It is genuinely difficult for leaders today to think ahead to how they're going to lead their businesses, departments, governmental jurisdictions, trade organizations, etc, out of the present darkness of pandemic. After all, they're practically overwhelmed by managing the disruption day-to-day to remain open and active. Here's the thing...Leaders, the preponderance of your focus has to be on the long term. Yes, it is absolutely necessary for you to devote some measure of your mental and physical energy to the present situation. But unless you are a single-entity business or office, you must lead the thinking on what will happen [...]

By Tom Ruby and Scott Bethel Back in the first week of January, Tom posted some specific predictions for what the world would see in 2030. Not yet half a year into that decade, the Coronavirus Pandemic is accelerating some of those predictions. Sure, there were people who predicted that a pandemic would wreak havoc in a globalized, interconnected world. Kudos to those who accurately predicted this would happen. But it is no surprise that there is wide variance in how countries have and are responding. Many people are surprised at how willing populations are to accept social distancing and [...]

We're now a couple of weeks into the Pandemic that is the Coronavirus or Covid-19. It is time for a progress report on where we are and what are our prospects for recovery. First and foremost, we need to remember, reiterate and remind one another that this pandemic is real and not a hoax. It is a real and rapidly spreading disease that is markedly different from the seasonal flu. It cannot be compared to traffic fatalities and waved away because infections and deaths from this virus are not spread out across a country over the period of a year. [...]

With the Covid-19 Coronavirus now in full Pandemic mode, leaders at every level, from political leaders to titans of industry, to small business leaders, to town councils and emergency management planners, all eyes are on you. In times of crisis, people look for someone to follow. In times of crisis, people look around for the person who keeps his head when all the rest are losing theirs. That is the woman or man they will naturally gravitate towards. By now, even the most ardent skeptic has realized that this pandemic is real. Some are still shaking their heads and saying [...]

How many of you are in a business whose investors or owners have set an aggressive growth goal for the company? Or perhaps you have been told you're really great at something that you should scale up?  Growth and scaling are natural and good goals for companies. It can be incremental, slowly building more capacity of what you do very well in a narrow lane, or it can be branching out to other related competencies. But growth and upscaling are often very difficult to manage. In this article, I'll explain some of the issues that companies have as they scale [...]

There's a mythical person it seems that most everyone wants to be like, the spontaneous, carpe diem, grab-my-overnight-bag-and-go-at-the-drop-of-a-hat person. The person who doesn't overly think things through. The person that feels the best way to start a project is to just start it and go from there. Real life, however, is not so romantic. Real life is more like having to suffer through the consequences of just starting and not worrying about thinking things through. The spontaneous person figures out what they want to eat every night and goes with that idea. Real life is more like having to run [...]

I've been corresponding recently with a young friend I used to work with. We were discussing weekly reflecting. Taking time out to think about where you are personally and professionally. He has really good insight for someone at his stage in his career, far better than I had at the same point many years ago. He told me the following: "I was looking at how I can incorporate a more professional weekly review to take into consideration how the previous went, areas of weakness, and what I can do to help prepare for the following week. That way I [...]

The Washington Post has done a service to its readers and indirectly all businesses in its years-long effort to expose the waste of lives, resources and time the US government alone has spent in Afghanistan over the last 18 years. There ought to be hand-wringing in the halls of the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom and think tanks paying former national security staffers. There ought to be serious questions in foreign capitols about following the US in future conflicts. There ought to be outcries in congressional districts across the country where bridges and roads are in disrepair when good money was [...]

Its always easy to look back and say, "Yeah, we should have seen that one coming..." Stunning how few people who were professionally studying the Soviet Union for a living saw its collapse. Yet all the signs were there. And the few who did see it coming were scoffed at. Funny how nobody found them and said, "Hey, sorry for scoffing you." Not everyone working on elements of the technology knew about the development of the smart phone, even if they knew the pieces and requisite capabilities existed. Those that were working on it likely knew only what their little [...]

George Packer, writing on the passing of Leslie Gelb in The Atlantic, quoted Gelb in saying "Foreign policy makes no sense." Packer added: "He meant that our leaders, even ones he respected, often don’t know what they’re doing. They have to make decisions with large but unknowable consequences in ignorance, thinking wishfully, perhaps under the sway of some irrelevant ideology, or the American politics of the moment, or the onrush of events in distant places. Then they spend their careers justifying decisions that they never understood in the first place." We really don't know what we're doing. That is the [...]

With the passing of Air Force Maj Gen (Ret) John Casciano, the country has lost a leader, a gentleman and mentor for countless men and women over the last 5 decades. A career intelligence officer who rose on a non-traditional path that included both Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command, a long deployment to Thailand during the Vietnam war, teaching political science at the Air Force Academy, and leading the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Enterprise, he did everything and did it well. He exuded calm in the office and deliberate decision-making so that everything was transparent, thorough [...]

On Wednesday the 28th of May, 1986, then Vice President George H.W. Bush gave the commencement address at the US Air Force Academy. The speech itself was unremarkable. It was the man himself that stood out to me. He was very gracious. While most of my fellow newly minted lieutenants stiffly saluted and shook his hand (he shook every one of the 954 hands that morning) I couldn't help but notice his tie. I thanked him for making the trip to speak with us and told him I liked his tie. He perked up and said, "Do you really like [...]

