What Can Be Changed
In the years leading up to World War II, the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a prayer poem that would become far more popular than he could ever have anticipated. It opens by asking a divine power for “grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” This nugget has been taken to heart by all manner of self-help seekers, but it can also be read as sound advice for people running businesses. There will always be things that an individual CEO cannot change. Macroeconomic forces, for example, are outside the scope of what a company can directly affect. As editor-at-large Leigh Buchanan notes on page 26, the size and…
