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.

what has changed with leadership in the past 50 years?

Very Little.

Tom Peters is a business and leadership legend widely known for his historical bestseller, In Search of Excellence, which has been called "the greatest business book of all time" by Bloomsbury Publishing.... 

In an interview with Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, Peters didn't mince words on the current state of leadership, saying that "nothing has changed in 50 years, including the maddening fact that all too often a business strategy is inspiring, but the execution mania is largely AWOL."

In his latest work, The Excellence Dividend, Peters collects everything he's learned in his 35-plus years of writing and speaking on the best practices for businesses and their leaders. He also puts the finger on the most common offenses people in management roles have made--and keep making. 

1. Inability to execute well.
2. Seeing 'excellence' strictly as long-term strategy.
3. Failure to develop a thriving culture.
4. Failure to put employees first.
5. Failure to listen.
6. Ignoring women as potential leaders and consumers

"Poor cross-functional coordination and communication is the principal element in the delay of everything," Peters says. If your organization's health is suffering due to internal conflict and too many obstacles in the way of progress, leaders aren't actively working together in a coordinated way to effectively execute.

How do you interpret excellence in leadership or business? Most leaders think "strategy," "planning" and "vision" are pathways to achieve excellence "out there." But Peters says managers fail to capitalize on immediate excellence--how we connect, listen, inspire, and admit mistakes on a human level to employees or customers. "Excellence is conventionally seen as a long-term aspiration. I disagree. Excellence is the next five minutes," says Peters.

"CEO job No. 1 is setting -- and micro-nourishing one day, one hour, one minute at a time -- an effective people-truly-first, innovate-or-die, excellence-or-bust corporate culture," Peters says. 

Peters says excellent customer experiences rely entirely on excellent employee experiences because it's the employee who makes or breaks the customer connection. This means leaders must see extreme value in them and pour into their career growth and development. "Training is any firm's single most important capital investment," adds Peters.

I've often written that effective communication isn't just about talking; it is also the ability to listen and understand what's happening on the other side of the fence. That's what great leaders do. "I always write 'LISTEN' on the back of my hand before a meeting," Peters says. 

On a more strategy level, Peters says "women buy everything" and make up a majority of consumer and business purchasing decisions, yet are largely underserved. But his conclusion hints at the underrepresentation of women in the C-suite: "One indicator of readiness to embrace this colossal women's market opportunity comes from conducting what I call a 'squint test.' One, look at a photograph of your exec team. Two, squint. Three: Does the composition of the team look more or less like the composition of the market you aim to serve?" Now there's a reality check.

Marcel Schwantes

"6 Things The Smartest Managers Already Know But Keep Getting Wrong" Inc.com. Oct. 8, 2018