On my second day running what was then Oregon Trout at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, October 3, 2000, a purposeful white-haired man walked through the front door, up the stairs toward the fly-fishing library, and then turned into my office. He brought me a sheet of paper with a quote on it and demanded I read it.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
A fan of quotes, I had seen this one before, but admittedly had never had it put to me as a command to read while being stood over. The power of the words combined with the intentionality of this guy began a relationship that would end up shaping how I run this organization today.
New to a set of issues that he had spent the better part of his life contemplating, I was coming in to an organization that he helped found decades before. Observers noted that he became re-energized at my engagement in the enterprise, but in truth I only saw his full-throttle energy and deep commitment. From my perspective, this purposeful man, Roger Bachman, was a great and kind sage. Steady state.
