Leadership

Social Media Roundup: Hillary Deserves a Break, Too

Why just-resigned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can help remind everyone that time off is nice sometimes. Also: Stop mixing planning into your strategy.

Let’s say you’re one of the busiest people in the world, and you tell everyone that your next step is to take a really long break.

Wait, why don’t people believe you?! One major political leader’s lessons, and more, in today’s Social Media Roundup:

Hillary’s Next Step

Hillary Clinton has had an eventful life. She’s been basically running without much of a break for the past 20 years—counting her time as first lady, her years as a senator, her presidential run, and her just-completed stint as secretary of state. And she’s ready for a break—especially after an illness put her out of commission for nearly a month recently. “I just want to sleep and exercise and travel for fun. And relax. It sounds so ordinary, but I haven’t done it for 20 years,” she said recently. “I would like to see whether I can get untired.” Arianna Huffington says that Clinton’s time off may provide a big lesson about why we all need to take a break: “And maybe I’m dreaming, but the world needs Hillary not only to get herself ‘untired,’ ” Huffington argues. “But in the next chapter of her life to become a role model for the idea that one can both be untired and successful.” Perhaps a step back doesn’t sound like such a bad idea? (ht @libbyhoppe)

Strategy ≠ Planning

When you’re “working on your strategy,” are you really just doing a lot of organizing? If so, you’re doing it wrong, according to Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. In a Harvard Business Review post, Martin writes that strategy not a set of boxes to check. “Strategy is not planning—it is the making of an integrated set of choices that collectively position the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage relative to competition and deliver superior financial returns,” he explains. “I find that once this is made clear to line managers, they recognize that strategy is not just fancily worded budgeting and they get much more interested in it.” (ht @CSAEBC)

Finding it hard to separate strategy and planning? Tell us about it!

(Photo by Titanic Belfast/Flickr)

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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