Leading by Counterexample?
Thursday, April 11, 2019
A piece in the Economist provides the following salt to take with the next habits of highly effective people article you encounter:
The danger of copying chief executives is that what makes their habits fashionable is usually strong profit growth and share price performance, and those can be ephemeral. Quirks that look daring and groundbreaking in good times seem more of a liability in testing times. Just ask shareholders in Tesla.
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| Image by Free-Photos, via Pixabay, license. |
Regardless of your opinion on that last question, the fact remains that some people can be wildly successful in spite of some of their habits. A similar type of article, which I dub health advice from centenarians gives us more examples: No. I don't think I need to sip whiskey daily -- or, for that matter, to be cavalier about smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
When pursuing success, it can pay to study examples, but sometimes, it could be worth asking, "What other factors or habits might account for this person's success?" Some of those may well be worth adopting indeed.
-- CAV
Updates
Today: Corrected a typo.
2 comments:
Yo, Gus, you write: "A similar type of article, which I dub health advice from centenarians gives us more examples: No. I don't think I need to sip whiskey daily..."
A classic joke doubling as reductio ad absurdum (well, once it was absurd; now it might be fairly moderate):
A reporter was sent to interview the world's oldest Frenchman. He asked him, "To what do you attribute your long life?"
"Ah, monsieur, I never let a drop of water cross my lips. Wine, only wine."
The reporter grinned, "Aha! So how do you brush your teeth?"
"A light claret."
Nice.
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