“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” -Nietzsche
1: Thomas Edison was at home one night after another busy day in his laboratory. Suddenly, a man appeared at the door. A fire had broken out at Edison’s … continue reading
1: Today, we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., perhaps the most influential American of the 20th century.
And yet, the greatest American civil rights leader was at first an unwilling one.
In September 1954, Martin was 25 years old. He had just completed studying for his doctorate at Boston University. He and his wife, Coretta, moved to Montgomery, Alabama to realize his career goal of becoming a … continue reading
Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations. On Friday, I share something about myself or what we are working on at PCI.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been exploring (1) the key ingredients of a great annual planning meeting and (2) the importance of holding a full-day planning meeting every 90 days … continue reading
1: “Peak performance isn’t something we win,” Steven Kotler writes in his brilliant book The Art of the Impossible.
“There are no fixed rules, no established time frame for the contest, and the field of play is as big or as small as we choose to live our lives.”
Peak performance is what philosopher James Carse calls an “infinite game,” Steven notes. There are “finite games” and “infinite games” … continue reading
1: Author Steven Kotler is a skier.
“I started skiing when I was five years old and have never stopped,” Steven Kotler writes in The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer. “As a result, every time I head into the mountains, I am making a choice (autonomy) that is aligned with my passion and purpose.”
This week we’ve been exploring the importance of autonomy to drive peak performance. … continue reading
1: Imagine it’s 9:30 am on a Wednesday morning. We are sitting at our desk. We receive an email from a colleague: “The waves are good!”
We stop what we are doing. We close our laptop. We stand up. We go change into our surfing gear. And we run to the beach.
This happens regularly at the outdoor retailer Patagonia, where the corporate headquarters sits on the Pacific Ocean, and … continue reading
1: The year was 1977. Edward Deci and Richard Ryan were young psychologists at the University of Rochester. On the day they met, Edward had just become a clinical practitioner, and Richard was still a graduate student.
Both men “shared an interest in the science of motivation, which led to a long conversation, which led to a fifty-year collaboration that overturned most of the foundational ideas in that science of … continue reading
Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations. On Friday, I share something about myself or what we are working on at PCI.
It’s the start of a new year. For many of us, it’s time to lay out our goals for the year ahead. In recent weeks, I’ve written about the keys to a … continue reading
Different goals. Different stories.
Yesterday, we looked a the power of a springboard story.
1: As leaders, we want to have many different types of stories in our leadership tool belt. We are wise to “employ a variety of narrative patterns for different aims,” Stephen Denning writes in The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling. “The point is that there is no single way to tell a story. Instead, narrative … continue reading
1: “Human communication has its own set of very unusual and counterintuitive rules.” Malcolm Gladwell tells us.
Exhibit one: If we want to inspire people into action, providing detailed scenarios doesn’t work.
Why? “Even if believable when disseminated, such scenarios quickly become discredited as the future unfolds in unexpected ways,” Stephen Denning writes in The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative.
