The Loneliest Leader - The Investigative Journalist Or Reporter

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The written piece which follows was excerpted from a newsletter sent by Truthout, a decidedly "progressive" and partial organization with what one would consider to be a 'liberal bias' in terms of its thrust.

I believe that in my role as an author and as a commander, I should look to every political extreme, no matter how far out on the fringe that it may seem, as a routine function of my professional existence -- as I have said in The Global Futurist Blog and in The Internationalist Page Blog, "What may seem absurd or extremist today may well become tomorrow's status quo."

Political considerations notwithstanding, this is a piece about the personal toll taken by assuming the job of being the loneliest kind of leader - an investigative reporter or journalist.

 Not only do you have to unearth things that frighten you and display them in the naked critical light of day, but you are also the messenger;

and the news that you provide, if negative, generally gets associated with and occasionally blamed on the messenger. The article excerpt, which is very well-written follows...

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When I tell people what I do for a living, the most common response is, "But isn't it depressing???" My response: "Of course!"

Grappling with the news every day is an emotional sky-dive with a rickety parachute. But for each of us on Truthout's staff, it's a jump we must take.

When Truthout reporter Mike Ludwig told me he wanted to cover the brutal "gas rush" that has brought a fracking epidemic upon Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania, it was because he felt compelled to do so: he grew up in Ohio, and - watching his childhood stomping grounds fill up with fracking rigs - he couldn't simply stand by. Truthout's lead investigative reporter Jason Leopold has described his decade-long pull to report on the horrors of Guantanamo: "There's something about the crimes committed by the Bush administration in our name that haunts me." And a couple of weeks ago, after watching a gaggle of corporate apologists squawking about the greed of public schoolteachers on a local Chicago news station, I couldn't help staying up half the night to hammer out a column in defense of the teachers' rights and those of their students.

Truthout's content relations editor, Leslie Thatcher, once put it this way: "While our task will never be completed, neither may we ever desist." We can't not do this work. It's not because we love to wallow in the murk of disaster and political frustration. It's because we believe ardently that a more equitable, more humane world is possible, and we must expose the murk in order to climb toward that brighter future.

You, our community, are our partners in this journey toward justice, because you care too much to sit idly by.

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One of the greatest motivators for leadership is the existence of a problem which must be solved for the benefit of that leader and for all of Humanity, as a whole. Every investigative reporter or journalist is a leader, without support troops, and facing life-threatening perils as well as emotionally-devastating truths every single day.

The greatest commanders not only have their respective missions -- but they are also champions of Humanity, compelled by an obsession to do what they believe is truly right.

Douglas E. Castle for The Taking Command Blog

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Letting The 'Crowd Effect' Rule You - Facebook's Flop

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By letting the sweeping opinion of the crowd rule you, or in buying into any idea or course of action pushed by the momentum of the either ecstatic or depressed 'mob mentality,' you are delegating your decision making criteria and authority to a ship of fools. There is much to be said for making your important decisions based upon your own analysis in a quiet environment -- especially if you are brighter than the median intelligence of the crowd members. Don't 'average your intellectual and emotional IQ down.' By the way, if you are reading The Taking Command Blog, the odds are quite high that you are of significantly more than median intelligence. A wonderfully relevant example of a "You can't lose on this deal -- I'm getting in. How 'bout you?" is the recent failure of Facebook's eagerly awaited stock offering (IPO) to sputter in the fiscal gutter.

Here is a fascinating extract from an article regarding the Titanic-like Facebook investment stock price collapse from Business Insider and author/commentator Henry Blodget. Enjoy the read, and then come back here where we'll be serving coffee and desserts in the basement...
  
It's Becoming Clear That No One Actually Read Facebook's IPO Prospectus Or Mark Zuckerberg's Letter To Shareholders

As Facebook's stock continues to collapse, the volume of whining is increasing.
Four months ago, you will recall, Facebook was viewed as "the next Google." Now, with no major change in the fundamentals, it's viewed as an over-hyped disaster. Meanwhile, there is ever-louder grumbling that 26-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in over his head and should be relieved of command.
As I listen to all this whining, I have a simple question:
Didn't anyone even read Facebook's IPO prospectus?
The answer, I can only assume, is "no."
Because if anyone had read the Facebook IPO prospectus, they would have learned, among other things, the following:

• Facebook's growth rate was decelerating rapidly.
• Facebook's user-base was rapidly transitioning to mobile devices, which produce much less revenue.
• Facebook's operating profit margin was already an astounding 50%, which suggested it had nowhere to go but down.
• Facebook's CEO had a nearly unprecedented amount of control over the company.
• Facebook's CEO had set up this astounding level of control intentionally. Mark Zuckerberg knew all about how impatient public-market shareholders are. And he set up the whole company so he would never have to pay attention to their whining.
• In the 9 months following the IPO, insiders would be free to sell more than 2 billion shares of Facebook that they had been holding for years.
• Facebook was going public at an astoundingly high price for a company with these characteristics—about 60-times the following year's projected earnings, in a market in which other hot tech companies like Apple and Google were trading at less than 15-times. [Read more]

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Following the crowd is a mixed behavior with its roots in the complex genetics of species survival as well as in the established need (read Abraham Maslow recently?) to be accepted amongst one's peers.

Simply stated, when you follow the mob, you are simply not acting as a leader. You have surrendered your power of independent discernment to a group of strangers, and will have demonstrated, whether your gamble proves wrong or right, that you are neither strong, nor a true commander.

Making your own decisions as a leader is a lonely business. But it is a calling which draws both the best and the worst among us. For the sake of your employees, your constituents, your troops, your team and for Humanity in general, I would prefer it if you were one of the best among us.

