Humility has gotten a bad reputation. Some portray it as being weak and indecisive. Truth be told, being humble takes strength and self-knowledge. Read on as Dan, Cathy, and Collins introduce humility as one of the key traits of happy companies.
----
What it Takes to Be HAPIE: First, Humility
Some executives shy from the word humility like a horse from a snake. A few may find the word offensive. They relate it to the notion of forced submission (humiliation) rather than voluntary modesty. Or they assume that humility means that they must wear sackcloth and ashes rather than enjoy the perquisites of their success. In fact, humility of character is not an embarrassment but a gift. Far from implying a lack of ability, confidence, ego, or will, humility is a manner of expressing those capacities in a way that engages others. Humble leaders operate from conviction, either from moral values that cause them to act beyond themselves or from a deep belief in the companyâ??s mission. In fact, some such leaders may be cold, anemic, or arrogant until they connect to their mission, and then their entire behavior becomes energized and their focus intense. Humble leaders know they have gifts. They just keep them in perspective, as they also do their lifestyle. Humble leaders enjoy the pleasures of life; in fact, they appreciate them rather than take them for granted. Humble leaders have powerful egos, meaning appropriate self-esteem as opposed to an overinflated self-opinion. They are demanding, but driving their demands is a capacity for caring and a desire to help others excel, rather than a desire for personal domination.
History comes alive with such examples. Jesus challenged religious orthodoxy by associating with the rabble and teaching universal love. Muhammad rejected ethnic and class distinctions and sought better treatment for slaves, orphans, women, and the poor. Martin Luther challenged the excesses and indulgences of the religious establishment. Gandhi used civil disobedience to oust the British from India. Mother Teresa scolded world leaders face to face to do more for the deprived. These were people with a profound sense of self-worth, and their actions changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
World War II provides a more macho example of humbling your way to victory. Americaâ??s finest general in the European campaign was George Patton, who manifested superior battle strategy, unyielding resolve, and ineptitude in matters personal and political that resulted in his sitting out D-Day as a decoy. Later unleashed, he led the Allies across Europe, including the rescue of the trapped American army at the Battle of the Bulge. Nonetheless, in the largest and bloodiest war in human history, Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower, the relationship guys, won out over the classic alpha male. Roosevelt knew that they were the only men who had the trust to keep the unwieldy and often cranky alliance together. A similar point about hubris could be made regarding Douglas MacArthur, who won the war in the Pacific with limited means, oversaw the reconstruction of Japan, and led U.N. forces to early and brilliant victories in Korea until his ego overran his considerable abilities. It is telling that in Eisenhowerâ??s presidential campaigns the tagline was not â??I fear the generalâ??? (as it would have been for Patton or MacArthur), but â??I like Ike.â???
These various leaders demonstrate that true humility is a form of courage. It requires people to subsume their personal needs and pretensions into causes beyond themselves. Humble leaders are those leaders willing to give away power. They recognize that more overall good occurs if they spread power through the organization or community than if they hoard power for themselves. Charlie Horn, founder and chairman of ScriptSave, which offers programs that reduce the cost of prescriptions for companies and individuals, puts it best when he says he has a â??deep-seated belief that ScriptSave not be limited by the limitations of Charlie Horn.â??? This belief carries over to current company CEO, Lori Bryant, and all members of the executive leadership team.
That is why â??humbleâ??? includes most of the people at the top of Fortuneâ??s list of wealthiest Americans. Warren Buffett, the investment guru, and the Walton clan of Wal-Mart carry the best of Americaâ??s heartland virtues. Sam Walton lived well, but not ostentatiously, because he saw more value in using corporate wealth to build stores or give customers better prices than by living a big showy lifestyle.
He had nothing but contempt for â??overpaid CEOs who are really just looting from the top and arenâ??t watching out for anybody but themselves,â??? because â??every dollar spent foolishly comes right out of our customersâ?? pockets.â???
