VOLUME 11, ISSUE 8
In This Issue:

• Maxwell Moment
The Challenge of Change

• Leadership@Large
Leading to a Cure
The Downfall of Snake Oil Salesmen

• Book Review
The Mindful Leader: Ten Principles for Bringing Out the Best in Ourselves and Others

• Quick Quotes
Potential... Buchan, Rudolph, McGinnis, Kierkegaard

The Challenge of Change
by Dr. John C. Maxwell

The history of Henry Ford and the Model T illustrates a fundamental truth about leadership: leaders never outgrow the need to change.

On his way to dominating the automotive market with the Model T, Henry Ford embodied innovation and progress. However, the dominance of Ford Motor Company was short-lived. As competitors changed their operations to copy Ford's concepts mass production, Henry Ford made a tremendous leadership blunder. With cars rolling off assembly lines like never before, consumers began to demand a variety of colors. However, Ford stubbornly refused, uttering the famous line, "The customer can have any color he wants so long as it's black."

For so long, Henry Ford had focused on moving from inefficiency to efficiency that he refused to move in the opposite direction - from efficiency to inefficiency - even when doing so would have been wise and profitable. Ford's genius in sparking change had catapulted him to the pinnacle of American commerce, but later, his inability to change cost him dearly.

Read the full article...

Leading to a Cure

Imagine a highly contagious, lethal disease completely wiping out every man, woman, and child in the United States. Sounds like the plotline for a Sci-Fi horror flick, doesn't it? Sadly, in the 20th century, smallpox claimed 300 to 500 million lives worldwide - more than the entire population of the USA.

Smallpox was a gruesome disease. It's victims contracted large blisters inside their mouths and on their hands and feet. Shortly thereafter, the blisters spread throughout the body. In fatal cases, the blisters would merge together and peel skin away from the victim's underlying flesh. Historical photographs showing the disfigurement of victims are simultaneously shocking and heart-wrenching.

As tragic as the story of smallpox may be, it has a happy ending, thanks to the heroic work of American physician, William H. Foege. For his contributions eradicating smallpox, Foege was named one of America's Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Reports.

Read the full article...

The Mindful Leader: Ten Principles for Bringing Out the Best in Ourselves and Others
by Michael Carroll (Trumpeter, 2007)

In The Mindful Leader, Michael Carroll applies Buddhist meditation to business leadership. In the book, he decries the prevailing ethics of ambition and power attainment, and he sets forth a divergent leadership path of openness, selflessness, and inspiration.

The Mindful Leader offers tremendous insight on cultivating qualities (such as simplicity, peace, and awareness), which have become rare due to the breakneck speed of modern life. However, unless a reader is acquainted with Buddhism or highly interested in exploring meditation, the book comes across as uncomfortably spiritual. All things considered, LW subscribers may want to skip over this one when searching for leadership literature to devour.

Read the entire review...

Potential

"The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already." ~ John Buchan

"Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion. The potential for greatness lives within each of us." ~ Wilma Rudolph

"Focus on your potential instead of your limitations." ~ Alan Loy McGinnis

"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never." ~ Soren Kierkegaard