THE ACHIEVEMENT DIGEST "TAD" Issue No. 44
A Unique Publication For Leaders Gene Griessman, Ph.D. Editor
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WHAT'S IN THIS ISSUE?
QUOTABLE QUOTES
LEADERSHIP LESSONS
LINCOLN'S LOG
FEEDBACK
TRAVEL NOTES FROM A ROAD WARRIOR
VALUABLE RESOURCES FOR YOUR PERSONAL GROWTH

QUOTABLE QUOTES
***Action
“Action is the antidote to despair.”
--Joan Baez

***Action
“An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.”
--Arnold Glasow

***Will Power
“Will power begins with a thought, but it is a thought that is felt strongly enough and long enough to produce action.”
--Gene Griessman “Abraham Lincoln: Lessons For Life”

***True Friendship
“To Maxwell Evarts Perkins: A great editor and a brave and honest man, who stuck to the writer of this book through times of bitter hopelessness and doubt and would not let him give in to his own despair….” Thomas Wolfe, “Of Time and the River”

***Bullies
“Those proficient in the art of intellectual bullying need not be well informed or rational to win arguments, so they tend to become intellectually lazy, while those with more pedestrian rhetorical gifts may explore a subject more deeply. Intellectual humility is inseparable from wisdom. Fortified with certainty and unencumbered by serious reflection, the intellectual bully troubles himself less with truth than with winning the debate” Philip Hansten

***Knowing Who and What You Are
“A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other a horse still.” --Samuel Johnson

LEADERSHIP LESSONS

Find A Way To Stay In Touch With The Person Who Says Yes

Several times in my career, I have obtained a commitment from the head of an organization, only to have it sabotaged by someone who reported to him/her. Let me illustrate. A few years ago the CEO of a large bank made a commitment to sponsor several Lincoln programs at various universities as a part of the bank’s marketing program. The CEO then delegated the program to a senior vice-president who, unfortunately, never bought into the concept. The vice-president expressed dismay to me about the CEO’s commitment. “He (the CEO) is always making commitments that he has no idea how to fund,” the vice president complained. The vice-president never attended a single performance.

Even though the programs received very high evaluations, the vice-president killed the project as soon as he could.

The CEO was a very busy executive, and I found it difficult to get another meeting with him. By the time I did, the budgets were completed and the momentum had been lost.

Knowing now what I did not know then (which is the essence of wisdom), I would have exploited that first rare face-to-face meeting by establishing at that time some lines of communication.

I would have said something like this: “Mr. CEO, I deeply appreciate your commitment, and I want these programs to turn out as well as you hope they will. In order to ensure that will happen, I would like to give you personal updates on a periodic basis. I promise not to take much of your time. The vice-president may not see this project in the same strategic way that you do. It’s possible that I may need a little nudge from you. Would you mind if I give you updates? How can I do this?”

Learning point: Your initial success can quickly turn into a No if you do not find some way to stay in touch with the person who said Yes.

Penny-Wise

You will have many temptations to be penny-wise. If you choose the airport shuttle instead of a taxi, you may lose valuable time waiting for the shuttle to arrive, waiting for it to fill up with riders, and then spending more valuable time as it drops off passengers one by one at the various hotels. For just a few dollars more, you could leave immediately in a taxi and go directly to your destination.

Other examples: Living far away from your work in order to save money is a variation of this principle. (If you earn $100,000 per year, every minute of your working day comes to 85.4 cents. Just one hour wasted per day comes to $12,250 in a year.)

If you have an old antiquated copying machine, and your people have to stand in line to use it, it’s costing you money. Don’t hold on to any slow, inefficient technology when reliable and faster technology is available.

When you attend a conference, staying at a motel way out in the suburbs instead of booking a room at the convention hotel can be penny wise. Don’t spend valuable time driving back and forth to the sessions instead of networking or attending important formal or informal sessions. Moreover, by staying off-site, you may be advertising that you are not a player.

If a meeting is worth going to, it’s probably worth making the extra investment to be where the action is, to be where you can rub shoulders with key players in the organization and increase the likelihood that serendipitous encounters with people who can help you will occur.

On this point, Alice O'Neill, columnist for Los Angeles Features Syndicate and a TAD subscriber, wrote me: There is a time to cut corners, pinch every penny. However, there is a time when your convenience takes precedence over cost. The rewards are great, in many ways. For example, when I toured China in 1999 I stayed in 5 star hotels all the way. Sure it cost more but it enhanced my appreciation of and memory of modern China in a way that lesser-grade lodgings could not. Years later I cannot remember how much more it cost me or what I had to sacrifice for the luxury. All I remember is the grandness of the hotels, the fully-equipped business centers, employees eager to assist me, extra bottled water (no charge by simply dialing housekeeping), exquisite bedding, super modern luxury bathrooms, proximity to the city’s sights, etc.

If you’d like to read more about this success principle, see Time Tactics of Very Successful People, pp.99-100. (www.achievementdigest.com/timetacticsofverysuccessfulpeople.html)

LINCOLN'S LOG
I’ve just finished reading an incredible new book entitled “Blood and Thunder” by Hampton Sides (Doubleday, 2006). The book’s central character is Christopher “Kit” Carson--a guide, mountain man, Army officer, Indian fighter, and finally a peacemaker who became extraordinarily famous during his lifetime, the subject of countless dime novels.

