Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Leadership
& Decision-Making
"Our
people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and
revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but
bold colors, which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues
troubling the people?"
-
Ronald Reagan, 1975
- Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis: "Uncertainty
is the most difficult thing about decision-making. In the face of uncertainty, some people
react with paralysis, or they do exhaustive research to avoid
making a decision. The best decision-making happens when the mental environment
is focused. In a physical environment, you focus on something physical. In tennis, that
might be the spinning seams of the ball. In a mental environment, you focus on the
facts at hand. That fine-tuned focus doesn't leave room for fears and doubts to enter.
Doubts knock at the door of our consciousness, but you don't have to have them in for tea
and crumpets."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower: "I find that planning is almost
useless -- but planning is essential."
- JFK, from the movie, Thirteen Days: "There is
something immoral about abandoning your own judgment."
- Charles Varlet De La Grange: "When we ask advice, we are
usually looking for an accomplice."
Unknown:
People will forget a lot of what you say, and People will forget some of what you
do, but People
will never, ever forget how you made them feel!
- Albert
Einstein:
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by 18."
- Mark
Twain:
“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and
stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit
down on a hot stove-lid again and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold
one either.”
- Woodrow
Wilson:
"I would rather fail in a cause that someday will triumph, than to win in a cause
that I know will someday fail."
- Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1831):
“Treat
a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he
will become as he can and should be.”
- Thomas Sowell: "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more
dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people
who pay no price for being wrong."
- Edward Abbey: "Grown men do not need leaders."
- Eric Hoffer: "All leaders strive to turn their followers into
children... The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading
them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them
away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a
fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance."
- Harry S Truman (a saying adopted by Ronald Reagan): "It is
amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
- President Ronald Reagan, May 22, 1985, speaking at the U.S. Naval Academy:
"Many good men gave their lives in the 1940s for America's unwillingness to prepare
in the 1930s. Let me promise you -- as long as I am President -- that will not happen
again."
- Samuel Eliot Morison on the hero of the Battle of Midway, Admiral Raymond
Spruance: "Power of decision and coolness in action were perhaps
Spruance's leading characteristics. He envied no one, rivaled no man, won
the respect of almost everyone with whom he came in contact, and went ahead in his quiet
way, winning victories for his country....When we come to the admirals who
commanded at sea, and who directed a great battle, there was no one to equal Spruance. Always
calm, always at peace with himself, Spruance had that ability which marks the great
captain to make correct estimates and the right decisions in a fluid battle situation...
Spruance in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, overriding Mitscher the carrier expert in
letting the enemy planes come at him instead of going in search of them, won the second
most decisive battle of the Pacific war. And, off Okinawa, Spruance never faltered in face
of the destruction wrought by the kamikazes. It is
regrettable that, owing to Spruance's innate modesty and his refusal to create an image of
himself in the public eye, he was never properly appreciated." Says
Michael D. Hull: "About his intellect he was equally unpretentious: 'Some people
believe that when I am quiet that I am thinking some deep and important thoughts, when the
fact is that I am thinking of nothing at all. My mind is blank.'"
- Oliver North, Jan. 4, 2002: "Poor Bill Clinton. He is out
of office, out of the limelight and, according to recent press reports, it's driving him
out of his mind...The lack of attention is such a problem for 'Mister Me' that a week
before Christmas, Clinton summoned a group of 'aides and
advisors' to the Big Apple -- and charged them to 'remind the public of his
accomplishments and defend his legacy."
- Ken Oshman: "The interesting thing is that there are so few
important decisions. You don't have to go in the 'right' direction. You don't have to
enter the 'right' business. What you have to do is have made a decision as to what you're
going to do and then you just have to figure out how to succeed at it."
- Peter Robinson, The Red Herring: "Sometimes during
the two-year curriculumn, every MBA student ought to hear it clearly stated that numbers,
techniques, and analysis are all side matters. What is central to business is the
joy of creating."
- Mike Huber on Techwr-L: "I never, ever say 'I can't' about
anything. I might say 'I don't have the authority to make that decision' or 'Building A is
too heavy for me to lift' or 'I will need training before I pilot that space
shuttle.'"
