The healthiest companies are always characterized by organic talent development.
We know – intellectually – that confronting an issue is the only way to resolve it. But any resolution will disrupt the status quo. Given the choice between conflict and change on the one hand, and inertia on the other, the ostrich position can seem very attractive.
The biggest catastrophes that we’ve witnessed rarely come from information that is secret or hidden. It comes from information that is freely available and out there, but that we are willfully blind to.
The cell phone has become the adult’s transitional object, replacing the toddler’s teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging.
Making those around you feel invisible is the opposite of leadership.
Huge open source organizations like Red Hat and Mozilla manage the collaboration of hundreds of people who don’t know one another and have spent no time hanging around the water cooler.
The truth won’t set us free – until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it.
Instead, we have found ourselves gasping for air in a sea of corruption, dysfunction, environmental degradation, waste, disenchantment and inequality – and the harder we compete, the more unequal we become.
On overnight flights, I have trained myself to get to sleep almost instantly after takeoff. I always listen to the same audiobook on my iPod so my brain knows, regardless of time zone, that that voice means it’s time for bed.
All businesses and jobs depend on a vast number of people, often unnoticed and unthanked, without which nothing really gets done. They are all human and deserve respect and gratitude.
Building businesses takes tremendous stamina, and success isn’t achieved without it.
Certainty is no guarantor of correctness.
Openness isn’t the end; it’s the beginning.
When we confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change.
We have to see conflict as thinking and then get really good at it.
Many CEOs and leaders think that silence is indeed golden, that consensus is bliss. It is – sometimes. But more often what it signifies is that there are no respected processes for surfacing concerns and dissent.
There is no more powerful weapon for change than honesty.
Companies don’t have ideas. Only people do.
Phones and soundtracks and Muzak and fountains replace genuine and unpredictable human contact with a seamless soundtrack from a bad movie and a cliche that makes us believe we must all be happy.
If we aren’t going to be afraid of conflict, we have to see it as thinking.