True Freedom

We don't begin to know what [true] freedom is until we come to a place in our lives where we have no need to impress anybody. - Joyce Meyer

Greatness in Leadership

From the May 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review:

HBR: As someone who’s known Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, what do you think makes a leader great?

Maya Angelou: A leader sees greatness in other people. You can’t be much of a leader if all you see is yourself.

Wisdom for the journey

Something I heard this weekend:

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Mobius on Templeton

What Dr. Mark Mobius learnt from Sir John Templeton.

Regrets of the Dying

Via Paul Graham: Some sobering thoughts.

Knowing where to tap

Good one (author unknown):

The engine of a giant ship failed. The ship's owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure how to fix the engine. Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a youngster. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, from top to bottom.

Two of the ship's owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed! A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

"What?!" the owners exclaimed. "He hardly did anything!"

So they wrote the old man a note saying, "Please send us an itemized bill."

The man sent a bill that read:

Tapping with a hammer ......................... $ 2.00
Knowing where to tap .....................$ 9,998.00

How Will You Measure Your Life?

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen

Drucker Digital Archives: Archivist’s Top Picks

Bridget Lawlor, the Drucker Institute’s archivist, shares her top picks from the growing Drucker Digital Archives.

The Wisdom of Couplets

Search the parks in all your cities,
Youʼll find no statues of committees.

The Wisdom of Cliches

It's a cliche, but it's still good advice:

Go where you're celebrated, not where you're tolerated.

Crocodile smiles

A friend of mine once shared with me these words of advice that his father gave him as he was about to embark on a challenging new phase of his career:

Remember that not everyone that shows you their teeth is smiling.

Meet or work

Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.

- From Chapter 2 ("Know Thy Time") of The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker