Category Archives: Leadership

Leadership, out of the box, Rational

Big Think

Leave a comment

The guy makes sense.

“It is very REASONED with compassion too.”  Some might say he is Rational in his thinking.

And people are slowly, but surely realizing this.

Charlie Munger for one.  Even John Stewart has caught on. 😉  And me too, even though I thought his fantastic idea about fast and slow ideas was the only article I would read of his.

openquoteThere are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.closedquote — Hannah Arendt

tortoise-hare

“And one of the things they showed us was how to really focus on making it swift and usable. We made a two-minute surgery checklist; it had just 19 items. Some of them were just make sure you don’t forget dumb stuff: make sure you gave antibiotics, make sure you have blood ready for a high-blood-loss case. And then there were other interesting parts: make sure everybody in the room has been introduced by name and role; make sure the surgeon actually explained to the team what their goals for the operation are; make sure the anesthesiologist and nurses had a chance to explain their plans for the operation. We put that checklist in eight hospitals around the world, ranging from rural Tanzania to Toronto and Seattle, and every single hospital we put it in had a double-digit reduction in complications. The average reduction in death was 46 percent. That made me realize there was something much deeper and more important going on here about this set of problems we’re grappling with in the modern world.”

You see, his main ideas are Slow Ideas.  Complex ideas: hard to take hold in the general public zeitgeist.

Continue reading Big Think →

Guardian, Leadership, Presidential

For the Good of My Country

Leave a comment

No.

NO.

NO!

Grover Cleveland

Stephen Grover Cleveland [22nd and 24th President] was a man who knew how to say “no.” During his two terms in office he issued more than six hundred vetoes, four hundred and thirteen of them in his first term alone. This was more than the combined vetoes of all the twenty-one Presidents before him and more than any other President except Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Cleveland was quite proud of his record… [Presidential Temperament]
Continue reading For the Good of My Country →

Leadership, Presidential, Rational

Architecting History

6 Comments

James Madison

Thomas Jefferson, [Architect Rational,] served two terms as President, and like Washington before him decided that two terms of its “splendid misery” were quite enough for any man. He was eager to return to a life of study and to have his old friend, the gentle and scholarly James Madison, [Architect Rational,] succeed him in the White House. There was little opposition to his choice and “Little Jemmy” Madison, who stood about five feet, five inches tall and weighed in the neighborhood of 100 pounds, won the presidential election of 1808 handily, and was sworn into office in early 1809. Though he was pleased to have become President, Madison intensely disliked the ceremony and celebration that attended his inauguration. He was quick to announce to a friend his reaction to the gala inaugural ball: he would rather be in bed.

Another quiet, privacy-loving Engineer Rational had taken the helm of the ship of state. [Presidential Temperament]

Continue reading Architecting History →

Leadership, out of the box, Rational

A New Page

1 Comment

of History.

You’re Hired. You’re Fired.  That’s business.

You’re Fired!  It was Donald Trump‘s phrase, he tried to trademark it.  But it is the old, tried, and true random way: Neo-Darwinism (but do not blame Darwin for he understood his views better than that).

No, how about Margulian Darwinism?

Because, Larry’s plan is different — fundamentally different. His choice.

You’re Hired.

A New Page of History

You’re hired, and your salary is a one time gift, of ~30 billion dollars give or take some billions, no strings attached, but Metaperson tethered.

Are we on the SAME PAGE? Not likely.

Larry Page
Continue reading A New Page →

Artisan, Leadership, out of the box

The First Visible Crack

Leave a comment

I remember the exact moment and place.  As we talked, Karel had made the gesture of flicking his finger at an imaginary glass globe in his hand that would crack into a million pieces:

“It would just take a small Ping — the whole thing could shatter and fall apart” he said.

I thought, yes, just like the edge-of-chaos/order: a phase transition.

Soon it happened.  Few, if any, but Karel could have imagined it happening — and so soon.

He knew the system well: as a kid, he had been prevented to pursue what he was good at — mathematics — for the powers of Czechoslovkia wouldn’t let him go to school, because his father had escaped from the Soviet bloc, leaving Karel and his mother to suffer the consequences.  Karel knew what it is like not to trust anybody outside his immediate family — not say what everybody knew but could not say — the Soviet system was a human prison: Private Truths, Public Lies.  Karel did get out in 1978 by Jimmy Carter’s diplomatic initiative with Alexander Dubček’s short regime. Only a few could escape from the system.

Karel obtained his PhD in Mathematics from Stanford University a couple years later after our talk.   Nobody really thought it would happen.  The Iron Curtain seemed still solid in 1988.  The Soviet system had lasted for more than 75 years.  The Soviet Union was one of the two superpowers: a military and nuclear super power. Rebellions had failed before: Hungary and Czechoslovakia, otherwise subversive acts had to keep a low profile.

The first real crack on the surface of that Curtain had started in 1982, three years before Mikhael Gorbachev took power. That first crack, that finally spread like that imagined shattered glass globe of Karel’s in 1989, was Promoted by one man….

