Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The Best Wisdom is Portable

By which I mean that it can be put in multiple contexts and keep its status as wisdom.

I'm reminded of this over and over reading Seth Godin's book "Linchpin". I was expecting it would be a good book, but only a few pages in I was as excited about reading the book as maybe I've ever been starting off on a book. It just resonated so well with me, gave better voice than I could to vague thoughts that I've had, and went in brilliant directions I would have never thought of.

I'm now most of the way through, and I look back and it seems like almost at every page I wanted to stop and jot down at least one quote. Though I haven't (until now) because I couldn't bring myself to stop the flow of reading it.

The highly portable quote I hit today:

"Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable."

This is one of the thoughts that so obviously resonates with me right now as we're thinking about putting together the team for our startup to take it to the next level.

But I feel like its true wisdom is that it resonates just as strongly in the completely different context of being a parent. It just strikes a chord with how I think about how we want to approach raising our almost-2-year-old daughter.

All children are motivated learners; are naturally curious. So you get that for free. Setting high expectations and giving her room to become remarkable is where the magic can happen. I get the impression that too many parents forgot that the last 20 years, and I hope that it's changing now.

This isn't the first case that this portability of wisdom in Linchpin hit me, and I think that is the real genius of the book.

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