The following is taken from the March 2nd issue of Business Week written by Jack and Suzy Welch. I’ve shortened it but it’s word for word. Obama is making some critical mistakes.

The behavior in Washington last week could be organized into three lessons of how not to succeed in business.

• First, business leaders gain nothing by showing uncertainty and indecision.

Look, every leader grapples with a monster of a challenge at some point or another. And every leader in such a predicament feels unsure of direction and overwhelmed by complexity. That’s only normal.

What’s not normal—or what shouldn’t be in business situations—is taking those feelings public. As a leader, your job is to steer and inspire. That’s why when a difficulty arises, the first thing you need to do is to huddle with your trusted advisers and wrestle the challenge to the ground. Probe it. Debate it. Work it over for everything it’s worth, and when you’ve gone as far as you can with the available information, formulate the best plan to move the business forward.

• Second, business leaders undermine success by talking about the risk of failure.

There was a stunning moment in Katie Couric’s interview last week with Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III, the pilot who landed Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. Asked if he was afraid at any point of “not making it,” Sullenberger simply replied: “No, I knew I could do it.”

Obviously, with all his years of experience, Sullenberger knew the enormous risk of a water landing. And yet he showed the best kind of leadership by putting himself in a can-do mindset. Business leaders also know that any strategy they adopt holds the risk of failure. But why go there? You’re only practicing “CYA management” by harping on the chances things won’t work out. Equivocating enervates everyone. Your team won’t give its all if it senses you’re prepared to say, “Well, I told you it might not work out.” They know you can’t win unless the leader believes you can.

• Finally, business leaders cannot indulge bureaucratic data dumpers.

Part of a leader’s job, of course, is to act as a sounding board for direct reports. But if you want to build leadership in your ranks, make sure your managers don’t bring you stacks of PowerPoint slides describing their problems in bone-crushing detail. Demand that they sort through the data with their team and deliver a decision with their rationale for it in unambiguous terms.

The reason is simple. If you’ve got a manager working for you who is paralyzed by information, options, and obstacles, you can be sure his people are confused and demoralized. And the only way to break that cycle is by not tolerating leaders who obfuscate with data to avoid taking action.

The economy and the so-called “stimulus” plan is a major event in the lives of Americans. This morning in my training run I listened to Dave Ramsey’s Tuesday February 10th podcast – his take on the above is the best I’ve ever encountered. Go to the iTunes store, click on podcast – search for Dave Ramsey – listen on your computer or your iPhone or iPod – worth the effort.

The two major issues facing America, and the rest of the world for that matter, are the economy and terrorism. It will be really interesting to see how Obama handles both of these. His administration is off to a rocky start with the Daschle, Killefer and Geithner nominations. The joke in Washington is “cheering for the Redskins is mandatory – paying your taxes is optional.” On the economy, his proposed stimulus bill of 800 billion plus, according to the non-partisan OBM, 75% of the plan will only extend the recession and 25% will have a positive effect – time will tell. This week, Standard and Poor rated California as having the poorest credit rating of all 50 states. I trust nobody is surprised.

Terrorism – this is the major concern. This week marks the seventh anniversary of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl’s murder. Some of the following is from an article his father Judea Pearl (UCLA computer science professor) wrote, “Could anyone have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail? Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters.”

Former President Carter (history is already placing him as the least effective leader the U.S. has had in the past 100 years), is only making matters worse – so sad.

Four years will tell us a lot about these two major issues – I’m praying for the best.

Two great quotes by Ronald Reagan –

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

“Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.”

The study of charitable giving is always fascinating – who gives, what segment of the political spectrum gives the most, and on and on. The Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy publishes the “Philanthropic Giving Index” which tracks the prediction of of non-profit leaders about charitable giving. Over the past several years studies have consistently shown that people on the political right outperform those on the left when it comes to charity. People who said they were “very conservative” gave 4.5% of their income to charity, “conservative” gave 3.6%, “moderates” gave 3%, “liberals” gave 1.5% and “very liberals” gave 1.2%. Another interesting point is that secular liberals will give, on the average, $1,000 less than secular conservatives. Finally, even though most charities receive their money from Republicans, 82% of the employees of those charities give to Democratic causes. Amazing.

