[180] in magellan
Higher Ground
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Anderson)
Fri May 21 15:48:49 1999
Message-Id: <v03020909b36b64f92f5d@[18.177.0.74]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 15:44:14 -0400
To: magellan@mit.edu
From: Greg Anderson <ganderso@MIT.EDU>
On this lovely Friday afternoon, I decided to take a moment and extract
some wonderful messages from an article I've had on my desk since this
winter. _Spectrum_ is the newsletter for the MIT Development Office, and it
is a first-class publication.
The winter issue includes a story about William Weisz, retired chairman and
CEO of Motorola. The story was written in December 1998, the day before
Bill Weisz died.
Bill Weisz was an MIT grad; a scholarship made it possible for him to
attend, and he has established a scholarship fund to continue those
opportunities for others.
Here are some quotes from the story titled:
"Higher Ground: Integrity, the true test of Leadership"
"Bill is happy to share the secret of success:
Uphold the highest values every second of every day in all things.
Be impeccably honest. Have integrity and live a life congruent with your
beliefs. Pursue the highest standard of excellence. And work like Hell
[n.b. sounds a bit reminescent of Doc Edgerton's four rules: Work like
Hell, tell everyone everything you know, close a deal with a handshake, and
Have Fun]
Be kind. Compassionate, but don't take any baloney. Be fair. And
respect everyone. "The true test of leadership," he says, "is if people
trust your integrity."
"The way you achieve high ideals in this society is that everybody
in society adheres to high ideals every minute of every day. People learn
what's expected. If you want quality out of a production line, you don't
ask how many units they produce every day and once every six months ask for
quality. You ask for quality first. You teach by daily activity of what you
want."
"Don't be afraid. There's plenty of room to grow in any field . . .
Don't be afraid to tackle anything, and I really do mean anything. Just be
positive and optimistic 'cause there's a hell of a lot to be optimistic
about"
