only the leader can make execution happen

An organization can execute only if the leader's heart and soul are immersed in the company. Leading is more than thinking big, or schmoozing with investors and lawmakers, although those are part of the job. The leader has to be engaged personally and deeply in the business. Execution requires a comprehensive understanding of a business, its people, and its environment. The leader is the only person in a position to achieve that understanding. And only the leader can make execution happen, through his or her deep personal involvement in the substance and even the details of execution.

The leader must be in charge of getting things done by running the three core processes - picking other leaders, setting the strategic direction, and conducting operations. These actions are the substance of execution, and leaders cannot delegate them regardless of the size of the organization.

How good would a sports team be if the coach spent all of his time in his office making deals for new players, while delegating actual coaching to an assistant? A coach is effective because he's constantly observing players individually and collectively on the field and in the locker room. That's how he gets to know his players and their capabilities, and how they get firsthand the benefit of his experience, wisdom, and expert feedback.

It's no different for a business leader. Only a leader can ask the tough questions that everyone needs to answer, then manage the process of debating the information and making the right trade-offs. And only the leader who's intimately engaged in the business can know enough to have the comprehensive view and ask the tough incisive questions. 

Only the leader can set the tone of the dialogue in the organization. Dialogue is the core of culture and the basic unit of work. How people talk to each other absolutely determines how well the organization will function. Is the dialogue stilted, politicized, fragmented, and butt-covering? Or is it candid and reality-based, raising the right questions, debating them, and finding realistic solutions? If it's the former - as it is in all too many companies - reality will never come to the surface. If it is to be the latter, the leader has to be on the playing field with his management team, practicing it consistently and forcefully. 

Specifically, the leader has to run the three core processes and has to run them with intensity and rigor. 

Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan 

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 24, 25

to attain wisdom

To attain knowledge add things every day. To attain wisdom subtract things every day.

Lao-tzu

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.185.

essentialism

Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it's about how to get the right things done. It doesn't mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential. 

Greg McKeown 

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.5

everything is a teacher

When we reexamine what we really want, we realize that everything that happens in our lives — every misfortune, every slight, every loss, and also every joy, every surprise, every happy accident — is a teacher, and life is a giant classroom. That’s the foundation of wisdom that spiritual teachers, poets, and philosophers throughout history have given expression to — from the Bible’s “Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without God knowing it” to Rilke’s “Perhaps all the dragons of our life are princesses, who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.” My favorite expression of wisdom — one that I keep laminated in my wallet — is by Marcus Aurelius: “True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: “You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.” And everything is turned to one’s advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I was looking for. Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art — and this art called “life” is a practice suitable to both men and gods. Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing; what then could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend?”

Arianna Huffington

"Why We Need Wisdom More Than Ever," by Arianna Huffington. Thrive Global. November 30, 2016. Excerpt from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder pp. 116–130. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.

wisdom is missing

Growing up in Athens, I was brought up on the classics and the Greek myths. They were taught to me not as ancient history, as my children learned them in their American classrooms, but as my personal roots and the source of my identity. Athena was the goddess of wisdom, and, for me, the idea of wisdom is forever identified with her — weaving together strength and vulnerability, creativity and nurturing, passion and discipline, pragmatism and intuition, intellect and imagination, claiming them all, the masculine and the feminine, as part of our essence and expression.

Today we need Athena’s wisdom more than ever. She breathes soul and compassion — exactly what has been missing — into the traditionally masculine world of work and success. Her emergence, fully armed and independent, from Zeus’s head, and her total ease in the practical world of men, whether on the battlefield or in the affairs of the city; her inventive creativity; her passion for law, justice, and politics — they all serve as a reminder that creation and action are as inherently natural to women as they are to men. Women don’t need to leave behind the deeper parts of themselves in order to thrive in a male- dominated world. In fact, women — and men, too — need to reclaim these instinctual strengths if they are to tap into their inner wisdom and redefine success.

Wisdom is precisely what is missing when — like rats in the famous experiment conducted by B. F. Skinner more than fifty years ago — we press the same levers again and again even though there is no longer any real reward. By bringing deeper awareness into our everyday lives, wisdom frees us from the narrow reality we’re trapped in — a reality consumed by the first two metrics of success, money and power, long after they have ceased to fulfill us. Indeed, we continue to pull the levers not only after their diminishing returns have been exhausted, but even after it’s clear they’re actually causing us harm in terms of our health, our peace of mind, and our relationships. Wisdom is about recognizing what we’re really seeking: connection and love. But in order to find them, we need to drop our relentless pursuit of success as society defines it for something more genuine, more meaningful, and more fulfilling.

