Why, I Oughta – and other authority instincts

Why, I Oughta – and other authority instincts

Friends,

I was working with an office a while back where morale had sunk to awful levels. At one point in a full-group meeting I excused the management team so I could get a no-holds barred airing of the issues. Wham, did I get it! Both barrels. I had to keep reminding myself: “you were the one who asked for candor, dude,” and “they’re expressing genuine hurt and confusion, so don’t punish them for it.”  The experience reminded me again, how authority distorts everything!

So, parents and managers let me offer two thoughts. First, authority’s no party.  Authority figures – whether parents, teachers, pastors or governors (just for a random example) stand in for a crazy share and blare of blame.  It was what I stood in for from that office when I invited their candor.  I heard a priest yesterday that lit up just about every button on my emotional console; with just a few sentences he spoke, I was mentally giving him a piece of my outrage, the build-up of years of struggle with my beloved church. In our very democratic era people feel quite entitled to express themselves with great vitriol, which was what I felt like doing.  I’m glad I spared the young cleric.

If you’re in authority you just gotta know you’re gonna be blamed for all kinds of stuff that’s not working for others. I found myself scratching my head the other day when I heard President Clinton twice repeat, “People have a right to be angry.”  Really, I thought? They do? I’d agree that we have a right to our feelings, whatever they are.  The economy remains a mess. So, some people are afraid. Some are disappointed. Many are frustrated (which rises to anger) because they want to work but don’t have a job.  I get all of that.

My problem is with what I took to be Clinton’s legitimization of  a “right to be angry” AT.  At politicians – Reagan/Bush if you’re a Dem, Obama if you’re an R, and angry at Washington or the Congress, whether you’re a D, R or I. It’s an accepted truism that we have this right to be angry, despise, even hate our elected leaders.  I think we need to do a little less blaming and raging, and take responsibility whether as children vis-a-vis parents, or students to teachers, workers to CEO’s, or citizens relative to our elected leaders.

The authorities aren’t all to blame. I know for my part I’ve been lazy as a saver, consumer, parishioner and active citizen. Before you hit the Comment button, however, let me make the second point: The last thing an authority should do is shoot the messenger. Clinton’s true and defensible inference, I believe, was: People are hurting, and we should NOT blame the victims. This is a HUGE authority lesson.   At that group meeting I was tempted to say, “Hey, looks to me like you’re the source of the morale problem,” but that would have been so wrong. I would have quashed a needed airing of issues.

Authorities have to absorb some big hits to begin to understand where the pain is really coming from, and to in turn enlist people in the solutions. Some of the hardest work of authorized leaders is to absorb some of the hits and hurts, in order to create space for people to get the really hard work of

leading with their best self!

Dan

  • I heartily agree with your statements regarding the fact that “people are hurting and we should not blame the victims”; however, I would also like to say that the victims need to be sure they are not victimizing themselves. My husband and I have hovered on the edge of poverty (often deeply below the definition) as we struggled to pay for his education, while still providing for our 2 sons. At one point, I worked 5 jobs while attending classes myself and going to ballgames, plays, etc. My husband is now a licensed physician, just finishing his residency, my two younges sons are in college. Oh… did I say that I am 51 years old?

    My belief in the so-called “American Dream” is as alive now as it was 30 some years ago. No one said it would be easy, or that I would not need to earn it. It is also not possible for everyone to do what we have done (I know how blessed we truly are). BUT… when things got tough, we refused to accept the label of “victim” for any longer than we had to. It IS still possible to acheive a version of the dream.

    • Terry,
      That’s an impressive tale! Prompts me to share my favorite quote from Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner’s The Leadership Challenge:

      “Name any great leader, performer, scientist, athlete, activist, citizen, [human!]. Chances are that the crucible of that person’s crowning achievement was some distressing crisis, wrenching change, tragic misfortune, or risky venture. Only challenge produces the opportunity for greatness.”
      Dan

  • I think the voters are angry because so many unread, not understood, HUGELY expensive social programs have been charged to our “future tax bill” with a verry patrernal condescending attitude from the house, senate and executive branch.

    Dan – Anger is justified by many of the voters. They have not shown any violence whatsoever. They wil show thier anger on Nov 2nd.

