I have a toast or a bagel each morning and like always I placed my bagel in the small convective oven and two minutes later the bagel was toasted, like always I took it out of the oven and placed it on my plate, spread some cream cheese. As I bit into it I felt the cold insides of the bagel. Strange as I am I was inspired by the bagel to think of leadership in modern organizations and opportunities.
Most organizations have leadership like the oven. Stuff happens with the heat being turned up which obviously means people do things without an internal commitment. Sometimes what appears like a completed task is just the superficial burn from the convective heat of the oven.
The microwave on the other hand is a very unique device. There is no visible heat but yet the item being microwaved is hot/warm from the inside-out. That’s leadership in principle! Dwight David Eisenhower our 34th president said it best.
“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. “
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Now the Microwave is not perfect either… over heat the food in the microwave and it looses moisture and hardens up but rarely ever visibly burning off like in the oven where as when you over heat the same item in the over and it chars.
