whenever there is chaos

I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.

Septima Clark

Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement. Africa World Press.  1990. As found in 2022 Great Quotes from Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes from Leaders Who Shaped the World.

the cushion of advantages

A man who sits “on the cushion of advantages, goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has been put on his wits, … [learns] moderation and real skill”

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Compensation,” The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, New York: Wm. H. Wise & Co., 1929, p. 161. As found in 'Progress through Change," by Marvin J. Ashton. General Conference. October 1979. 

I found what I loved

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Steve Jobs

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says: This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005. Stanford News. 

the rough side of the mountain

It's the rough side of the mountain that's easiest to climb; the smooth side doesn't have anything for you to hang on to. 

Aretha Franklin

"The Swingin' Aretha," Ebony. March 1964. p.85. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.  

to be stronger men

Oh, do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work will be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. 

Phillips Brooks

Christ the Life and Light. Dutton. 1905. p. 209.  As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World. 

resilience like a muscle

There is an inherent fallacy in the way people view resilience, believing it to be a trait rather than a skill. Thus, people operate under the false mantra that “you either have it or you don’t.”

The truth is that resiliency is much like a muscle — over time it grows stronger through effective leadership. That’s not to say a workforce constantly exposed to adversity will eventually become more resilient. Rather, leadership needs to create a culture where hardships can also be seen as an opportunity to evolve both the individual and the organization.

Resilience can also be misinterpreted as overconfidence. People who are resilient are often seen as tough, self-reliant, and unaffected by the same stresses and negative emotions others might face. This can lead others to believe that resilient individuals don’t need any help. Not only does this stifle collaboration, but it can have a negative effect on the mental wellbeing of resilient individuals.

It’s important that leadership understands how these misconceptions can be detrimental to their organization. Furthermore, leadership has to realize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to building resilience in the workplace. Rather, it requires a robust strategy.

"5 Ways to Build Resilience in the Workplace" FTI Journal. October 2020

the other side of hard

"Monty [Williams] always says a quote, 'Everything you want is on the other side of hard,' " [Devin] Booker said. "I've took that quote and embraced it. He never put a definite explanation on what hard is, but I think he said that for you mentally, hold yourself accountable when you’re feeling a step slow, or your back's hurting or something’s bothering you or the ref makes a bad call, you have to take it in and next play."

Booker admits it's not easy, but he sees value in that approach to the game.

"I might want to go say something to a ref or I might to go take a bad shot or something like that, but everything you want is on the other side of hard," Booker concluded.

Duane Rankin

"Devin Booker still growing, leading — and finally winning with Phoenix Suns." The Arizona Republic. November 5, 2019

let's learn to live with crisis

I want to tell you a story that was brought to me by one of my own Random House authors, Mr. James Michener, who wrote Hawaii, the most successful novel in America since Gone With the Wind. Jim Michener tells about a man who, in 1938, was a very successful Wall Street broker, had a beautiful duplex apartment on Park Avenue in New York, a wife and two handsome children. In 1938 this man said, "I smell another war in the offing. I went through World War I; I do not intend to go through anything like that again." Despite the protestations of his wife and family and his business associates, he sold his business, closed up his apartment, packed up all his belongings and his wife and children, and bought himself a plantation on an island nobody had ever heard of way out in the South Pacific; and he said, "They're never going to get me in World War II." The name of this island happened to be Guadalcanal. It is a true story. This was 1938. In 1964 it is even harder to get away from the world, so let's learn to live with it and realize that we are living in a time of perpetual crisis.

Bennett Cerf 

BYU Speeches, April 16, 1964, p. 3

treasures of fortitude

I have seen great beauty of spirit in some who were great sufferers. I have seen men, for the most part, grow better not worse with advancing years, and I have seen the last illness produce treasures of fortitude and meekness from most unpromising subjects.