  • Dan,

    Where have you been hiding? We all know the “Blame Game” much too well. This is America we have all been taught at a young age either by example or by words that it is always the other person’s fault. I have a little cartoon in my Detroit office of a kid writing on a blackboard that reads “Philosophy 820…”It’s my mother’s fault, it is my father’s fault, it is your mother’s fault, it is your father’s fault, It is your religion’s fault, it’s my religion’s fault…

    The TIP Lady

  • Dan- Depending on my situation in life I have two sayings I often refer to when it gets rough: Personal: You don’t scare me… I have a teenager
    Professional: Bring it, ’cause I’ve got big shoulders… I’ve been an elected school board member
    I don’t always agree with our elected officials,(local, state or federal) but I respect that they are making difficult decisions and have volunteered to put themselves “out there”, resulting in them being judged (right or wrong) in every aspect of their life.
    Parent and school board member, the two toughest, most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had.

    • Katie –
      Amen to those being the two toughest jobs around.
      I might add the most important.
      So, keep those shoulders broad and that mind open!
      Dan

  • I really appreciate this message.

    And I think the issue of authority is very complicated.

    We need leaders, yet we are in a society where every person’s voice and opinion has value. (And I don’t know about others, but I am a very good armchair quarterback!)

    My father regularly interrupted whatever political arguments we had at the dinner table with one phrase, “Why don’t you try to be part of the solution?” These days, it’s hard to know what the solution is. Still, I can refrain from obsessive finger pointing and appreciate that those in authority are doing what they think is right. And they’re willing to take the heat.

    • Katherine,
      You, as a clinical psychologist, know how crazy “authority” is for us. I think it should be a required course in high school: Authority, Power, Freedom and Responsibility.”
      Thanks for weighing in.
      Dan

  • Well said, Dan! Thought-provoking and true. Let’s utilize the energy it takes to be angry to do something positive…to be a part of the solution.

  • Dan,

    I have enjoyed receiving your emails and view points for some time. What clearly comes across is your caring enough to stick your neck out and try to make things better.

    What is dearly needed in todays world are courageous conversations. In business people are so afraid of loosing their jobs, they won’t talk about problems or against current directions. The people that are suppose to implement the changes and duties of business on a daily basis know the most and have the insight to make the best changes. Regardless of where you work in an organization, you are all there to make money and move the business forward.

    Business should operate like Doctors. First, do no harm! Your people are your greatest asset to make business successful! People with long tenure at a company are not a liability. They have seen a lot and have a great deal of insight. They need to be asked and have their ideas acted upon. Everyone will see this, and fully engage in making the business successful. Without the action, passive aggressive behavior will only continue.

    The same insight that created the problems will not be the people solving todays problems! Every business has a counter culture that needs tapped into. They don’t believe in the current directions, and have outside of the box thinking that would make some people cringe. If there was ever a time from creative thinking, now is it. Its needed in every subject I read in the news, but the world is afraid of making change. People want to feel comfortable with only minor change that doesn’t turn their world upside down.

    Sorry to be so chatty, but I have a lot to say on this subject for a long time.

    Regards

    Paul Pollock

    • Paul,
      I couldn’t agree more about the need for courageous conversations. I spoke to a group of adult ed researchers/profs/practitioners from around the midwest this morning. I ask them: in a world where companies, even whole industries can go out of business overnight, what attributes, attitudes, etc., do you need to drive success, they talked (as groups always do) about : flexibility, adaptability, creativity, openness, collaboration. That can’t happen with rigid authority. We all have to think: How do I open things up? Get opposing views, etc., as you so well put it.
      Thanks for contributing!
      Dan

  • Dan,

    I agree with you wholeheartedly. I have seen first hand that current generation(s) are different from my grandfathers. Don’t get me wrong, I know there is nothing new under the sun, but I really do believe that one thing is more prominent now in our culture than that of my grandfathers generation. That is the lack of respect for those in authority.

    Part of the problem has been with the lack of integrity of our Leaders. From a son who sees his father being unfaithful to his mother, or vice versa, to a new employee seeing his boss going outside of the same procedure he was told to adhere to in order to complete the job. Or the young minister who after hearing the sermon on Sunday about integrity, afterwards hears in the Ministers office, talk that would be deemed unbecoming. Either way we become angry at how leadership gets to do whatever they please while we sit back and have all these standards to llive by. Wasn’t there a time when we looked at our leaders as examples not just someboy with a title?

