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Archilochus
The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
Abraham Lincoln’s leadership embodied
Abraham Lincoln’s leadership embodied the best of both animals.
Lincoln focused on preserving the principles of the Declaration of Independence through foxy means.
What more praiseworthy cause could a hedgehog possibly pursue?
But to abolish slavery, Lincoln moved the Thirteenth Amendment through a fractious House of Representatives, and here his manoeuvres were as foxy as they come.
Buffett, already an extraordinarily
Buffett, already an extraordinarily successful investor, came to Berkshire uniquely prepared for allocating capital.
Most CEOs are limited by prior experience to investment opportunities within their own industry – they are hedgehogs.
Buffett, in contrast, was a classic fox and had the advantage of choosing from a much wider menu of allocation options, including the purchase of private companies and publicly traded stocks.
Some people see the
Some people see the details in everything they do, like the fox, while others are great at having one singular vision, like the hedgehog.
Great leaders and thinkers can be categorized as either hedgehogs or foxes. The divide may stem from how each animal reacts to its environment.
When a fox is hunted, it finds many clever ways to evade predators; when a hedgehog is hunted, it curls up into a spiky ball and lies still.
Carl Reichardt, the former
Carl Reichardt, the former CEO of Wells Fargo, has been called “a consummate hedgehog.”
While his counterparts at Bank of America went into a reaction-revolution panic mode in response to deregulation, hiring change gurus who used sophisticated models and time-consuming encounter groups, Reichardt stripped everything down to its essential simplicity.
So, where do you stand?
Hedgehogs relate everything to
Hedgehogs relate everything to a single central vision – a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance.
Foxes, on the other hand, pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory related to no moral or aesthetic principle.
