You can teach someone with basic smarts to be smarter; you can't teach cultural fit or personality. But you also want someone who has a passion to win; someone that is all in.
Mellody HobsonRead
Diverse perspectives lead to a better outcome. There's so much data, when you look at the math, in terms of the investor returns and the shareholder value that gets created from more diverse boards.
Interpretation
Embracing diversity enhances decision-making and financial performance.
This quote emphasizes the importance of diverse perspectives in leadership, particularly within corporate boards. Mellody Hobson argues that when boards include a variety of voices, it leads to improved outcomes in terms of investor returns and shareholder value, highlighting that diversity is not just a moral choice but a strategic advantage in business.
In practice
In a corporate meeting discussing strategic initiatives, one might say, 'As Mellody Hobson suggests, diverse perspectives lead to a better outcome, so we should include voices from different departments.'
You can teach someone with basic smarts to be smarter; you can't teach cultural fit or personality. But you also want someone who has a passion to win; someone that is all in.
Observe your environment. Invite people into your life that don't look like you or think like you
Black women have a kind of advantage over white women in the workplace. They go in prepared to face some discrimination, so when it happens, they aren't shocked.
I can't tell you how many resumes we get from business schools across the country from black women and black men and Hispanic women, men, etcetera, who say I'm interested in working for your company because they can see someone at the top who looks like them.
The way I go about it is that we should all be inviting people into our lives who don't look like us, speak like us and don't come from where we come from.
Now, race is one of those topics in America that makes people extraordinarily uncomfortable. You bring it up at a dinner party or in a workplace environment, it is literally the conversational equivalent of touching the third rail.
It had become usual to give Napoleon the Credit for every Successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, "Under the guidance of our leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days" or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, "thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!".
One thing I noticed working in the Bronx is that leaders come in the craziest places. They don't always show up at community board meetings. Sometimes it's just the guys on the corner that the boys on the block respect.
And when a leader embraces their responsibility to care for people instead of caring for numbers, then people will follow, solve problems and see to it that that leader’s vision comes to life the right way, a stable way and not the expedient way.
I don't believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.
If a king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will not only be reckless likewise, but also eat into his works.
One of the recurring themes in Marcus' handbook is leadership's responsibility to work intelligently with what it is given and not waste time fantasizing about a world of flawless people and perfect choices.
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