5 Things I’ve Learned or Stolen

admin August 04, 2008 leadership, organizational culture 6 Comments

In the 6.15 CIO, William Cohen notes 5 things he’s learned from working with Peter Drucker. Three of them resonate with me and are provided below. Then I added two more which I did not steal from William Cohen. Can you guess which are mine?

  1. Nothing gets done without leadership. Or, conversely, with leadership, stuff gets done.
  2. Good leaders are creative, particularly when resources are scarce.
  3. Sometimes, a few of us are smarter than all of us.
  4. Everyone is different: manage your staff around their strengths and make their weaknesses irrelevant.
  5. Most of the time, fear influences behavior more than desire. People act more to avoid particular outcomes than they do to achieve a particular vision.

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6 Responses to “5 Things I’ve Learned or Stolen”

  1. Kyle said:

    Aug 05, 08 at 6:43 am

    I’m gonna say that 2,3, or 4 are yours. I can’t really narrow it down more than that. This of course means that the correct answer is that 1 and 5 are yours. ‘-)

  2. rufusb said:

    Aug 05, 08 at 7:33 am

    Yours are 1 and 3.

    Btw…my organization is up to its armpits in bad leaders. Therefore…nothing gets done. This one is right on the money.

  3. essprit said:

    Aug 05, 08 at 8:41 am

    I’m guessing 3 & 5 are yours. (I put #3 out of fear of being a total loser, since two other folks already put that, rather than out of a desire to achieve my vision of getting this right 🙂

  4. admin said:

    Aug 05, 08 at 4:44 pm

    Essprit got it: 3 & 5. Interesting how everyone picked 3. It’s true that I edited 1 a bit (the 2nd sentence is mine). I really like the bit about managing around staff strengths and trying to build organizations to protect us against all our weaknesses.

  5. rufusb said:

    Aug 06, 08 at 6:15 am

    3 sounded like something you would write and 5 sounded more, shall I say, “self-helpish”? I chose 1 because of the informal usage of the word “stuff”.

  6. kdghty said:

    Aug 06, 08 at 9:32 am

    It’s too late to count now, but I definitely had 3 and was waffling between 1 & 5. Just in case you thought you were an enigma or something… ;^)

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