Sublime

Keith Ferrazzi, a consultant and management speaker, related that a talk on how companies can accomplish cultural change prompted a manager in the audience to note the similarities in Ferrazzi’s prescriptions to elements of addiction programs.30 For good reason: Successful efforts at change at the individual or the organizational level have many

Every time that we, as a species, have changed the way we think about the world, we have come up with more powerful types of organizations.

I’ve taken a different tack. After years of experimenting, I discovered that the more I tried to exert power directly, the less powerful I became. I learned to dial back my ego and distribute power as widely as possible without surrendering final authority. Paradoxically, this approach strengthened my effectiveness because it freed me to focus on

It is a universal truth in life that humans don’t make good decisions in an emotional state. People who are able to remain cool, calm, and collected in the face of challenges and the unknown are people you want in your organization.

Surowiecki’s argument is that we need dissenting voices, people who challenge the conventional wisdom, resist the fashionable consensus, and disturb the intellectual peace. “Follow the person in front of you” is as dangerous to humans as it is to army ants.

I began to ask myself questions like “What makes a group lively and engaged?” instead of “How good am I?” So palpable was the difference in my approach to conducting as a result of this “silent conductor” insight, that players in the orchestra started asking me, “What happened to you?”

The first kind is the expert—the kind of person whose wall is covered with framed credentials: Oliver Sachs for neuroscience, Alan Greenspan for economics, or Stephen Hawking for physics. Celebrities and other aspirational figures make up the second class of “authorities.” Why do we care that Michael Jordan likes McDonald’s? Certainly he is not a