By Chris Stark, Strategy Magazine, July 2015

For decades, leaders chanted the mantra, “Don’t just sit there, do something!” It was common practice for leaders to push themselves and their people to the limit, all in service to the god of productivity. Then, in 1949, an unknown columnist for the Tulsa Times flipped the order to, “Don’t just do something … sit there.” Shortly thereafter, this saying was picked up by the likes of Dwight D. Eisenhower in dealing with his direct reports.

At the time, this upheaval of perspective came as a major jolt to leaders who had become conditioned to promoting a worldview characterized by busyness, liveliness, and noisiness.Read more.