The majority of the above was taken from an article by Arthur Brooks.  Arthur is President of the American Enterprise Institute.

In all my presentations I encourage everyone to read Atlas Shrugged. Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal wrote a fantastic article in last week’s Journal. The following are excerpts from the article. Tom

Ayn Rand’s classic novel is about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok.

Rand came to America from Soviet Russia. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated “Atlas” as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism. As “Atlas” grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate “windfalls.”

Ultimately, “Atlas Shrugged” is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand’s political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear — leaving everyone the poorer.

David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand’s ideas, explains that “the older the book gets, the more timely its message.” He tells me that there are plans to make “Atlas Shrugged” into a major motion picture — it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. “We don’t need to make a movie out of the book,” Mr. Kelley jokes. “We are living it right now.”

This is the best I’ve read on this subject – this is taken from a CNNMoney article. Thanks to Dale Boozer for sending it to me.

Playing the blame game:  Americans want simple answers to our economic woes. Here are four.

By Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large

Last Updated: December 8, 2008: 9:53 AM ET

(Fortune Magazine) — What happened in 2008?

Chances are you can’t succinctly express your views on that complex question. But the American public will settle on one of four catch phrases over the next several months. Whatever bit of conventional wisdom wins out will have an impact on the economy. The contenders are as follows.

Free markets ran amok. The broad deregulatory trend of the past 30 years finally went too far.

Financial geniuses cooked up new ways to buy, slice, dice, reconstitute, and sell mortgages as novel securities that no one really understood but that investors were willing to buy because rating agencies – clueless, conflicted, and unregulated – said they were solid. Mortgage brokers were permitted to confuse and deceive prospects.

Supposedly stabilizing the whole system was a multitrillion-dollar market in credit default swaps that was totally unregulated. When government fails to police the financial sector strictly, that is what happens.

If this version wins out, watch for heavy new regulation of risk markets and financial institutions – leading to reduced innovation, profitability, and market values in the sector.

Greenspan did it. In the late 1990s, when former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan knew that stock prices were irrational, he failed to put the brakes on, and then, trying to rescue the economy after the resulting market bust from 2000 to 2002, he cut interest rates too far too fast. Credit became insanely easy throughout the economy, and everybody but him could see it.

He even reassured the nation that there wasn’t a housing bubble, and such words from the maestro emboldened hapless homebuyers to continue down their doomed path of paying and borrowing ever more money.

When one person gains so much influence over the financial system and screws up, the result is disaster. Expect little structural change but intense new congressional and media scrutiny of the Fed if this explanation triumphs.

Bill Clinton spawned the subprime epidemic. To gain favor with the lower-income voters who are an important part of their base, the Democrats heavily revised the Community Reinvestment Act in 1995 and took other measures that virtually forced lenders to give mortgages to subprime borrowers.

Remember the outcry over redlining, the practice of refusing to lend for homebuying in certain neighborhoods? Congress sure fixed that, and now those neighborhoods are the hot zones of the foreclosure crisis. Banks that refused to lend to those borrowers weren’t evil, they were prudent – until Clinton and Congress made that illegal.

Even if Democrats have come to believe this now, they will be hard pressed to narrow the scope of homeownership. So expect little change.

Americans lost their self-discipline. Lenders, borrowers, and investors – everybody forgot that financial life requires hard work and is filled with risk. Mortgage lenders had good reasons for demanding that borrowers submit mountains of paperwork and make a 20% down payment, and borrowers quite rightly felt their hearts in their throats when they signed the note.

All that disappeared from 2002 to 2008. Millions of us in every part of the system chose to believe that we could get rich quickly, easily, and safely, that work and risk assessment no longer mattered.

When a whole society decides to abandon basic virtues, large-scale trouble is certain. Wide embrace of this view would strengthen financial companies as Americans became bigger savers and would create new businesses as economizing became more chic.

