Gen Y Now: Millennials and the Evolution of Leadership, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER FIFTEENLEADERSHIP: A Timeless Principle

In the first chapter of the first edition of this book we posed a few simple questions. We asked you, the reader, to imagine that you had known in 1995 how important the Internet was going to be. Or if you had known about the dot-com bubble through 2001, or the real estate bust of 2007. What might you have done differently?

In closing this book we want to take that a bit further. We want to ask you to think about how you felt in 1995 when this thing called the Internet began to take off? How did you feel when you began to see companies launch an initial stock offering and be worth a billion dollars, with little to no revenue? How did you feel when someone bought a house and sold it thirty days later for twice the price?

You may even have bought and sold one of these homes. Or perhaps you were able to get in on an IPO and make a great deal of money. You may even have had a great Internet strategy and transformed your business. Many people did. Also, many people did not.

Principles vs. Rules

What is certainly true about all three of these transformational events is that, until long-held, rock-solid principles were put into place, nothing was self-sustaining. The Internet had to find its place, businesses went bankrupt during the bubble burst, and the housing market, arguably, put the entire world economy at risk. Timeless principles needed to be put into place and combined with these new opportunities. Once that was accomplished, ...