When You’re Stuck, Serve: Ed Hart, Senior VP/Board Member of First Bank

I wrote it on my white board the first time I heard this guiding wisdom that Ed gleaned from his father.

Because stuckness has a certain ring to it, a tone that can be dulling…and yet, like the winter of our own soul, it’s time to rely on deep roots and go inward.

When Ed stood up on our Legend stage and shared his story, we all wandered into the depths with him, all felt his true study of self, and his search for a resilient pathway through the tunnel. And we all emerged anew as Ed showed how he took the advice to build resilience and community among the family businesses he serves.

It’s a great representation of what the mythologist Joseph Campbell called the innermost cave: the place of not knowing, where it is hard to see and even harder to listen. But the gifts of listening are great, as Ed’s was, to the point that When You’re Stuck, Serve has become a repeated mantra that has followed the event, and one of the key insights that helps people connect the dots of their own legend.

And it’s still up on my white board.