In a Christmas Day release from The National Interest, (retired Army General) Tom Spoehr makes a passionate case that the upcoming audit of the Defense Department is unnecessary and potentially wasteful. Sadly, this Op-Ed column is riddled with straw man arguments, false trails and magic pixie dust to deflect the targeted reader, in this case, Congress, from the genuine purpose of any audit of the Department of Defense: instilling public trust in the processes of those charged with spending the money and ensuring a proper return on that money. Spoehr begins by commending the DoD "for the hard work to [...]

A family member once asked me during a home viewing of The Hunger Games what the point was of watching something that was so fantastical and obviously could never happen. I responded that this was not fantastical at all, but a fictionalization of human history. "When? When did this happen?" Well, I said, how about the Roman Empire when wealthy Romans dressed themselves to stand out from one another while watching defeated captives fight each other for others' amusement. Slaves, gladiators, wild beasts. Yes the Hunger Games was a dystopian future based on a historical past. This begs the question [...]

Transparency. How much light gets through. Can you see what is on the other side of the divide? Perhaps no concept brings on headaches for senior leaders. Perhaps no concept brings on hesitation from investors. Perhaps no concept makes workers wonder whether their jobs will be secure in the future. Why? Why should I as a senior leader give my competitors an insight into what I am doing and thus give up some of my competitive advantage? Why should I as a CEO allow my subordinates to know how I make decisions on promotions and assignments? Why should I ever [...]

Well, this is an interesting time in the U.S., isn't it? For all those who say we should avoid discussing politics and religion at work and family gatherings, you have larger issues to worry about than having to figure out what is interesting about the weather, the early turning of leaves this summer, and the eclipse in order to avoid discussing the deep divisions this country faces today. It is impossible to avoid the sociological elephant in the room. No matter how busy we can make ourselves at work, there is always down time, always a coffee break, always the [...]

I was listening to NPR this morning when a story came up about the new status symbol in the US these days: Busyness, or at least the appearance of being too busy for leisure and other people. Boy have we flipped things upside down or what in the last 20 years? It used to be that people showed their status by how much time they took off for vacations or how many people they had to do certain things for them. Today it is the opposite. NPR reported on a study that shows people perceive others to be more important [...]

If you've read this column over the last few years, you would likely have noticed several themes, one of which is peoples' remarkable consistency in getting in their own way on the road to success. I've written many times that the three most important words a senior leader can say is "I don't know." Once you admit that and are open to finding out, your organization can really move forward and people will rally around you as a leader. But saying I don't know should necessarily mean that you are willing to accept the truth when evidence is presented. With [...]

Warning Aspiring Leaders: If you set about bringing down the king, you had better be prepared to BE the king. That means fixing all the issues you were complaining about. Leading, governing is always harder than complaining. Side note: if you're unable to separate your political feelings from the intellectual argument on leadership that follows, perhaps you should move on to something else. This is not a political analysis. It is about leadership. That said... Three news stories from this past week serve as excellent illustrations and backing material for a very cautionary note to up-and coming leader in business [...]

Look around, leaders. Who do you see? Yes, it is meant to be a loaded question. We are told constantly through the popular culture and through many of our religious cultures that we are to see and value the dignity of the individual and not merely the skin colors or genders. And as far as the dignity inherent in each person as a human being, that is absolutely true. But a person needs a bit more than inherent dignity to be successful in a particular field of endeavor. We certainly expect to see around us people competent in the tasks [...]

Well, if there is a subject many of us didn't think would be at the forefront of popular culture at the beginning of this year it certainly would have to be truth. There's no question that the political culture has that word at the center of discussion as does the media. But it isn't only there. Increasingly there are social media discussions centered on creating your own truth and whether or not truth is malleable. This trend in discussing, debating, and sometimes shouting about truth has real implications not only for media and political elites, but also for business and [...]

Sorry to say, but if you are, you don't know it, and most likely nobody is going to tell you. But there's hope. You can turn it around. Really. The New York Times piece "How To Keep Your Office Holiday Party From Going Off The Rails" is a good place to start. “Getting on top of the boss’s desk and dancing — not a good idea,” John A. Challenger, chief executive of the outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in an interview. “Making a pass at the C.E.O.’s spouse — not a good idea. These sorts of things [...]

One of the truths of all human endeavor, especially in business, is that your actions have consequences. That is, after all, why we make decisions and think about what we need to do to achieve our desired outcomes. And when we do it properly, we are rewarded with success. But what happens when we take certain actions and something other than our expected outcome occurs? Were we just unlucky? Was someone nefariously undermining our success? Or could it be that we were so focused on what we wanted to happen that we didn't think about what was more likely to [...]

"What are the last 5 books you've read?" I was surprised how often I was asked that question as a young rising professional by my bosses and other senior leaders considering hiring me. Then as I grew older, I found myself asking the same question to my direct reports when I took over a new job and to those who I was considering hiring. And I also noticed that whether it was a Presidential election, or a local race, there isn't a candidate who isn't asked about the last 5 books he or she have read. Their answers are always [...]