Douglas. E. Castle for The Taking Command Blog and for The Daily Burst Of Brilliance Blog

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-stock-letter-shareholders#ixzz25bBQwzps

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Leaders And Policy-Making: Understanding Cause And Effect

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Please click on the image above to see a larger, more readily legible version of the graph

Leaders are called upon to make policy decisions. These decisions, as well as their enactment (promulgation, enforcement, monitoring, refinement), will, in great part define the success of a leader, and will be his or greatest legacy. In making policy, the person setting the framework of regulation or command must understand all of the significant situational and circumstantial aspects of the variables which affect the issue.

In establishing policy, one must constantly and consciously separate his or her opinion of the ideal situation with the proven facts. The acceptance and cold understanding of the parameters of reality will often determine the success or failure of any policy.

The following is excerpted from a recent post published in The Global Futurist Blog. Unfortunately, it focuses (of necessity) on the infamous and much-politicized gun control debate in the United States:
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In the united States, the issue of Gun Control has been a hotly contested and largely politicized one for many years. You hear multiple sound bites (or bytes):

"We need to get the guns off the streets -- gun violence is killing people"; "Guns don't kill people. People kill people. If they don't have guns, they'll use some other weapon."; "The Constitution cites the right, of the People, 'to own and bear arms' -- with gun control laws, innocent, decent civilians won't be able to get guns for self-defense, but the criminals who intend harm will keep getting them anyway.";"How can I defend myself if I am attacked -- the police get there after the crime has happened... what will they do then? Draw a chalk line around my body?"; "If the bullying criminals knew that civilians were likely to be armed, they would be less likely to prey on us and victimize us."

I personally believe that Human beings make choices. If you give a person a gun, it doesn't make him or her into an attacker. I also believe, as an economist, in the law of supply and demand; if people didn't want guns, they (the guns) would be economically eliminated from the marketplace. As a martial artist, I know that virtually any tool can be turned into a weapon... it just requires a bit of hasty ingenuity and the presence of a threat.

Weapons are merely an extension of Human nature. Some people carry them to inflict harm, some people carry them so that they can defend themselves in the event of a clear threat. I believe that Human Nature is more of an issue (in terms of gun control) than the laws which are passed in never-ending attempts to control it. Human beings ultimately exercise free will in making all of their decisions, the law notwithstanding. Our society is not controlled by regulations and laws; it is ultimately controlled by economics and the Human behavioral psyche. Unless you can control people, gun control just won't work.

If the government cannot protect me, I believe that I have a right (psychologically hard-wired into me) to self-defense in the interest of my own survival. I will not surrender that right.

If guns are available, the best we can hope to do is carefully screen prospective purchasers, and be certain that they receive some training in the use of these weapons. I don't stand with either the NRA or with the ACLU on the issue of gun control. I actually believe the point is moot, and that the Pandora's box of weaponry has already been opened.

Here's my apolitical take: Making all civilian guns illegal will simply 1) drive up the price of guns as a commodity, and that 2) weapons dealers, like drug dealers, will benefit far more than the Public-At-Large.

Here's a recent article about the "massacre" at the Empire State Building which is really worth reading: NYPD police officers responding and reacting to the lone gunman threat are responsible for all nine civilians injured during the Empire State Building incident.

As I have said before, maybe it's time that we, as a society, stop in our denial of the laws of economics and Human psychology and accept the reality of our situation and circumstances.

Solving problems starts with understanding their true causes, and by then addressing them.

I don't necessarily trust my fellow Humans (which sounds sexist - I mean to include females here as well [I am grinning]), but I do trust in my own ability to discern right from wrong, and I know that I would feel safer if I were armed and properly trained, than if I were not. 

That's it.

Douglas E. Castle for The Daily Burst Of Brilliance Blog and for The Taking Command Blog
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If you are to make policy as a leader, or execute or enforce policy as a commander, you must deal with reality, and only reality, in order to meet your goals and objectives in either creating rules or in seeing to their enforcement. Otherwise, you are either wasting your precious time in the wonderland of your own imagination, or you are catering to a political agenda instead of an operational one.

You must focus on the Laws of Physics, practical economics and the body of knowledge as it relates to Human behavioral psychology if you are to make or enact policy. If you fail to take these three sets of variables into account, your policy certainly fail.
 

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Management: DO Automate and Delegate - DON'T Hesitate or Deviate

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"It is a manager's job to automate and delegate, without having to hesitate or deviate." - Douglas E. Castle's First Principle Of Management

Management is a profession unto itself. It is the art and science of accomplishing things by optimally leveraging the resources available, both human and machine. The general objective is accomplish the greatest output by using the best possible mixture of inputs.

The conventional wisdom is that if a manager is fully successful at his or her job, he or she will reach a point where they have virtually rendered themselves obsolete through the brilliant use of automation, delegation, instruction and inspiration.

Ironically, a manager's job is to put himself or herself out of work. Happily, despite this self-extinction paradox, good managers, particularly senior level experts with good communications and command skills, are in high demand, and they tend to rise ever-higher [this is not quite the Peter Principle -- it's more like a territorial gain through victory and conquest than a "getting the boot upstairs"] within the organizations which are fortunate enough to have them.

It's childishly simple, but is indeed good enough, and true enough for me to call it Douglas E. Castle's First Principle Of Management:

"It is a manager's job to automate and delegate, without having to hesitate or deviate." Did somebody from the back say "Amen?"

Remember: Douglas E. Castle's First Principle Of Management

And you first read about it on THE TAKING COMMAND BLOG!

And you thought that we Commanders aren't permitted a bit of levity every so often. Well then.

p.s.  On a serious note, please always bear in mind that every commander is a manager, but not every manager can be a commander.

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