10 April
Crisis and Leadership
Leadership is a foul-weather job.
The most successful leader of the twentieth century was Winston Churchill. But for twelve years, from 1928 to Dunkirk in 1940, he was totally on the sidelines, almost discredited—because there was no need for a Churchill. Things were routine or, at any rate, looked routine. When the catastrophe came, thank goodness he was available. Fortunately or unfortunately, the one predictable thing in any organization is the crisis. That always comes. That's when you do depend on the leader.
The most important task of an organization's leader is to anticipate crisis. Perhaps not to avert it, but to anticipate it. To wait until crisis hits is abdication. One has to make the organization capable of anticipating the storm, weathering it, and in fact, being ahead of it. You cannot prevent a major catastrophe, but you can build an organization that is battle-ready, that has high morale, that knows how to behave, that trusts itself, and where people trust one another. In military training, the first rule is to instill soldiers with trust in their officers, because without trust they won't fight.
4月10日
危机与领导
领导是“恶劣天气中的工作”。
20世纪最成功的领导者是温斯顿·丘吉尔。然而，从1928年到1940年的敦刻尔克，他完全处于边缘，几乎被抛弃——因为当时并不需要丘吉尔。事情是常规的，或者说，至少看起来是常规的。当灾难来临时，幸好他在场。无论是幸运还是不幸，在任何组织中，唯一可以预测的就是危机。这是你真正依赖领导者的时候。
一个组织领导者最重要的任务是预测危机。或许不是为了避免它，而是为了预测它。在危机来临时再行动是放弃责任。必须使组织具备预测风暴、挺过风暴并且领先风暴的能力。你不能防止重大的灾难发生，但你可以建立一个能随时准备迎战的组织，一个具有高士气的组织，一个知道如何应对的组织，一个信任自己的组织，以及一个成员彼此信任的组织。在军事训练中，第一条规则是让士兵信任他们的指挥官，因为没有信任，他们就不愿意战斗。
