Tag Archives: string theory

Tuning In to Your Creativity

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to use music as a strategic thinking tool. Reading time: 3:09

How do you fine tune your creative thinking skills?

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein

With a fine tune.

Albert Einstein chose to play the violin to help him relax and problem solve more readily, according to his son, Hans Albert.

Whenever Albert Einstein felt that he had come to the “end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music. That would usually resolve all his difficulties,” Hans Albert recalled of his dad’s String Theory of a Different Kind.

At any rate, music just may be the oil in the engine of creative and strategic thinking. In fact, some of the world’s most renowned thinkers -leaders -were musically talented:

Galileo, the son of a musician, played a guitar like instrument called the lute.
Thomas Jefferson played the violin.
Ben Franklin, who invented the glass harmonica, played the guitar and harp.
Henry David Thoreau played the flute.
Albert Schweitzer played the organ. Continue reading →

Yo-Yo Leadership: Pulling Your Own Strings

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to help you preserve and protect your values. Reading time: 2:23.

The six yo-yos flanking the side of the Chief Executive Officer’s desk like so many-colored safety switch buttons, quickly became a conversation piece for every first time visitor.

And whenever he saw that familiar quizzical look, the CEO was only too happy to share the Yo-yo Lore that turned his desk into a toy chest of sorts.

“No, no, no I’m NOT having my second childhood and no I’m not a yo-yo dieter,” he smiled.

“No yo-yos are too important to be used only as toys or as negative reminders of simplistic observations that what goes up must come down and all those variables that go with that kind of thinking.”

The visitor learns that the yo-yo display on his desk was gift from his direct reports. They were intrigued with his concept of principle-centered, values-based leadership that the then new CEO referenced in his first speech to the company.

“The most effective leaders are like a yo-yo,” the CEO declared to surprised looks in his company-wide audience assessing their new leader for the first time.

Leaders by definition, the CEO explained, are always attached to something. They always come with strings attached. Strings of cultural norms and behaviors. Strings of values and truths. Strings that make you, you. Continue reading →