🥁 The OffBeat #82: Lead Sheet | Leadership Digest

Something to read, something to think about, something else

This is The OffBeat, from jazz drummer, two-decade marketing leader, and mom of two Allison Stadd: music-inspired answers for your leadership challenges, like music-inspired rules to thrive at work.

Lead Sheet is The OffBeat’s every-other-week roundup of links, recs, and quotes. Like a lead sheet in music (just the essentials: melody, harmony, lyrics), it always has something to read, something to think about, and something else—all within the themes of leadership cues from music, cultural curiosity, and personal/professional balance.

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Halfway projects (Seth Godin)

Rise of NDAs has worrisome impact on worker rights and workplace equity (WorkLife)

Quantity is the journey to quality (Alexander Obenauer)

Gen Z battling with phone anxiety are taking telephobia courses to learn the lost art of a call (CNBC)

50 years of travel tips (Kevin Kelly)

The surprising theory that explains modern American life (Vox)

How to sharpen your analytical thinking even if you’re "not a numbers person" (

Wes Kao

)

“Uncertainty is also the only thing that makes life possible. Without it, we would move like automatons through predetermined paths, unspirited, unaware, unliving. Our awareness of life, of its great variety and beauty and possibility, emerges out of uncertainty. Awareness, that sense of being awake to the world, is necessary only because we live in uncertainty. If we knew what was to come, we would have no need for sensemaking, no need to be alert to what’s around us, no need to ever open our eyes and ears and arms to each other.” — Mandy Brown

One of the reasons I’m such a big quotations person is that I’m a big words person. The right words at the right time can clarify complex ideas, reinforce values, and push you toward action. It’s like how a great lyric sticks with you long after the song ends; a powerful quote lingers, reshaping how you think, lead, and create.

On that note, I wanted to share some of my favorite candidates for what I call “corkboard quotes,” or the types of quotations I’d hang in my office to serve as daily inspiration:

“Great leaders create great leaders.” —Randy Garutti

“Don't put a hat on a hat.” —Juliet Litman

“Language creates culture” —Will Guidara

“Freedom lies across the field of the difficult conversation.” —Shonda Rhimes

“It takes a lot of self-confidence not to say everything that you know.” —Jack Welch

“The highest form of self-confidence is believing in your ability to learn.” Adam Grant

“Success is being excited to go to work and being excited to come home.” —Will Ahmed

“You do not have to feel like doing something in order to do it.” —Oliver Burkeman

“Getting to know one another is almost always the most effective path to getting anything done, both in the near term and the long run.” —Brian Grazer

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace. Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” —Charles Mingus

For double the reading recommendations, including how to email like a man (🙄) and the biological origins of rhythm, plus some things to listen to / watch, keep reading.