C. S. Lewis 

“Adversity and You,” by Marvin J. Ashton. Ensign, Nov 1980, 54

the good man’s shining time

From the last week of August to the last week of December, the year 1776 had been as dark a time as those devoted to the American cause had ever known – indeed, as dark a time as any in the history of the country. And suddenly, miraculously it seemed, that had changed because of a small band of determined men and their leader.

A century later, Sir George Otto Trevelyan would write in a classic study of the American Revolution, “It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world.”

Closer to the moment, Abigail Adams wrote to her friend Mercy Otis Warren, “I am apt to think that our later misfortunes have called out the hidden excellencies of our commander-in-chief.” “’Affliction is the good man’s shining time,’” she wrote, quoting a favorite line from the English poet Edward Young.

David G. McCullough

1776. Simon & Schuster, 2005. p.291

in command of his conduct

“I walked with my friend, a Quaker, to the newsstand the other night, and he bought a paper, thanking the newsie politely. The newsie didn’t even acknowledge it.

“ ‘A sullen fellow, isn’t he?’ I commented.

“ ‘Oh, he’s that way every night,’ shrugged my friend.

“ ‘Then why do you continue to be so polite to him?’ I asked.

“ ‘Why not?’ inquired my friend. ‘Why should I let him decide how I’m going to act?’

“As I thought about this incident later, it occurred to me that the important word was ‘act.’ My friend acts toward people; most of us react toward them. He has a sense of inner balance which is lacking in most of us; he knows who he is, what he stands for, how he should behave. He refuses to return incivility for incivility, because then he would no longer be in command of his conduct” (“Do You Act—Or React?” condensed from the Chicago Daily News).

Sydney J. Harris

Chicago Daily News (as quoted in "Adversity,” by Dallin H. Oaks. Ensign, Jul 1998, 7

courageous pine

Courageous pine-

enduring the snow

that is piling up,

color unchanging.

Let people be like this.

Hirohito. Emperor Shōwa

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II. By John Dower. W.W. Norton and Company. 1999. p.317-318 

In heralding the advent of each new year, the [Japanese] court customarily assigned a thematic topic on which members of the imperial household as well as ordinary people would compose thirty-one-syllable waka, with commoners invited to submit their verses for evaluation by experts assembled by the court. Early in the new year, the best poems would be published alongside waka by the emperor and other eminent figures - a high honor indeed for an amateur poet. In October of that year of bitter defeat (1945), it was announced that the theme for the coming year's poem would be "snow on the pine," a classic image of beautiful endurance. Above is the emperor's own poem, widely disseminated in the media on January 22.

no uninteresting things

Where to discover your interest and how to amass relevant information are illustrated in the story of an obscure spinster woman who insisted that she never had a chance. She muttered these words to Dr. Louis Agassiz, distinguished naturalist, after one of his lectures in London. In response to her complaint, he replied: 

“Do you say, madam, you never had a chance? What do you do?”

“I am single and help my sister run a boardinghouse.”

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I skin potatoes and chop onions.”

He said, “Madam, where do you sit during these interesting but homely duties?”

“On the bottom step of the kitchen stairs.”

“Where do your feet rest?”

“On the glazed brick.”

“What is glazed brick?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

He said, “How long have you been sitting there?”

She said, “Fifteen years.”

“Madam, here is my personal card,” said Dr. Agassiz. “Would you kindly write me a letter concerning the nature of a glazed brick?”

She took him seriously. She went home and explored the dictionary and discovered that a brick was a piece of baked clay. That definition seemed too simple to send to Dr. Agassiz, so after the dishes were washed, she went to the library and in an encyclopedia read that a glazed brick is vitrified kaolin and hydrous aluminum silicate. She didn’t know what that meant, but she was curious and found out. She took the word vitrified and read all she could find about it. Then she visited museums. She moved out of the basement of her life and into a new world on the wings of vitrified. And having started, she took the word hydrous, studied geology, and went back in her studies to the time when God started the world and laid the clay beds. One afternoon she went to a brickyard, where she found the history of more than 120 kinds of bricks and tiles, and why there have to be so many. Then she sat down and wrote thirty-six pages on the subject of glazed brick and tile.

