[July 08, 2014] Comedians and politicians appear to be the best at reading their audience. Not to equate them on their level of national importance, of course. They both base their livelihood on their ability to foresee how their audience will react to what they do (telling a joke or debating national security). Predicting the audience reaction is… Read More »
[July 07, 2014] Savage manliness? Running of the bulls in Spain rates with Rugby and Calcio Fiorentino as a sport that requires very special talents. My wife says that those who run with a bunch of bulls chasing them are crazy. I like to think of them as having physical courage mixed with a little insanity. However, it… Read More »
[July 07, 2014] The United States has an immigration problem. There is no denying the fact that the number of people crossing the southern border annually in violation of U.S. law has dramatically increased over the past several years. Likewise, the number of deportations has fallen. The real problem, however, is not the immigration issue itself, but the… Read More »
[July 06, 2014] Military leaders are taught from the beginning to be aware of the dangers of “group think.” There have been a number of colossal military disasters that resulted from group think: Custer’s Last Stand, the Maginot Line, Stalingrad, and the Bay of Pigs. Any good leader would rather learn from group think failures than experience them… Read More »
[July 05, 2014] Today I added a new page to test the feasibility of having a leadership news page. Right now, I’m calling it “Leadership Weekly”. My intent is to have a place people can go for major stories from the past week on leadership. Those selected stories will be simply linked to articles published elsewhere … but… Read More »
[July 04, 2014] In 2006, soon after the President announced a “surge” in Iraq, I was given an extra duty. Several of us, the most senior colonels, were to help “flush out the particulars of the military surge strategy.” General Petraeus outlined the strategy for us but there were to be a structure to the direction and control… Read More »
[July 03, 2014] Yesterday, I missed a very important date. Fifty years ago, on July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.1 While the entire Act is important, Title VII Equal Employment Opportunity is the part most commonly cited and the core of the Act. The signing of the Act was conducted with much fanfare… Read More »
[July 03, 2014] When a good friend of mine was newly promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, the lowest flag rank, he was shocked that he was highly visible in spite of where he went or what he did. He could no longer remain anonymous in the back of a meeting room. Everything he said was analyzed… Read More »
[July 02, 2014] Yesterday, we discussed Detroit’s problem of an entitlement mentality with so many of its citizens (link here). It turns out that over half the population is delinquent on their water bills and is threatened with their water being turned off. A parallel between the privileged status of Detroiters and the failed socialist system was difficult… Read More »
[July 01, 2014] News comes to us over the past several weeks that large numbers of residents who do not pay their water bills are having their water service disconnected. What is interesting, from a leadership perspective, is what folks are saying and doing about it. A water department official said, “The majority of our customers (who) are in… Read More »