever they are, inside or outside of the school system, and then ask what’s next, so we can continue to improve because nothing is ever perfect.

Does the Major Thoroughfare Program have its eyes set on what’s next?

As wonderful as it is, the new Toyota plant at Blue Springs is almost at full employment of 2,000, and will soon be making 600 Corollas a day.  CDF, What’s Next?

We have, after six years, gotten the results of the railroad study.  We still have the problem, and it is getting worse.  What’s Next?

Soon Tupelo will have a new up-to-date modern Aquatic Center.  What’s Next?

What Matters Most…..….you get the idea!  If we just THINK, all problems are solvable, and if we always ask, “What’s Next,” we will always be moving forward and not backwards.  You might want to write these two ideas down as words to live by and post them on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror, or where ever you post things you never want to forget.

THINK / What’s Next

© 2012 #1  Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467, Tupelo, MS 38802-0467