MORE FROM THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN
In TAD Issue No. 50, I told you about spending three nights aboard the famous USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, where I made three presentations.  We just received the following message from Captain Andrew McCawley, Commanding Officer, of the ship:
 
“Thank you for bringing a valuable message of leadership and perspective to the crew of ABRAHAM LINCOLN and delivering it in an exceptionally resonant and relevant fashion. I believe that you were able to reach and inspire a great number of the fine young people here on board that I have had the honor of serving with. I personally derived great benefit and enjoyment from your messages and teaching.”  --Andy McCawley

I was, of course, highly pleased to receive those words from Captain McCawley, but was not prepared for the generous coverage the presentations were given in the military press.  Here are the links:  http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=29967
http://www.cvn72.navy.mil/pao/penny/08Jun07.pdf

The award-winning ship newspaper also produced a Top-Ten Lincoln List in the style of David Letterman. Here are three of them:  Three.  After freeing the slaves, saving the union, and seeing us through a bloody civil war, he still found the time to take his wife out to a show.   Two.  On second thought, maybe he should’ve stayed home and watched football instead…  One.  The way Abraham Lincoln struts around the ship, you’d think his name was on it or something.

QUOTABLE QUOTES
***Self-Confidence 
“If we always are guided by other people’s thoughts, what’s the point in having our own.”
—Oscar Wilde
 
“You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”
 --Ralph Waldo Emerson  
 
***Wisdom Is The Ability To Evaluate
“Those who are wise have the ability to evaluate situations, people, and events.  They know what is worth knowing, having, and keeping--and what is not.” 
--Gene Griessman “Lincoln’s Wisdom: Timeless Lessons For Today’s Leaders”  (forthcoming book)

***Experience  
“Life is one long lesson.”   
--Jim Blasingame  “The Small Business Advocate Newsletter” (Jim Blasingame [newsletter@jbsba.com])
 
***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

***Near-Death Experiences 
“It is amazing how many people visit if you are in a convenient location and they’ve been told you’re going to die.”
--Art Buchwald, “Too Soon To Say Goodbye”
(Art Buchwald, whom I interviewed and photographed for The Achievement Factors.  He died on January 17, 2007 after a long illness.  The world is poorer because he is gone.)

***Patriotism
What often passes for patriotism is just noisy ethnocentrism—cheering for those who speak our language, worship our God, and hold our view of the world.  True patriotism is doing something unselfish that leaves our country better because we lived in it.”
--Gene Griessman “How To Understand Americans”   (forthcoming audiobook)

***Self-Preservation
“The most effective way to be secure against pain is to retire within ourselves….”    --Thomas Jefferson

LEADERSHIP LESSONS

NAME-DROPPING
Just because you know somebody doesn’t mean that you should use their name indiscrimately.   This is especially true if you’re trying to get someone to do business with you or if you’re applying for a job. 

You may lose the business because the person you’re trying to impress despises the person whose name you invoked.  Your supposed friendship with that individual may call into question your judgment for liking someone that they don’t.

Be careful whose name you give for a reference.  That person may like you much less than you like them.  Finding this out too late can be damaging to your cause. 

Test your references, as best you can, before you give them out.  There are at least two ways to do this.  One.  Determine if the person in question has made complimentary statements about you in the past.  Two.  Ask the person in question if you can use his/her name, and what for.   Then listen with all your might at the answer.  Is the response qualified, simply polite, or enthusiastically supportive?  It’s better not to get a recommendation than to get one that damns you. 

Shakespeare focuses on the same subject, but with a different emphasis—what to do with friends who have proved themselves to be friends:  “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,  Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;  But do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.”

CONSIDER THE SOURCE
Through the years I’ve noticed a difference between those who read books, and those who don’t.

For example, I can tell the difference between someone who has actually read books about the Middle East or Israel or Islam and someone who hasn’t.

People who read books for information have an advantage over those who get their information from newspaper/magazine/journal articles or from radio or TV.  It’s called in-depth information, and in-depth knowledge is just one step away from expert knowledge.

Consider why.  Those who write for newspapers, magazines, journals, radio or TV (I have written for all five) are limited by length constraints.  Simply put, they can’t take too long to tell their story.

This means that good stuff gets left on the cutting room floor; great material gets tossed into the waste basket. 

This is not usually the case with books.  A book writer can dig deep. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I read the news every day—hard copy and on-line.  I read magazines and journals.  I particularly love the long, in-depth articles of The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Atlantic Monthly.  I spend time with radio and TV. But when I really want to know a subject, I read a book.

Tell me the books you’ve read and I’ll tell you what kind of leader you are.