    When someone makes a decision that is unpopular, we try and find fault in it, or think we have the better plan, even though we are not in the position to push that plan, or to make it happen. For instance, most people who have an idea of how the president should conduct business are from people who would never be in the position to run for president, or even have a desire to do so. Most people could not run due to poor integrity issues that are hidden at the time, but the fear of them coming out by the opponent would keep them as the radio talk show host, or a political analyst. It is easy for us to judge or shoot the messenger simply because all the attention is on them, not on ourselves.

    Some of those who are unemployed today are not due to a lack of work by an employer, but because they violated a policy, and in some cases excessively, meaning they were given chances to improve and chose not to. However, they are part of the percentage of the unemployed so it seems as if the economy is doing worse than what it really is. Some companies left the U.S. simply because they could no longer afford to pay the high salaries that we as Americans demand, however, a lot of that is driven by our high cost of living mixed with alot of our greed that was born and breed right here in the United States. Regardless we will look at those that made the decision and say, they could have handled the situation differently. We have a problem with a company that wants to make bigger profits, but we can make decisions about our own lifestyles in a minute. When things get tight, the Lawn service will go, or eating out will go, and althought that effects the pockets of the Lawn guy or the neighborhood Bar and Grill we understand the decision because it is from a veiw we can see. We can justify our decision and stand by it. When someone else makes a simiar decision for a large corporation we look to see where we can call it greed. But the reality is we want the same thing, but the bottomes lines are just much bigger for one, but the ligic behind it is the same.

    It is a shame that the President himself cannot give the message you wrote simply because it would be deemed “politically incorrect.” Heaven forbid the leader of our nation try and tell us how we should live. No, it would have to be by someone like you Dan. In my pastors words, “Nobody wants to hear the truth, but somebody has to tell it anyway.” Continue to help us Lead with our best self.

    -David

  • It’s appropriate to become angry at a SITUATION. It’s oversimplistic to fix BLAME for the situation on any particular player in the situation. Probably we all have a part in it to some extent or another and the sooner we take responsibility for our part, the sooner that all of us can move forward to a genuine solution.

    It’s helpful to begin to fix the PROBLEM, and a good beginning place is to identify what we have control over and do that, also identify what we don’t have control over and stop worrying about that.

    For example, I can’t control what happens on Wall Street but I can put my retirement savings into socially responsible investments (you can Google it). I can’t control which party wins, but I can vote. I can’t control it if no qualified candidates run for office but I could run for office.

    Et cetera. Hopefully, you get the idea.

    What we should not waste energy doing is moaning and groaning and whining and complaining with anyone who’ll listen over developments that neither we nor they have any control. Don’t just be a “No! Don’t do that!” kind of person. If you have a specific problem with what a specific person is doing, have the intestinal fortitude to tell that person. Don’t just gossip behind their backs. If you want them to change, tell them, using this formula:

    When you… (describe the behavior in a factual way; what a camera or tape recorder could capture)

    Here’s how I respond… (tell not just how much, but why)

    So in the future, please… (change your behavior in certain ways).

    That way, they know what they did that was offensive and maybe they’ll change but even if they don’t, you did what you cold to help them see the value of changing, and even an idea about a new behavior they might be willing to adopt.

    Here’s a quotable quote attributed to President “Give ’em hell” Harry Truman that may apply here: “I don’t give ’em hell. I tell them the truth, and to them, it’s hell.”

    In summary, take an assertiveness course and find an appropriate, helpful way to tell your truth. Amazing things happen when we share enough to get all the facts on the table. Amazing things like progress towards a solution!

    Thanks, Dan! There is a lot of hurt our there and a lot of things to be angry about. There are some things we can do about it, but blaming people, as if that ever solved anything, is not helpful. It just provides a chicken’s way out.

  • And let’s not forget … Them. Whenever something isn’t working right, whether at our place of work, our church, or our government, it’s easy to say that They need to do something about it. “What a mess. THEY need to do something. It’s THEIR fault.”

    But if I understand the American form of government, They is Us. If We don’t like the way things are, We need to change it. Of the people, by the people, and for the people … that’s how it’s supposed to be. And I’ve known far too many people from across the political spectrum who, when asked how they felt about something when they voted, acknowledged that they didn’t vote. As far as I’m concerned, the right to complain needs to be substantially tempered if you don’t vote, or otherwise act.

  • Okay, I meant that last post to refer to the course you recommended. I thought this would go right under that.

