Thoughts on Leadership
Trimble. The Astonishing Mr. Scripps. P168-169
That boyhood penchant for sitting on the fence and watching others do his work for pay and glory never died in Scripps. It became his creed as a publisher, stronger as years passed, reinforced by experience- and eminently successful as he explained:
Remember the story of the old Greek Lycurgus, who giving his people a code of laws, made them meamn to keep them till his return and then went off never returning.
Something on the same principle I have given my men tasks hard to perform, hastening away before circumstances may occur which may cause me to consent to less performance, leaving them bound by honor and self pride to meedd me on my return with accomplished results and no excuses.
I have all my life had my own plan of administration. It has several features. It proscribes doing anything that another can do. It is to develop men rather by imposing on the m responsibilities and by a twice-long and intricate course of instruction. Its aim is to limit the scope of action of a chief to a constantly decreasing set of subjects, each piece of detail being turned over to some other sho has developed a capacity for it.
Each year the chief should become less important to the maintenance of what he has established with more liberty and greater capacity to enlarge the business. IN twenty years I have done probably not more than ten essential things and twenty other important things. I might have done more of both had I not wasted so much time and effort on doing things that I could have let others do.
Robert J Huebner MD formulator of the Oncogene Hypothesis.
Don’t do anything you can get someone to do for you.
General Leslie Groves (Director of the Manhattan Project who also built the Pentagon):
Groves oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb. He did this because of security without written memos. He had the ability to pick competent people, and would travel around the country checking on their progress
Ernest Shackleton led the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917). He chose 28 men crews for The Endurance and the Aurora. The Endurance became ice-bound, and ultimately crushed. The men camped on the ice, and when the ice broke up led his men in life boats 346 nautical miles to Elephant Island during a major storm. He left some of his men there and then sailed an additional 720 nautical miles to South Georgia Island. Because sailing around the island was not feasible he took two additional men and hiked 32 miles over icy mountainous terrain over 36 hours to a whaling station where he made arrangements for a Chilean tugboat to rescue those left on the far side of South George Island and Elephant Island. He did not lose a single crew member of the Endurance.
Lewis with his friend Clark led the Corps of Discovery in 1803 to 1806 over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean at Puget Sound. Under his leadership over this trek of many thousands of miles he lost only one man…from appendicitis.
We all know of the Leadership of Presidents Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt.
Each of these men were leader who led and built.
I leave you to reflect on how history will judge the leadership of Donald J. Trump. Particularly the corona virus epidemic where do to his incompetence the United States with 4% of the world’s population has roughly 1/3 of the worlds total cases and 25% of all the deaths. He truly has made America First !!!!
Howard P. Charman, MD 4-30-2020