Showing all posts in The Point

The reason we need experience is for experience. It’s not just for experience itself, but to improve tomorrow’s experience.

Grandma always said, “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” Too often, when friend or enemy says, “Try it,” we think they will just sell us snakeoil.

The invitation to try something before judging seems like a gimmick. “They want to get us,” we tell ourselves.

But, the real reason for trying is to know the truth: better or worse, what is the real reason it’s good or bad? We can’t know real reasons from inexperience.  · · · →

Those who are good at what they do in their own arenas dominate other arenas.

Adolph Kiefer won the gold in the 1936 Olympics 100 meter backstroke. It mattered to Germany.

Art can overpower arms. A single pedestrian can stop an entourage of tanks. Not always, but it can happen if the art is compelling enough or the pedestrian is angry enough and the times are desperate enough.

Hard working people are fed up with junk everywhere—politics, business, family, culture. Across the world, the best kept secret is the quality, hard work dominating secret workshops. When provoked, those workers will emerge.  · · · →

Many things have a threshold. Incompetence is one of them. Powerlessness is another. When a leader is viewed as both incompetent and powerless, everyone else—peers, outsiders, competitors, allies, subordinates—everyone will view that leader as “full of hot air”.

Once compared to a hot air balloon, it’s hard to restore any respectable reputation.

“Hot air” symptoms involve overreaching, making rules that can’t be enforced, making rules that hurt and don’t help, making rules outside of jurisdiction, prudence, or ethics.

As a leader it’s your full time job to make life better for others. When you don’t, they poke holes.  · · · →

See and understand by looking outside of your own world. Once you see beyond your normal boundaries, other boundaries will make more sense.

The comfort zone was never any indication of safety; it is a prison. That prison keeps people from knowing each other and from knowing the future—from understanding each other and from understanding both the future and the past.

Because we don’t understand so many things, the future seems impossible to predict or anticipate. People who see things coming get labeled as “lucky” or “divine” when, actually, they simply live comfortably uncomfortable. For futurists, comfort is evil.  · · · →