Leaders are readers and readers are storehouses of ideas – ideas that could address the emerging challenges of our time.
We live at a time where the prevailing complexities and challenges are constantly defiling conventional reasoning. More than ever before, we need to learn new lessons and deploy new thinking so that we don’t bequeath agony to generations after us.
There is nothing that kills faster than ignorance. A leader is dead who does not read.
Fresh, executable and profitable ideas keep you on top of your game. These ideas might just be lying in the pages of that new or old book you have not read.
Every organization, whether profit or not-for-profit, wants idea and solution-minded men and women to steer their ships and I dare say that they will also do anything to keep such men and women from poachers.
The ideas contained in books could lighten up your life and reignite your passion for excellence. Information is one of the key elements of transformation.
Having committed myself, over these few years, to studious reading and extrapolation of concepts from books, I have come to appreciate the power of leveraging on the thoughts and ideas of great minds for achieving my objectives. As a leader that I know I am, I regularly interact with the minds of other leaders through their writings.
I see books as tools for acquiring new paradigm necessary for value creation both at personal and at professional levels. When I read, I seek every opportunity to learn new things and drop old and unprofitable approaches. With my professional responsibility also involving gleaning relevant scientific, business and market information in order to provide value-based products and services to agri-food and agribusiness enterprises, I just have to read to stay relevant in my trade.
There are principles contained in books that could fundamentally challenge your competence set and heal your arrogance and ignorance.
Stay away from leading people, projects, processes and programs if you will stay away from reading. A mind that cannot leverage the knowledge, capabilities and thoughts of greater minds, through reading, to answer unanswered questions should not think of leadership.
Pick up a book today and read it; you will be on your road to enrolling as one of the leaders of this age.
Again, leaders are readers and readers are the custodians of ideas we need for the transformation of our world.
