While My Guitar Gently Weeps - The Monday Morning Memo

“In many organizations there is hardly time for lunch, let alone assessing the past. Appropriate reflection is the nourishment that feeds our future. Without it, how can we be sure of the ground from which we wish to move forward? As the saying goes: ‘If you don’t know where you’ve been, or where you are, how the hell can you know where you want to go?’

Of course, there will be the practical assessment. We will know the figures, and the statistical analysis against the projections. But how often do we take time to tell the story of the past? Not the result but the process, not the ‘what’ but the ‘why’ and the ‘how’? Wherever we are and whatever we do, we are all, always, part of a story. Human beings have always passed on knowledge this way; stories are storehouses of wisdom that can teach and inspire us. There is not a day goes by that we do not tell, hear, read or see a story, from children, partners, friends, or the media. But we go to work and start reporting facts and speaking in acronyms. A leader who does not know what story he or she is in, and where they are within it, is missing an essential route to inspiration.”

- Richard Olivier, Inspirational Leadership, Henry V and the Muse of Fire, p. 10

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