Quips and Quotes -- The Best From This Week

Leaders are readers. Here are few of the things I've found helpful in my reading this week. I hope this provides some fuel for your leadership tank.

Quips & Quotes To Ponder

  • Yeah, leaders are afraid. They just know what to do with their fears: "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you." Psalm 56:3
  • "One of a leader's jobs is to assess the capability of the organization." Carly Fiorina, Tough Choices, page 167.
  • Implication: When are you setting aside time to assess? What are you assessing? How are you measuring?
  • "Whenever a leader hears a team say, 'We can't,' for whatever reason, much more conversation is required. And teams are built through such conversations. Teams are built when people can work together to successfully solve problems and achieve goals. Teams are built through effective collaboration." Tough Choices, page 167.
  • "When we serve God faithfully in whatever task he puts before us, we are carrying out our role as image-bearers." Steve Nichols, Welcome To The Story, page 135 (my son, David, and I are working our way through this book).
  • "We don't passively watch the story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration play itself out. We're not off the the gallery peering down on the stage. We are part of the story." Steve Nichols, Welcome To The Story, page 132.
  • "Leaders only really accomplish something by permission of the followers." Max De Pree, Leadership Jazz
  • On rewards & metrics: "A company values what it measures & measures what it values, & people pay attention to what is rewarded." Carly Fiorina, Tough Choices, page 184.
  • Organizational change: "As I'd learned over and over, many people prefer a deeply problematic known to the risks of the unknown." Carly Fiorina, Tough Choices, page 182.
  • Don't quit: "On the long train ride home, Will said, later, 'We doubted that we would ever resume our experiments . . . . When we looked at the time and money we had expended, and considered the progress made and the distance yet to go, we considered our experiments a failure.' Someday people would fly, he remarked to his brother, but the two of them would not live to see it." Wilbur Wright, on a return from Kitty Hawk after problems with their experimental glider. To Conquer The Air by James Tobin, page 113.
  • Lyndon B. Johnson on using power in the cause of civil rights: "Assuring Richard Goodwin there would be 'no compromises on civil rights; I'm not going to bend an inch,' he added, 'In the Senate [as Leader] I did the best I could. But I had to be careful . . . But I always vowed that if I ever had the power I'd make sure every Negro had the same chance as every white man. Now I have it. And I'm going to use it.'" The Passage Of Power by Robert Caro, page 563. Application: What am I doing with the "power" God has entrusted to me?
  • Warning: Becoming a champion of change may get you labeled a "dangerous heretic" by those who want to maintain the status quo.

Books And Articles To Consider

  1. "A Day Without God" by Robin Eckel
  2. Robin, a second Christian school teachers describes what is lost if we lose our freedom of declaring the Truths of God in the classroom.
  3. The Final Four, Travel Teams, and Empty Pews: Who Is Winning The Competition Between Sports And Religion
  4. The "folk religion/idolatry of sports" IS one of the biggest challenges the church and parents face.
  5. Tough Choices by Carly Fiorina
  6. Bill Hybels put this book in his "Top Ten" and that was all it took for me to give it a read. It's outstanding. I have included some of the quotes above.
  7. Churches: Time To Fight Back by Michael Reagan
  8. The son of a former US President offers his thoughts on the silence of the church on the issue of gay marriage. As I read this I was asking myself afresh, "What is the role of the church?" and "What is the role of the pastor in the church?"
  9. Carly Fiorina's Leadership Framework
  10. I heard Carly share her leadership framework at a leadership roundtable I attended recently. She includes it in Tough Choices. I will add it to my toolbox and include it in "Models and Tools" on my website.
  11. The Passage Of Power by Robert A. Caro
  12. Caro does a masterful job of taking the reader through the transition from the Kennedy assassination to the Johnson presidency. Outstanding work.
The Leader's WorkLeadership development, Leadership Quotes, ReadingComment