Today's Maxwell Quote

From A More Excellent Way (1967):

In almost every leadership situation we are working against the clock—in terms of time as well as facts and feelings. Joseph in Egypt knew through divine revelation that food must be stored for the years of famine. He was ready, and Egypt was ready, when the famine struck. He worked against the clock and finished his work on time. In just as real a sense—though on a smaller scale—a bishop who is striving to get a young man ready for a mission faces a chronological deadline even though it may not be a formal deadline or a stated deadline. A Scoutmaster, too, is facing a psychological clock, when he is preparing young men to receive their Eagle Scout awards. For the statistical evidence is plain, the Eagle award is almost always achieved by a certain age, or not at all. A commitment to temple marriage is usually made by young people in advance of their serious courting, or not at all. Not all leadership situations have this kind of time pressure but this is increasingly true in our kind of mobile society.