My Thoughts from Day 1 of the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit
Quotes
"[Entrepreneurship] is a discipline like any other. It can be learned and practiced."
-Peter Drucker via Leonard Schlesinger
"If you can't predict the future, create it"
- Leonard Schlesinger
"Stop worrying about what you want to do and start worrying about what you are going to do next"
- Leonard Schlesinger quoting a colleagues Mom.
"Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear a word you say."
- Cory Booker on the need to first live out the change we want to see our world in ourselves.
"Competence is no longer a scarce commodity."
- Seth Godin
"We teach you to wait to be picked. Give me a break! Pick yourself and do what you want."
- Seth Godin
"If its worth doing, then what are you waiting for?"
- Seth Godin
Thoughts
Bill Hybels gave a great talk where he asked some thought provoking questions about hard situations you encounter in leadership. It got me thinking a lot about adjustments I can make to lead my team better. I want us to have fun building great software, be challenged to grow, and do it without letting the parts we have to do get in the way.
Leonard Schlesinger's talk showed me that being an entrepreneur isn't about being a crazy man like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. It about going after something you want and taking action with the resources you have. It was another kick in the pants to me to actually code some of the ideas I have, because they are things I want.
Seth Godin's talk was way cool. He talked about how computers and the Internet are making it so just being competent at something isn't valuable anymore. If you can reproduce something, you can find a way to do it cheaper. The value, and the power, we now have is that we can bring art to our work. I have been thinking about code as art more and more recently. Right now my team is wrapping up a proof-of-concept app to support a pilot program for one of our clients at Vibes. I'm feeling pretty damn proud of how we did it. I think that it is elegant code.bIt is a work of art. I want to bring more of my art to my code, both at work and in my spare time, and I want to inspire my team to do so as well.
