A Question of Character

This is the title of the book I acquired today together with another titled "Ted Levitt on Marketing". A Question of Character written by Joseph Badaracco. He is a Professor in Leadership in Harvard. This is a discourse on using literature as a guide to understanding leadership. I find this interesting as I am not a reader of literature. My main interest is non-fiction like Business, Management, Leadership, Science, Occult, Self Improvement, New Age or Psychology. Literature is about life and human emotions and relationship. Prof Badaracco talks about using literature to reflect on our current situation or ethical issues. I will develop this myself and see if I can start reading literature to gain further insights. I remembers an article that says liberal arts will be the degree that most CEOs will have. When I read this article that was in Straits Times many years ago, I did not understand what is liberal arts. Even today, I am not sure. So I check my handy Webster dictionary which states the main curriculum of liberal arts are languages, history and philosophy. The article argues that liberal arts teaches human history and trains a person to understand the broad range of human interaction. CEOs deals mainly with human. Except for high tech where tech skills are important, all other businesses will require the CEOs to manage people and people issues.

Ted Levitt is another Harvard Professor. He wrote the marketing classic "Marketing Myopia". In this article, Prof Levitt gives example of business that defines themselves narrowly and were subsequently made obsolete(out of business) by newer different business. In another article, he made a case to differentiate your products. Even commodity product such as sugar or oil can be differentiated. This will increase the profit of your business.