Dickinson poem with great sunset images

This poem was published in 1864 with the title "Sunset" and in 1891 with the title "The Juggler of Day."

Blazing in Gold and quenching in Purple
Leaping like Leopards to the Sky
Then at the feet of the old Horizon
Laying her spotting Face to die
Stooping as low as the Otter's Window
Touching the Roof and tinting the Barn
Kissing her Bonnet to the Meadow
And the Juggler is gone

Tony Zinni: excerpts from Battle Ready

General Tony Zinni is a retired Marine Corps officer who commanded US Central Command and was a special envoy involved in the Israel-Palestine peace negotiations.  Tom Clancy co-wrote a biography of Zinni in Battle Ready (2004).

Here are two excerpts with valuable leadership insights.

Zinni set up several novel training programs within the Marine Corps.  During one program, he had an unique assessment system.

"First, the assessments were only given to the commanders training there and never to their superiors. So they could test their limits and work on their weaknesses without fear of report cards.  This allowed me to be brutally honest about their shortfalls and it allowed them to fail and improve."

When Zinni was selected to be the Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command, he received some good advice from Ed Fugit, an adviser for the previous commander.

"Connect personally with both the leaders and the people.  'But you can take that even farther," he continued, "by showing interest in their culture and society.  Do that and you build trust and confidence.'  I warmed to this approach.  Too often we get caught up in the crises, rushing around with requests, programs, and policy positions, without taking the time to listen to the concerns of the people who have to live with our decisions."


Reference:  Tom Clancy with General Tony Zinni (Ret.) and Tony Koltz, Battle Ready (New York, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2004).

P&G's Lafley on Leadership: transformation

Recently, Procter and Gamble selected a former CEO, Alan "A.G." Lafley, to become the new CEO. On Nightly Business Report on 24 May, Lafley made a comment that included a good quote on leadership.

"One of the definitions that I use of leadership is the ability to continually transform the mission, the strategy, the organization, whatever needs to be transformed to keep pace with and stay ahead of the unrelenting change that I believe is the reality in a global and incredibility competitive marketplace."






An article on the new CEO can be found on the Motley Fool Website:  http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/05/23/procter-gamble-gets-new-ceo.aspx

If you have to prove it . . .

In discussing the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis, author William Cohan wrote about an interview that Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz had on March 12.  During the interview, Schwartz said "We put out a statement that our liquidity and balance sheet are strong, and maybe I should expand on that a little."

Cohan reflected on this statement with a reference to Walter Bagehot's comment in 1873:  "Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguements, in fact his credit it gone."

Many people rely on statements of quality in lieu of demonstrated, consistent performance.  

Reference:  William D. Cohan, House of Cards:  A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street (New York, Doubleday, 2009), p. 35.

Reviewing Goal Setting; Kinder and Kinder

It is good for leaders to review the basics on Goal Setting.  One of the best discussions I know about goals setting is Kinder and Kinder.  They list four simple principles.

• Goals Must Be Achievable 
• Goals Must Be Believable 
• Goals Must Be Measurable 
• Goals Must Have Deadline

We constantly set goals, however, sometime we violate these basic principles.  Review these principles from time to time and confirm that goals meet these criteria.


Reference:  Jack Kinder, Garry Kinder, and Val Ivanov, Building the Master Agency (Cincinnati, National Underwriting Company, 2002), Chapter One: Planning, pp. 1-21.

Grit for Success: Duckworth at TED

Great TED Talk recently posted on their website.

 “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.”

 

Link to TED page:  http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit.html

Sources for Poetry: Le Guin, Endrezze

April is National Poetry Month.

Two poem recently caught my attention because they came from unique sources.

The first is "Anonymous Is Coyote Girl" (2000) by Anita Endrezze.  It uses a newspaper article to provide the background for her poem.

(Excerpt)
From a newspaper photo and article about my godfather, James Moreno, East Los Angeles, 1950. 

 (Three police officers took a brutal beating in a wild free-for-all with a family, including three young girls.
 From left, James, 19, and Alex, 22, in jail after the fracas 
on the porch of their home at 3307 Hunter.) 