- Dan Marino, Sr. (Dan the Man's father): "The
scoreboard can't make you a loser. If you walk off the field with your head up, you don't
lose. You don't hang your head for nobody. People in the stands think you're the greatest
or the worst -- their opinion doesn't make a difference. The only opinion that
makes any difference is your own opinion of yourself. Nobody can make you a loser."
- Harvey B. Mackay: "Are you worried about pressure? I look
at it this way: Pressure is having to do something you are not totally prepared to
do."
- Max De Pree, Leadership is an Art: "The greatest thing is, at any
moment, to be willing to give up who we are in order to become all that we can be... The
signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers. Are the followers
reaching their potential? Are they learning? Serving? Do they achieve the required
results? Do they change with grace? Manage conflict? ... We need to give each other the
space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other
space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness,
dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion."
- W. Edwards Deming: "It is not enough to do your
best; you must know what to do, and then do your best."
- Sir Barnett Cocks: "A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are
lured and then quietly strangled."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, counseling Frances Perkins: "One
thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the
moment... If it doesn't turn out right, we can modify it as we go along."
- Richard Sloma: "Never try to solve all the problems at once
-- make them line up for you one-by-one."
- Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.: "Do it,
fix it, try it, is our favorite axiom. Karl Weick adds that 'chaotic
action is preferable to orderly inaction' ... The most important and visible
outcropping of the action bias in the excellent companies is their willingness to try
things out, to experiment."
- General George Patton: "If you tell people where to go, but
not how to get there, you'll be amazed at the results."
- A. Lincoln, remarks at Painesville, Ohio, February 16,
1861: "I have stepped out upon this platform that I may see you and that
you may see me, and in the arrangement I have the best of the bargain."
- Maggie Gallagher , Jan. 8, 2002: "There
are just two kinds of political leaders, as some wag put it: mommy pols and daddy pols...
Since Sept. 11, the American people have developed a sudden belated taste for having a
daddy in high office, whether it be Rudy Giuliani in New York or George W. Bush in The
White House. The difference between mommies and daddies is not love. A
daddy who doesn't seem to care about you is not good for much, either in personal or
political life. But daddies and mommies tend to have different ways of expressing
care and concern. A friend of mine described recently what happened when his
3-year-old son fell down and scraped his knee. Mommy, naturally, ran to comfort him with
coos and concern and kisses. Daddy brushed him off, checked out his scrape and
reassured him with brusque words: "You are just fine. Go back and play." Mommies feel your pain. Daddies give you
confidence that you can ignore the pain and get on with life."
- Theodore Roosevelt: "The best executive is the one who has
sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep
from meddling with them while they do it."
- Sir John Hoskyns: "Strategic
leadership requires one other skill. It is a readiness to look personally foolish; a
readiness to discuss half-baked ideas; since most fully baked ideas start out in that
form; a total honesty, a readiness to admit you got it wrong."
- Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658): "Do not
trust the cheering, for those persons would shout as much if you or I were going to be
hanged." [He was the son of a knight, well-educated at his
local grammar school in Huntingdon and at university in Cambridge, a lawyer,
businessman-farmer and MP.The disputes which led to the English Civil War were about the
rule of law, the power of the church and the absolute rule of the monarchy. In short, the
debate was about where power lay -- with Parliament or with the Crown.The clash resulted
in five years of bloody civil war, the beheading of a defeated king who would not come to
terms, and the rule of the Lord Protector: Oliver Cromwell. The Crown was offered to him.
But he refused, and remained Protector until his death in 1658.]