Bill Gates lives a bigger and showier lifestyle than Walton did, but like Walton, he achieved his wealth by focusing on the company, tying his future to Microsoftâ??s stock performance. He once wrote a memo telling employees not to spend money just because the company had it, and he flew coach until the volume of Microsoft employee travel caused the travel agency to automatically upgrade him. When his schedule necessitated a private jet, he paid personally rather than out of company funds. No stranger to magazine covers, he is astute enough to parlay his fame into meeting people he admires, such as South Africaâ??s Nelson Mandela. Far from being threatened by talent, Gates has spent many years wooing the industryâ??s best and brightest to join his firm. Warm and fuzzy Microsoft is not, but no one can accuse the leadership of not being open to new people and to new ideas that stretch the firm and its abilities.
Finally, a practical reason exists for CEOs to be more humble. Research by leadership consultant Marshall Goldsmith shows that business leaders have a high and largely unjustified regard for their abilities. His studies show that 85 percent of all business leaders rate themselves as being in the top 20 percentâ??even the leaders of failing companies! Goldsmithâ??s explanation is that, as they move up through an organization, leaders superstitiously associate all their traits with their success, when in fact they are successful despite some of those traits. They become â??delusional,â??? unable to hear any feedback that is not consistent with their own self-image.
Perhaps this inflated sense of self helps explain the salary inflation of CEOs. In 1980, the CEOs earned 42 times the salary of the average production worker. In 1990, the ratio increased to 100 to 1. Now, the ratio at 367 top U.S. corporations is 431 times, and the spread continues to grow, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Many
studies show no relationship between CEO pay and company performance. Financial writer Michael Brush compiled a list of the five most egregious examples. The CEOs at Ciena, Sanmina-SCI, Sun Microsystems, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Albertsonâ??s received compensation of tens of millions of dollars per year for four years while company stock values declined calamitouslyâ??93, 78, 76, 48, and 39 percent over four years, respectively.
With some of these companies, the delusional shell is so thick that the board of directors evidently cannot see through it, never mind the CEO. Humilityâ??an openness to the way others perceive usâ??is a major step in cracking the delusional shell and pointing corporate leaders and boards toward the shareholders the company is supposed to be in business for.
Jul
26
Humility has gotten a bad reputation. Some portray it as being weak and indecisive. Truth be told, being humble takes strength and self-knowledge. Read on as Dan, Cathy, and Collins introduce humility as one of the key traits of happy companies.
----
What it Takes to Be HAPIE: First, Humility
Some executives shy from the word humility like a horse from a snake. A few may find the word offensive. They relate it to the notion of forced submission (humiliation) rather than voluntary modesty. Or they assume that humility means that they must wear sackcloth and ashes rather than enjoy the perquisites of their success. In fact, humility of character is not an embarrassment but a gift. Far from implying a lack of ability, confidence, ego, or will, humility is a manner of expressing those capacities in a way that engages others. Humble leaders operate from conviction, either from moral values that cause them to act beyond themselves or from a deep belief in the companyâ??s mission. In fact, some such leaders may be cold, anemic, or arrogant until they connect to their mission, and then their entire behavior becomes energized and their focus intense. Humble leaders know they have gifts. They just keep them in perspective, as they also do their lifestyle. Humble leaders enjoy the pleasures of life; in fact, they appreciate them rather than take them for granted. Humble leaders have powerful egos, meaning appropriate self-esteem as opposed to an overinflated self-opinion. They are demanding, but driving their demands is a capacity for caring and a desire to help others excel, rather than a desire for personal domination.
