LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead by Woodward Orrin & DeMille Oliver

Author:Woodward, Orrin & DeMille, Oliver [Woodward, Orrin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics / Leadership
ISBN: 9781455573363
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2013-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

20

“Okay, group. You have joined one of the most important teams anywhere. This is going to be some of the hardest work you’ve ever done.”

James paused. “And some of the most rewarding, fun, interesting, and exciting.”

More silence from the group.

“But the real point is this. It’s going to be successful. We’ll keep working until it is. In fact, we’ve already been at it now for over a century.”

The trail narrowed, and David waved to Wendell to go on ahead. As they hiked up the steepest incline yet, David tried to remember everything Kami had told him about Wendell’s background.

Wendell Olsen had founded the John Adams Institute for Freedom over two decades ago. The Institute was a think tank focused on using the best wisdom of the past to develop proposals for effective policy changes for current governments. While the Institute’s projects dealt with local, state, and national levels, the growth area was consulting governments around the world on how to restructure themselves in order to increase their prosperity and world influence.

The Institute wasn’t part of the established network of think tanks that relied mostly on specialists, but rather used the great classics and writings of history as a source of wisdom and then applied it to current affairs. Wendell hired entrepreneurs and set them to influencing the Great Conversation.

While she was an undergraduate student, Kami had read a book written by Wendell and contacted him to request his mentoring. He had met with her frequently while she went through school, and later as she worked for a year as a teacher at a private school and then as a speaker and an account director for a consulting firm.

When he felt she had enough corporate experience, he shook up her world by telling her that she needed to stop thinking like a corporate climber and that she needed to go get sales experience. In four years, she built a network marketing business that made her independently wealthy. Still in her midtwenties, she continued to lead her independent business even as Wendell recommended that she get back into the corporate world.

“You learned a lot in a corporation before,” he had told her, “but that was the simplicity on this side of complexity. Now, having become a successful business leader in your own network business, two years of experience back in the corporate world will teach you the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

Kami knew this idea came from a famous quote, but she wasn’t sure what he meant. Still, it had felt right, so she got a job at a corporation in San Diego. Less than a year later, the struggling business brought in Indytech, and she met Marcus and David.

By that point, she had come to understand her mentor’s cryptic counsel about simplicity and complexity. As a successful business owner herself, she learned so much more than she had ever known about business as she watched the big corporation struggle. She had tried to help with a turnaround, but by the time she got involved the company had already decided to bring in David and his team.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.