In December, I posed two questions in this blog. First, “What leadership advice could a 21st-century leader, possibly get (or want) from a 19th-century poem?” and “What can an Information Age leader learn from a Victorian Age poem?” That post began to explore the relevance of Kipling’s ‘If-’ for today’s leaders. ‘If-’ describes a path leaders may choose to follow. Each of the poem’s sixteen couplets describes an essential leadership attribute.
Conventional wisdom teaches that leadership is about looking forward. We are all taught that leading means creating a compelling vision for the future and inspiring others to follow us into that future. While I fundamentally share this view, I believe the past plays a critical role in how we lead. Leaders must be able to look back. We must learn lessons from our own experiences and from the experiences of those who came before us.