History comes alive with such examples. Jesus challenged religious orthodoxy by associating with the rabble and teaching universal love. Muhammad rejected ethnic and class distinctions and sought better treatment for slaves, orphans, women, and the poor. Martin Luther challenged the excesses and indulgences of the religious establishment. Gandhi used civil disobedience to oust the British from India. Mother Teresa scolded world leaders face to face to do more for the deprived. These were people with a profound sense of self-worth, and their actions changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
World War II provides a more macho example of humbling your way to victory. Americaâ??s finest general in the European campaign was George Patton, who manifested superior battle strategy, unyielding resolve, and ineptitude in matters personal and political that resulted in his sitting out D-Day as a decoy. Later unleashed, he led the Allies across Europe, including the rescue of the trapped American army at the Battle of the Bulge. Nonetheless, in the largest and bloodiest war in human history, Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower, the relationship guys, won out over the classic alpha male. Roosevelt knew that they were the only men who had the trust to keep the unwieldy and often cranky alliance together. A similar point about hubris could be made regarding Douglas MacArthur, who won the war in the Pacific with limited means, oversaw the reconstruction of Japan, and led U.N. forces to early and brilliant victories in Korea until his ego overran his considerable abilities. It is telling that in Eisenhowerâ??s presidential campaigns the tagline was not â??I fear the generalâ??? (as it would have been for Patton or MacArthur), but â??I like Ike.â???
These various leaders demonstrate that true humility is a form of courage. It requires people to subsume their personal needs and pretensions into causes beyond themselves. Humble leaders are those leaders willing to give away power. They recognize that more overall good occurs if they spread power through the organization or community than if they hoard power for themselves. Charlie Horn, founder and chairman of ScriptSave, which offers programs that reduce the cost of prescriptions for companies and individuals, puts it best when he says he has a â??deep-seated belief that ScriptSave not be limited by the limitations of Charlie Horn.â??? This belief carries over to current company CEO, Lori Bryant, and all members of the executive leadership team.
That is why â??humbleâ??? includes most of the people at the top of Fortuneâ??s list of wealthiest Americans. Warren Buffett, the investment guru, and the Walton clan of Wal-Mart carry the best of Americaâ??s heartland virtues. Sam Walton lived well, but not ostentatiously, because he saw more value in using corporate wealth to build stores or give customers better prices than by living a big showy lifestyle.
He had nothing but contempt for â??overpaid CEOs who are really just looting from the top and arenâ??t watching out for anybody but themselves,â??? because â??every dollar spent foolishly comes right out of our customersâ?? pockets.â???
Bill Gates lives a bigger and showier lifestyle than Walton did, but like Walton, he achieved his wealth by focusing on the company, tying his future to Microsoftâ??s stock performance. He once wrote a memo telling employees not to spend money just because the company had it, and he flew coach until the volume of Microsoft employee travel caused the travel agency to automatically upgrade him. When his schedule necessitated a private jet, he paid personally rather than out of company funds. No stranger to magazine covers, he is astute enough to parlay his fame into meeting people he admires, such as South Africaâ??s Nelson Mandela. Far from being threatened by talent, Gates has spent many years wooing the industryâ??s best and brightest to join his firm. Warm and fuzzy Microsoft is not, but no one can accuse the leadership of not being open to new people and to new ideas that stretch the firm and its abilities.
Finally, a practical reason exists for CEOs to be more humble. Research by leadership consultant Marshall Goldsmith shows that business leaders have a high and largely unjustified regard for their abilities. His studies show that 85 percent of all business leaders rate themselves as being in the top 20 percentâ??even the leaders of failing companies! Goldsmithâ??s explanation is that, as they move up through an organization, leaders superstitiously associate all their traits with their success, when in fact they are successful despite some of those traits. They become â??delusional,â??? unable to hear any feedback that is not consistent with their own self-image.
Perhaps this inflated sense of self helps explain the salary inflation of CEOs. In 1980, the CEOs earned 42 times the salary of the average production worker. In 1990, the ratio increased to 100 to 1. Now, the ratio at 367 top U.S. corporations is 431 times, and the spread continues to grow, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Many
studies show no relationship between CEO pay and company performance. Financial writer Michael Brush compiled a list of the five most egregious examples. The CEOs at Ciena, Sanmina-SCI, Sun Microsystems, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Albertsonâ??s received compensation of tens of millions of dollars per year for four years while company stock values declined calamitouslyâ??93, 78, 76, 48, and 39 percent over four years, respectively.
