“And therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t. No one does. You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I’m following, and I’m not walking in anyone else’s footsteps. I’m making it up as I go.” – Charlie Hoehn, who has had some interesting career moves himself. Roughly approximates what I’ve been learning myself.
> “The fossil fuel deposits of our Spaceship Earth correspond to our automobile’s storage battery which must be conserved to turn over our main engine’s self-starter. Thereafter, our ‘main engine,’ the life regenerating processes, must operate exclusively on our vast daily energy income from the powers of wind, tide, water, and the direct Sun radiation energy.” – Buckminster Fuller.
I’ve thought similar things about a lot of situations: taking a sabbatical, for instance, isn’t sustainable, but it can recharge the storage battery, and power the setting up of new practices that are sustainable. Booster rockets are another analogy–you can’t use them forever, but they can help you break free of gravity. It’s important that we use fossil fuels, booster rockets, and sabbaticals to set us up for when they’re gone.
[These lessons from Colin Powell](http://www.chally.com/enews/powell.html) are much more interesting than the usual CEO tripe…
* Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
* The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
* Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.
* Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.
* Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.
* You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.
* Keep looking below surface appearances. Don’t shrink from doing so (just) because you might not like what you find.
* Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.
* Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.
* Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.
* Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission.
* Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
* Powell’s Rules for Picking People: Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done.
* (Borrowed by Powell from Michael Korda): Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.
* Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired. Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.
* The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
* Have fun in your command.
* Command is lonely.
“A priority is observed, not manufactured or assigned. Otherwise, it’s necessarily not a priority.” – Merlin Mann. Real priorities are what you are actually doing.
“Improving university education is one of the cheapest and simplest things that we could do to improve the U.S. economy’s long-term prospects. The current system, in light of both the promise and distractions of modern technology, is almost laughably poorly designed. – Philip Greenspun.
Some good ideas, including changing grading, stop lecturing, open offices for students, and teaching the full work process (from vague request to refined and documented solution).
“Many VCs tell entrepreneurs to ‘come back when you have a demo.’ They aren’t wondering whether your product can be built – they are wondering whether you can build it.” – Chris Dixon.
“Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus and concentrate the mind…but for [creative tasks] you want to be looking around.” – Dan Pink
WSJ: But is there something compelling about the collaborative process compared to the solitary job of writing?
CM: Yes, it would compel you to avoid it at all costs.
– Cormac McCarthy on The Road – WSJ.com.
“Mission is revealing to others their fundamental beauty, value and importance in the universe, their capacity to love, to grow and to do beautiful things and to meet God.” – Jean Vanier.
If someone’s checking their email in your meeting, maybe your meeting isn’t good enough.