- Editor's note (9-8-02): The movie Beautiful Mind
provides a useful metaphor regarding decision-making. John Nash is plagued by the
"demons" of imaginary friends scolding him, prompting him to various untoward
activities. Quite real to Nash, these unwelcomed advisors cause their victim a great deal
of anguish. Nash defeats them with logic: after years of torment he notices that his
nemeses have not aged at all while Nash himself has grown old. This insight, despite
Nash's mental torment, finally registers with and is accepted by him, allowing Nash
greater mental-health recovery. It occurred to me that in decision-making, one is often
plagued by "bad feelings" toward a certain course of action, even when that
course has passed all of the tests of good sense and wise judgment. While
there is great truth in the saying that one ought to "trust" one's
"organism," it is also true that there comes a time when undefined
"bad feelings" must be disowned, recognized for what they are, fear-inspired
ghosts of past traumas and failures; one's best decision, in a difficult arena,
must not be allowed to be hijacked and held hostage, indefinitely, to radical subjectivity
in the presence of healthy intuition, superior logic, and tested principles.
- Anthony Robbins: "It's in your moments of decision in which
your destiny is shaped."
- Vince Lombardi: "Teamwork is what the Green Bay Packers
were all about. They didn't do it for individual glory. They did it because they loved one
another."
- Ben Graham, counseling Warren Buffett: "You are neither
right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and
reasoning are right."
- Dick Morris, speaking of Presidential candidate, General Wesley Clark, Oct.
21, 2003: "Clark's managers, veterans of the 1992 Clinton run, are like
the generals of France, who enter each war perfectly prepared to win the last one."
- Robert Hagstrom, The Warren Buffett Way: "The most important management act is the allocation of the company's
capital... [A]llocation of capital, over time, determines shareholder value.
Deciding what to do with the company's earnings -- reinvest in the business or return
money to shareholders -- is, in Buffett's mind, an exercise in logic and
rationality."
- Time, Jan. 5, 1968: "In 1846, Abraham Lincoln's
friends raised a mere $200 to finance his race for Congress. After he won, Lincoln
returned $199.25: he had canvassed the voters on his own horse and spent only $0.75 to
treat some farm hands to a barrel of cider."
- Alfred North Whitehead: "A great society is one whose men
of business think greatly of their functions."
- Jenkin Lloyd Jones: "The vision of
things to be done may come a long time before the way of doing them becomes clear;
but woe to him who distrusts the vision."
- Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The author
describes Japanese fleet admiral Nagumo's chief of staff, Kusaka, just before the Pearl
Harbor attack: "Kusaka wrapped himself in his usual kimono of ascetic calm, believing
that at times the individual becomes caught up in problems he cannot
solve by his own efforts. He thought that by concentrating on the immediate task to
the exclusion of fruitless worries and speculations, the human being could tap a pure
stream of spiritual strength to carry him through."
- Elbert Hubbard: "There is something much more scarce,
something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize
ability."
- Kenny Rogers, The Gambler: "Son, I've made a life
out of readin' people's faces.
Knowin' what the cards were by the way they held their eyes. So if you don't mind my
sayin', I can see you're out of aces... If you're gonna play the game, boy, you gotta
learn to play it right. You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em Know
when to walk away, know when to run. You never count your money when you're sittin' at the
table. There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done. Every gambler knows
that the secret to survivin' is knowin' what to throw away and
knowin' what to keep.'Cause every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser..."
Editor's note: this is an important concept: every hand
of cards is a winning hand if one knows how to play it!!
- Nikita Khrushchov, 1960: "President Roosevelt proved that a
President could serve for life. Truman proved that anyone could be elected. Eisenhower
proved that your country can be run without a President."
- Thomas Jefferson: "I served with General Washington in the
legislature of Virginia before the Revolution, and during it with Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin
in Congress. I never heard either of them speak 10 minutes at a
time, nor to any but the main point that was to decide the question. They laid
their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of
themselves."