Carson was a man of great contradictions. He never learned to read or write, yet he could speak, in addition to English, Spanish, French plus at least five Indian languages. He killed many men, yet he never killed out of blood lust, nor did he ever kill women or children and despised those who did. He was regarded as truthful and guileless by Americans, New Mexicans, and Indians alike. In his later years the Utes called him “Father Kit.”

Carson and Lincoln were contemporaries. In fact Carson was born the same year as Lincoln--1809—and died three years after his assassination. He was the scout for John Charles Fremont, the erratic and notoriously vain explorer and adventurer who became the first Republican Presidential candidate. (Fremont was one of Lincoln’s generals.) Carson fought valiantly for the Union, holding the rank of colonel, in two of the westernmost battles of the Civil War, Valverde and Glorieta. Lincoln promoted Carson to the rank of Brevet Brigadier General of Volunteers in March 1865, one month before his assassination. Carson was possibly the only general in American history who could neither read nor write. Once someone mistakenly called him “colonel,” then apologized. Carson, sounding like Lincoln who preferred to be called simply “Lincoln”, said, “Oh, call me Kit and be done with it.”

While the Civil War was raging in the East, Carson led a force of over 1000 men in a brutal war against the Navajo. He employed “scorched earth” tactics, destroying crops, dwellings, horses, sheep and literally thousands of fruit trees (for which the Navajo have never forgiven him), and eventually starved them into surrender. Later he led a military expedition against the Comanche Indians, but did not conquer them.

The state of Nevada was formed because Lincoln needed another free state to provide the necessary votes to pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. In 1864, after receiving by telegraph the state’s constitution, Lincoln proclaimed Nevada the 36th state. The transmission originated in Carson City, the state capital, which was named in Kit Carson’s honor.

This book contains information that will come as a surprise to many readers: One, that the state of Arizona was formed by southern sympathizers who seceded from the New Mexico territory as a Confederate state. Two, that the South had a grand plan to extend slavery (“Southern institutions”) across the West to California. Three, that Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley hoped to implement a plan whereby Confederate railroads would connect the Confederate ports of Charleston, New Orleans, and Houston with the Confederate port of San Diego. Four, that Indians, Americans, and New Mexicans all took scalps and slaves. Indian tribes took captives from other tribes and from American settlements and wagon trains and turned them into slaves. The New Mexicans also engaged in a lucrative business in human chattel. As late as the 1860s several thousand Navajos served as slaves or peons in the New Mexico territory—nearly one-third of the census of the entire tribe. Sides puts it this way. “It was New Mexico’s dirty little secret….the United States, having fought a bloody war in large part to banish the evil of chattel slavery, still had slavery flourishing in various pernicious forms in the West.” (Carson himself had his own Navajos who helped his wife with household chores.)

Sides--writing with skill and grace reminiscent of his old friend, the late great author Shelby Foote--demonstrates what narrative history is supposed to be. He is thorough, painstakingly accurate, and so fair-minded that he even bothers to find something positive to say about men who did some truly despicable deeds. Blood and Thunder became my friend, which I took with me on trips short and long. As I approached the book’s end, I found myself hoping there would be more pages.

(For more on Abraham Lincoln, see The Words Lincoln Lived By. If you’d like to order an autographed copy of this book, click here. http://www.achievementdigest.com/thewordslincolnlivedby.html Contact us for quantity discounts.)

FEEDBACK
***“I am listening to your “99 Ways To Get More Out Of Every Day”, as well as your other materials. I have been motivated by your presentation.” Kevin D. Smith, President, ACS

***The piece on Buchwald (in TAD) about life-long learners was wonderful. Your quotes were great; you should collect them and get them anthologized, like George Seldes “Great Thoughts.” Michael Ward, Account Executive, Peoples Education, College Prep Division

From the evaluations (Many of these come to us unsigned):
“Practical applications were very good. It was easy to be engaged.”
“Wonderful ‘real life’ performance…”
“I particularly liked the actual stories related to Lincoln’s life that anchor the ideas/principles being presented.”
“It was like Lincoln was with us the whole time.”

TRAVEL NOTES FROM A ROAD WARRIOR
Caffe’ Lena
The nation’s oldest continuously run coffeehouse is located in Saratoga Springs, New York. Bob Dylan played there on his first tour of the East, and Arlo Guthrie sang there long before the rest of the world heard his music. It’s an unpretentious place, like most coffeehouses are, but you can feel the history all around you. Not long ago I spent a charmed evening listening to “Magpie”—Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino. One reviewer called this duo “beautiful, political, funny, nostalgic, poignant, incredibly classy.” I agree. I bought one of their CDs “Raise Your Voice” and loved it. The food—bar food—was not bad, either.(47 Phila Street; 518-583-0022; www.cafelena.org)

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VALUABLE RESOURCES
***THE WORDS LINCOLN LIVED BY www.achievementdigest.com/thewordslincolnlivedby.html

***TIME TACTICS OF VERY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE www.achievementdigest.com/timetacticsofverysuccessfulpeople.html

***99 WAYS TO GET MORE OUT OF EVERY DAY: www.achievementdigest.com/99waystogetmorecd.html

***"AN EVENING WITH ABRAHAM LINCOLN" VIDEO www.achievementdigest.com/aneveningwithabraham.html

***"LESSONS FROM LEGENDS" CD AUDIOBOOK www.achievementdigest.com/ProductOrderForm.html

***"LINCOLN ON COMMUNICATION" DVD-CD www.achievementdigest.com/lincoln%20on%20communication.html

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