Read View Listen - April 17 2016
Read
Do not Lead, from Aaron Webber, chairman and CEO at Webber Investments is well worth the 5 minutes it takes to read - key points as follows:
Be very very good at the technical assignment and competencies that you need to perform.
Be humble. Enough said.
Following on from number one and two, let the results you produce and the comments you make speak for themselves.
Speak less and listen more so that when you do say something, it is something worth listening to.
Be consistent.
I assume these points were written for business leaders, but they're a natural fit for any field. They aptly apply to leading in the classroom or within a school.
I'm currently engaged in an FB group for people who attended a mission boarding school that existed in various parts of Asia. It's a school that began in China, but has since been situated in Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, and Malaysia.
Many of the stories are blunt and honest, of people returning to find themselves, to wrestle with the choices their parents made and to consider how and why those choices have affected their lives. In the midst of this, I came across this article in The Atlantic:
Is Christianity Dark enough for Millenials
The author, Rachel Held Evans strikes a useful balance between critique and concern for the state of the church. In a time of "religion as politics" and in which faith as a concept of personal consideration is often dismissed, I found the article, and her blog refreshing and honest.
Hers is a Christianity that is fully aware of darkness. "So much of what Christianity produces as far as books and literature and even music in our worship—it’s all very rosy, when that’s not really life, and that’s not really church," she said. "We carry the weight of many, many centuries of injustice, and that matters, and we can’t just ignore that."
That might sound cynical, but it doesn't sound much like B.S. It's also not a pat plan for reinvigorating Millennial life in the church. Other than making space for those who wish to worship, Evans said, she isn't worried about who fills church pews. "Death is a thing empires worry about, not a thing resurrection people worry about," she said. "As long as there’s somebody baptizing sinners, breaking the bread, drinking the wine; as long as there’s people confessing their sins, healing, walking with one another through suffering, then the church is alive, and it’s well."
Listen
In my podcast feed this week, NPR's Fresh Air talked to Dan Lyons who worked at Hubspot, and is also a scriptwriter on 'Silicon Valley'.
Dan Lyons was in his 50s when he lost his job reporting on the tech industry. He took a job at a start-up, where he was the old guy. His new book is Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble. Congratulations, You've been fired from the NY Times also covers some of the issues in the podcast.
The official response from Hubspot is up on LinkedIn, and a there's commentary here, here and here
View
From Anthrax to horologist, this 3 minute video captures what it is to reinvent onself, to make time to master a new challenge, and the similarities in seeking perfection, despite the seeming disparity of thrash metal and precision clock manufacturing.
