The Extraordinary Ordinary Day

Turning an ordinary day into an extraordinary day. Dealing with crisis. Leading a team. Living out a career of personal identity. Overcoming short-term disgruntlement to achieve long-term success. Understanding how an experience—an event—can have different stages and phases and how your leadership will be part of each one. In ways you won't imagine now, these are the lessons we explore from the … [Read more...]

Harry Truman and the Nation of Israel

A leader sets a goal and has to work with a divided team to achieve it. A leader hires an extremely talented subordinate; with this subordinate comes divisiveness, separation, and confusion. A leader struggling to find his own identity has to tackle a major challenge on a fixed timeline. Welcome to the world of President Harry Truman and the story of the start of the nation of Israel. Truman … [Read more...]

Lilian Wald and Change Waves

  Finding your purpose. Starting-up an organization. Creating a niche where none existed. Balancing the competing needs of various stakeholders and allies. Facing a change you believe is vital and adapting your purpose to meet it. Dealing with the reality of that change. A woman whom you've likely never heard of—Lilian Wald—can show you some very important truths about these and other … [Read more...]

Lewis and Clark and Project Leadership

Leading a project. Collaboration and communication as a leader. Leading a team whose members are new to one another. Linking on-the-ground action to a sweeping vision and mission. A reality of diversity. Any one of these or all of these leadership issues can be found in the fascinating expeience of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their Corps of Discovery, 1802-1807. Lewis and Clark and … [Read more...]

Martin Luther King Jr, Leadership, and Scarce Resources

A leader deals with personal despair and a gnawing feeling of defeat. A leader seeks to rally a team and hold it together despite constant setbacks. A leader tries to find resources where there are very few available. A leader uses creativity to find new options, new choices, and new methods. And through it all, this leader must point to the way forward to a vision and to a victory, all the while … [Read more...]