August 19, 2024
President Abraham Lincoln had a hardscrabble beginning in life, but Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn says he was determined to succeed, so even though he had little formal schooling, he became a lifelong learner, teaching himself everything from geometry to the law, a habit leaders should emulate. "[W]hen you don't know something, and you believe it's critical to your mission or critical to the next place you need to reach on your journey, you can teach yourself those things," Koehn says.