If you want to be known as an expert on a subject, start by reading a great book on a subject that you care about.   That one book will give you an overview of the subject, and you then can move on to add to your knowledge with other books, seminars, documentaries, etc.

How to pick a book on a subject that’s great? 

Read the reviews.  Even quotes from significant individuals and sources can be important, but be sure to read the quote well.  It may seem to say more than it does.  Has the book won an important award, such as the National Book Award or a Pulitzer Prize?  I have found the absolutely best source for evaluating the best books on a wide range of subjects is The New York Review of Books,  which currently has a promotion underway with a 55% discount—One year for $69   www.nybooks.com)

But don’t continue to read a book if it hasn’t spoken to you within the first few pages.  There are too many great books in the world for you to waste time on one that doesn’t mean anything to you. 

(I’ve written about this further in Time Tactics of Very Successful People:  “Don’t Finish Every Book That You Start.” p. 69  Here’s a link to order this book.  Also, it is included in a money-saving bundle:   www.achievementdigest.com/timetacticsofverysuccessfulpeople.html

SHOOTING FOR THE STARS:  AMERICA’S TRUE CHERRY-TREE STORY
The name of America’s largest assemblage of space scientists and engineers—the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland—is a tardy honor for a long un-honored talent—Robert H. Goddard. When the center that bears his name was established in 1959, the man who by then was recognized as the father of modern rocketry had been dead 14 years.

When Goddard was just seventeen, while resting in a cherry tree that he had been pruning, he thought “How wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars.”  In Goddard’s words:  “I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended, for existence at last seemed very purposive.”

Goddard never got away from the idea of space travel.  In fact he celebrated the cherry-tree experience every year as “Anniversary Day.”

Often afflicted by poor health, Goddard spent most of his career enduring public disdain for his ideas about rockets.  Goddard chose to break with conventional science and engineering.  He was willing, indeed driven, to try something different.  That is almost always a hard path to take.

Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, offered him a faculty post with light teaching responsibilities and some modest research support.  Goddard used his spare time to work on his rockets, and became so focused that he came to be known, often in derision, as “the moon man.”

In 1926 Goddard launched his first liquid-fueled rocket on his Aunt Effie’s farm.  The rocket ascended all of 41 feet. Three years later he launched another one that went, in his words, ”somewhat farther.”  The local newspaper carried this headline:  “Moon Rocket Misses Target By 238,7991/2 miles.”

Undaunted, Goddard continued his research, filing some 214 patents.  Then he attracted the attention of the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, who encouraged the Daniel Guggenheim family to give Goddard a research grant of $100,000.  Departing Massachusetts for Roswell, New Mexico, Goddard completed 34 launches by 1941. 

With war coming on, Goddard offered his services to the military.  The Navy hired him but they did not give his unconventional research the attention we now know it deserved. 

However, German scientists were paying attention to some of his patents which were in the public domain.  After WWII, a high-ranking German officer was asked where the idea of the V-2 rocket came from. He replied:  “Why don’t you ask your own Dr. Goddard?”

Unfortunately Goddard did not live to witness the moon landing on July 17, 1969.  

Perhaps he did not need to.  He saw it in a cherry tree when he was seventeen—on October 19, 1899.

(For more information about this remarkable man, see Richard P. Traina, Changing the World: Clark University’s Pioneering People 1887-2000: Worcester, Mass.  Chandler House Press, 2005)   

LINCOLN’S LOG

First-Person Lincoln
How To Make Difficult Decisions

“The true rule in determining to embrace or reject any thing is not whether it has any evil in it; but whether it has more of evil than of good.  There are few things wholly evil or wholly good.  Almost every thing is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.

Whenever you attempt a project, there usually will be good and bad outcomes.   You seldom can be certain which will occur—good or bad—or how much of either.  But you can learn to think in terms of proportions and probabilities.   You also can decide in advance what are the essential outcomes, and what you are prepared to pay in order to get those outcomes.           

When you are making a difficult decision, decide what you absolutely must get out of the transaction and what you are prepared to do to get it.  That sounds very theoretical, but it is an imminently practical idea, one that I regularly employed when I was trying a case as a lawyer.
 
I asked clients to tell me in advance what they were willing to give up and what they were not.  As a lawyer I understood that I was more likely to get the one thing I wanted if I was prepared to concede what was not crucial.
  
Once when I was trying a case my opponent made one claim after another.   Each time, I said, “I’ll give you that” or “I’ll concede that.”   I said that so many times that my client became anxious and whispered, ‘My God, Lincoln you’re giving away the entire case.’   But I knew in advance what we had to concede in order to get what we absolutely had to get—and I got it.”

