"Innovation is the first reduction to practice of an idea in a culture."
James Brian Quinn from Intelligent Enterprise
"A strategy is a pattern or plan that integrates an organization's major goals, polices, and action sequences into a cohesive whole. A well-formulated strategy helps to marshal and allocate an organization's resources into a unique and viable posture based on its relative internal competences and shortcomings, anticipated changes in the environment and contingent moves by intelligent opponents."
James Brian Quinn in Strategies for Change
"Follow effective action with quiet reflection.
From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."
Peter F. Drucker
"Never mind your happiness; do your duty."
William Durant
These are a few of my favorite quotes. Taken together, they suggest to me a harmony of perspectives that I find useful to maintain when I am making plans.
I am proud to say that my wife has actually read the entire Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. All 11 volumes and 6 million words! She said it was really hard to get through "Our Oriental Heritage," but the rest were interesting. We have the entire set occupying about 4 feet of bookshelf space downstairs somewhere.
Durant is a good source if you want to find out how some of these great kings died. Some of their demises are pretty gruesome - wasting diseases, madness, and so on.
One overriding theme from the history is that only a few monarchs were personally as happy as you and I are right now!