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Chapter 11 Do the work

This story may be familiar to many of you. I worked with a director who constantly talked about the power of an inspiring leadership team and recounted Peter Drucker telling us that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. He would then go and invest very little in his people; and he didn't lead anyone to the values plastered on the walls.

We are in an age where information has never been easier to find. We absorb it at a rapid speed. When I was younger we used to go to the library or the encyclopaedia for information. Nowadays we can google anything on our phone, anywhere, and have hundreds of references. We can quickly gather information that tells us smoking kills, dishonesty ultimately catches up with you, and that relationships break down if we don't invest in them. Yet we do not always act on what we know. People still die from self-inflicted diseases, people still get caught embezzling or making corrupt decisions, and marriages and relationships fail regularly.

It's all well and good to know the right thing to do. But wisdom is combining it with action: working out the right blend of knowledge and implementation. But, as we know, it takes work. You have to fight for wisdom and push resistance out of the way.

KNOWLEDGE IS accessible. WISDOM YOU HAVE TO fight FOR.

Dr Albert Schweitzer was, according to Time magazine in 1949, ‘one of the most extraordinary men of modern times’. He was a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a famous missionary doctor who spent ...