Bill’s Curated Quotes – June 2024

“Leadership is not owning the problem. It is owning the problem of casting in the right roles, the people who must own the problem.”

Lee Thayer

Over my sixty plus years in the business world, I tried early on to manage people the same way I managed sales, operations, and finance. As my companies grew, that got to be a very cumbersome process. The quote above is very clear on what leadership is.

You manage things but you lead people.

In the late spring of 1944 during the 2nd World War, General Dwight Eisenhower (the Allied Supreme Commander of all forces attempting to defeat Hitler’s army) pulled together seven generals from different countries and asked them to come up with a plan that would stop Hitler’s aggression. That plan, known as Operation Overlord or D- Day, was successful and marked the beginning of the end of Hitler’s regime eighty years ago today on June 6, 1944.

From a leadership perspective, it wasn’t Eisenhower’s success. His responsibility was to place the right people in the right roles and then let them do their jobs — which he did and they did.

Why is it so difficult to put competent leaders in place, and then let them do what you hired them to do?

The answer may just be in the quote itself.

Onward!

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