- Robert Fulford's review of Paul Johnson's A History of the American
People: "While crossing the great divide of the 1960s [Johnson]
works up a little anger over the creation of John Kennedy's
political career, 'one of the biggest frauds in American political history,' which
involved everything from the ghost-writing of his college thesis to the cash purchase of
votes. But of all post-1950 presidents, the one who fascinates Johnson most is that
amazing piece of work, Dwight Eisenhower, the president from 1953 to
1961, who talked in a woolly gobbledegook and pretended to be dim while
outsmarting everyone. Robert Taft, Eisenhower's rival for the Republican
nomination, said, 'I really think he should have been a golf pro.' Eisenhower of course
rolled over Taft, as earlier he had rolled over Bernard Montgomery, George Patton, and
other fractious generals under his Second World War command, and as he later rolled over
Adlai Stevenson and Joseph McCarthy, who in different ways challenged his political power
in the 1950s. Eisenhower presented himself as amiable but
lazy by having his press secretary release every day an account of his schedule
that omitted, over the years, hundreds of crucial meetings--a deception that was revealed
when his office logs were studied decades later. During most of his years in office he
made it appear that John Foster Dulles was running foreign policy and Sherman Adams was
running everything else. Even Dulles and Sherman sometimes thought so at the time, but the
record shows that Eisenhower kept both of them, and everyone else, on a short leash. In
describing this process, Johnson gives political science and management studies what I
believe is a new phrase: 'He practiced pseudo-delegation.' Eisenhower fooled
everyone--well, almost everyone. His vice-president, Richard Nixon, whose opinion on this
point deserves respect, called him 'the most devious man I ever came across in
politics.' Johnson's account of Eisenhower's career reminds us how much
can be accomplished in stealth by someone who is not anxious to appear clever. It also
demonstrates that we should never assume we know what is happening inside a government at
the time it is governing: perhaps politics, like life, can only be understood in
retrospect." Editor's note: It’s been said,
“Back East, they try to fool you by saying more than they know; and out West,
they try to fool you by saying less than they know.” Eisenhower, the favorite
son of Kansas, fooled most everyone, including Nikita Kruschev who once remarked that the
D-Day Mastermind, with his apparently lazy golfing-day ways, proved that Americans did not
need a President. All of this public posturing should stand as warning to us: we are all
familiar with history's ego-maniac leader-types, ones who love the applause of the crowd
-- but, potentially far more dangerous, because they are clear-headed, are those who care
nothing for the laudations of men; those who have no ego to be stroked; those who, with
cunning calculation, cherish power. Such leaders, if altruistically motivated, can be
incredibly effective -- but, heaven help us if these political-stealth-bombers turn
against us.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower: When asked if he knew Douglas MacArthur,
he responded: "Oh, yes. I studied dramatics under him for 12 years."
- Harry S Truman, April, 1951: Speaking of MacArthur: "I
don't want that son-of-a-bitch resigning on me. I want him fired."
- Warren Bennis: "Leadership is the capacity to translate
vision into reality."
- Woodrow Wilson: "I not only use all the brains I have but
all the brains I can borrow."
- Warren Buffett on John Maynard Keynes:
"Keynes said in his masterful The
General Theory: 'Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to
fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.' (Or, to put it in less elegant
terms, lemmings as a class may be derided but never does an individual lemming get
criticized.)"
- Dick Morris, March 15, 2006: "As his
ratings sink below 40 percent and he even loses his grip on the Republican base, President
Bush faces a crucial test: To succeed in his final three years in
office, he has got to work much, much harder at maintaining popularity than he is right
now. To avoid lame-duck status, he has to manifest the same effort and maintain the
same schedule in 2006, '07, and '08 that he did in '03 and '04. George W. Bush is not
lazy; he works hard at the job of president. But not at the job of regaining his
popularity - perhaps out of an old-school belief that popularity is for elections. But
this mistakes the nature of modern American politics - where popularity is for every day,
and those who lose it are destined to twist in the wind. If Bush doesn't get his act
together and begin to work hard at building popular support, his self-indulgence will land
him in ever-deeper misery. His ratings will stay stagnant; then he'll lose one or both
houses of Congress - and spend his final two years in office dodging opposition bullets,
subpoenas, perhaps even impeachment. It will mean personal misery for this good man, and
leave a cloud on his legacy that will take years to erase. All because he doesn't want to
do what he must - get up every day and go out and speak to America. President
Bill Clinton kept his job rating over 60 percent through all the days of Monica and
impeachment. It had nothing to do with a good economy; as Bush is finding out, a growing
GDP
doesn't guarantee growing approval ratings.
