The truth at any cost lowers all other costs
6 Stars – A Most Extraordinary Uplifting Account of the Reinvention of America One “Flyover” Town at a Time (42 Specific Towns Visited)
I know James Fallows — he is best-known as a former speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and as an author for The Atlantic. I met him after reading three of his books, Blind Into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq; National Defense; and Free Flight: Inventing the Future of Travel.
Jason Redman with John R. Bruning, Foreword by Robert M. Gates
5 Stars Authentic, Humble, Healing, NOT Your “Normal” Leadership Story
This book brought tears to my eyes by page 71. This is not your “normal” leadership story. It blends three leadership stories from one personal experience: a personal failure of leadership stemming from the mix of arrogance and alcohol; a positive enabling leadership environment (not at all the norm for the Department of Defense) that helped this warrior grow; and finally, the personal triumph of being one with God, country, team, and family after being broken by wounds that would have killed most others.
Continue reading “Review: The Trident – The Forging and Reforging of a Navy SEAL Leader”
Revised and with a new foreword from leading reform advocate COL (ret) Douglas MacGregor, PhD, Don Vandergriff revisits his 2002 manifesto for the evolution of the U.S. Army.
From the foreword: “Few books in the history of the U.S. Army have made a more convincing argument for change than Don Vandergriff’s Path to Victory: America’s Army and the Revolution in Human Affairs. It is therefore a great privilege to offer some thoughts on the re-release of this important work.
When Don’s book appeared for the first time in 2002 it was not simply detailed account of the Army’s personnel management system, its promotion policies and unit manning practices. It was also a critical examination of the Army as an institution and its extraordinary resistance to change in the way it identifies, develops and employs human talent.
Don Vandergriff’s experiences, research and interaction with fellow military professionals suggest that a cultural revolution within the U.S. military is essential if the nation is to successfully adapt and prevail in the emerging 4th Generation Warfare (4GW) or asymmetric warfare threat environment. An Army cultural revolution has three parts:
1. Strategic leaders must change a counterproductive array of long-established beliefs including many laws, regulations and policies, which are based on out-of-date assumptions.
2. Military leaders must drive and sustain a military cultural evolution through effective education and training of the next generation(s) of leaders in a system that is flexible enough to evolve alongside emerging changes in, and lessons from, war, society and technology.
An Industrial Age model continues to shape the way the Army approaches its recruiting, personnel management, training, and education. This outdated personnel management paradigm―designed for an earlier era―has been so intimately tied to the maintenance of Army culture that a self-perpetuating cycle has formed, diminishing the Army’s attempts to develop adaptive leaders and institutions.
This cycle can be broken only if the Army accepts rapid evolutionary change as the norm of the new era. Recruiting the right people, then having them step into an antiquated organization, means that many of them will not stay as they find their ability to contribute and develop limited by a centralized, hierarchical organization. Recruiting and retention data bear this out.
Trump Revolution Series @ Amazon Kindle
Trump Revolution Series Free @ Phi Beta Iota
with apologies, free link fixed on 18 June 2018
The People’s Army – the Continental Army rooted in home-spun militias – was formed and fought and won a war before the U.S. Constitution was written and signed in 1787. The Constitution – and the Republic – exist because the People’s Army, the Continental Army led by George Washington – leveraged the twin advantages of a righteous cause and home court to eject what was then the greatest imperial power on the planet. Of the 55 men attending the Constitutional Convention, at least 29 served in the Continental Army, most of them in positions of command. Understanding the relationship between the people from whom the early militias were drawn, the Army, and the Constitution, is essential to evaluating where we fall short today.
Pedro B. Ortiz
6-Star Guide to Saving Every City in Every Country — a World-Changing Book
This is an extraordinary book, easily five stars but I am elevating it to 6 stars (my top ten percent across over 2000 reviews, all but a handful non-fiction) because the author is not just a genius, but he explains his deep multi-level knowledge brilliantly. I have never seen a collection of complicated nuanced topics presented in such a compelling, easy to understand, well-illustrated manner. The case studies abound. The publisher is to be complemented for the purity of the presentation — a stunning book with perfectly laid out pages, glossy color on every page, and a superb index, which is where most publishers fail their authors.
Continue reading “Review: The Art of Shaping the Metropolis”
Richard A. Barker
5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star Paradigm Shifting Book — Destroys Existing Leadership “Industry”, July 13, 2015
I received this book as a “must read” gift from a colleague finishing his doctorate with a focus on transformative leadership, and after reading it, I quite agree, to the point of rating this book at 6 stars (my top 10% across 2000 plus non-fiction books). In brief, this book is a massive detailed literature review that covers academic and practitioner definitions of leadership and finds them all wanting for the simple reason that they are mired in leadership as a supervisory hierarchical relationship in a reductionist system in which the followers are the means and the ends are defined by someone other than the followers.