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Colin Powell

Colin Powell, (1937) surprised many by endorsing Barak Obama for President of the United States shortly before the 2008 election. What made this even more surprising was Powell’s close ties and often stated friendship with Senator John McCain.

Powell was born in Harlem and grew up there and in the Bronx of New York City. While in high school, he worked for a local shopkeeper where he picked up Yiddish from the owner and customers. As a student at City College of New York, he participated in the ROTC program and the Pershing rifle program. This positive experience brought him into the military where he had a stellar career culminating in being the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As an adviser to President Reagan, the 1st President Bush and as Secretary of State for George W. Bush, he was seen to be more centrist and pragmatic and less ideological than many in the administrations for whom he served. Many believe that this led to his departure from the George W. Bush administration.  He is likely to continue having prominent influence and perhaps participation in our country’s affairs for many years to come.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.

Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It's inevitable, if you're honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: you'll avoid the tough decisions, you'll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you'll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset. Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally "nicely" regardless of their contributions, you'll simply ensure that the only people you'll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization. 

 
Good leaders don't wait for official blessing to try things out. They're prudent, not reckless. But they also realize a fact of life in most organizations: if you ask enough people for permission, you'll inevitably come up against someone who believes his job is to say "no." So the moral is, don't ask. Less effective middle managers endorsed the sentiment, "If I haven't explicitly been told 'yes,' I can't do it," whereas the good ones believed, "If I haven't explicitly been told 'no,' I can." There's a world of difference between these two points of view.

 

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

 
Strategy equals execution. All the great ideas and visions in the world are worthless if they can't be implemented rapidly and efficiently. Good leaders delegate and empower others liberally, but they pay attention to details, every day.

 
Organization doesn't really accomplish anything. Plans don't accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don't much matter. Endeavors succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.
 
Leaders honor their core values, but they are flexible in how they execute them.

 
Spare me the grim litany of the "realist." Give me the unrealistic aspirations of the optimist any day.

 
Procrastination in the name of reducing risk actually increases risk.

 
Shift the power and the financial accountability to the folks who are bringing in the beans, not the ones who are counting or analyzing them.

- Colin Powell (1937 - )

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