Sublime

Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.

He must reach some type of decision.

I encouraged all my subordinate commanders and staff to feel free to argue with me. My guidance was simple: “Disagree with me, do it with feeling, try to convince me you are right and I am about to go down the wrong path. You owe that to me; that’s why you are here. But don’t be intimidated when I argue back.

Leaders can be magnified – or diminished – by the qualities of those around them.

While Stephanopoulos may seem to have been needlessly obsessed about where he sat, his anxiety illuminates a stark truth: by losing influence, you risk losing effectiveness. The structure of an organization informs who can work with whom, who exerts influence, and who is subject to power. Healthy Risk Immune Systems acknowledge this very fact, and

Finally, it is a cardinal principle of deception that the deceiver succeeds by reinforcing his opponent’s misconceptions.

But in the 2020s the image of the federal government will make deliberate collusion the only coherent explanation for its failure.