“If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts” - I present to you an amazing piece I’ve recently read. One of the most inspiring texts about leadership… Enjoy.

By William Deresiewicz

The lecture below was delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October of last year.

My title must seem like a contradiction. What can solitude have to do with leadership? Solitude means being alone, and leadership necessitates the presence of others—the people you’re leading. When we think about leadership in American history we are likely to think of Washington, at the head of an army, or Lincoln, at the head of a nation, or King, at the head of a movement—people with multitudes behind them, looking to them for direction. And when we think of solitude, we are apt to think of Thoreau, a man alone in the woods, keeping a journal and communing with nature in silence.
Leadership is what you are here to learn—the qualities of character and mind that will make you fit to command a platoon, and beyond that, perhaps, a company, a battalion, or, if you leave the military, a corporation, a foundation, a department of government. Solitude is what you have the least of here, especially as plebes. You don’t even have privacy, the opportunity simply to be physically alone, never mind solitude, the ability to be alone with your thoughts. And yet I submit to you that solitude is one of the most important necessities of true leadership. This lecture will be an attempt to explain why.

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With the Academy Awards just a few hours from now, I’ll make some last-minute predictions. Having seen all movies nominated for the “Best Picture” award I have to say that 2009 brought some very good movies! Anyway, here’s my list (it’s a list of who I think will win, not whom I would vote for):

• Best Picture: Avatar - I don’t think Avatar deserves the best pictures award, but it will most likely win it. Beating the long-time “Titanic” Box Office revenues (both domestically and internationally), investing huge money and unprecedented 3D effects are reasons for which I think it will win the Best Picture award. Unfortunately, with 9 other movies nominated in this category I don’t think Avatar deserves the Oscar, which, in my opinion, should go to “The Hurt Locker”
• Actor: Jeremy Renner (”The Hurt Locker”) - he did a great job in the movie and George Clooney and Morgan Freeman already received the statue (Freeman for “Million Dollar Baby” and Clooney for “Syriana”).
• Actress: Sandra Bullock (”The Blind Side”) - in my opinion this will be a political decision, but, as it rarely happens, a very decent one. Bullock did a fantastic job in “The Blind Side”. Why I’m saying it’s political is because Bullock was (well… is) America’s sweetheart but she never had the opportunity to play in a movie the Academy would consider worthy of the Award. This time she had her opportunity and most definitely did not blow it!
• Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (”Inglourious Basterds”) - I’m not so sure about this one, but, wow, didn’t he do a great job in this movie? I remember everyone being excited about Waltz’s performance and he might just get the Oscar for that.
• Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique (”Precious”) - very good acting and the Academy actually likes to award first-time or second-time roles in the supporting actor / actress categories.
• Director: Kathryn Bigelow (”The Hurt Locker”) - why? Because Avatar is taking the Best Picture award. And because I really Avatar won’t take it.
• Animated Feature: Up - nah, come on. That was easy.
• Original Screenplay: Inglourious Basterds
• Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air
• And most of the technical ones go to “Avatar”… Yeah, that was easy as well.

Now… Let’s wait a few hours and see how much I got right :). Enjoy watching the Academy Awards!

Or “Keep It Simple Stupid”. Anyway, this quick thought I just had won’t be about abbreviations or any crazy TLAs (Three Letter Abbreviations - nice, huh?).

I always felt that there’s power in simplicity and there’s power in reminding people of “obvious things”. As one of my professors used to say the tricky thing about obvious statements is the fact that… they’re obvious. Because they’re so simple and so, uhm, obvious, people stop thinking about them. And that’s just horrible, because it’s obvious statements that are most powerful and most inspiring.

Anyway, my professor’s obvious insight (see what I did there? Just called his insight about obviousness obvious although he specifically reminded us not to do that… Oh, fun!) never really helped explain why we should be reminded of the obvious and why every once in a while we should think about it. And then I ran into this fantastic statement:

“I am sure that all of the above points are nothing new or something you have not heard of before [yeah, trust me - they were pretty "obvious" /Tom]. But it sometimes helps to reiterate the obvious since we most often, in our quest to impress, look for more complex solutions and overlook the basics.“

Isn’t this insightful? It’s a great statement and an obvious explanation of why we forget about the obvious. Keep it simple, because that’s where the power lies! I could talk about many experiences I had with that and how complexity ruined various projects, while simplicity took them to a whole new level. But I’d rather leave the message as it is - simple.

It’s been a while, again. Well, let me just update you on what I was doing over the last three months! Read more… »

About a month ago, in September, I defended my thesis at Warsaw School of Economics. The title of my work is called “Servant Leadership as a Tool for Effective Business Management” and I finally managed to find the time to post it on my website. You can read the whole thesis over here or in the “On Leadership” section. Please feel free to comment! I hope the document will serve as an inspiration to anyone seeking knowledge about business leadership.

I am very, very happy to announce that CEMS Master’s in International Management (my program!) has been rated as the best pre-work experience master’s in management program in the world by the Financial Times. It was nice to see a swarm of Facebook statuses among by proud friends proclaiming the news to the world. I have to say I’m really proud as well as the program was quite demanding and I have so many great memories related to it.

As for the ranking. You can find it over here. The CEMS website is http://www.cems.org. Go CEMS!

(This is a piece I wrote for a Student Magazine about my summer experience)

I attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The people I spend my time with are mostly alcoholics and drug addicts. I understand that the first step in recovery is admitting that one has a problem and I am in a treatment center as I write these words. I’m not in rehab though – I’m just doing my internship! Read more… »

A very interesting view on capitalism / socialism. Short and simple, but powerful (huh, short and simple usually is powerful…):

“You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

Dr. Adrian Pierce Rogers, 1996, from his book Ten Secrets for a Successful Family

What would be a perfect response to these five sentences? How about the “short and simple and powerful” statement, which recently was spreading with the speed of light on Facebook:

“No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.”

My overall thought about the health care debate? That was a hot summer and temperature had nothing to do with it… And more seriously - I’m looking at it from an economic perspective. And with the gigantic deficit and ridiculous spending on health care I believe that any reform is better than no reform.

California is in a lot of trouble and it’s just getting worse and worse. I just read that Carly Fiorina, the former disgraced CEO of Hewlett-Packard decided to run for the Senate in California. There’s a number of reasons why it makes me angry:

• Personality - Carly Fiorina got fired from the McCain campaign last summer for saying that none of the presidential candidates have the experience to run a major company like Hewlett-Packard. Now, I’ll go into her extraordinary leadership skills in a moment, but, hey, how far from diplomatic you mindset needs to be for you to say something like this?! Read more… »