--Adapted from the one-man Lincoln performance “An Evening With Abraham Lincoln”    Available as a DVD ($19.95) and bundled with six popular books and CDs ($70) www.achievementdigest.com/aneveningwithabraham.html

FEEDBACK
***“I was at the Utilities Service Alliance (USA) conference which you spoke at in 2006.  I still remember it as if it was yesterday.  You bring such insight and maybe the word is common sense to everyday life.   I think this is missing from our hectic life-style.  You surely have a great talent.  Please keep me in your future emails.”    --Butch Colby, Senior Marketing Manager   L-3 Communications MAPPS Inc.

*** “Amazing use of a historical figure.   Unprecedented respect of the audience by the quality of the content/delivery and great job of acknowledging the country and knowledge of the audience.  I consider it an honor to have heard you speak.”  General Manager, IBM, Saskatchewan, Canada

*** “Very realistic, impressive likeness of stepping back in time.   I really appreciated the careful thinking process that Abe was committed to.   Absolutely excellent, thorough presentation.  –President, SOS Cleaning, Saskatchewan, Canada

TRAVEL NOTES FROM A ROAD WARRIOR
 Highlands, N.C.

4 and ½ Street Inn   Perched on a hill in Highlands, North Carolina, this small inn is delightful.   And, yes, there really is a 4 and ½ Street and the inn is located on it.  (The street is one block long.) The rooms are lovely, bird-watching is enchanting, the breakfasts are scrumptious, the home-made cookies addictive, and the afternoon receptions delightful.   I liked what one couple wrote in the guest book: "The 4-1/2 Street Inn is paradise and Rick and Helene Siegel are guardian angels."  888-799-4464; 828-526-4464;   Relax@4andaHalfStInn.com; http://4andahalfstinn.com/

Wild Thyme  There are several great restaurants in the resort town of Highlands, North Carolina.  Wild Thyme, a recent discovery for me, is top-tier.  The force behind Wild Thyme is Chef Wolfgang, former executive chef at Commanders Palace.  Wild Thyme is located in one of the historic houses of Highlands, and features New Orleans specialties. Wine Spectator Award Winning Wine List, 490 Carolina Way  Highlands, NC 28741 www.wolfgangs.net/ Business: (828)526-4552

Golden Corral and Cracker Barrel
Wild Thyme offers cuisine.  Two chains, Golden Corral and Cracker Barrel, offer home cooking.  Their restaurants can be found throughout the U.S., often in the suburbs and near Interstate highways.  (Both have good websites that enable users to search for locations.)  There’s nothing fancy about what they do.  They stay with proven recipes.  I particularly enjoy Golden Corral’s salads—potato, tuna fish, and chicken—and the bread pudding.  My favorite at Cracker Barrel is their slow-cooked roast beef and their vegetables. 

IF YOU ARE INVOLVED IN PLANNING AN UPCOMING MEETING, SALES CONFERENCE, CUSTOMER-APPRECIATION EVENT OR SEMINAR, PLEASE TYPE "YES" BESIDE THE ITEM/S BELOW AND RETURN THIS EMAIL IN ORDER TO RECEIVE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE FOLLOWING PROGRAMS:
___Lincoln-Leadership
___Personal Productivity-Time Management
___Macroforces and Trends in American Society
___Keynote Presentation LESSONS FROM LEGENDS (Powerful stories from interview with famous high achievers)
___Executive Coaching   (For a description of the program, click here.  http://www.theamericans.us/Executive%20Coaching.html
 
YOU MAY ALSO CONTACT US BY CALLING 800-749-4625 OR CLICKING HERE: www.theamericans.us/ContactGene.html
Click here to watch excerpts from the Lincoln presentation in streaming video.
www.presidentlincoln.com/1.html  

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

 “Lessons From Legends”  recently was name “Best Educational Album” in the 2006 JPF Music Awards.   It is a recording before a live audience of several thousand people in which I tell stories from my exclusive interviews with celebrities.  If you’d like to obtain multiple copies of this CD, contact us directly for a quantity price.  The best way to obtain a single copy of the CD is from CD Baby.  You can hear an excerpt on-line before ordering. http://cdbaby.com/found?artist=griessman&soundlike=&album=lessons+from+legends&style=

If you want to unsubscribe, click "Reply" and type "unsubscribe." Be sure to tell us what email address TAD comes to.  We will miss you, but we will honor your request. GG
 
 

THE ACHIEVEMENT DIGEST--TAD, March 2005--A Unique Newsletter For Leaders