Arianna Huffington

"Why We Need Wisdom More Than Ever," by Arianna Huffington. Thrive Global. November 30, 2016. Excerpt from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder pp. 116–130. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.

who never makes a mistake

Roosevelt is no more infallible than the rest of us. Over and over again I have seen him pause when he had decided upon his line of action, and review it to see where there was a chance for mistake. Finding none, he would issue his order with the sober comment: “There, we have done the best we could. If there is any mistake we will make it right. The fear of it shall not deter us from doing our duty. The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.”

Theodore Roosevelt

1900 August, The American Monthly Review of Reviews, Volume 22, Number 2, Theodore Roosevelt by Jacob A. Riis, Start Page 181, Quote Page 184, Column 2, Published by The Review of Reviews Company, New York. (Google Books Full View). As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World. See also "The Person Who Never Makes a Mistake Will Never Make Anything," Quote Investigator. December 16, 20214. 

This was a popular phrase widely in circulation at the time of Theodore Roosevelt's statement. Here are some of my favorites:

• 1832: It has been justly observed, that he who never makes an effort, never risks a failure, and, “In great attempts ’tis glorious to fail!” (The New Sporting Magazine)
• 1859: We learn wisdom from failure more than from success: we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and he who never made a mistake, never made a discovery. (Samuel Smiles)
• 1897: THE INFALLIBLE MAN - There was a man who never made, A blunder in his life; He loved a girl, but was afraid, If she became his wife, That he or she might rue the day, That brought them bliss; and so, He put the happiness away, That wedded lovers know. (The Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo)
• 1903: The man who does things makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all—doing nothing. (Poor Richard Junior’s Philosophy)
• 1903: ‘He who never does anything wrong, seldom, if ever, does anything right,’ and a man whom I know you particularly admire expresses the same thing when he says, ‘A man who never makes mistakes, never makes anything.’ All the wise men of all ages have called attention to the one trait in which all humanity is alike, namely the liability to make mistakes. (Leo Tolstoy)

hold two opposed ideas

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

F.Scott Fitzgerald

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.132

the humility mantra

I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. Humility leads to clarity. Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart. With an open mind and a forgiving heart, I see every person as superior to me in some way; with every person as my teacher, I grow in wisdom. As I grow in wisdom, humility becomes ever more my guide. I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. 

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.33

by the awful grace of God

Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart,

and in our own despite, against our will,

comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

AESCHYLUS

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.5

the virtue of resilience

Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength – if we have the virtue of resilience. 

Resilience: Hard-won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2015. p.3

we don’t eat it all; we don’t plant it all

“We don’t eat it all; we don’t plant it all.”

I Am the Grand Canyon: The Story of the Havasupai People by Stephen Hirst. Grand Canyon Association. 2007. p. 50

Note: In the past, the Havasupai grew their corn in the canyon and then, in the winter, moved up to the plateau to live and ranch. Corn is carried with them for food. The corn may be stored in three chambers: that in the first is eaten during the winter, that of the second during the spring planting period, and of the third, only a little may be eaten, not all. This remainder is saved against the contingency of flood, etc.

the wise use of a limited amount of information

We have thousands of times more available information than Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln. Yet which of us would think ourselves a thousand times more educated or more serviceable to our fellowmen than they? The sublime quality of what these two men gave to us—including the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address—was not attributable to their great resources of information, for their libraries were comparatively small by our standards. Theirs was the wise... use of a limited amount of information.

Dallin H. Oaks

“Focus and Priorities,” Ensign, May 2001, 82

myopic misery

We hypothesized a phenomenon that we term myopic misery. According to our hypothesis, sadness increases impatience and creates a myopic focus on obtaining money immediately instead of later. This focus, in turn, increases intertemporal discount rates and thereby produces substantial financial costs….

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), the English poet and philosopher, experienced profound bouts of anxiety and depression throughout his life. This life experience may have given rise to his famous phrase “a sadder and a wiser man”.  More recently, beginning with empirical tests of depressive realism (Alloy & Abramson, 1979), hundreds of studies have found support for the sadder-but-wiser hypothesis: Sadness and depression make individuals wiser than nondepressed or happy people. For example, sadness tends to be associated with careful, deliberative, System 2 thought (Kanhenman, 2011) as opposed to heuristic, impulsive System 1 thought (Keltner & Lerner, 2011). Sadness has been shown to reduce a range of otherwise robust cognitive biases, including having overly optimistic views of one’s importance, reputation, and abilities (Alloy & Abramson, 1979); relying on stereotypes (Park & Banaji, 2000); and overattributing causality to individuals (Keltner, Ellsworth, & Edwards, 1993)….

[Yet,] sadness makes one myopic. Although sadness may make people more accurate in some contexts (Alloy & Abramson, 1979), it also makes them prefer immediate gratification – and that preference is not an attribute associated with wisdom….


