You may not think he has much leadership advice but wow...he really does!
His words that are often quoted have tons of heavy packing punches on how not to lead and how to lead. I truly believe we can find leadership inspiration anywhere if we are really looking.
This post is about the often quoted line : "Tina you fat Lard, eat your food!"
What could such a stupid scene/quote do with leadership? How could we look at such a weird part of Napoleon's life and get something of note from it?
I'll tell you. Napoleon's story is weird, yes indeed very weird but I'd say Tina is the only so weird it's dumb type of things in Napoleon's narrative. Sure it's funny, witty and just so off the wall you can't help but laugh. Yet, having a lama for a pet, then feeding it home cooked meals is simply a waste of time on something dumb.
Now, I'm not trying to stir up any animal activists or anything but a llama shouldn't be a pet, especially in America so for the purpose of the blog post here today I say having a lama is dumb.
This then directs me to the leadership principle we can grab from Napoleon's life: don't waste your time on dumb things!
Too often, leaders spend time doing, saying and reacting to dumb things. Dumb things interrupt the flow of life, they distract from the most important things and they throw wrenches into things that could go smoothly but end up bumpy.
When you read about leaders, Christian and Non we see a common thread: too often they spend their time on dumb things.
I won't bore you with listing the dumb things I've seen others do, but I will share some dumb things I find myself wasting time on.
1. Watching dumb things- With the onset of YouTube, Netflix and a host of other ways to watch tv, films and dumb people doing dumb things it has become so easy to end up watching dumb things. Dumb things aren't the funny things, or good shows/films but if you're like me I end up wasting too much time trying to find something good that I eventually realize I just spent maybe an hour watching dumb things in the hopes of something good. Sorry, that's wasted time on a dumb thing.
2. Reading dumb things- Similar to #1, I realized that being on FaceBook though productive at times caused me to read way too many dumb things and I look at how much time I spent reading about someone's toe nail hurting or about a hangover yesterday that cause a headache today; made me sick. Sometimes keeping up with people is important but seriously...it's not THAT important.
3. Getting into dumb arguments- Another thing I realized, (more so when I was in college but still today) was that I tend to get into stupid arguments. Somethings really just don't matter that much and we spend too much time discussing non-issues or issues that we can do nothing about. Many times as leaders we can get distracted by the buzz of certain topics but in reality we have no right to enter in a discussion simply for the sake of discussing it.
I could continue to divulge my dumb things or share other dumb things leaders engage in but I'm pretty sure my point is made and made well. Don't waste time on dumb things, like owning a lama. How can we stop wasting time on dumb thing?
1. Evaluate your time- how does your time break down? Anything look dumb or simply a waste of time? If so, it probably is dumb and a waste of time. Once you determine it's dumb, make a list of those dumb things.
2. Evaluate your dumb list- Take the dumb list and purposefully delete the really dumb and determine to spend less time on the less dumb.
Remember: don't waste time on dumb things...even if like owning a lama it gets some laughs...it's just not worth it!
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