    Anyway, I see anger as a starting point. We can visit there. We just don’t want to live there. We do have things to be angry about. Once we pinpoint just what, we move to – what are we going to do about it? Love activadvocate’s comment and then there’s the Serenity Prayer. Or the serenity affirmation for those who aren’t into prayer…

    • Meryl,

      Great line about anger:

      “We can visit there. We just don’t want to live there.”

      That should be one of your “speak strong” to your own self lines.

      Thanks,

      Dan

  • Dan,

    I think this is a great subject and true in so many points and comments. We have taken so many things over the years for granted. The car industry was going to last forever and no matter what you did a college education would get you a job. Now things are coming to light. People panic and do not know what to do so they look to find blame. When people are looking to blame someone, they sometimes look away from the big picture. All we want as people is to be compensated for our hard work, and to have someone acknowledge that work. It is the small things that effect morale in a company, and some times all the people need is a little room to vent.

    I would like to hear more about this company. How or what worked to increase and improve the moral. This article I found very interesting. I also find many of the comments are well written and I enjoy like reading them.

    Thank you for allowing us to comment. While I am not in a position to lead, your comments and articles help me do better with those I work with. Thanks again.

  • Making things difficult, and making our times difficult takes talent. Think of who benefits when times are hard. I sometimes have seen the same politician say that something is failing, when they are actively making it fail. For instance Blue Cross prior to the Granholm Administration. I will say the same for Social Security. The loudest naysayers and the one’s who are taking it down by preventing the well known improvements from being put into legislation.

    And also see Rudyard Kipling’s poem which begins,

    If you can keep your head, when all those about you are losing theirs, and blaming you . . . . .

  • [ This brings up so many things: the multiple meanings of “lead”; the motivations behind leadership and when it’s right that motivations go wrong; that to address it all I had to write a four-page essay complete with thesis statement. No real argument is raised, just clarification of things, and I agree with the RFL. In case of tl;dr – excellent, it takes more calories to read than to scroll down. ]

    I’m also glad you spared the young cleric. Leadership is important, but sometimes its importance is overemphasized. Commonality and compassion are also key to a working group’s success, and definitely “being there” is important in general whenever some function or method needs to be undertaken, and the plan or model can’t stand alone. In other words, maybe he knows where he’s wrong about something and you showed him the best example. If I recall, you wanted to be a priest yourself, so I’m sure that’s beneficial to you. Whether the system is better or worse off for your leniency, though, is another matter. By not leading him to nose-off, you stressed success over leadership. But not only does leadership sometimes not need exercise, sometimes leadership doesn’t need to be in place, at all. Sometimes these lead positions are excessively deployed and they don’t really benefit the system.

    In the news, for instance, there’s a problem with a new function of the national government. This new department, “U.S. Cyber Command” (or “CyberCom”) already has a director, a budget, and a leadership in place, but no workers. Because of this, they will not be meeting the Friday, October 1st 2010 deadline for becoming operational.

    http://www.securityweek.com/cybercom-will-miss-fully-operational-october-1st-deadline

    Quoted from the article: “A major challenge appears to be staffing the command with qualified personnel, of which it will need over 1,000 skilled employees. General Alexander told Congress his leadership staff was in place but acknowledged there were challenges in bringing in people to the rest of the organization. . . . A subunified command under U.S. Strategic Command, Cybercom has about 1,000 servicemembers and civilian employees. The command has a budget of about $120 million this year, and is scheduled to receive approximately $150 million in fiscal 2011.”

    So, during this time between October 1st and whenever CyberCom is finally staffed, seated, resolved, and working, there will be no effective “cyber defense” for the country. Though the Department of Homeland Security will have just completed operation “Cyber Storm III” (between Tuesday of this week – currently ongoing – and 3-4 days later) which is a simulated attack on our nation’s “information superstructure”, apparently we will be without a department that could take advantage of what that simulation teaches us. If history is of any value as a learning tool, we should take note that prior simulations have taxed our national defenses and presented strategic moments for our enemies to attack. If you’ll remember, during the terrorist attacks of 9-11, our Air Force and other departments were undergoing an attack simulation which left us vulnerable in key areas for the most terrible thing that happened to all Americans since Key West got overdeveloped, blocking out the gorgeous view. It was also very similar to Pearl Harbor in the way in which the enemies executed their attack, and similar to the Trail of Tears in how many Americans died.

