Leadership, teamwork, democratic workplace
A Wolf saw a Goat feeding at the summit of a rock, where he could not get at her. “Why do you stay up there in that sterile place and go hungry?” said the Wolf. “Down here where I am the broken-bottle vine cometh up as a flower, the celluloid collar blossoms as the rose,…
Once in winter, a flock of wild turkeys made its circuitous way across farmlands and through forests. There were two dozen, young and old. One turkey, Tom by name, somehow mangled his foot and could not keep up. He called to the flock and asked them to slow down, but no one responded. When the group…
The Fable of The Weeping Bald Man and Some Partridges by Odo* of Cheriton** “Against Rulers Feigning Justice” “A bald man, his eyes streaming with tears, was killing partridges. And one partridge said to another: ‘Behold the man – how good and saintly he is.’ And the other asked: ‘Why do you call him good?’…
The donkeys were tired of being burdened with burdens and labouring all the days of their lives, so they sent ambassadors to Zeus, asking him to release them from their toil. Zeus, wanting to show them that they had asked for something impossible, said that their suffering would come to an end on the day…
AN Inquisitive Man was one day met by a friend who cordially hailed him: “Good morning, my good fellow! And where do you come from?” “From the Museum of Natural History, where I have just spent three hours. I saw everything there was to see and examined it carefully. It was all so astonishing that…
As the reader may know, I have moved my 15-year-old blog from the Nucleus platform (no longer supported) to the WordPress platform which, I am told hosts 40% of the world’s blogs. My progress has been akin to traversing a squelching bog at midnight. . It’s been trial and error (or sink or swim) as…
The resolution of Tom T. Hall’s mournful song about a hospitalized pig farmer set me to thinking about work, the dignity of work, and perspectives on work*. The song ends: “Well, the doctors say they do not know what saved the man from death But in a few days he put on his overalls and he…
Recently reading an old-timey Ellery Queen mystery, I stumbled across yet another nimble fat man allusion: “As the District Attorney closed the door the occupant of the room wheeled about with astonishing agility for a man of his weight.” This cliché appears in The Roman Hat Mystery (1929). The “astonishing agility” reminded me of a…
It’s an eternal question , why some teams do well and others fail. Is it luck or circumstance, personality, leadership, or urgency, nature or nurture? All of these, none of these? Some of my work teams would take off and soar far above others. I try to explain this phenomenon in my classes by exploring…
“A small elephant is not a rabbit.”