After studying 24,000 people in more than two dozen organizations, three authors (David Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright) outlined some innovative, science-based leadership models. Their 2008 book, Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, Logan et al., concluded that a company’s success depends on the strength of its “tribes.”
Charles Bolden, a former space shuttle commander and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator from 2009 to 2017, dreamed of being the first person on Mars when he checked in for astronaut training in 1980. At the time, NASA thought that a crewed Mars mission was thirty years away. Of course, we know now that prediction was overly optimistic.
At any given moment more than 100,000 people in the United States alone are awaiting an organ transplant, and more than a dozen people a day die while waiting for an available organ. There just are not enough donors to meet the demand for organs. It is a tragedy without a viable solution—until now.
“The dissolution of thoughts in eternal awareness or pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”
– Voltaire
Skills are assets, and they are how most people make a living. We go to school, learn a trade, acquire experiences and then give our time in exchange for money. The amount of money we earn for our time is most likely (but not always) a direct reflection of the “market value” of our skillsets—traditionally speaking. It’s true, “time is money,” but it makes just as much sense to say, “skills are money.” Luckily, obtaining a skill is quite simple in terms of cognitive processing. All one needs is motivation, the ability to learn, and time for practice.
Think back to your first couple of semesters as an engineering student. You were flooded with new concepts. Likely, the mathematics were more difficult than anything you had encountered in high school, and you worked around the clock to absorb it all. But you knew some of the difficulties when you applied for school in the first place. The challenges weren’t a mystery to you, and something drove you to take them on. Becoming an engineer is a big, challenging goal that many people are not ready to accomplish or could not, even if they tried.
The age-old debate of whether leaders are born or made through experience was mostly solved on March 16, 1802 when the United States Military Academy at West Point was founded. The academy’s goal was to develop leaders of character for a lifetime of serving the nation, and by all measures the academy was a success.
Addictive and habitual digital distractions stem from more than just technology. Workplace culture (in particular, the “always on” culture), social norms, and individual behaviors all contribute to society's addiction to digital distractions. Read Slaying the Digital Addiction to discover how digital distractions are stealing your time.
To have the correct perspective on technology, we must understand not only how technology is changing, but how technology is changing us.
Most people understand that the pace of change is speeding up globally, along with the demand for more innovation. In a little more than 100 years, technological development has taken us from the first telephone call in 1876, to the first website in 1991. A mere 16 years elapsed between the appearance of the Internet and the first iPhone (2007). Since then, significant technological breakthroughs are happening each year.
