[April 3, 2020] Someone once said that as long as you have to think, think big. To see the ‘big picture’ or put another way to ‘have a vision’ is the epitome of great leadership. We can think of strategy as combining both the vision and the way we accomplish it. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, said that… Read More »
[April 1, 2020] I began this three-part series with a simple fact. To think like a strategic leader is hard. The problem is that most leaders have never tried to think strategically; those who have tried, failed. I could easily blame this failure on a lack of education or motivation but that would be misleading. Strategy can only… Read More »
[March 31, 2020] It’s not easy to think like a strategic leader. To do so is not common. Strategic thinking is learned, is complex and often counterintuitive, and forces us to move out of the comfort of tactics. In this three-part series, I’ll be laying out a foundation on strategic lessons from great minds of the past. Hardly… Read More »
[March 23, 2020] I was watching a little television yesterday, and while catching up on the news (all about the Coronavirus-COVID19), one of the announcers said that “now is the time for leadership.”1 After seeing what many young folks are doing by ignoring commonsense warnings about the pandemic, I would have added that now is the time for… Read More »
[March 17, 2020] Looking through the “free new movies” section of Netflix last night, I ran upon the movie All Hands on Deck (1961) starring Pat Boone, Buddy Hackett, et al. Decades ago, when it first came out, my dad gathered up our entire family to see it at a drive-in on a hot and humid evening in… Read More »
[March 16, 2020] I was a junior military officer and saw many self-inflicted mistakes made by my peers. These errors formed a pattern, and, at the time in the 1980s, I wrote them down in my notebook (that I found recently tucked away in an old footlocker). Here are the 12 biggest mistakes junior officers can make: Thinking… Read More »
[March 12, 2020] Rudyard Kipling once said that words are the most powerful drug used by mankind. He was talking about how communication is the peak human achievement, and our use of it is unimaginably powerful. Many decades ago, beginning in the Great Depression, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the new radio medium to connect to millions… Read More »
[March 11, 2020] Back in November last year, U.S. Presidential candidate Joe Biden called a woman in his audience a lying dog-faced pony soldier.1 Darn it; I wish he had called me that name. If he had, I would be the envy among my combat veteran peers. I like the expression, and I thank Joe Biden for saying… Read More »
[March 7, 2020] As I sit in my comfortable armchair watching cable news, I watch many politicians pointing fingers to who they believe is responsible for the spread of the Coronavirus. At first, they blamed China and their leaders, then it was U.S. President Trump, and now they are accusing local health officials of allowing more outbreaks. “Confusion”… Read More »
[March 3, 2020] We all know that for good leadership to work well, we need to speak and write clearly. Like my grandmother, bigmama, that means sometimes being blunt. Today, I’m doing introducing the psychological big five personality traits 1,2 because I will use those more here at www.theleadermaker.com. Over the next few weeks, I plan to draw… Read More »