It’s fine to argue that the real answer is a nuanced combination of these and other factors, but that won’t do. By this time next year, public opinion will have settled on a one-sentence explanation. (If you doubt our propensity for reducing complex economic maladies to blurbs, think of how the Great Depression is now remembered as something Herbert Hoover got us into and F.D.R. got us out of.)

So what happened in 2008? Of course I like the nuanced combination of factors, but if forced to order off the menu above, I’d say that answer No. 4 is the most nearly correct. My prediction is that answer No. 1 will win. I hope I’m wrong.

From time to time I get this question – Tom, what are your morning disciplines – routines? So here goes. I’m not in any way trying to use myself as an example nor am I suggesting these should be your disciplines. I’ve found these work for me so for whatever they are worth, here are my morning “daily disciplines.” I do these 5 to 6 days a week.

1) Upon waking, I say three prayers – a prayer of thanksgiving, a prayer of forgiveness and a prayer of supplication.

2) I follow this prayer time with meditation – 10 to 20 minutes.

3) Then I do my stretching and exercises – modified sit ups and push ups followed by working out with two 8 pound hand weights. Items 1, 2 and 3 take me about 45 minutes.

4) Next I read my goals.

5) Unless I’m in training for a marathon as I am now, my normal routine is to run 3 miles a day and then 5 miles on weekends – taking off one or two days a week.

6) Back home after my run, I take a tablespoon of Omega 3-6-9 fish oil using Nordic Naturals liquid – no aftertaste. Then I make my shake using Almond milk, a small Gala apple, frozen blueberries, grapes, and a CoQ10 capsule and JuicePlus complete powder – blend for 45 to 60 seconds. I follow this with 6 JuicePlus fruit gummies – that is my breakfast. I also take 6 JuicePlus veggies in the afternoon.

I’m an early riser so this gives me time to follow this routine. I realize not everyone has the discipline or the time or the desire to do all of this. If you have a regular job &/or children, it makes it more difficult.

One of the challenges we face as a nation is the statistics that say more and more Americans see themselves as victims and fail to take responsibility for their actions.  Everything from supporting more and more entitlements to not taking care of their health (almost 70% are overweight and then expect taxpayers to pay for their health care).

As I was reading Charlotte Shelton’s book, Quantum Leaps, I read the following quote and knew I had to share it. Here it is:

“When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world.

As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country.  But it, too, seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.

And now as I lie on my deathbed, I realize:  If I had only changed myself first, then by example, I would have changed my family.  From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the world.”

–From the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in the Crypts of Westminster Abbey

One of my favorite TEDTalks (I’m an avid TEDTalks listener and viewer – go to iTunes – then podcasts – search for TEDTalks and then download either audio or video – no charge) is done by Martin Seligman. His 2006 book, Authentic Happiness, is really good. He says that happiness is not what most people think it is. Instead happiness comes from using six factors that all religious groups would embrace. They are:
* WISDOM: Including learning, prudence and creativity.
* COURAGE: Including fortitude. perseverance and confidence.
* LOVE: Including both giving and receiving love.
* JUSTICE: Including fairness, citizenship and leadership.
* TEMPERANCE: Including humility, discretion and self-control.
* SPIRITUALITY AND TRANSCENDENCE: Including gratefulness and a love of beauty.
I highly recommend this book – obviously there is a lot more than my brief review.

One the challenges we face as a nation is the statistics that say more and more Americans see themselves as victims and fail to take responsibility for their actions. Everything from supporting more and more entitlements to not taking care of their health (almost 70% are over weight) and then expect taxpayers to pay for their health care.

When I read Charlotte’s Shelton book “Quantum Leaps” and read the following quote I knew I had to share it. Here it is:

 

When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world.

 

As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country.  But it, too, seemed immovable.

 

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.

 

And now as I lie on my deathbed, I realize:  If I had only changed myself first, then by example, I would have changed my family.  From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the world.

 

 

 

 From the tomb of an Anglican Bishop in the Crypts of Westminister Abby

 

 

 

 

 

—

Dr. Tom Hill

 

Co-Author /Chicken Soup for The Entrepreneurial Soul/

 

/E-Mail: tom@tomhillwebsite.com/

 

/Office: 636.625.3337/