Continue reading The First Visible Crack →

Guardian, Leadership

Be Himself

1 Comment

I have often reflected that the causes of success or failure of men depend upon their … character, and [are] not a matter of choice. – Niccolo Machiavelli

He was there, tall and imposing, and upright with his natural grace and nobility. In front of the his men, he naturally commanded attention, his speech had seemingly come to close.

But now he hesitated. He stopped. This was unusual for him.

They knew him so well. They had followed him, through thick and thin, for years. But they were angry. They wanted to revolt. They hadn’t been paid; they had listen to his prepared speech; they had heard similar excuses before. Most of them still not convinced. He knew this.

He was at loss to what to do.

In a last desperate act, he pulled a letter from his pocket. Something was wrong, however.

He tried to read the letter, stumbling with his words, then, hopelessly staring at it.

He hestitated again. He, again, reach to a pocket, pulling out a pair of eyeglasses.

“Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray, but almost blind, in the service of my country.”

Most had never seen these eyeglasses, something only General George Washington intimates had ever seen him wear. Humbled and embarrassed, many of the officers were now in tears. For, if the speech had not already destroyed the revolt, this act assured its demise. Washington left the meeting. The officers unanimously voted to wait for their overdue wages, and they would not “retire to some unsettled country” and leave Congress without an army.

“On other occasions he had been supported by the exertions of the army and the countenance of his friends,” said Captain Samuel Shaw, “but in this he stood single and alone.”

With that George Washington continued lead and help found the United States of America.

Leading Naturally.

The point of this story is that George Washington, could not help himself, but be himself, and be leader even at his weakest moment. His officers followed the man, George Washington, because of who he was. Continue reading Be Himself →

Leadership, Rational

Lean In Slowly

4 Comments

BUT SURELY.

“You don’t choose your passion, your passion chooses you.”
— Jeff Bezos

Passion requires Temperament
— David M Keirsey

He said to her: “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don’t ask what seat. You just get on.”

When companies grow quickly, there are more things to do than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing, there is less to do and too many people to be doing them. Politics and stagnation set in, and everyone falters. 

When debating her next career move, Sheryl Sandberg made a spreadsheet comparing the roles and responsibilities that would come with each position and company she was considering. Google was on her list (a relatively unknown company in 2001), and ranked lower than all of the other options in categories like security, salary and responsibilities, but when Sandberg presented her dilemma to Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO at the time, he managed to change her mind with this simple piece of advice:

“[Eric] covered my spreadsheet with his hand and told me not to be an idiot (also a great piece of advice). Then he explained that only one criterion mattered when picking a job—fast growth. When companies grow quickly, there are more things to do than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing, there is less to do and too many people to be doing them. Politics and stagnation set in, and everyone falters. He told me, “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don’t ask what seat. You just get on.”

Sandberg made up her mind that instant and joined Google, which as we all know was one of the fastest flying rocket ships ever created, to date.

Continue reading Lean In Slowly →

Dyads, Idealist, Leadership, out of the box, Rational

Wings

20 Comments

Don’t ask me what I did.  Ask what I did not do.
I did not clip her wings.
— Ziauddin Yousafzai

Malala 1

Ziauddin Yousafzai, Teacher Idealist, is the father of Malala Yousafzai, a young woman who protested against the Taliban for the education rights of children, especially for Pakistani girls. Originally a headmaster of his school in Swat Valley, he is currently the United Nations Special Advisor on Global Education.

Malala Yousafzai, Fieldmarshal Rational, ( born 12 July 1997) is a Pakistani school pupil and education activist from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. She is known for her activism for rights to education and for women, especially in the Swat Valley, where the Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. In early 2009, at the age of 11–12, Yousafzai wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban rule, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls. The following summer, a New York Times documentary by journalist Adam B. Ellick was filmed about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region, culminating in the Second Battle of Swat. Malala rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu. [Wikipedia, revised]

“I will get my education – if it is in home, school, or anyplace.”
— Malala

As Malala became more recognized, the dangers facing her became more acute. Death threats against her were published in newspapers and slipped under her door. On Facebook, where she was an active user, she began to receive threats and fake profiles were created under her name. When none of this worked, a Taliban spokesman says they were “forced” to act. In a meeting held in the summer of 2012, Taliban leaders unanimously agreed to kill her.
Continue reading Wings →

Famous personality, Guardian, Leadership

Without Malice

Leave a comment

He would use the word “love” of his players.

But, he was very gruff and tough. Beyond tough. A Stone-cold Leader. One of the 7 blocks of granite.

He demanded the best of each individual. He would do whatever it took to get his team to win.

The Commanding Leader

“I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle-victorious.” 

Continue reading Without Malice →

Famous personality, Idealist, Leadership

Unreasonable

5 Comments

But not irrational

— not by long shot.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.” –George Bernard Shaw

He is unreasonable in his consistent integrity of his ideals.

Some say, because of that, he is unsafe at any speed of change.

He has always been Idealistic. THAT’S THE NATURE OF TEMPERAMENT.

He won’t change, he can’t change. He doesn’t compromise.

And he is unreasonable about that. Continue reading Unreasonable →