FOLLOW THE LEADER
had stopped growing and progressing when he said: “He died
at 30, but was buried at 60.”^15
- Executive leadership at the highest levels is not about peak
performance for today, but developing and integrating all the
functions and systems for sustained performance.^16
2. FAILURE:
- “Success is never final, and failure is never fatal. It is courage
that counts.” (Winston Churchill)^17
- The list of leaders who failed and had to try again...is endless.
A young man’s lifelong dream was to attend West Point. He
was turned down twice, but applied a third time and was
accepted. His name was Douglas MacArthur. Henry Ford
went bankrupt in his first year in the automobile business, and
two years later his second company failed. His third one has
done rather well! Twenty-three publishers rejected a children’s
book written by an author who called himself Dr. Seuss.
The 24th publisher published it, and the result was sales of 6
million copies...Michael Jordan TV ad: “I have missed more
than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games.
Twenty-six times I have been trusted to take the game winning
shot – and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again –
and that’s why I succeed.”...
History books are full of stories of gifted persons whose
talents were overlooked by a procession of people until someone
believed in them. Einstein was four years old before he could
even speak, much less read. Isaac Newton did poorly in grade
school. A newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because he had
“no good ideas.” Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college and Werner
von Braun failed ninth grade algebra. Joseph Hadyn gave up ever
making a musician out of Ludwig van Beethoven, who seemed
a slow and plodding young man, with no apparent talent,
except a belief in music. Even Winston Churchill showed little
promise as a boy. At Harrow, the boy’s school he attended, he
was far and away the worst pupil. In four and a half years, he
never rose above the bottom of the school. “That lad couldn’t
