Everything I know about physics I’ve learned from Sheldon Cooper, Howard Wolowitz, Leonard Hofstadter and Rajesh Koothrappali who are characters on the TV sitcom “The Big Bang Theory”. You can deduce from this confession that I’m not a science guy and never, ever in any time or space will I be a leader in the field of physics.
Yesterday in Cern it was announced that real life physicists had finally discovered the Higgs boson. Christopher Llewelyn-Smith, Lyn Evans, Herwig Schopper, Luciano Maiani, and Robert Aymard apparently spent a lifetime searching for the “God particle”. They believed it was there, it just took awhile to find it. Peter Higgs, for whom the boson was named following his 1964 paper on the topic, seemed surprised when told of the find, “I never expected this to happen in my lifetime and shall be asking my family to put some champagne in the fridge.”
Let me get this straight. You wrote and published a scientific thesis in 1964 and nearly 50 years later you are surprised this universe super glue was found. Talk about your needle in a hay stack.
The leadership lessons which Higgs teaches in all of this is that leaders sometimes have to be incredibly patient, dogmatically focused on the task at hand and if success comes be surprised then celebrate with family.
So if you’re having a tough day and you think the sky is falling you can relax because the Higgs boson is apparently holding the sky in place. Therefore, you can be patient and focused as you lead. – BB
dontbesheep 