[April 10, 2014] In the U.S. Army we are fond of saying the “maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters.” This is a play on words that harks to the effective killing range of a weapon system. I learned this the hard way when, on my first day as a platoon leader, several of my unit’s… Read More »
[March 23, 2014] My grandmother – affectionately called big mama – told me many times that, “if you ain’t learning, you ain’t livin.” She valued all types of education and was the first relative to insist I go to college. Continuous learning, she implicitly knew, is one of the many good habits a person needs to be the… Read More »
[August 06, 2014] The demands made on military commanders are awesome; yet little is provided in the way of guidance. Commanders that make rapid, sound decisions are highly valued and promoted quickly to higher levels of responsibility. The problem is that decisions made rapidly often encounter resistance in application. Regardless whether the decision is the best or not, how… Read More »
[July 25, 2014] A small group of friends and I had our first taste of college life after graduating from high school. We were all engineer majors and figured that since we knew nothing about their trigonometry courses we would take one our first summer. The teacher was smart and dedicated but his accent made us struggle to… Read More »
[July 24, 2014] High School teaching can be a tough job, especially in schools that are in poor neighborhoods with growing crime rates. One young lady from New York City wanted to be a teacher more than anything else in the world but after only 6 months quit her job. The reason? She was unable to “connect” with… Read More »
[July 23, 2014] Senior leaders are busy people with too much to accomplish and too little time to get it all done. Using time wisely is a key to successful leadership. One of the most difficult of good habits to obtain and to keep is the focus required to make effective use of time. Superficially this is easy.… Read More »
[July 22, 2014] As I progressed through the military ranks, I was always both surprised and amazed those senior officers 2 or 3 ranks above me always seemed to ahead of my peers and me. To us it was like they were intellectually superior and were able to predict the future. It turns out that they were like… Read More »
[July 21, 2014] In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey writes that the most successful people are able to “sharpen the saw”. He means is to balance and renew your energy, especially mental renewal. This is done, he notes, through “good reading.” In the military it is recommend that all leaders read… Read More »
[July 20, 2014] The best way for senior leaders to learn about what is really happening in their organization is to, simply, walk around and talk to people. That may appear to be uninspiring and lack originality, but it works … and it works well. In conversations with the most senior CEOs and military flag officers, one of… Read More »
[July 19, 2014] Picking good daily habits for senior leaders is rather easy because there are so many to choose form. Today, selected is the good habit that most leaders actually violate regularly; making assumptions that turn out not to be true. People make assumptions in everything we do, otherwise nothing would get done but here the reference… Read More »