The Real Value Of Course Correction (Use It Early And Often)

Posted on March 7, 2019 by in News

By: David K. Williams

Agility is the hallmark of every scrappy and successful leader.  Identifying the weaknesses and opportunities of products, services and team members with accuracy and introspection enhances your organization’s capacity to achieve its goals. Translating that information into action, however, is where many entrepreneurs fall short.

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Through my mentorship with entrepreneurs, I’ve often found them clinging to their preliminary concept for dear life, regardless of the mountains of evidence that suggest a course correction is not only likely to be more profitable, but even essential for the company’s life.  

But here’s the catch: great entrepreneurs and leaders are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. Strong leaders empower teams to act,  make course corrections and chart new courses. Great entrepreneurs are inspired by ideas, while maintaining just enough awareness to avoid idea stagnation. The magic equation: If you combine the two, the result is a business superhero who can balance these qualities to replicate success in any environment, regardless of the product or service they sell.

 

Roosevelt-Style Agility and Entrepreneurialism

The book Leadership in Turbulent Times, by Pulitzer Prize Winner Doris Kearns Goodwin leaves me inspired by the entrepreneurialism and leadership of our U.S. Presidents. Franklin Roosevelt, for example, endured a childhood filled with adversity, but refused to let circumstances derail his dreams of becoming president. He demonstrated agility in the face of staggering challenges, including paralysis. He surrounded himself with loyal advisors, created support systems, and took action to overcome obstacles quickly. During his presidential campaign he said…

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkwilliams/2019/02/28/the-real-value-of-course-correction-use-it-early-and-often/

What Would Eleanor Roosevelt Do? A New Book Has the Answer

Posted on March 7, 2019 by in News

Eleanor Roosevelt

“If You Ask Me: Essential Advice from Eleanor Roosevelt”
by Eleanor Roosevelt, edited by Mary Jo Binker
c.1946, 1974, 2018, Atria Books
$25.00 / $34.00 Canada
245 pages

What should you do?

When relationships break down, what then? Or you lose your job and your bank account is depleted, your home is in foreclosure, you’re a victim of discrimination, what do you do? You ask yourself “What next?” then you reach for help, and with the new book “If You Ask Me: Essential Advice from Eleanor Roosevelt,” edited by Mary Jo Binker, the advice you get might be decades old.

Arguments on immigration, world issues, patriotism, and messy politics. Minority issues, equal pay, family problems, and Constitutional matters. Though these may seem to be problems strictly of the modern age, from 1921 until 1962, Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of our 32nd president, also tackled these same topics in her books and magazine articles. In those 41 years, she ultimately penned more than 600 pieces.

People from every walk of life consulted Mrs. Roosevelt for advice: politicians asked her and women sought her out. Men looked toward her wisdom and, says Binker, she had a particular affection for…

Read more at:

https://rebelliousmagazine.com/what-would-eleanor-roosevelt-do-book/

What FDR Can Teach Us About Congress and National Emergencies

Posted on March 7, 2019 by in News

by Martin Halpern

Martin Halpern is professor emeritus of history at Henderson State University and the author of UAW Politics in the Cold War Era and Unions, Radicals, and Democratic Presidents: Seeking Social Change in the Twentieth Century.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Sam Rayburn, and Alben Barkley

 

Seventy-five years ago this week, there was a serious conflict between President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress. The United States was at war, indisputably a national emergency. Today we face a serious conflict between President Donald Trump and Congress. President Trump has declared a national emergency in order to spend monies appropriated by Congress for other purposes in order to build a wall between the United States and Mexico. Only Trump’s supporters, a minority of the country, see an emergency. If Trump is not stopped, we will have taken a serious step toward authoritarian government. We may draw some lessons from the conflict between Roosevelt and Congress in 1944 that may be helpful today.

As a follow-up to his call for an Economic Bill of Rights in his January 11, 1944, State of the Union address, Roosevelt had proposed to raise $10.5 billion for the prosecution of the war and domestic needs. The resulting Revenue Act raised only $2.1 billion and included tax cuts and new benefits for bondholders and the airline, lumber, and natural gas industries. On February 22, 1944, Roosevelt issued a veto message, charging that the measure enacted by Congress was “not a tax bill but a tax relief bill providing relief not for the needy but for the greedy.” Although Roosevelt was right in his criticism, the reaction on Capitol Hill was outrage. 

The next morning, Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky, hitherto a close supporter of the president, charged that…

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https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/171377

Nazis and communists tried it too: Foreign interference in US elections dates back decades

Posted on January 22, 2019 by in News

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Bradley W. Hart, California State University, Fresno – 

(THE CONVERSATION) Americans have spent the last 18 months wondering about Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election. Charges have already been filed against 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering with the 2016 presidential campaign, as special counsel Robert Mueller continues investigating the extent of the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

A Senate report concluded that the Russians’ interference was aimed at influencing the outcome of the election.

If true, the president would not be the first U.S. politician that foreign powers tried to help.

In fact, two campaigns, in 1940 and 1960, featured bold attempts by hostile foreign powers to put their preferred candidates in the Oval Office.

 

While neither was successful, both highlight a vulnerability in the American political system…

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https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Foreign-interference-in-US-elections-dates-back-13551260.php

If You Ask Me: The Writings of Eleanor Roosevelt

Posted on January 1, 2019 by in News

IWF Reads: If You Ask Me

by Hadley Heath

Eleanor Roosevelt is an American icon. In her time, she was a progressive, but as Mary Jo Binker points out in the introduction to her new book, “If You Ask Me,” the term “progressive” has changed with the times.

The book is a compilation of Roosevelt’s advice columns, ranging topics from etiquette to war and peace. It’s a delightful look back at a pivotal chapter in American history, and much of the timeless advice is just as applicable to our present chapter as it was then.

On politics, Roosevelt believed in positive rights, such as the right to a job, good wages, education, health care, and so on. She chaired the UN drafting committee for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is fundamentally different from the U.S. Constitution, which only secures negative rights, meaning it limits government’s interference in our freedoms.

Her political views would be very different from…

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http://www.iwf.org/blog/2808309/IWF-Reads:-If-You-Ask-Me

75th Anniversary of Repeal of Chinese Exclusion Act

Posted on December 14, 2018 by in Commentary

In 1943, Congress passed a measure to repeal the discriminatory exclusion laws against Chinese immigrants and to establish an immigration quota for China of around 105 visas per year. As such, the Chinese were both the first to be excluded in the beginning of the era of immigration restriction and the first Asians to gain entry to the United States in the era of liberalization. The repeal of this act was a decision almost wholly grounded in the exigencies of World War II, as Japanese propaganda made repeated reference to Chinese exclusion from the United States in order to weaken the ties between the United States and its ally, the Republic of China. The fact that in addition to general measures preventing Asian immigration, the Chinese were subject to their own, unique prohibition had long been a source of contention in Sino‑American relations. There was little opposition to the repeal, because the United States already had in place a number of measures to ensure that, even without the Chinese Exclusion Laws explicitly forbidding Chinese immigration, Chinese still could not enter. The Immigration Act of 1924 stated that…

Read more at: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/chinese-exclusion-act-repeal