Saturday, September 27, 2008

Planning for the Future

I just finished reading a book entitled, "Leadership Jazz" by Max DePree. In the epilogue he recounts this story. I will let you draw your own conclusions regarding applications to your journey. As for me, it is a reminder of how important it is to consider the impact of the present on the future. Decisions made today may play a critical role in the plans of tomorrow.

In the late fourteenth century, the members of New College, at Oxford, moved into their quadrangle, the first structure of its kind, intended to provide for the residents all that they needed. On the north side of the quadrangle sit the chapel and the great hall, beautiful buildings and, as you might imagine, the focus of the life of the college.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, almost five hundred years later, the college hired architect Sir Gilbert Scott to restore the roof of the hall. The roof and the great oak beams that supported it had badly rotted. And so representatives from the college with Sir Gilbert visited Great Hall Woods, in Berkshire, where they expected to find trees for replacement beams. Sure enough, the replacements were standing there, waiting to be hewn out of the living oak trees planted a century before for just that purpose.

An anonymous leader's promise had been fulfilled. The voice and touch of a distant leader had been joined.

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