Adam Bryant has an interview with Jeffery Swartz,
You know the line in “The Godfather” — “Nothing personal. It’s just business.” At Timberland, I want to make it clear from the beginning it is personal. Not invasion-personal, like I need to know what’s going on in your life. But if you aren’t going to play at the level of personal, it’s probably not going to be nourishing for either of us.
A willingness to be exposed, a willingness to acknowledge the personal dimension, a willingness to value the personal dimension — from the beginning, that’s what we’re after. I’m saying that there’s no chance that our company, in a cruddy industry in a world that’s in an L-shaped recession, not a V- or a W-shaped recession, is going to be able to reinvent itself with the speed and ease that it needs to unless we bring more than our intellects to the table.
I’ve got to find people who are comfortable with fuzzy logic, who are comfortable being exposed, who are comfortable being wrong, who don’t value as the first notion, “I got the answer, Boss.”
Q. Sum it up for me.
A. Comfort with ambiguity is one thing and faith in a solution is another and a commitment to fight for a worthy outcome is the third.
