Tag Archives: boldness has genius in it

To Quench Your Thirst for Success : Stir

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you take more decisive action. Reading time: 1:46.

“Yucky,” the little girl said, after taking a sip of her iced tea at a restaurant. Her mother intervened: “You have to put sugar in that.”

The little girl tore two packets of sugar and poured them into the iced tea while her mother was busy taking care of her two other children. The little girl tasted the iced tea again. “Yucky!” The girl’s mother looked up and said matter-of-factly. “You have to stir it.”

How many leaders have the right ingredients but forget to stir it? Taking action is critical. As the wit said,”Indeed, God may have given us the ingredients for Our Daily Bread but He still expects us to do the baking.”

Just Do It

Turn up the temperature on your oven. And get started baking. Don’t worry about next steps. Focus on THE NEXT step.

Don’t worry about heading in the wrong direction. Just start out. You can made adjustments in your plan. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “The voyage of the best ship is a zig-zag line of a hundred tacks.”

Adapt and adjust but keep going. Like the Nike iconic ad said: Just do it. “Boldness has genius, power and magic in it,” said German philosopher and author Johann Wolfgang Goethe. “Only engage and the mind grows heated.”

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Quick Start: Well Begun = Half Done

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you launch your initiatives more effectively. Reading time: 3:10.

“Move ’em on, head ’em up. Keep them doggies rollin’. Rawhide.”

Carl Lewis in LongJump competition

Those lyrics from the 1960’s TV show Rawhide still ring in my ears. And no wonder. I was fascinated with how the real life cowboys of yesteryear could herd 3,000 cattle over a 1,000 mile route -hoofing through 16 miles a day on average -over two months despite rain, terrain and pain. Amazing since I can’t herd three cats into a room in a warm, comfortable home.

What’s the secret? A quick start.

Track star Carl Lewis Celebrates a Victory

And that’s an instructive leadership tactic for any complicated project filled with many moving parts.

Turns out that over the first four days of the drive the cattle covered twice as many miles per day as they would average for the rest of the drive. Why so quick a start? Fewer strays from homesick cattle.

Indeed well begun is half done as the Roman historian Horace observed, echoing Aristotle’s notion that “beginning is said to be half the whole.” Continue reading →