A lot has happened in the past ten years. Some good. Some not. We’ve hashed and rehashed the dysfunctions the attacks revealed in our society and in the society of the world at large.
I don’t want to do that today. I ran across a story about one of the tenants of the World Trade Center that shows that life is what you make of the cards you are dealt. This company occupied the 101st through 105th floors of the North Tower. Over two-thirds of its New York workforce was at their desks that morning when those cowardly bastards flew an airplane into the building below them. Every one of those people perished in the resulting fire and collapse of the building.
The CEO of that company, Howard Lutnick, was on his way to work. He was arriving late because he wanted to drop his son off on his first day of kindergarten.
It would have been easy to walk away at that point and simply be thankful for having been spared. Lutnick is not that kind of man. He resolved to lead his company back from its devastation. Ten years later, we can see that he has been more than merely successful.
“What we had was secretaries that had lost their bosses, divisions of 86 who had only four remaining,” Lutnick said. “There were many divisions we couldn’t rebuild.”
But they returned to work, even as families and friends grieved for those who were suddenly gone, to get their systems running again.
Despite the profound disruption of its business, Lutnick and his colleagues dug deep within themselves and went to work.
“You were looking for friends, you were hoping and praying that people were just going to find their way and get in contact with you, and while that was going on we were working around the clock to bring back the systems,” he said.
The single most inspiring aspect of this story to me is the commitment Lutnick made to the families of those who lost their lives that morning.
“My goal after 9/11 was to take care of the families of the people we lost, and that was the most important thing,” Lutnick said.
Twenty five percent of the company’s profits for five years were set aside for the families of those lost and for other charitable causes – a total of $180 million.
“We all had to commit to doing something different,” Lutnick said. “It changed our outlook about what was important about business.”
The attacks “just created sort of that bang of what type of human being are you right here, right now,” Lutnick said. “I didn’t think there was a choice. Either we take care of our friends’ families or I’m not a human being.”
I salute Howard Lutnick and all of his colleagues at Cantor-Fitzgerald for working hard to make something positive come out of the depraved actions of a group of medieval madmen.
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