Eleanor Roosevelt

Learn from past mistakes – preferably someone else’s.

learn from the mistakes of othersFred Brooks, the man who managed the development of IBM’s System/360 family of computers knows a thing or two about learning from mistakes, he wrote the book on it. Brooks wrote about his experiences managing systems development at IBM in the book The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. 

The book coined what is known as “Brook’s law,” which states that “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” Brooks discovered this law when he himself added more programmers to a project falling behind schedule, then concluded that it delayed the project even further. Using this and other examples of what he learned in his career, Brooks is quoted as saying, “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.”

What are you doing to prepare yourself for leadership?  Making some mistakes on your own is inevitable and one way to learn; but learning from the mistakes of others is the easier route. 

As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live enough to make them all yourself.”

 

Successful leaders provide a preview of future attractions

it-looks-like-the-futures-really-bright-future-quoteMy family enjoys the whole experience of seeing movies at the local theatre. We like to arrive early to take in the atmosphere of the posters for all the movies that are playing, get our popcorn and other snacks, and find our way to one of the seemingly endless doors that lead to the big screens. Once seated we wait in anticipation for the show to start.

For us, half of the show is the preview of future attractions, the other half is the feature presentation. We like to see the previews for two reasons that apply to successful leadership. First, it allows us to make our personal future plans when we know where the industry is going. Secondly, it give us a glimpse into what to expect in the present (the feature film) because the future previews are geared towards what is thought to be the expectaions of the audience.

Here are four reasons that successful leaders provide a preview of future attractions:

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