where the tiny bit begins

One may say that true life begins where the tiny bit begins - where what seem to us minute and infinitely small alterations take place. True life is not lived where great external changes take place - where people move about, clash, fight, and slay one another - it is lived only where these tiny, tiny infinitesimally small changes occur.

Leo Tolstoy

"Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?" p.197 Tolstoy's polemic against what he saw as the "escapes" of alcohol and narcotics, translated by Aylmer Maude

there are no bad teams, only bad leaders

When Leif Babin became a Hell Week instructor for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training (BUD/S), he had already served as a Navy SEAL platoon leader in the most decorated special-operations unit of the Iraq War.

Still, he learned a profound lesson about leadership: "There are no bad teams, only bad leaders..."

In one exercise, Babin explained, SEAL candidates were grouped by height into boat crews of seven men and assigned to a WWII-relic inflatable boat that weighed more than 200 pounds. The most senior-ranking sailor became the boat-crew leader responsible for receiving, transmitting, and overseeing the execution of the lead instructor's orders. They were to go through a grueling string of races that involved running with the boat and then paddling it in the ocean.

After several rounds, one particular team came in first and another in last nearly every time. The instructors decided to switch the leaders of the best and worst teams, and the results were remarkable. Under new leadership, the formerly great team did relatively well but was a shadow of its past self, and the formerly terrible team placed first in nearly every race.

The once-great team had practiced enough with each other to accomplish something even under bad management, but the bad leader was unable to command respect or maintain synchronicity.

Meanwhile, the excellent leader had taken his new team from last to first by getting them to believe that they were just as capable as his former team, and that bickering with each other during the exercise would not be tolerated...

"One of the things that I learned from that boat-crew example is that most people want to lead," Babin said. "The team that was failing there, they didn't want to be on the failing team. They wanted to win. ... It's about checking the ego — it's about being humble, to recognize what can I do better to lead my team."


Richard Feloni
"Former Navy SEAL commanders explain why 'there are no bad teams, only bad leaders'" Business Insider. October 1, 2016

one in five corporate executives are psychopaths

An Australian study has found that about one in five corporate executives are psychopaths – roughly the same rate as among prisoners. 

The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 percent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred.

Nathan Brooks, a forensic psychologist who conducted the study, said the findings suggested that businesses should improve their recruitment screening. 

He said recruiters tend to focus on skills rather than personality features and this has led to firms hiring “successful psychopaths” who may engage in unethical and illegal practices or have a toxic impact on colleagues.

Jonathan Pearlman

"1 in 5 CEOs are psychopaths, study finds." The Telegraph. September 13, 2016

a man's age

You can tell a man's age by the amount he suffers when he hears a new idea.


Marion G. Romney
Marion G. Romney: His Life and Faith by F. Burton Howard. Bookcraft. Salt Lake City. 1988. P.217

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