With some of these companies, the delusional shell is so thick that the board of directors evidently cannot see through it, never mind the CEO. Humilityâ??an openness to the way others perceive usâ??is a major step in cracking the delusional shell and pointing corporate leaders and boards toward the shareholders the company is supposed to be in business for.
Jul
19
This excerpt is from Karlin Sloan's book Smarter, Faster, Better.
I'll let the intro speak for itself. Take it away Sloan:
"I know you are already smart, fast, and good. Now it's time to become smarter, faster, and better. It's time to ask questions, slow down, and start focusing not on just your own self-development but on your contribution to your team, your organization, and the greater good." -- Sloan
What can you do to add the -er to your current smart, fast and good (better) practices? This excerpt will get you started on how to energize your team by giving examples from Clif Bar and the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy.
We donâ??t accomplish anything in this world alone...and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of oneâ??s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.
â??SANDRA DAY Oâ??CONNORWhen you think about energy, Gary Erickson should be at the top of your mind. An avid cyclist, rock climber, backpacker, skier, and chef, Gary needs all the energy he can getâ??and did I mention heâ??s also the founder of a company that has been on Inc. magazineâ??s list of the fastest-growing companies in the United States for four years running? Garyâ??s brainchild, Clif Bar Inc., has won numerous awards honoring the company for its treatment of employees, commitment to the environment, and support for important causes such as the fight against breast cancer. He is the author of Raising the Bar, which tells the story of the development of his company and of its climb to success after a last-moment decision not to sell out to one of the corporate giants. When I asked Gary about leading an energetic culture, he had this to say:
Understanding the kind of business we are and where we are going is inspiring for people. Our vision here is to work to live rather than live to work. Itâ??s more of a long-term vision. Weâ??re not in the fast lane trying to grow this thing as fast as possible. The people here work really hard, they give themselves over and theyâ??re sharing in the profits when we meet our goals. We have different bottom lines than a traditional business does. We try to have several and theyâ??re not all money. Inspiring and taking care of our people is critical. As the shareholders, my wife and I want that to be our return on our investment. We also have a lot of the other benefits other companies have: 401(K) plans, medical and dental and so on. On top of that we try to spice things up in the atmosphere itself. Our office is open, alive, not like a cubicle type of workplace. Weâ??re family-friendly and dog-friendly, so we have babies and dogs around. Every week we have an all-company meeting and we all eat together, very casualâ??we have bagels and fruit and we sit down in the auditorium and we all just meet there and we read letters from consumers, sometimes we review the financials, sometimes we just have fun and hang out together and learn whatâ??s going on in the company and the world outside. We make a healthy product and people feel energized by that. Once when we got off track and jumped on the low-carb thing, it was really demotivating. Sticking to our food philosophy is something that gives life and energy to our group. On the physical side, we have an on-site fitness center with yoga, spin, kickboxing, and so on. The gym is world class, with a separate dance studio, two full-time personal trainers, and instructors who have classes. We have some quirky things too: Thursdays we have a hair salon and a carwash. We have a washer-dryer here that people can use if they need to do their laundry. What weâ??re trying to do is to free people up when they get home to have more of a life. If we can do that, people get more done in a shorter amount of time. One other thing is, at 6 P.M. around here, itâ??s empty. We donâ??t encourage people to work nights and weekends. We believe the way we plan and budget, and with how many people we have, that weâ??re able to get our work done in normal business hours. I know thatâ??s not the norm, particularly living in the Bay Area and watching the Silicon Valley boom when people were working eighty to a hundred hours a week. Our particular business is very competitive. We canâ??t sit still, but we know this is the way to go to get the job done. Every day is like a half-marathon. We run really hard, we play really hard, and some years are better than others. Weâ??ve been in business since 1992, weâ??ve remained private, and weâ??re competing against Kraft and Nestlé and Coke. Everyone is jumping into this category. Our story is compelling, and we need to keep doing things right. Weâ??re trying to do good business, and thatâ??s working for us. I donâ??t take anything for granted. We work very hard, and weâ??re doing it the way we believe in.How can you make your organization more like the energetic culture of Clif Bar?
