Dream in Verse, Deliver in Prose

A note to young leaders.

Leadership is dreaming and doing in equal measure – part poetry, part plumbing.

Take Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealander who in 1953 became the first person – along with his sherpa, Tenzing Norgay – to scale the summit of Mount Everest.

Hillary was a dreamer: “As a youngster, I was a great dreamer, reading many books of adventure and walking lonely miles with my head in the clouds.”

But here’s the rub. Hillary wasn’t dreaming about fame or fortune, he was dreaming of doing difficult things.

Hillary was a doer: “People don’t decide to become extraordinary”, he said. “They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”

Lasting celebrity comes to those who risk obscurity in the quiet pursuit of a worthy cause.

In business as in mountaineering – dream in verse, deliver in prose.