    One person commenting on the news article noted: “What’s absurd is that leadership is so easily staffed, but technical prowess is not. These roles are subjective. The people actually doing something require objective skills. The fact that the objective-skilled people are not staffed, but the subjective-skilled people are, leads me to question the quality of leadership.”

    Now, in a Communist government, our leadership would allegedly be pulled necessarily from the ranks of the groups which are supposed to be led. So, automakers would have to support the rise of a fellow automaker to be assigned the glorious rank of automaker cabinet, and from then on to cabinet ministry of automachination, from them on to ministry of industry, from them on to ministry of the interior, from them on to cabinet of prime minister, and from there on to troika. And, like in American government today (not in the 1700’s,) they would more or less have to be party-members of the major party in order to be included in the extravaganza of expressing responsibility towards their fellow citizens.

    But, in the spirit of American democracy, often we choose to forego having an actual staff when we assign leadership to a department, and sometimes we forego having a department at all. Of course this makes people angry: they have a right to be angry, so of course they are, that’s the American spirit. We always have all guns blazing. So I think Bill Clinton was right, Americans have a right to be angry, even if I’m not sure why Bill Clinton was saying it.

    Shouldn’t leadership have to justify something? Consider a flock of birds. The birds change direction and suddenly some bird who was in the “wings” of the V-formation is current leader. The birds don’t change direction based on the bird flying at the apex of the pyramid, the wind changes and they try to keep a V for various reasons, all of them useful for the group’s cohesion, but none of them serving a chain of command. Their group behavior is largely an emergent property. So is ours: we have tasks set out to accomplish, in industrial civilization they are largely specialized and the labor is divided, and one or more members work together to fit a specific division of the labor until goals are met towards completing the task.

    So, all of our group behavior is precipitated by the task at hand, thus making it emergent: we don’t demonstrate it out of its own necessity such as we do eating or running, instead it doesn’t occur unless there is some purpose. People don’t stand around, in other words, just literally putting their heads together for nothing. Who comes up with this stuff? . . . Leaders. And if we had leaders in place without people for them to lead, they’d be doing nothing.

    Some might argue that it’s important to determine whether we should have leadership first in place or teams first in place. Some say, “well, leaders are winners, winning is first place, leaders are here first, we win, pay us for being here and, by the way, show up for work”. Some say, “well, I’m in charge, here, and I say I’m in charge, that means I’m in charge of you, and if there’s too many of you then I need to be in charge of somebody I need around to let you know that I’m in charge”. Maybe they disagree, but what they both have in common is that they are both working in the capacity of regulating conduct. They are both determined to have control over what’s happening. Including before it’s going to happen.

    In technical situations, however, where we’re talking about a complex flux of things like condition, response, strategy, implementation, tactic, and security – all still pertinent to that flock of birds example, too – the emergent behavior has to be more complicated than a straight line of conduct. It’s going to be constantly changing if it’s going to be successful, especially since it depends on response to conditions. What that means is if the leadership is going to be effective, it’s going to have to be able to keep up. How are they going to keep up if nothing has even happened, yet, but they are determined to state that they’re in charge of the situation?

    Your comment provides insight into the heart of the matter: “Authorities have to absorb some big hits to begin to understand where the pain is really coming from, and to in turn enlist people in the solutions.”

    Notice how when you removed the management team, everybody opened up and started venting. There’s probably a reason why they repressed that in the presence of the management: it wasn’t necessary to getting the task done, not as the management saw it, so the behavior got ruled-out. What you did was say, “for the current task at hand (listening to the workers) there’s no need for this management, at all – people can speak freely – so, get them out of the equation, and see how the workers operate without them”.

    I think that attitude needs to be stressed in America. We have this huge financial sector that’s taking huge portions of our economy and allocating them to their own personal use. That’s akin to yourself being contracted as advisor to a large company and saying, “well first of all I see the problem, here, you should give half of your assets to me, thank you, now we’re really running full steam.” We have this American tradition of execs taking the lion’s share of things and being less concerned for workers than for success. Without workers, there’s not even anything being produced so there’s no success to speak of.

    Without a national product, the money these financiers are so interested in heaping into their burners isn’t worth anything. They want it any way, even if it means the workers have less incentive to work. Even if it makes the value of the dollar weaker, these people apparently want more dollars. It needs to be stressed, in America, that we need fewer people like that, period. If their job was to improve the American economy and if their big idea was to personally privatize a significant portion of the American economy in lieu of improvement then it seems to me that they aren’t that necessary to begin with.

