[October 21, 2020] As the current COVID-19 pandemic slows and the Fall weather approaches, I am revisiting one of the greatest books of all time. In March of this year, I wrote a short review of The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn.1 It may have seemed like I was on kidding when I tried to sum up… Read More »
[October 20, 2020] Three years ago, I profiled U.S. Senator Tom Cotton,1 one of my early leader profiles and one that set the stage for those I profiled later. These profiles are about character. I intend to lay out what that leader sees as necessary, their priorities, and what defines them. Today, as part of my leadership blog,… Read More »
[October 19, 2020] Walking my dog early this morning before the sun came up, I strolled by a car with a bumper sticker that read, ‘WAR is NOT the ANSWER.’ My dog smelled the tires, and we went on our way. Later, I got to thinking too many folks don’t understand or simply deny the reality of war,… Read More »
[October 18, 2020] Mike Pence is a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican who is currently running with President Donald Trump to be reelected for another four years. I’m profiling VP Pence because the Vice President position is getting more attention this election cycle. Here in my blog, I have a simple goal to stand against political correctness… Read More »
[October 17, 2020] Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, once said that “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” I was counter by saying that “leadership” is knowing which ones to keep. Today’s article is about common weaknesses that we find in all people. In the study of human… Read More »
[October 16, 2020] Abolitionist John Brown raided the Federal Armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) on this date, October 16, 1859. A company of U. S. Marines, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, overran Brown and his followers. Brown was convicted of treason on November 2, 1859, and hanged on… Read More »
[October 15, 2020] Officers in the U.S. military are, at minimum, give annual evaluations that provide feedback on both their performance and potential. Evaluations are crucial to the career of the officer and impact future performance. Thus, when I received my very first evaluation, I was upset. It read, ‘You’re only average, 2LT Satterfield.’ I don’t particularly appreciate… Read More »
[October 14, 2020] There will be times as a leader you will be the bait to attract unwanted attention and the enemy’s firepower. During my first combat tour of duty, my small unit was tasked to build a small engineering project “outside the wire” to attract an enemy insurgent cell’s attention. Overlooking my unit was a Special Forces… Read More »
[October 13, 2020] For the first half of my long career in the U.S. Army, I was wrong. I was most wrong about learning the way to think like a leader. For so long, I thought the solution was to understand what successful leaders thought rather than how they thought. It was the essential process of thinking that… Read More »
[October 12, 2020] Shortly after the terror attacks on U.S. soil, September 11, 2001, I was sitting on an Army bus when I overhead two buck Sergeants talking. The red-headed Sergeant said that he had wished he was on one of the commercial jets that had crashed into the World Trade Center a few days earlier. He believed… Read More »