Dan > Recent Status Updates

"Leadership by its very definition is about taking people and ideas to new places. "

"This notion that success was dependent upon a collective effort and that wisdom should be gleaned from every corner of an organization became the cornerstone of how I thought about the kind of staff that would be needed to create the National Museum of African American History and Culture. From these conversations I realized that a leader is only as good as the people he or she hires, mentors, and listens to."

"I have always believed that the job of any museum director, but especially one at the Smithsonian Institution, required skills that one rarely learns in graduate school. It is not enough to be smart or to be a content expert. One needs to hone not only one's political skills but also to embrace the diplomacy and street smarts that are now required for effective leadership."

"One can tell a great deal about a country by what it remembers. By what graces the wall of its museums. And what monuments have privileged placement in parks or central traffic intersections . . . Yet one learns even more about a nation by what it forgets. What moments of evil, disappointment, and defeat are downplayed or eliminated from the national narratives."

“Let’s concede that some portion of every day must be devoted to the unknown and the unexpected. Still, success requires a leader who is clear about what should be accomplished, works persistently on realizing priority goals, and persuades colleagues to move in the same direction.”

"Building and sustaining vibrant institutions is a continuous process, something of a relay race."

"Chief executive officers are often judged by what transpired during their tenure. That's fine as far as it goes. But they should also be evaluated by institutional accomplishment after their departure. Did they build enduring value? Did they leave behind a foundation for sustained success?"

"When leaders teach, they invest in their people's ability to solve and avoid problems in the future. This is one of the most powerful ways that Multipliers build intelligence around them."

"When people are given ownership for only a piece of something larger, they tend to optimize that portion, limiting their thinking to this immediate domain. When people are given ownership for the whole, they stretch their thinking and challenge themselves to go beyond their scope."

“Once a leader accepts that he or she doesn’t have to have all the answers, he or she is free to ask much bigger, more provocative, and frankly, more interesting questions. They can pursue things they don’t know how to do.”

"Our holy place is holy still; our love not diminished by absence or by pain. Death has but interrupted our loving, and I know I shall see you again, if the world lasts."
-Nancy Wood

"It's typically American to equate healing with doing something. When we have a problem, we fix it, and we prefer to do it quickly. But fixing is not the same as healing; in fact it can easily get in the way of healing . . . Healing happens not through doing but through feeling."
- Elio Frattaroli

" . . . the course of grief, once past the acute period, is to emerge and reemerge, moving from the foreground to the background, rising and falling."

"Like love, grief can't be constrained by time and space."

"When we disconnect from our grief, we disconnect from ourselves. When we disconnect from ourselves, we disconnect from others and from the natural world. It is an insidious cycle of unnecessary suffering that pervades families, communities, cultures, and generations. By trying to circumvent suffering, we magnify it."

“Traumatic death provokes traumatic grief. And traumatic death refers to any sudden and unexpected death . . . When someone we love dies traumatically, we feel frighteningly uprooted, markedly insecure, and our ability to trust in the world feels gravely threatened—and it is gravely threatened.”