Quotable quotes: the definitive word on leadership
by Miki Saxon
Jim Stroup writes an amazing blog. He reads widely, thinks deeply and writes superbly—of course, it doesn’t hurt that we hold similar views on the subject of ‘leaders’.
Last Thursday Jim wrote Clarifying leadership and supplied me with my quotes for today.
The first is from Peter Drucker, who said,
“Leadership is all hype. We’ve had three great leaders in this century – Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.”
Jim considers this the most sensible thing Drucker ever said about leadership and I agree. Jim goes on to say,
“He was right. Those guys had it all: vision, oratorical ability, relationship building skills, charisma, relentless focus, outside the box thinking, follower-attracting magnetism…Moreover they had the unconstrained maneuver room to give their leadership the untrammeled free rein that the modern movement’s gurus also insist is vital.”
Hmmm, free rein. Isn’t that what deregulation gave our fearless ‘leaders’ on Wall Street and in corporate America?
Your comments—priceless
October 29th, 2008 at 11:54 am
I have held the, often debated, opinion that Hilter was a genius for a very long time. In saying that, I am in no way giving credence to his beliefs or support to his way of thinking, I am simply pointing out that any person who is able to seize upon an opportunity, such as the state of Germany post WWI, convince others of their crazy ideas, while limiting the freedoms of those same people has to be more than just the monster we say he is (not to say he wasn’t a monster). If someone were to use the same techniques for perceived good that Hitler did for evil we would have no problem saying that man is a genius (might I point out the Peace Prize Al Gore received for his work on Global Warming … or Climate Change, I can never really remember what they are calling it now that, you know, the earth is cooling and support for the man-made theory is waning in light of evidence that the lack of sun-spots is currently causing the change of the climate).