August 24, 2026
In the mid-1990s, I had the great privilege of attending a three-day leadership seminar led by Professor John Kotter at Harvard Business School. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, and a globally recognized authority on organizational change. Matsushita was a Japanese industrialist and founder of Panasonic.
As Terri-Lynn Levesque’s year as AICC chairwoman ends, I’m proud of the emphasis AICC has placed on leadership through her theme, Legacy in Action, Inspiring Tomorrow’s Leaders. These transitions are always a moment of reflection for me, and they often lead me back to my own leadership journey.
Kotter closed the seminar by sharing the following thought from Matsushita: “Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind, it is not a matter of red lips, and supple knees; it is a matter of will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
“Youth means the temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 over a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
“Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human’s heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what’s next, and the joy of the game of living.
“In the center of your heart there is a wireless station, so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage, and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young. When the aerials are down and your spirit is covered with the snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20. But as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.”
It was a powerful way to close an exceptional course, and I have returned to it often since. Over the years, I’ve come to see leadership through this lens. The most effective leaders are rarely defined by age or title, but by energy, courage, and a resistance to cynicism. Organizations thrive when leaders stay curious, embrace possibility, and remain committed to ideals larger than themselves.
But the quote also grounds us in the here and now. Leadership requires composure, authenticity, and limits. Constant optimism without judgment can slip into naïveté.
The lesson for me is, yes, leaders must be optimistic, but not endlessly. Leadership demands realism, but more importantly, it demands that we never surrender our sense of possibility.
Michael D’Angelo
AICC President
