George Bernard Shaw
Strategic Concepts & Mechanics
Primary Evidence
"'Success covers a multitude of blunders. —George Bernand Shaw"
"Just as, back at university, Heatley’s suggested business ventures had been more audacious than his friends’, so too were his ideas now. ‘Craig was ahead of his time in shares in the sense that he actually had quite grandiose views about what could happen with certain companies, and I say that in a positive manner, not a negative manner,’ says Paul Collins, who was chief executive of Brierley Investments, the highest flyer of the eighties stock market hero companies. ‘Even though at Brierley’s we were regarded as being a large corporate raider, we tended to be relatively conventional so we looked at a business and looked at its assets whereas Craig would look at the potential. His mind was quite open and expansive.’ Collins cites George Bernard Shaw’s saying that some men look at things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ while others look at what might be and ask ‘Why not?’ Heatley is one of the latter, Collins says. Heatley himself puts it differently. He had sought out staff and colleagues with complementary skills because he knew his own weaknesses. ‘I am the world’s worst administrator—the worst. If I have a strength, and I don’t know that I do, but if I do it’s probably the big picture. It’s the tectonic plates as opposed to the grains of sand.’"
"Before the first night of Pygmalion, playwright George Bernard Shaw wired Churchill: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.” Churchill replied: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”"