What You Learned Today is Your Future

With the Allegheny Mountains in summer glory, the Tau Kappa Epsilon class of ’58 gathered at Penn State University last week. I attended with my husband with expectations of a bad chicken dinner in the company of people called TKE’s with whom I don’t have much in common. I was, after all, tuning in to The Mickey Mouse Club while their personal and social development was with the Greek life in all it’s glory in 1958.

What happened as the salad was served, was the precursor for a spontaneous, colorful and memorable evening that made my experiences with Mickey look very small. One tanned, fit TKE whipped out a tape player and suddenly we were listening to the rehearsal night performance before the 1956 fraternity singing competition – a fierce competition that TKE’s had won for 8 straight years with the title up for grabs the next day.

Slightly scratchy but compelling and beautiful, the acappela performance began a celebration of memory that applies to everyone working on a new behavior, approach, communication style or strategy. You might not be thinking 50 years ahead, but then again, neither were they.

For one who holds others accountable for learning new things, I hadn’t realized that once something is learned it’s forever available….even when you haven’t needed it for 50 years. You, like me, may be totally surprised at what happened next.

I was told that the conditions at that time on campus with a Greek culture thriving and twenty-three fraternities meant competition was keen….even for a singing title. So three weeks before the performance, all TKE members – yes, everyone – gathered in front of the fireplace in the TKE house at 10:30 pm to rehearse for an hour every night. If you couldn’t sing, you mouthed the words. You were there…period.

The beauty of that taped recording – done on a whim by one of the members on a reel to reel – is that’s as close as the TKE’s can get to the actual performance that secured the title for them the next day – the 9th year in a row! (They also won it the next year.) Seems like all the file drawers marked 1956 in these 70- something brains opened up after the last recorded, “Ba Ba Boom, Boom Boom” faded away.

Suddenly while waiting on the chicken to be served, a man at another table stood up reached in his navy blazer pocket to retrieve a pitch pipe to secure the correct note which is how they probably began years ago. Before the note slipped away, he started singing….then faltered a bit trying to remember the words. But another brother helped him out, then another and another and another.

Within seconds as the room filled with harmonious altos, tenors and bass the words, as well, bounced and glittered off the walls. Amazing themselves at their recall from so many years, I was struck with the awesome power of memory.

I was also dumbstruck with a new vision for my own brain – the sight of my husband (who has peeped nary a note in front of me) singing full throttle with the best of them…IN HARMONY.

Asking executives to forge new behaviors for their invisible tool boxes isn’t just for tomorrow but for a long successful future. Taking time to develop a strength, work to improve or learn something from scratch may seem disconnected and not worth the effort at times. But if you consider what you learn today just might be available for your forever just in the nick of time – then toys aside, he or she, with the most things learned, wins.

According to Daniel Pink, best selling author of A Whole New Mind:Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, “stories are how we remember.” I hope your remember this one. But in case songs are your thing, here are the lyrics to The Whiffenpoof Song. You never know when you might need them. And on that evening last week, this song was one of the TKE’s finest.