1: Floyd Barker was 88 years old. He lived alone in a rustic farmhouse he had shared with his late wife Ruth, who had passed away six years earlier.

“You couldn’t tell from his gregarious smile and inquisitive eyes,” Diane Button writes in her wonderful book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living, but “Floyd was lonely. . .

“He was also dying from kidney failure,” … continue reading

1: Ron Shaich‘s first impression of the company he would sell twenty-four years later for $7.5 billion was not good.

It was 1993.  Ron was the CEO of Au Bon Pain.  He had gotten up before dawn to visit the St. Louis Bread Company, a bakery that sold sandwiches, baked goods, and pastries, which one day would become Panera Bread.

After making several wrong turns, Ron arrived … continue reading

1: To answer this question, we must step back in time.

“Imagine a world in which our only reliable options for a quick lunch across much of the country were fast-food joints like McDonald’s and Burger King,” Panera Bread Company founder  Ron Shaich writes in his powerful book Know What Matters.

If we were born after the year 1990, this reality is likely hard to comprehend.

Because now there’s … continue reading

1: “If I want to know you,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person, “it’s moderately important that I know what you think, but it’s very important that I have some sense of the flow of what you feel.”

Yesterday, we began our exploration of empathy. “Empathy is a set of social and emotional skills,” David writes. “Some people are more naturally talented at … continue reading

1: The generals of the First World War were “educated as cadets in the age of the cavalry charges,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.

As a result, the models of warfare they knew were appropriate for the era of horses and rifles.

“But decades later, after they had become generals,” David notes, “they … continue reading

If there were any.  

“Many otherwise able people are disqualified to lead because they cannot work with and through the half-people who are all there are,” writes Robert Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, his powerful book about leadership.

“It is part of the enigma of human nature that the ‘typical’ person—immature, stumbling, inept, lazy is capable of great dedication and heroism if he or she is wisely led.”… continue reading