    It’s no wonder people think communism is some kind of “way out” of the corruption we can find in all of this. Of course they fail to see that the corruption would have even fewer obstacles if communism were there to level the playing field. And they fail to properly define corruption. They think anybody who doesn’t do what they’re told is corrupt, or something. They reason corruption in terms of good versus evil, and say corruption is defined as versus purity. They fail to reason that corruption works less like conduct and more like emergence: if something in charge of maintaining the given task is actually working against it, it’s failed, and if the system in place supports the failure, the system is corrupted. If the task changed, even the broken part can be used. If the task were to spew oil, the brokenest gasket is the leader of them all.

    And, those “it’s good or evil, me or you, us or them, friend or foe” extremist-minded people fail to understand that the conflicts that cost them the most aren’t good versus evil or right versus wrong, they’re power versus other power. Tasks change in more ways that simple opposition. There are grey areas; but it takes understanding and a chance to focus in order to rationalize that. When people are being shouted down by two major parties like it’s all some arena, and when pressure is on to be on one side or the other, people forget to maintain their independent mind and think for their own self. Leaders forget that, too, and that their leadership has to serve some task, and that it has to ensure the productivity and safety of the team.

    I bring up the tendency of poor people to fall for the promise of communist or socialist utopias as an indicator of what can go wrong when leadership fails to serve, forgets the task at hand, or tried to pass off some non-work activity as work when they believe people can’t tell the difference. All in explanation of my follow-up to what you said, “authority’s no party”. Of course it’s no party. If you could just walk in, join up, pay your dues and your airtime and get your elected position, it would be pointless. We might as well tear up the ballots and sell the election via Coca-Cola and Disney. It would invite so much disaster and corruption that the system would fail to serve its own needs and it would end up destroying itself in some fashion, like an engine blowing up because something that was supposed to regulate action broke.

    I could have just as easily said “no wonder desperate people in emergency situations either look for a leader or attempt to exert leadership potential”, but that clouds the issue with self-service. Leadership isn’t always self-serving, depending on what the definition of “self” is. Or, I could have said “no wonder people in shock will agree with anything you say”, but the degree of severity wouldn’t have been fitting and at that level is discompassionate. Not that some discompassion is unfitting in a comment on a message depicting a gun and talking about shooting the messenger in lieu of white collar politics, but rather just because the djinn is out of the bottle doesn’t mean she gets a massage whenever she wants, taking her picture will serve just fine.

    So much by way of explanation. But, how can we explain why lazy, thieving, duplicity is pandemic in the ranks of practically every liberal and white-collar job there is in America? Simple: once people figure out that the complacency level has made people so thick and unawares that you can literally sit around and do nothing on the clock and collect your tenure, or your stipend, or your salary, or your bribe, and nobody will notice, it becomes their new job – sitting around, just siphoning off the well-being of others.

    If I recall, some people said that you shouldn’t have a position in the state government, but it’s not like you’re completely out of your mind, at least you’re asking people questions and getting answers, collating ideals, assessing risks, optimizing formations and flapping your arms. And how often does any government get the equivalent of one of a working Verifier approach analyst on the cheap? They don’t, so far the closest they seem to come is electing a modern progressivist-centrist who promptly takes a pay cut. You would think people would feel more obliged, or that it would catch on or something.

    And all those people too cowed-in to even speak? That was what their management was really getting paid for? to shut them up? Of course the management shouldn’t “shoot the messenger”; leadership like them should be fired for making the company weak and vulnerable to attack.

    Personally, I would have scolded the priest, for better or for worse, because of my temper. But I never wanted to be one, either, so I can’t empathise. And, I’ve scolded priests, before. Statistically, I’m more likely to do it, again. I even scolded a kasher organisation, once, but they had a clever comeback.

    [“Verifier Approach”: see “Bayes’ Theorem”, Gordon Rugg, James Surowiecki]

  • Dan,

    I thought the enclosed Forbes article on commitment, courage and persistence is very pertinent to this discussion. Leaders need a commitment to winning without sacrificing the Team. Churchill was a great example of willing to do whatever it takes to win. He made several unpopular speeches during his time that cost him dearly,but he staid true to his beliefs.

    Todays leaders could take lessons from him whether public or private.

    http://blogs.forbes.com/geoffloftus/2010/09/30/lead-like-winston-churchill/?boxes=leadershipchannellighttop

    Regards
    Paul Pollock

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