Back came the letter from Dr. Agassiz: “Dear Madam, this is the best article I have ever seen on the subject. If you will kindly change the three words marked with asterisks, I will have it published and pay you for it.”

A short time later there came a letter that brought $250, and penciled on the bottom of this letter was this query: “What was under those bricks?” She had learned the value of time and answered with a single word: “Ants.” He wrote back and said, “Tell me about the ants.”

She began to study ants. She found there were between eighteen hundred and twenty-five hundred different kinds. There are ants so tiny you could put three head-to-head on a pin and have standing room left over for other ants; ants an inch long that march in solid armies half a mile wide, driving everything ahead of them; ants that are blind; ants that get wings on the afternoon of the day they die; ants that build anthills so tiny that you can cover one with a lady’s silver thimble; peasant ants that keep cows to milk, and then deliver the fresh milk to the apartment house of the aristocrat ants of the neighborhood.

After wide reading, much microscopic work, and deep study, the spinster sat down and wrote Dr. Agassiz 360 pages on the subject. He published the book and sent her the money, and she went to visit all the lands of her dreams on the proceeds of her work.

Now, as you hear this story, do you feel acutely that all of us are sitting with our feet on pieces of vitrified kaolin and hydrous aluminum silicate—with ants under them? Lord Chesterton answers: “There are no uninteresting things; there are only uninterested people.”

Keep learning.

Marion D. Hanks

“Good Teachers Matter,” Ensign, Jul 1971, 60

crucibles of leadership

[O]ne of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual’s ability to find meaning in negative events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances. Put another way, the skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders…. 

We came to call the experiences that shape leaders “crucibles,” after the vessels medieval alchemists used in their attempts to turn base metals into gold. For the leaders we interviewed, the crucible experience was a trial and a test, a point of deep self-reflection that forced them to question who they were and what mattered to them. It required them to examine their values, question their assumptions, hone their judgment. And, invariably, they emerged from the crucible stronger and more sure of themselves and their purpose—changed in some fundamental way….

So, what allow[s]… people to not only cope with these difficult situations but also learn from them? We believe that great leaders possess four essential skills, and, we were surprised to learn, these happen to be the same skills that allow a person to find meaning in what could be a debilitating experience. First is the ability to engage others in shared meaning…. Second is a distinctive and compelling voice…. Third is a sense of integrity (including a strong set of values). 

But by far the most critical skill of the four is what we call “adaptive capacity.” This is, in essence, applied creativity—an almost magical ability to transcend adversity, with all its attendant stresses, and to emerge stronger than before. It’s composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. The ability to grasp context implies an ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in perspective. Without this, leaders are utterly lost, because they cannot connect with their constituents….

It is the combination of hardiness and ability to grasp context that, above all, allows a person to not only survive an ordeal, but to learn from it, and to emerge stronger, more engaged, and more committed than ever. These attributes allow leaders to grow from their crucibles, instead of being destroyed by them—to find opportunity where others might find only despair. This is the stuff of true leadership.

Warren Bennis and Robert J. Thomas

"Crucibles of Leadership" Harvard Business Review. September 2002

the great north wind

It was the great north wind that made the Vikings. 

Scandanavian Proverb

As quoted in Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls, Simon and Schuster, 2009

no condition is permanent

‘No condition is permanent’. [A Nigerian admonition, carried on the side of trucks and busses during the 2003 elections.] 

  

Martin Meredith

The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair. PublicAffairs. 2005.

modesty and kindness

In my experience, men who respond to good fortune with modesty and kindness are harder to find than those who face adversity with courage.

Cyrus the Great 

Xenophon's Cyrus the Great: The Arts of Leadership and War, translated by Larry Hedrick as found in 9 Timeless Leadership Lessons from Cyrus the Great by Ryan Holiday. Forbes. 4/19/2012