Jennifer S. Lerner, Ye Li, and Elke U. Weber

“The Financial Cost of Sadness” Association for Psychological Science. 2013

challenge your certainty

Our beliefs and assumptions are skewed by personal biases and not to be fully trusted. Often they haven't been tested or revised based upon new information. They reflect partial knowledge and are only partially wise. Resist acting instinctively on your beliefs and assumptions, and open your mind to the subject's potential complexity. Before registering your opinion, enter into a state of not knowing. Zen Buddhists call this the "beginner's mind." Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey (Immunity to Change, Harvard Business School Publishing, 2009) would describe this as moving from the "self-authorizing mind" to the "self-transforming mind." 

Once you learn to distrust yourself, it's easier to trust others. The goal isn't to locate the most trustworthy or least fallible individual and hand all decision-making to this person; the goal is to share the load and get everyone to feel ownership in the organization's direction and operations. This doesn't mean that everyone should participate in every decision, but decision-making needs to be more evenly distributed. 

Gary B. Cohen

"Leadership: How to Ask the Right Questions" Bloomberg Business. 9/29/2009

know thyself

Skills and experience might land you a leadership position with a large business organization, but they don’t make you a true leader.

Leadership comes from inside—and the greatest leaders first question themselves before they tackle the world around them.

Develop an inner clarity. Understand your bright and dark sides, your personal strengths and weakness. Self-comprehension is a fundamental precondition necessary for real leadership.

In the 6th century BC Thales, one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece, is reported to have offered the famous instruction “know thyself.”  This idea of self-inquiry as a mandatory feature of a well-lived life rapidly attained proverbial status among the Greeks.  In fact, it was even deemed worthy of inscription on the wall of Apollo’s temple at Delphi.  Sayings based on great wisdom, such as this one, all have one thing in common, regardless of the time and place where they occur: they all share one thing in common: they are encouragements to engage in conduct which is demanding and out of the ordinary but offers prospects of great reward.  Thales’ teaching is a classic illustration of this point.

Panos Mourdoukoutas

"The First Golden Rule Of Leadership" Forbes. 9/5/2015

the mystique of leadership

The mystique of leadership, be it educational, political, religious, commercial or whatever, is next to impossible to describe, but wherever it exists, morale flourishes, people pull together toward common goals, spirits soar, order is maintained, not as an end in itself, but as a means to move forward together. Such leadership always has a moral as well as intellectual dimension; it requires courage as well as wisdom; it does not simply know, it cares.

T.M. Hesburgh

Management of organizational behavior: Utilizing human resources. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1971

As quoted in Jones, H.E. and Moser, H.R. From Trait to Transformation: The Evolution of Leadership Theories – Middle Tennessee State University

a wise agreement

Any method of negotiation may be fairly judged by three criteria: It should produce a wise agreement if agreement is possible. It should be efficient. And it should improve or at least not damage the relationship between the parties. (A wise agreement can be defined as one that meets the legitimate interests of each side to the extent possible, resolves conflicting interests fairly, is durable, and takes community interests into account).

Roger Fisher, William L. Ury & Bruce Patton 

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (The Harvard Negotiation Project). Penguin. 2011. P.4

does this need to be said?

There is this idea that people are meaner than they used to be because of the internet... People are no meaner than they used to be - people have always been #@*%&! #@*%&!'s... What happens is that the technology is just faster.... You have this crazy idea, a crazy angry thought, "I've got a crazy angry thought!" and clickety click click click and boom! - it's out. And you don't have time to slow down and ask yourself the three things you must always ask yourself before you say anything, which is: 

1. Does this need to be said?

2. Does this need to be said by me?

3. Does this need to be said by me now?

Three #@*%&! marriages it took me to learn that.

Craig Ferguson

"Does This Need to Be Said?" 2011.

lead from the back

Mandela loved to reminisce about his boyhood and his lazy afternoons herding cattle. "You know," he would say, "you can only lead them from behind." He would then raise his eyebrows to make sure I got the analogy.

As a boy, Mandela was greatly influenced by Jongintaba, the tribal king who raised him. When Jongintaba had meetings of his court, the men gathered in a circle, and only after all had spoken did the king begin to speak. The chief's job, Mandela said, was not to tell people what to do but to form a consensus. "Don't enter the debate too early," he used to say.

During the time I worked with Mandela, he often called meetings of his kitchen cabinet at his home in Houghton, a lovely old suburb of Johannesburg. He would gather half a dozen men, Ramaphosa, Thabo Mbeki (who is now the South African President) and others around the dining-room table or sometimes in a circle in his driveway. Some of his colleagues would shout at him — to move faster, to be more radical — and Mandela would simply listen. When he finally did speak at those meetings, he slowly and methodically summarized everyone's points of view and then unfurled his own thoughts, subtly steering the decision in the direction he wanted without imposing it. The trick of leadership is allowing yourself to be led too. "It is wise," he said, "to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea."

Richard Stengel
Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership - Time Magazine. July 9, 2008