Following up on freedom from yesterday’s post, I wanted to share a perspective so useful, I almost can’t believe it wasn’t originally written for the context of personal development. Michelangelo, when asked about how he created David, said I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. As I mentioned yesterday, the greatest improvements we can make are to free ourselves from constraints that inhibit[…] Keep reading →

This model is one of my most important ones I think about almost daily. It fits with my practice of having low standards the first time. It also enables you to act on the perspective most successful people I know of realizing the importance of failing. The scene is a martial arts class. A few students learning from a great master. The students ask the master how he never loses his[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written about my models for how to motivate doing things you aren’t good at. Such skills are important in many fields, but especially so in leadership. More than having to motivate yourself to do things for the first time, you often have to motivate many others to do things they haven’t done. One is my practice of having low standards the first time I do something, which motivates doing[…] Keep reading →

I write a lot about models on this page. By model I mean a simplified representation of something for a purpose. I promote recognizing what models work and using those, and not dwelling on if the model is right or wrong or accurate or not. Sometimes I like using models that work despite being very wrong. For example, sometimes thinking men are from Mars and women are from Venus helps[…] Keep reading →

Following yesterday’s post asking you about your model for leadership, you might wonder mine. I looked at my paper from the business school leadership class, but my model has evolved so much from then — the beginning of my even asking the questions — I don’t see value in posting it. Elements of my leadership model Since then I’ve developed my Model of the human emotional system, which I’ve found[…] Keep reading →

To ask what your model for leadership is is not just an idle question. It was the sole question for the final essay in one of my leadership classes at Columbia Business School — one of the best classes I’d ever taken, including all undergrad and graduate school classes. Models influence your behavior strongly. Since people tend to do what they think is best (though not always what you think[…] Keep reading →

A scene from the inspirational docudrama Apollo 13 based on the true rescue of a disaster in space illustrates a great example of how different models and beliefs can motivate different motivations and behavior. The scene is the control room after a lunar mission suffered an explosion and three astronauts’ lives were in peril as their ship hurdled through space with little chance at recovery. The characters are a fictional[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written before about why deciding is hard. One of my most helpful (to me) insights was that the difficulty in deciding is not figuring out which option I like, but working up the nerve to get rid of the options I don’t choose. Our language illustrates this challenge — the -cide in decide is the same -cide as in pesticide, insecticide, etc. It means to kill, reiterating that the[…] Keep reading →

Hearing Dr. King talk about injustice anywhere being a threat to justice anywhere, I couldn’t help but notice how he polarized people too. The content is different, but the structure sounds like the “You’re either with us or against us” I heard from a U.S. President ten years ago. It tells people they aren’t safe, no matter where they are. If you read this page regularly, you know I don’t[…] Keep reading →