Corp America March 2017

8 CORP AMERICA / MARCH 2017 , Cincomwas established in Cincinnati, Ohio, on the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel on September 29, 1968 with only $600 of capital. Dr. TomNies ‘CEO of the Year - Ohio’ was a founder of Cincom – now in his 49th year of service as Cincom’s President and CEO, he has become the longest-serving senior executive in the entire history of both the computer and the software products industries. The company was incorporated with the belief that computer software would become one of the world’s most important industries, and that Cincomwould become one of the most important leaders in shaping andmakingmanifest the then only barely imagined destiny of the software industry. All of these visions soon became realities, as Dr. Nies narrates. The CincomMystique: Helping Others to Act Most Successfully and Become All that They Can Become In August 1984, before an audience of many thousands, President Ronald Reagan pointed to Cincom as an exemplar of the type of entrepreneurial high-tech company upon which America’s economic future would be built. President Reagan also lauded Tom Nies as the epitome of the successful entrepreneur. Ten years later, the Smithsonian Museum inducted Cincom and Tom Nies into its permanent recognition of a handful of persons, such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who were also so recognized as the founders of the software industry. Over its lifetime to date, Cincom has served several thousands of organizations, including many of the largest and most prestigious in the world, and has generated approximately $4.5 billion of revenues, of which some $3 billion have been redistributed to Cincom staff in compensation and benefits. And, all of this has been done on only $600 of invested capital. From Cincom’s earliest years, Tom Nies believed and taught that a personal life should be a voyage partly of self-discovery and partly of self-invention. In part, persons discover – over time and through much darkness and lacking of self-awareness – who they are. Then, in part through trial and error, conjoined with education, mentoring and coaching, they commit to giving themselves their own meaningfully unique identity and thereby establish their own character, personality and reputation. These are some of the reasons why everyone’s personal experience is unique, and self-fulfilling. Cincom’s Meaningful Uniqueness, or its primary differentiations, would be to offer very easy to use, to support and to maintain software, providing relatively low- cost, low-risk products that would yield very rapid and extremely high returns to its clients, who could gain the many advantages and significant benefits Cincom offered, over very long time frames. Cincom also believed that it would become an Ideal of a proper organization because the demands for success in its pursuits could be so marshalled that each and every Cincomer would be aided and encouraged to “become all that each one could become” as each, and all, served others in the company’s pursuits. So, as Cincom, through the efforts of Cincomers, “Discovered” and “Invented” itself, every Cincomer would be aided to similarly “Discover” and “Invent” their own personal selves. This was Cincom’s Vision of the future for its company, and for others. Jonathan Swift once stated that, “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” Robert Browning taught that, “Our aspirations are our possibilities.” Cincom’s aspirations were its inspirations. It was once written that, “Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible.” This power of Hope energized Cincom’s pursuit of its very own “Impossible Dream” from its earliest beginnings, and inspired the choice of Don Quixote as its corporate hero. Entrepreneurs are precisely the visionaries, as Swift suggested, who see opportunities and possibilities where others do not so see. In fact, the French word “entrepreneur” translates to “one who sees and takes an opening, or an opportunity.” So important are the Vision and the Mission, and the entrepreneurial spirit that produces the successes, that it may be impossible to overstate their importance. James Broughton believes that, “The only limits are, as always, those of Vision.” This is why Napoleon Hill advises to, “Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.” And this is why J.G. Gallimore observes that, “Image creates desire. You will what you imagine.” Malcolm S. Forbes states, “When you cease to dream, you cease to live.” Maxwell Maltz, the author of The Psychocybernetics Concept, emphasized the importance of the Vision, or the Imagination, in these comments: “Imagination sets the goal ‘picture’ which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of the ‘will,’ as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.” Cincom was also built upon the principles that each Cincomer is an individual person who is free to choose whatever he or she may choose to do according to the demands 1612CA08