Clinton
went before the nation every day with
a new speech, an executive order, a proposal, a bill signing or some other media event.
He
didn't just recycle his old proposals. Each day, he unearthed a new idea or initiative to
keep his daily majority. He knew that without it, with an opposition Congress, he was a
goner.
His initiatives were widely varied: a rating system to help parents anticipate TV
content; school renovations; clearing out decaying public housing projects; increased
college scholarships; lower FHA closing fees; national databases for child abusers;
anti-tobacco initiatives; expansion of family and medical leave; job creation for welfare
mothers - the list was endless. An entire White House policy apparatus was charged with
churning out the initiatives... Bush needs to tell his political team to start
churning out events, as they did before the 2004 election, every day, every week, and
every month. His presidency's future depends upon it. Bush cannot afford the
self-indulgence of not working as hard as Clinton did to keep his daily majority."
- Geoffrey Colvin, Fortune, Why Dream Teams Fail, May 31, 2006: "Read the extensive literature on team effectiveness, or talk to people on
teams in sports, business, or elsewhere, and it always comes down to this: Trust is the most fundamental element of a winning team. If people think
their teammates are lying, withholding information, plotting to knife them, or just
incompetent, nothing valuable will get done... In fact, trust is so fragile and so
laboriously created that it may never extend very far in a top-level team. Building a
really high-performing executive team at the highest level is a mirage. When such teams do
exist, they'll consist mostly of two people, maybe three. It's just too hard to build
trust more extensively at the top level, where everyone is supposedly a star... the legendary top executive teams are almost always pairs. Think of
Roberto Goizueta and Donald Keough at Coca-Cola in the '80s and '90s, or Tom Murphy and
Dan Burke at Capital Cities/ABC from the '60s to the '90s, or Reuben Mark and Bill
Shanahan at Colgate-Palmolive for two decades until last year, or Warren Buffett and
Charlie Munger at Berkshire Hathaway from the '60s to today... Maybe you noticed something
else about those teams: Each consisted of a boss who became famous and a much less famous
No. 2 who devoted his career to the success of the enterprise. In every case,
though, they developed deep trust over many years and produced outstanding results."
- James Grant, John Adams: Party Of One: The author
refers to the following incident: The brilliant 20-something John
Quincy, in a series of 1791 newspaper articles, defended his father against the barbs of
non-other than the stellar Thomas Jefferson -- and won! "I confess, Sir, I am
somewhat at a loss to determine what this very respectable gentleman means by
political heresies. Does he consider this pamphlet [The Rights of Man] of
Mr. Paine's as the canonical book of political scripture? As containing the true doctrine
of popular infallibility, from which it would be heretical to depart in one single point?
[If] Mr. Paine is to be adopted as the holy father of our political faith; and this
pamphlet is to be considered the Papal Bull of infallible virtue, let us at least examine
what it contains."
- Elizabeth Fry, testimony from the Other Side: Fry speaks via Leslie Flint, direct-voice medium:
"... There
is, in a sense, organization here [on the Other Side] -- there is a feeling that
everything is in its place, but there is no conscious organization
here… There are no actual leaders
[here] as such – we have an organization which is so subtle and yet so natural
– because, a person here, for instance, does not, in a sense,
‘give orders’; we have groups of souls who do special work – but we
all realize, automatically, within ourselves, what our part is, what work we have to
do..." read more here
- Mohandas K. Gandhi: "Power is of two kinds. One is obtained
by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand
times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment."
- Charles Adams: "There have been great and powerful men who have moved
civilization, but most of the time no heroes can be found,
and the world is led by scoundrels, fools, and second-stringers."
- General George S. Patton: "Lead me, follow me, or get out
of my way... Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will
surprise you with their ingenuity... Prepare for the unknown by
studying how others in the past have coped with the unforseeable and the unpredictable...
Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash. My personal belief is that
if you have a 50% chance, take it!"
-
"There is something immoral about
abandoning your own judgment."
JFK, Thirteen Days
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