Jul
12
What is intelligence? If you were Leonard Fuld, you'd answer, "Intelligence is the art of applying imperfect knowledge. It is the art of the SWAG, the Scientific Wild-Ass Guess. No matter how much information you gather, uncertainty will always exist; still, you need to make decisions."
This excerpt from The Secret Language of Competitive Intelligence is on how Michael Dell and Richard Branson used their intelligence to excel in computers and airlines.
COMPETITOR INSIGHTS, BYTE BY BYTE
Shortly after IBM announced the sale of its personal computer division to the Chinese computer company Lenovo in late 2004, a reporter asked Michael Dell if he was concerned about mergers in the PC business. He said no, he was not worried. He could not recall a large merger in the computer business that had actually worked as promised. â??We like to acquire our competitors one customer at a time,â??? he said. It was this final statement from Dell that spoke volumes on his view of the competition and how he will attempt to outmaneuver them in the future.
Michael Dell is in many ways Waltonâ??s spiritual heir, inheriting Waltonâ??s penchant for controlling market conditions, as well as absorbing vital intelligence from both suppliers and customers.
Dell Computerâ??s rise is nothing if not meteoric. Started in Michael Dellâ??s college dormitory in 1984, Dell has become predominant in almost every category it has entered. It has become the largest seller of personal computers and in 2000 even surpassed Sun Microsystems as the largest seller of workstations.
Like Wal-Mart, it has harnessed technology to both collect market data and reduce cost of operations. It has done so in a gargantuan fashion.
According to a fact book located on Dellâ??s site,â??Today,Dell operates one of the highest volume, most frequently visited e-Commerce Web sites in the world, with approximately half of the companyâ??s $32.1 billion in annual revenue being generated online. Dell.com . . . receives an average of 9 million page views per day at 80 country sites written in 27 languages/dialects. It manages 400,000 customer transactions a month in 40 different currencies.â???
Unlike Wal-Mart, Dellâ??s target market is not the individual consumer; it is the corporate customer. Dell aims to sell nearly three-quarters of its computer and computer products to corporations. This makes its extranet an even more powerful tool, a force to control supplier costs as well as to harness its knowledge of market demand.
The Dell extranet has succeeded in reducing the number of suppliers by 75 percent and its inventory to no more than five daysâ?? worthâ??an industry low. At the same time, Dell has used its extranet with its largest corporate customers to learn in detail who their customers are, their buying patterns, and the kinds of problems they have had in corporate computing (which in turn gives Dell an intelligence jump on the solution needed).
Dellâ??s customer reach is deep, very deep. At least ten thousand customers communicate with Dell each and every day.With such active customer participation and communication, buying patterns and trends become evident quickly. For instance, if Dell begins to see it is running short on a fifteen-inch monitor, it may begin to lower the price of the seventeen-inch monitor. This realtime customer data (perhaps only matched by the airline industryâ??s ability to balance its load factors to fill airplanes) allows Dell to forecast accurate market demand and customer trends as far as three months into the future.
Michael Dellâ??s drive for ultimate customer intelligenceâ??that is, knowing what the customer needs perhaps even before the customer doesâ??came through during a talk he gave at the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. â??I started off like pretty much all of you as a customer and I was frustrated by the comp
uter dealers at the time who werenâ??t offering much in the way of service and support and at the same time has high markups . . . if you have a problem and you tell the dealer, does the dealer tell the manufacturer, does that get all the way to the guys that are designing the products?â???
â??Noâ??? was the answer to his question. Dellâ??s need to eliminate the â??noâ??? is what drives him to close the intelligence gap between his suppliers and his customers.
Sam Walton would have been proud.
