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The principles of Personal Power

Initiative and leadership

Everything passes at par, temporarily truth alone remains permanently.

The power of initiative

The reason why Initiative and Leadership are associated terms in this lesson is that leadership is essential for the attainment of success, and initiative is the very foundation upon which this necessary quality of leadership is built. Initiative is as essential to success as a hub is essential to a wheel.

Initiative is that exceedingly rare quality which impels a person to do what ought to be done without being told to do it.

What is Initiative? It is doing the right thing without being told.

But next to doing the right thing without being told is to do it when you are told once.

Next, there are those who do the right thing only when necessity kicks them from behind, and these get indifference instead of honors, and a pittance for pay.

This kinds spends most of the time polishing a bench with a hand luck story.

Then, still lower down in the scale than this, we have the person who will not do the right thing even when someone goes along to demonstrate and stays to see that the work is done right. This person is always out of job, and receives deserved contempt, unless there is a rich relative in the background, in which case destiny patiently waits around the corner with a club.

To which class do you belong?

One of the peculiarities of leadership is the fact that it is never found in those who have not acquired the habit of taking the initiative.

Leadership is something that you must invite yourself into; it will never trust itself upon you.

If you carefully analyze all leaders whom you know, you will see that they not only exercised Initiative buy also they went about their work with a definite purpose in mind. You will also see that they possessed the quality of self confidence.

There is no security on this earth only opportunity
-General Douglas MacArthur

Some people have terrific ideas but their ideas don't make them successful because they never get beyond using those ideas to amuse themselves and their friends.

Entrepreneurs didn't have the money to launch their projects themselves. In both cases they took the initiative to find someone who did, and then made the case for why it was in that party's interests to finance the project.

To continue the example of Microsoft, in 1980 IBM wanted someone to write the software for a personal computer line they were about to launch that was far more sophisticated than the altair. They wanted results in 3 months. Microsoft agreed to it.

Allen and gates bought an os from another company and began adapting it for IBM. They called it MS DOS. Gates, Allen, and their staff met IBM's deadline, and the IBM PC cause a sensation.

It also inspired an immediate wave of clones, less expensive versions of the IBM PC. Mircosoft's deal with IBM allowed them to licensed their software to whomever they pleased. And that's what they did, riding the popularity of home computers. But microsoft didn't stop there. They created a worldwide sales force to license their software in other county and they continually worked to improve MS-DOS. In four years their sales quadrupled.

There are generally many plans through which a desired object may be achieved, and it is often true that the obvious and usual methods are not the best. The unusual method of procedure would have been to borrow from the bank. But sometimes this method was impractical because no collateral was available.

A great philosopher once said "Initiative is the passkey that opens the door to opportunity."
 

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