Category Archives: Information

[March 8, 2021]  Leaders are judged by results, not so much by words.  Achievements are accomplished through action by teams guided by a leader’s vision.  One way such success can be assured is to pin the rose on a responsible person.  I learned this lesson the hard way on the day I received my first leader promotion to… Read More »

[March 7, 2021]  Leadership is about finding the right path and keeping to it.  But, leaders are still prone to step on landmines that symbolically blow up along their way.  Despite a successful career, how could it be that so many leaders slip and fall anyway? I’ve stepped on these same leadership landmines, and so have many of… Read More »

[March 6, 2021]  Independence.  No single motivation has led to more wars than those willing to fight for independence.  Independence from tyranny has inspired many, and that was the thinking of those defending the Alamo from a large Mexican force commanded by Generalissimo Antonio López de Santa Anna.  On this date, March 6, 1836, Fort Alamo defenders were… Read More »

[March 3, 2021]  After the first day of the Battle of Shiloh of the American Civil War, 6 April 1862, sometime after midnight, then Union Brigadier General William T. Sherman came upon then Major General Ulysses S. Grant was standing under a tree.  Sherman remarked, “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Grant looked up.… Read More »

[March 1, 2021]  Good communication is one of the keys to successful leadership.  We all know this to be true because we have all witnessed what happens when what we say is unclear, meandering, insulting, or off-topic.  Great leaders are always on guard against dismissive words. “We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in… Read More »

[February 28, 2021]  Make no mistake about it; I have been insulted and threatened in more ways and languages than most people.  Most of the time, I came out ahead of the game (and alive).  One of my top insults was, ‘You’re 15 seconds from stupidity. This 2-Star U.S. Marine General in Iraq told me that I was… Read More »

[February 26, 2021]  Enforce the 3Bs of the briefing: Be brief, Be brilliant, Be gone.  We’ve all been at the traditional graduation ceremony where the speaker went on and on.  We only remember that we were there and the day was a happy one.  The speaker?  Who was that guy anyway?  The 3Bs is one of many leadership… Read More »

[February 26, 2021]  At 11 years of age, I joined the Boy Scouts.  Among other things, they taught me to be prepared.  We also learned the Boy Scout oath and the Scout Law.  If we ever had any doubts about what values were important, each scout core value was reviewed weekly in our meetings. This article is the… Read More »

[February 25, 2021]  By the time I reached my 20th year in the U.S. Army, I had become one of a few experts on large-scale combat and military construction Engineering.  My specialty was Base construction in hostile combat zones.  Yet, on several occasions, my ability to design, fund, construct and maintain large, complex bases failed.  Experts can and… Read More »