50th Anniversary Message
It hardly seems possible that we are about to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Predictive Index. I was eight years old when my father started the business and got his very first client in 1955 and I can still remember when his ‘office’ was in the attic of our house; when he opened his first real office in the center of Harvard Square; when he brought onboard his very first ‘Licensee’ (1958 in Canada); when he was joined by eager PI consultants throughout the United States; when he traveled to Scandinavia and Egypt for Predictive Index; when he brought Predictive Index to South Africa and South America and how excited he was each and every time a new PI Consultant joined the group and each and every time a new PI Client came onboard. That excitement never abated for my father and his passion for Predictive Index never diminished. So when I sat down in early 2004 with a group of my colleagues to talk about the upcoming 2005 50th Anniversary, I brought that history with me, and the challenge of how to celebrate fifty years of commitment to a product (Predictive Index) and a business. We certainly were looking for celebratory ideas, and more than that, we were looking for words that somehow expressed both our rich past and our exciting future. The result of those meetings was ‘Founded Every Day Since 1955.’ I liked it, but don’t think I knew exactly what it meant. So I’ve spent the last six months thinking about what that expression means in general, what it means to me and what it might mean to all of you. At the heart of my struggle was a very personal question: how could I be a ‘Founder’ since I wasn’t the person who opened the doors. Opening the doors of a brand new business is big. Behind the doors is an empty room furnished with a product, some faith and a lot of hope. Also in the room is strong will to open those doors every day, rain or shine, year after year – always sure of the rightness of the original idea and the brightness of the future. That’s what it takes to be a Founder. Founders are pioneers who throw caution to the wind and take a chance on their own idea and their own abilities to sell it. And in the case of this business and Predictive Index, the Founder was a person about whom the term ‘own abilities’ meant a lot. He preferred to do much of the work alone. If we had his PI we would know absolutely the reason for all of why and how he did what he did, but we don’t have his actual PI. We never have. But we have always guessed at what it must have been and it seems only right to reveal that now – on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Predictive Index – because it explains a lot of how we grew the way we grew and why PI has maintained such remarkable integrity for all these years.
So, okay, here is the best guess of my father’s Predictive Index pattern: SCHOLAR. My father was indeed a very serious, introspective and reserved person. He was analytical and curious about everything. He was also very innovative, but cautiously so and only within the limits of his own special areas of interest. He was a careful, methodical person who took incredible care of details and developed extraordinary expertise within his universe. He couldn’t and didn’t delegate because he was sure that no one could or would do any job as well as he could do it. He was probably right. And he could and did accumulate, analyze and remember remarkable amounts of information, always working steadily and consistently and patiently. My father thought a lot. Mostly, he thought about Predictive Index and how to keep it pristine and how to protect its integrity and how to oversee its use. And it’s because of that, and because of the way he was that PI is what it is today: a remarkably pure, reliable, valid and highly efficient instrument that is used worldwide in more than 129 countries in more than 60 languages. Essentially, Predictive Index has never been out of the hands of its Founder. Hence my struggle. How can I be a Founder? Well, I know now that I can be a Founder because ‘founding’ is not an event. As I saw with my father, founding is a way of life. Founding is a commitment to your product, your clients, your employees and your community. Founding is a responsibility. As a founder, I feel responsible for making change; for expanding and improving the original model, but also for protecting the integrity of the product. Notwithstanding what I was given (a successful, viable business – doors open!), I am confident that we can continue to make this new without losing any of what makes it so special. I am not my father and I am not ‘founding’ this alone. I wouldn’t want to do that and I wouldn’t know how. I have a group of dedicated Founders with me, all of whom are focused on building on my father’s wonderful original model and creating a company that is even better than what it has been for these last almost fifty years. Where I was once concerned that I was supposed to be a conservator of past successes, I know now that my job is to understand the root of those successes in order to build future success. And where I was once concerned that there were real limits on PI’s reach, I know now that those limits are determined only by our creativity and energy. I’m excited by the future we face together. I’m excited that we’ve discovered our ‘Founders’ niche and I’m especially excited that we have Predictive Index - a product you can feel passionate about that has the power to change companies…even individual lives.
I think that is my 50th Anniversary message. We are confident in our company and in Predictive Index. We are focused on the future and finding ways to make PI an even more important and accessible part of your lives. We are opening new doors every day with a commitment to fill the room with ideas. We are ready for the next fifty years and I am glad that you’re on this journey with us. Dinah Daniels can be reached at: DDaniels@PIworldwide.com