The Safety in Learning While in command during a major exercise at the National Training Center in the Mojave Desert, we faced a professional enemy that was not about to cooperate with the plan I had developed. As we approached the critical moment of the battle, my staff could now see what I could not, … Read more
Making People Matter Few of us knew that roughly 40 percent of my class entering West Point would not graduate four years later. That attrition was not an accident. It was, in some respects, by design. The culture of the institution then was built around pressure, endurance, and the belief that only those who could … Read more
Defining The Culture of Commitment Not long ago, I was working with a car dealership General Manager who told me a story I have never forgotten. He was walking his service bays at the end of a long workday when he stopped to talk to one of the technicians (a young man named Jack, as … Read more
You can feel the difference here. Most leaders stop too soon. In We’re All In, I described one of the most instructive cultural turnaround stories I have come across: the New Aetna. In the early 2000s, Aetna Healthcare was in serious trouble. It was losing roughly a million dollars a day. Its relationships with customers and … Read more
The most hopeful level is also the most frustrating. Here’s why. When I interviewed Andrew Sewnauth, President and CEO of CDS Life Transitions, for The Power of Being All In, he said something that stopped me cold. “Companies that don’t take time to invest in their employees pay an even greater price.” He wasn’t speaking theoretically. … Read more
In July of 1970, I found myself standing on the parade field at West Point alongside hundreds of other young men. Seventeen years old, two weeks out of high school, and a long way from Georgia. Several months earlier, two Army football coaches had shown up at my home in Atlanta one evening, and not … Read more
