Friends,
Reader’s Digest is a storehouse of information, in case you can tap into!! Sometimes, they come out with special editions containing gems from their earlier publications – what I call “Masterpieces”. I picked the following from an article ‘The Puzzle of Personal Excellence’ written by Dianna Booher. Dianna is CEO of Booher Consultant, a communications training firm.
In one of her articles she has made an important observation: Leaders are readers!! An excerpt:
Stay informed: Chief Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes said, “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” When I started my consulting and training business, I read everything I could find on the subject. Only high school seniors know it all. The rest of us have to read and learn.
When a US team traveled to Japan in the 1980’s to study the Toyota production system and the innovative Japanese just-in-time concept, they met with the system’s creator, Taiichi Ohno. When the Americans questioned him about what inspired his thinking, he laughed, “I learned it all from Henry Ford’s book.” The book he referred top was Today and Tomorrow; written by Ford and published by Doubleday in 1926. Leaders are readers.
Someone said of us knowledge workers, “Wealth was once measured in gold. Now it’s measured in what we know.” Stay alert and informed. Read voraciously.
Cheers and Best Wishes!!
With information available at the click of a mouse,everybody has easy access to the same information with the unwanted side effect of information overload. It seems to me that apart from knowing where to find information, knowledge workers need the ability to find the proverbial needle in the haystack and then know how to sew, that is, use it!!
ReplyDeleteTransforming information into usable knowledge is an alchemical process where critical thinking is an ingredient but to get 24 karats of wisdom, experience seems to be the catalyst.
Cheers