It’s said that when former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Gordon Dean died in a plane crash in 1958, an envelope was found among his personal effects.
On the back of the envelope, Dean had scribbled nine lessons that he had learned in life. Every manager would be wise to take note of each one:
- Never lose your capacity for enthusiasm.
- Never lose your capacity for indignation.
- Never judge people—don’t type them too quickly. But in a pinch never first assume that a man is bad; first assume that he is good and that, at worst, he is in the gray area between bad and good.
- Never be impressed by wealth alone or thrown by poverty.
- If you can’t be generous when it’s hard to be, you won’t be when it’s easy.
- The greatest builder of confidence is the ability to do something—almost anything—well.
- When confidence comes, then strive for humility; you aren’t as good as all that.
- The way to become truly useful is to seek the best that other brains have to offer. Use them to supplement your own, and be prepared to give credit to them when they have helped.
- The greatest tragedies in world and personal events stem from misunderstandings. So communicate!
[Article first appeared in Family Times, August 2010.]