Jul
7
Normally, I'm not a huge fantasy book enthusiast. Yet I picked up one Harry Potter book and have since read all six books (and am eagerly anticipating the next and final book). It's a book that appeals to people of all ages. It's lessons are universal. Knowing this, Tom Morris, applied the lessons to business. What better business to apply it to than GE, a company renowned for innovation and growth? So here it is, business lessons to be learned from Harry Potter.
This particular excerpt from If Harry Potter Ran GE is on Headmaster Dumbledore's lessons. Enjoy.
THE WISDOM OF THE WIZARDS
"Nothing is mightier than wisdom."
—SocratesThe Harry Potter books are full of wisdom about life. Some of this insight for living is explicitly articulated by one character or another. Some is just shown in the exciting action and developing story line. The most important pieces of advice explicitly stated in the books often come from the mouth of Headmaster Dumbledore.
For example, we see him saying, in various places, such things about life as:
â??It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live . . .â??? (SS 214)
This great leader is both a thinker and a man of action. He lives life to the fullest, and in the best possible way, and wants his students to enjoy the same approach to their time on earth. Dreaming is great, but doing is greater.
Dumbledore also articulates what may be one of the most important pieces of wisdom in the whole series of stories when he says:
â??It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.â??? (CS 333)
Dumbledore is an existentialist of the most important sort. No preexisting categories need determine our identity or decide our fate.
We have the chance, through choice, to carve out our own identities and create our own futures. The ancient philosopher Heraclitus once said, â??Character is destiny.â??? Since anyone’s character is ultimately a result of the choices that he or she makes, it’s an even deeper realization to see that â??choice is destiny.â??? In the recent movie
Batman Begins , one of Bruce Wayne’s oldest friends says to him, â??It’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.â???Dumbledore takes this insight back to the source, to that factor over which we always have some control, the element of choice.Dumbledore also says wise things about death as well as about life. At one point he makes an enigmatic and fascinating observation reflecting the wisdom of Socrates when he remarks that, to the well organized mind, death is just â??the next great adventureâ??? (SS 297). It’s an insight of the most profound thinkers that life is a series of adventures.
Dumbledore joins some of the very greatest philosophers by extending that exciting concept beyond the grave and seeing death itself as in this way an extension of life. And with that in mind, he explains at a much later time that when people fear death and darkness, what they really are afraid of is nothing more than just the unknown (HB 566). The headmaster understands that wisdom about life must encompass wisdom about death, and he does not hesitate to pass on what he has learned to his students, who will inevitably face this one adventure at the end of all the others they will ever confront.
Many other wise perspectives of equal importance are never explicitly stated but can be gleaned from the behaviors of various characters and the consequences of their conduct. Rowling doesn’t try at all to be professorial, pedantic, or preachy in her approach to sharing wisdom.
But she clearly considers the wisdom to be learned from the world of the wizards to be an important element in the overall sweep of the
events that she portrays. In this chapter, I want to survey briefly some of this wisdom about living that we can derive from the stories. There is no particular order to the insights and perspectives I’ll offer here for comment and consideration. But they all add up and fit together to begin to outline a powerful, and powerfully good, worldview. Rowling’s intellect and perceptiveness—her philosophical sensibilities and visions—shine through all her stories in both simple and subtle ways.I believe that she understands quite well that we can lead our lives, and lead other people, in the best possible ways only when we root everything we do in the deepest life wisdom we can find.
First, I should make it perfectly clear what wisdom is and what it isn’t. It isn’t esoteric knowledge or deeply hidden truth about life that is extremely difficult to discover, grasp, and master. That’s a false model of wisdom propounded by the gnostics and sophisticated hucksters in almost every world culture. It’s also a model that has gained unfortunate ascendancy in our own time. Real wisdom isn’t some sort of highly secret key to life that is well hidden from ordinary people. The truth is simple and powerful. Wisdom is just great insight for living. And it’s often conveyed by simple statements that serve to remind us of what we’ve already learned as we’ve walked this path of life from our earliest years to the present day.
