Morning Briefings

Scary Halloween for retailers: Operators of local outlets are spooked by a drop in sales this season; theft has been more prevalent this year.

– Lou Ponsi
Orange County Register

Now is a great time to start a company. Why? Because great people are available to join you, VCs are loaded with cash, and office space is available cheap. Everything is cheap and readily available in a recession. Expectations are lower during bad times so it is a good time to be in development mode, building a product, getting an audience, and starting a tiny revenue stream. Customers are willing to try new things to save money in bad times. If you can save them money, they are happy to deal with a startup. Go for it!

– Don Dodge
The Next Big Thing

To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives–the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections–that requires hard spiritual work.

– Henri J.M. Nouwen
Bread for the Journey

The speaker of Australia’s Parliament has called for a public debate about whether the country’s lawmakers should end the practice of starting each session with the Lord’s Prayer. Dumping the prayer is unlikely to end anytime soon, though, as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull said Sunday they wanted to keep the prayer.

– AP, October 27, 2008

Life is a series of tests. There are different trials for different seasons.

– Bob Buford
Stuck in Halftime

Those who live in close proximity to their basic values are apt to agonize over choices that other people, drifting over the surface of their lives, might never even see as problems. Sound values raise tough choices; and tough choices are never easy.

– Rushworth M. Kidder
How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living

Leaders are tempted to be ‘lone rangers.’ Why do leaders need to consider having partners? According to Ecclesiastes 4:9-10: Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one; they get a better return for their labor. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But people who are alone when they fall are in real trouble.

– TouchPoints for Leaders

In the workplace, employees will spend roughly half their waking hours working and living in the environment you create as the leader. There is a lot at stake and people are counting on you. The role of the leader is a very high calling.

– James C. Hunter
The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership

I would like to challenge you to begin reflecting upon the awesome responsibility you signed up for when you chose to be the leader. That’s right, each of you voluntarily signed up to be mom, dad, boss, coach, whatever. Nobody forced you into any of these roles and you are free to leave at any time.

– James C. Hunter
The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership

All spiritual growth is fraught with mystery. No matter how hard we try, we cannot push and shove our way into union with the Holy One.

– Joyce Rupp
Prayer

Never ask anyone to do something that you wouldn’t do: This goes for customers (’fill out these twenty-five fields of personal information to get an account’) to employees (’fly coach to Mumbai, meet all day the day you arrive, and fly back that night.’)

– Guy Kawasaki
Five most important lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur

One does not awaken each morning with the compulsion to reinvent the wheel. But if one is a servant, either leader or follower, one is always searching, listening, expecting that a better wheel for these times is in the making.

– Robert K. Greenleaf
Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness

All callings are, ultimately, spiritual in nature. Each one of us has unique potential–distinct, God-given gifts–with which to serve the world.

– Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro
Whistle While You Work: Heeding Your Life’s Calling

Fear can be the single biggest obstacle a person faces when trying to accomplish a goal. Unfortunately, it seems that modern society has developed into a fear-worshipping machine. Fear, more than any other emotion, is what drives people to do what they do. And most of that fear is irrational.

– Levi Brackman and Sam Jaffe
Jewish Wisdom for Business Success

Jesus’ life didn’t go well. He didn’t reach his earning potential. He didn’t have the respect of his colleagues. His life wasn’t long. He didn’t meet his soul mate. And he wasn’t understood by his mother. Yet I think I deserve all those things because I am so spiritual.

– Hugh Prather
Spiritual Notes to Myself

Now journey forth!

– Exodus 14:15

This is judgment day. Many Jews practice repentance, say prayers and give to charity to obtain God’s forgiveness for any sins made in the past year. Yom Kippur is the culmination of a process that began a month earlier.

– FactMonster.com

In short, we’re learning the hard way that virtues like prudence, temperance, thrift, promise-keeping, honesty and humility–not to mention a willingness not to do to others what we wouldn’t want them to do us–can’t be optional-extras in communities that value economic freedom. If markets are going to work and appropriate limits on government power maintained, then society requires substantial reserves of moral capital.

– Samuel Gregg
No Morality, No Markets

The kingdom of God is within you. Could anything be plainer than that?

– Mary Pickford
Why Not Try God?

Man’s accidents are God’s purposes, attributed to Sophia Hawthorne, 1843. Our need for words of wisdom like this is ancient, as old as ‘the wisdom of the ages’ itself, which is why the aphorism is the oldest written art form on the planet.

– James Geary
The World in a Phrase

The rich and the poor have this in common, the Lord is the maker of them all.

– Proverbs 22:2

A primary task in taking a company from good to great is to create a culture wherein people have a tremendous opportunity to be heard, and ultimately, for the truth to be heard.

– Jim Collins
Good to Great

Despite their prevalence in American high school culture, college admissions exams–such as the ACT and SAT–may not be critical to making good admissions decisions at many of the colleges and universities that use them, stated the National Association for College Admission Counseling report. [Bates College’s William] Hiss stated, ‘We felt students were spending way too much time worrying about and trying to prepare for testing instead of taking advanced calculus or taking a Chinese history course or working at an AIDS clinic.’

– Morgan Modjeski
More than 280 U.S. universities ditch SAT, The Manitoban