How cool. Last night after a delicious Italian meal in old town Pasadena, one of my favorite towns in L.A., smASH and I had the distinct pleasure of happening upon a place she has been trying to get me to check out for a few weeks now.
Wish Tree for Pasadena was setup by Yoko Ono and it’s literally a collection of trees surrounded with tables with boxes full of tags and little pencils where anyone can scribe their thoughts, wishes or otherwise and hang them on tree branches for the whole world to see. We spent a good 20 minutes wandering around and reading the thoughts and hopes of those who had already contributed.
If you’re looking for one small reminder of why we’re all here, grab a coffee and wander around the thousands of wishes and hopes, but try to do it at night!
Fitting title for a guy who used to work for Madonna’s record label of the same name! Picked this one up in Wisconsin for the plane ride home after the We The Living video shoot last week… what a great read!
Since deciding I’m on a mission to become the world’s greatest and most well-read young music CEO, I’ve been stocking up on reading that will directly benefit my day-to-day business.
Amongst the pack is the afore-blogged-about The Five Temptations of a CEO
, Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity
(a re-read), The Tipping Point
(also a re-read) and the not-yet-read The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make
.
I’m not sure if it’s the green tea or the great ideology, but these books had me at hello.
Mavericks Only.
Now I admit that I am NOT a big reader… Not a fact that I am proud of but I do have a certain “ADD” quality that prevents me from sitting still for very long and focusing on a lengthy book.
As a young CEO, however, I am quickly learning the ropes of this complex and constantly changing role and am eager to learn as much as I can, as quickly as I can, to avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost certainly in store for me. Sure I’ve been an Executive at record labels, but the ideology that a CEO must understand and embrace is far different than any other management capacity and I have to say I learned a tremendous amount from a quick read of The Five Temptations of a CEO.
The book was a gift from David, one of my business partners, and is an excellent read for anyone currently in -or aspiring to be- a leadership role. It points to the five most common mistakes that those in a commanding position make and uses an engaging and somewhat charming fable to tell the tale.
I found myself so immersed that I finished it in what sitting, which at 130 widely-spaced pages, is a fairly quick read.
Key Quotes:
“…any decision is better than no decision.”
“Sometimes it’s even okay to get burned, because you realize it’s not fatal.”
“The greatest challenge of being a CEO, or any leader for that matter, is to avoid getting trapped by the daily complexities and details of our “business”.”
Read To Lead.
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