Oddly enough, we often forget the insights we’ve already had about living as we continue in our adventures, and we typically do so precisely at the times that we need those insights the most. Of course, our forgetting is never complete.When reminded of something that we long ago realized, we usually recognize the truth of the insight immediately. It was still buried in memory, locked safely away deep in our neurons, ready for retrieval. But somehow we had forgotten that we knew it. It was no longer â??top of mind.â??? It had lost its proper grip on us.We had neglected to use it to filter our further experiences or to help us govern our emotions and chart out our actions in the subsequent relevant situations we’ve faced. And so we need to be reminded of what we really know.
The great wisdom literature of the world often serves to help us recapture insights that we’ve already had. And it helps us to clarify those thoughts. But it sometimes gives a great many of us new insights as well, things that we had never thought of, and novel perspectives that we can test in our further experience. Even these new insights often ring true instantly as we understand them in the light of our previous experience. They capture patterns that we might at some level have noticed but never thought much about.We may not have made the connections they explicitly give us, but we can see them when they’re shown to us. These nuggets of new wisdom often open for us some new doors into the future based on what’s been learned in the past. And in many ways they can guide our path as we move forward into each new day.
Human beings have always enjoyed capturing their most common insights about living in pithy statements that allow for ease of memory and readiness of use. But wisdom is not always to be found in the form of well-known truths. It’s occasionally captured in a statement that may be surprising to many people, such as Dumbledore’s comment about death’s being the next great adventure. But even surprising wisdom shouldn’t be thought of as involving technical or difficult lessons available only to the greatest gurus and their most devoted long-term students. Wisdom about life can be distilled from the process of living by anyone who pays enough attention.
In our previous chapters, we’ve looked at how Dumbledore embodies wisdom and virtue, how Harry experiences one of the classic virtues, what the wizards in general show us about the distinction between ethical and unethical living, how important issues of truth and deception can come to a new measure of clarification through these stories, and what Dumbledore and Harry can teach us about transformative leadership. In this chapter, we’ll survey some of the main nuggets of wisdom to be found throughout the Harry Potter books, bits of insight and perspective that can help us all to live better and more meaningful lives. And then, in the next chapter, we’ll confront the most fundamental issue of meaning more directly.
Meaning and wisdom are both crucial to the living of a good life. We all seem to know this at some level. But what is not as widely understood is that meaning and wisdom are as important in organizational contexts, and in all sorts of business endeavors, as they are in our personal lives.When we look closely at the lives of very successful and admirable people, we often see that the greatest achievers have plugged into some fairly deep wisdom about life and human nature. They know themselves and the people around them in a penetrating way. They have a sense of what really matters and what isn’t so important. And that’s what allows them to concentrate their time and energy in the best possible ways.Wisdom empowers. Meaning directs.
As we move deeper into a new era, it will be increasingly important in corporate and executive life to understand and embody the insights of our greatest philosophers and the wisdom of the greatest wizards of excellence who live among us. The life wisdom that runs through the Harry Potter stories, and the deeper understandings that crop up at various places in these remarkable narratives, can be expressed in terms of some very simple, clear insights. Let’s look at a few.
----
This excerpt was taken from If Harry Potter Ran GE by Tom Morris, published by Currency/Doubleday.
Jul
3
These days, blogging is a common, if not necessary, way for a business to reach its customers. In her manifesto, Meryl Evans, long-time blogger and Internet aficionado, details why blogging is important for businesses, and how to make sure that your company’s blog is a great blog.
Click here to view the manifesto.
Click here to visit the site.
Jul
3
What is your earliest memory of coffee? What image comes to mind when you hear about a Jeep? Why are wedding traditions different in the United States from France? Rapaille reveals the unconscious motivators behind how we act and what we buy by unearthing the unique culture codes found within each of us and derived from our earliest or most enduring memories.
Click here to view the manifesto.
Click here to visit the site.