On January 31, 2011, I will be holding my second Leadership Now Seminar. The topic will be the Challenger disaster of early 1986 and the way in which President Ronald Reagan dealt with the communication of this news to the American people. The theme of this Leadership Now Seminar will be the role of leadership in understanding tragedy. More information on this session will be forthcoming. It is … [Read more...]
December 9, 2010 by
December 9, 2010 by
Looking back over the past couple of years, I think one of my biggest positive steps was in the discovery of my river analogy. For those of you who don't know it, I liken all of life, all of history, to a river. You put in at Point A (your birth, for example) and you put out at Point Z (your death), and everything in between looks a lot like going down a river. There are twists and turns, shallows … [Read more...]
December 8, 2010 by
Earlier this year, I added a feature to my work here at Historical Solutions LLC. The new feature is one-on-one, private follow-up for people who attend my leadership development seminars. The follow-up occurs within three or four weeks after the session. It consists of a private conversation between myself and the participant, lasting about 30 minutes. We talk about whatever the participant wants … [Read more...]
December 6, 2010 by
Mistakes are one of the most powerful engines of history. Think about it--the act of making a mistake is behind many of the influential moments of history. Tomorrow, December 7, is the anniversary of a great mistake, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Three mistakes lay behind this event. First, Japanese leaders believed the attack would cripple American military capability and undermine the … [Read more...]
November 29, 2010 by
FURTHER THOUGHTS ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ONE-ARMED MAN · I don’t know the name of the One-Armed Man. I’d love to be able to tell you his whole story. Maybe someday I’ll find the information. Did you hear the sound of the wind right before I referenced "rumble and roar"? Interesting coincidence of sound, word, and meaning. A brush of spirit, perhaps. The story … [Read more...]
November 22, 2010 by
I suspect every father, every parent, has a mental list of those unforgettable questions that a child asks. I'm referring not so much here to actual questions that seek factual answers. I'm referring to the moment that is frozen in time by the excited outburst of a son or daughter. Let me explain. Our oldest daughter, age nine, takes horseback riding lessons. She loves it. During one of her first … [Read more...]
November 22, 2010 by
Last week was a record week for my leadership development seminars. I had three sessions with three different clients in a single week. That's a record. In case you're wondering, the topics were the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721; Abraham Lincoln and the One-Armed Man; and Martin Luther King's experience of early 1963. Worthy topics all, and if you weren't part of one of them, I wish you could … [Read more...]
November 22, 2010 by
Sometimes it's the words not heard that are either the most meaningful or the most forlorn. One morning not long ago I stood with our 18-month old daughter as she looked out an upstairs window. It was dark, but she could see the lights of a school bus in the distance. As the bus came closer to our home and then drove by, she waved and said in the sweetest voice imaginable: "Bye." She didn't know … [Read more...]
November 22, 2010 by
One of my alumni shared an interesting point with me the other day. This person was surprised to learn that I have several small businesses and entrepreneurs among my clientele. The assumption, I guess, was that I would only have large or medium-sized businesses using my history-based work in leadership development. Is that your assumption? I told this individual that small businesses and … [Read more...]
October 20, 2010 by
"My aircraft," said Chesley Sullenberger at a crucial moment in the drama that was the emergency landing of U.S. Air Flight 1549 in January 2009. These two little words have more meaning than you might think. First of all, they were mandated. In an emergency situation aviation regulations and protocols require the pilot and co-pilot to announce this statement to each other. It's the captain's … [Read more...]
