I happened to catch a Charlie Rose interview last night with George Schultz – former US Secretary of State.
Now in his 90's, he still has coherent and interesting things to say. This part of the interview particularly caught my attention, and it's as relavent to his field as it is to general business:
Charlie: “You’ve always had this relationship between academia […] and business, and you’ve always believed that […] policy ought to begin with big ideas.”
Schultz: “If you don’t have ideas, you don’t have a compass; you’re just steering by the wind … You’ve got to have a strategy. We’re just reeling around and throwing money all over the place.”
About the Author
I’ve had the good fortune to travel and work internationally. I’ve also had the good fortune to have grown up in New Zealand and have lived the American “immigrant experience” for more than half of my life. I’ve also had an unorthodox musical journey that led me to and kept me in Kansas City.
Music, IT and travel became partners along the way helping me appreciate multiple worldviews and the concepts of cross-disciplinary approaches to life and work. My non-conventional experiences reflect my meanderings about this interesting occupational field.
The beauty of having been in IT for 30 years is that our solutions become predictably cyclic while our problems remain the same. Culture is a topic I’m rather obsessive about. I firmly believe that it will help to usher in a renaissance in American business – oddly enough in the hands of IT.