    Jimmy is staring off the page, hands in his pockets. 
    A four-button dark shirt. No bruises, 
    but he looks dazed. 
   Alex wears a leather coat and a polka-dot shirt, 
   which is in itself a crime. 
   Nowhere is there a photo of a young girl 
   with a face carved like a racetrack saint, 
   eyes with all bets called off, 
   grinning like a coyote.


The second is "The Hill Yoncalla" (1999) by Ursula K. Le Guin.  It uses letters from a pioneer who was on the trail to Oregon in 1843.  The footnote for the poem states:  "All word of this poem are take from 'The Letters of Roselle Putnam,' edited by Sheba Hargreave, Oregon Historical Quarterly 24, no. 3 (1928)."

(Excerpt)
   Yoncalla is not a town nor a place of man's creation
   nor of white man's naming
   but it is a hill round and high and beautiful

   I can get five pounds of dried peaches
   for one pound of butter

   the nearest neighbor is three miles off

   our little cabin quite a comfortable little place


Link to "Anonymous Is Coyote Girl":  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238976

Reference for "The Hill Yoncalla":   Ursula K. Le Guin, Sixty Odd:  New Poems (Boston, Shambhalal Publications, 1999), pp. 39-41.

Jackie Robinson: courage, team unity; Public Radio Interviews

With the release of the movie "42", there are many interviews connected to the movie as well as Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball.  There were two great interviews on Public Radio discussing the movie and the event.

Actor Chadwick Boseman plays Jackie Robinson in the film.  On 6 April 2013, Scott Simon interviewed Boseman on National Public Radio.  In that interview, Boseman talks about reflecting on a character when portraying him on the screen.

"And I think you learn something from every character, every character you play. As you do that, you find parts of yourself that you didn't know. So, in order to find those characters, you dig into yourself and say Jackie Robinson was a courageous man. So, what is courage to me and what is discipline to me?"

Looking at the initial weeks when Robinson played baseball, KPCC's John Rabe interviewed Jim Becker on 9 Aptil 2013.  Becker is the last surviving newsman at Jackie Robinson's Major League debut.

"The day sent chills up my spine, and 66 years later it still does. I always said his failure would have been our failure, but the victory was his."

Becker also talked about how later in the season, the Philadelphia team was particularly hostile towards Robinson.  It was that hostility that helped unify the Dodgers to support Robinson.  Initially, half the Dodgers signed a petition against Robinson being on the team.  When an opponent attacked one of them, that caused the team to unite.


The Chadwick Boseman radio interview can be found here:  http://www.npr.org/2013/04/06/176357603/learning-how-to-steal-bases-like-jackie-robinsonay

The Jim Becker radio inteview can be found here:  http://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/2013/04/09/31264/photos-jim-becker-last-surviving-newsman-at-jackie/

Buffett on Business Management

In The Warren Buffett Way, Robert Hagstrom lists the three management tenets that Buffett uses to evaluate companies.

1. Is management rational?
2. Is management candid with the shareholders?
3. Does management resist the institutional imperative?

In the case of institutional imperative, there are a few more details which Buffett looks for.

• The organization resists any change in its current direction.
• Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions  will materialize to soak up available funds.
• Any business cravings of the leader, however foolish, will quickly be supported by detailed rate-of-return and stategic studies prepared by his troops.
• The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.

 Robert G. Hagstrom, The Warren Buffet Way, Second Edition, (Hoboken, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2005), pp. 81-96.

Thinking Long Term as a Leader

In The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner, they give a few great examples on how leaders should look at the long term.  Significant changes happen in the long term.

Visions are future-oriented and made real over different spans of time.

• It may take three years from the time you decide to climb a mountain until you actually reach the summit.
• It may take a decade to build a company that is one of the best places to work.
• It may take a lifetime to make neighborhoods safe again for little children to walk alone to the corner store.
• It may take a century to restore a forest destroyed by a wildfire.
• It may take generations to set a people free.

Leaders should share their long term vision and commit to the short term struggles to reach that vision.