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December 23, 2016 - February 11, 2017
It is okay to change your mind as an opinion writer; what is not okay is to have no mind—to stand for nothing, or for everything, or only for easy and safe things.
Talmudic saying “What comes from the heart enters the heart.” What doesn’t come from your heart will never enter someone else’s heart. It takes caring to ignite caring; it takes empathy to ignite empathy.
it is fanciful to suppose that you can opine about or explain this world by clinging to the inside or outside of any one rigid explanatory box or any single disciplinary silo.
‘Disruption’ is what happens when someone does something clever that makes you or your company look obsolete. ‘Dislocation’ is when the whole environment is being altered so quickly that everyone starts to feel they can’t keep up.”
“In the twenty-first century, knowing all the answers won’t distinguish someone’s intelligence—rather, the ability to ask all the right questions will be the mark of true genius.”
To succeed now, we have to continually refresh our stocks of knowledge by participating in relevant flows of new knowledge.
Warning: in the age of accelerations, if a society doesn’t build floors under people, many will reach for a wall—no matter how self-defeating that would be.
The only way to steer is to paddle as fast as or faster than the rate of change in technology, globalization, and the environment. The only way to thrive is by maintaining dynamic stability—
The executive’s role here is to define the vision for the future. The company’s responsibility is to provide the tools and platforms for employees to get there, and the individual’s role is to provide the selection and motivation.
Managing weakness is an enormous headache.
1 in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum.
And to start with I would focus on five of these killer apps that have immediate application to governing today: (1) the ability to adapt when confronted by strangers with superior economic and military might without being hobbled by humiliation; (2) the ability to embrace diversity; (3) the ability to assume ownership over the future and one’s own problems; (4) the ability to get the balance right between the federal and the local—that is, to understand that a healthy society, like a healthy tropical forest, is a network of healthy ecosystems on top of ecosystems, each thriving on its own but
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culture is the “pattern of responses discovered, developed, or invented during the group’s history of handling problems which arise from interactions among its members, and between them and their environment. These responses are considered the correct way to perceive, feel, think, and act, and are passed on to the new members through immersion and teaching. Culture determines what is acceptable or unacceptable, important or unimportant, right or wrong, workable or unworkable.”
senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously observed: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
role of a leader is “to help people face reality and to mobilize them to make change” as their environment changes to ensure the security and prosperity of their community.
“We have to surprise them with compassion, with restraint and generosity.”
“In the postbiblical Jewish view of the world, you cannot be moral unless you are totally free.
“Every technology is used before it is completely understood,” Leon Wieseltier wrote in The New York Times Book Review on January 11, 2015. “There is always a lag between an innovation and the apprehension of its consequences. We are living in that lag, and it is the right time to keep our heads and reflect. We have much to gain and much to lose.”
inspire more of what Dov Seidman calls “sustainable values”: honesty, humility, integrity, and mutual respect. These values generate trust, social bonds, and, above all, hope. This is opposed to what Seidman calls “situational values”—“just doing whatever the situation allows”—
“the one big bug we have as humans is that we are tribal,”
“Collaboration moves at the speed of trust,”
When you are in a real one, never, ever say to someone in need: “Call me if you need help.” If you want to help someone, just do it.
“I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist, because they are each just different forms of fatalism that treat the future as fate and not choice—and absolve you from taking responsibility for creating the future that you want. I believe in applied hope.”
“Our message has to be: ‘We are glad that you are here and can’t wait to see the contributions you will make to our community. That asks something of us. But it also has to ask something of you. What are you doing to embrace the existing culture, to be a part of this place you have chosen as your new home?’”
