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Leadership Newsletters:

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Friday, December 12, 2003

 

Risk everything, or gain nothing.

Geoffrey De Charny, 1358

Thursday, December 11, 2003

 

The short words are best,
and the old words are best of all.

Winston Churchill

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

 

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

Robert Frost

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

 

The secret of fast progress is inefficiency,
fast and furious and numerous failures.

Kevin Kelly

Monday, December 08, 2003

 

Learning is important, for both people and organizations. But the real challenge today is unlearning, which is much harder. Each of us has a "mental model" that we've used over the years to make sense of the world. But the new world of business -- built on digital technologies and increasing-returns economics -- behaves differently from the world in which we grew up. Before any of us can learn new things, we have to make our current assumptions explicit and find ways to challenge them.

This is no academic exercise, and it doesn't come naturally. The harder you fight to hold onto specific assumptions, the more likely there's gold in letting go of them. Step back, reflect -- and listen!


John Seely Brown
Vice President and Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation