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TEMPUS M FROM THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF TEMPUS JETS Partners MY GRANDFATHER was a man of very few words. Highly respected in his small community as a person of faith who could be trusted and counted upon to do his share and more, he simply never said a whole lot—to anyone. He did, however, in a ft of anger toward some unintelligent sin that I committed as an adolescent, utter the following: "You can't do everything by yourself." Probably the closest he ever came to producing a complete sentence in any sort of teaching moment involving a seventeen-year-old kid like me. Without him and his infuence—aside from the challenges of communicating with a product of the Great Depression like "Big Da," as we called him, despite his smallish physical stature—I most certainly would have been dead before my twentieth birthday. His observation and implied advice regarding my tendency to go it alone now seems to have a special meaning. Perhaps my MBA program skipped this course, or maybe I wasn't listening when it was taught, but I have determined that good partnerships are absolutely necessary in today's competitive and complex business world.You simply can't do it alone. My problem is that I am still learning, at the ripe old age of ffty, how to manage partnerships and the expectations that come along with the relationships that partnerships create. The partners I have in my numerous Scott Terry (right) with his grandfather Big Da in London 1994. endeavors are wonderful people and organizations. I have managed to nurture most of them to the point of tremendous mutual success and admiration, but unfortunately, I have allowed some to wallow in mediocrity with a void in the leadership that I was expected to provide. My goal is to correct the latter to the best of my ability in the most effcient manner that I can produce. But the one constant that I have determined to be the most critical element in partnerships is trust. However clichéd it may seem, trust is diffcult to establish, easy to lose, and as valuable as any fnancial investment or business asset. My partner in the Tempus family of companies and my wife of thirteen years are the epitomes of trust. They have taught me how to win it, keep it, and proft from it. But the best of all is that they have taught me not from a business school textbook, but from how they live their lives and treat their partners—namely me. Had Big Da been more articulate or felt the need to speak more freely, he probably would have said to me in that incident thirty-three years ago something like: "You can't do everything alone in today's world. It is too complex, and you have to utilize the resources at your disposal. You need solid partners, and to fnd and grow these partnerships, it takes mutual trust and respect." I know that Big Da was probably thinking this as he blurted out the short sentence that I remember to this day. I also know that he probably wanted to add, "You're not as smart as you think you are" but held back because to the best of my knowledge he never said a cross word to anyone except a few choice politicians back in the day. My job now is to be a good partner at home and at work and emulate those around me who clearly learned from their mentors much earlier and easier than I did. SCOTT TERRY CEO, Tempus, Inc. "You can't do everything alone in today's world. It is too complex, and you have to utilize the resources at your disposal. You need solid partners, and to fnd and grow these partnerships, it takes mutual trust and respect." Fall 2013 . Tempus-Magazine.com 13