Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

Churchill’s Europe required one type of leader. Today’s interconnected world requires its own. Because there is so much information to be sorted through, so much competition, so much change, without a clear head… all is lost.

This, then, is how leaders dismantle walls they’ve built separating vital from peripheral interests. For the abstractions of strategy and the emotions of strategists can never be separated: they can only be balanced. The weight attached to each, however, will vary with circumstances. And the heat of emotions requires only an instant to melt abstrac

The prudent leader “dreads and reflects on everything that can happen to him but is bold when he is in the thick of action.” Xerxes listens patiently, but objects that “if you were to take account of everything . . . , you would never do anything. It is better to have a brave heart and endure one half of the terrors we dread than to [calculate] all

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to