I hesitate to mention this because I don't have a link, but the March 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review has an excellent piece on "Timeless Leadership" with historian David McCullough. An excerpt:
Spotting talent is one of the essential elements of great leadership. Washington had it to a remarkable degree. Washington was not an intellectual. He wasn't a spellbinding speaker. He wasn't a military genius. He was a natural born leader and a man of absolute integrity. And he could spot ability when it wasn't necessarily obvious. . . Henry Knox was a big, fat, young, and totally inexperienced Boston bookseller who had a brilliant, brave idea - to go to Ticonderoga, get the big guns there, haul them back to Boston, and thereby drive the British out of the city. And this in the dead of winter. There were all kinds of reasons why it wouldn't work, but Washington not only saw at once that it was a very good idea, he saw that Knox was the man to do it.
1 comment:
Hi Michael
Here's the link to the HBR McCullough article: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?_requestid=9568&ml_subscriber=true&ml_action=get-article&ml_issueid=BR0803&articleID=R0803B&pageNumber=1
It will be free online until the 3rd week of March. Enjoy, and thanks for your post!
Eric Hellweg
Editorial Managing Director
HarvardBusiness.org
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