Sublime

A biographer of the novelist E. M. Forster wrote, “To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.” Imagine how good it would be to be that guy.

building a venture that fused the world of cold, harsh, real-world business practice with the kind of creativity, passion and care only found in a small business.

a very mortal human who was willing to demonstrate behavioral standards and facilitate the interaction of teams rather than pretending to know all answers to their many problem sets.

TAKE THE HEAT AND HOLD STEADY.

Balfour, Buchan continued, would take the hesitating remark of a shy man and discover in it unexpected possibilities, would probe it and expand it until its author felt he had really made some contribution to human wisdom.

Mike Flynn, taught me a great technique. We were visiting a unit that boasted of having more than 250 intelligence sources (Iraqi civilians recruited to pass information to U.S. forces). I was deeply impressed. Mike then asked a simple question: “Can you describe your very best source? I’ll assume that all the others are less valuable.” The unit ad