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Archive: Marty Linsky
The Best Disappointer
The Nobel Prize for Leadership should be awarded to those who have demonstrated unusual courage in disappointing their own people in pursuit of a solution to an intractable problem.
By Marty Linsky | October 12, 2009; 10:31 PM ET | Comments (0)
Don't Fight Regulation
The best we can hope for is that some far-sighted bankers will work with the Congress rather than fight it in crafting legislation that will incentivize transparency, accountability and longer-term thinking on Wall Street.
By Marty Linsky | September 16, 2009; 07:20 AM ET | Comments (0)
Loyalty, Schmoyalty
Van Jones had to go. For the president to keep him would have been somewhere between gratuitous masochism and pandering to constituents who are already on the team.
By Marty Linsky | September 10, 2009; 01:30 PM ET | Comments (5)
They Might Be Giants
I see an enormous wealth of potential giantness in the electoral pipeline.
By Marty Linsky | August 31, 2009; 03:56 PM ET | Comments (1)
Breaking Through the Gardol Screen
Ted Kennedy lived and worked behind the screen of his family name until failure pushed him to find his authentic leadership style.
By Marty Linsky | August 27, 2009; 09:24 AM ET | Comments (11)
Moving Past the 'Anti-Bush'
Consistency is a virtue for good management. Unpredictability is a virtue for successful leadership.
By Marty Linsky | August 18, 2009; 10:05 AM ET | Comments (0)
Easy to Say, Hard to Do
It is an act of leadership for someone with significant responsibilities to "take care of yourself" rather than sacrifice your body for the cause. Unfortunately, as I pack my laptop for vacation, this is a case of "Do as I say...."
By Marty Linsky | August 13, 2009; 08:53 AM ET | Comments (4)
Anti-Leadership
With the beer summit, Obama turned down the heat and calmed the situation, just what we want people in authority to do for us: Make things nice.
By Marty Linsky | August 5, 2009; 02:23 PM ET | Comments (15)
The Courage to Disappoint
Hang tough Barack. Stay focused on your purpose and do not squander your political capital on a side trip that will feed only the most banal instincts of some of your more rabid constituents.
By Marty Linsky | July 16, 2009; 11:58 AM ET | Comments (0)
Define "Maverick"
Palin has demonstrated that a politician can be doggedly conservative, unabashedly sexual, and electable (at least in one state.) None of that says that she has the qualities necessary to run for the presidency or serve well if elected.
By Marty Linsky | July 15, 2009; 03:48 PM ET | Comments (0)
The Adulation of Thousands
Why do so many of those who fall seem to be the ones who put themselves, with our collusion, on such an unrealistic moralistic pedestal in the first place?
By Marty Linsky | June 30, 2009; 10:42 AM ET | Comments (4)
Transparency Is Overrated
Secrecy and paranoia seem to have served Apple, its customers, and its shareholders well over the years.
By Marty Linsky | June 23, 2009; 01:52 PM ET | Comments (2)
Magic Without Magic
Phil Jackson made explicit what most great coaches and managers have understood intuitively: that the hardest challenge of leadership is to resist the impulse to take the work off of the shoulders of those who own the problem.
By Marty Linsky | June 15, 2009; 02:05 PM ET | Comments (0)
Personal With a Purpose
Leaders need to connect to people, to move them, and if you are going after their hearts, you have to display some of yours as well.
By Marty Linsky | June 9, 2009; 06:23 AM ET | Comments (0)
Don't Get Political
The president's willingness to expend political capital to protect GM from political pressures--and risk the vagaries of the marketplace--will determine the administration's new role as its dominant shareholder.
By Marty Linsky | June 5, 2009; 11:05 AM ET | Comments (0)
The Last At-Bat
When we work with top teams, we often ask about succession plans. Instead, what we frequently find, instead, are non-succession plans. People who stay too long no longer bring their A game.
By Marty Linsky | May 26, 2009; 10:55 AM ET | Comments (0)
A Consensus-Builder
President Obama sees himself as a healer, not a divider, and will nominate someone whose most important qualification beyond competence is having demonstrated the courage and skill to perform a consensus-building role.
By Marty Linsky | May 19, 2009; 10:14 AM ET | Comments (0)
Laundering Nixon
Richard Nixon made the transition from pariah to statesman, but it took time, patience, and a healthy absence and abstinence from the fray to launder himself.
By Marty Linsky | May 12, 2009; 10:21 AM ET | Comments (0)
What's the Purpose?
Leadership in the union or management would be about having the courage to skillfully disappoint their own people on behalf of the more noble purpose of ensuring the long term survival of that crucial civic institution known as the Boston Globe.
By Marty Linsky | May 6, 2009; 10:19 AM ET | Comments (0)
Katrina, 9/11 and Tylenol Lessons
When we are potentially panicked, what we want from those in authority is (1) to be present, (2) to feel our pain or anxiety, and (3) to be reassuring verbally and by action without being disingenuous.
By Marty Linsky | April 28, 2009; 10:19 AM ET | Comments (0)
Learning Not Teaching
There is no skill useful for leadership that you cannot learn if you really commit; even courage and charisma can be learned.
By Marty Linsky | April 21, 2009; 06:14 AM ET | Comments (0)
Going to Jerusalem
Captain Phillips did exactly what he was supposed to do in protecting his crew. Real leadership is going beyond the call of duty, like Anwar Sadat risking peace with Israel -- and paying the ultimate price for it.
By Marty Linsky | April 15, 2009; 10:18 AM ET | Comments (0)
Keeping Bush in the Toolkit
Being devoutly un-Bush means giving up valuable options that might come in handy under certain circumstances. He has already adopted the last Bush Iraq strategy in Afghanistan, although the While House has reportedly banned the use of the word "surge."
By Marty Linsky | April 7, 2009; 11:19 AM ET | Comments (0)
A Mere Wake-Up Call
It is too bad the President did not find a way to fire the Board as well. There is little or no evidence that GM is prepared for the new reality.
By Marty Linsky | March 30, 2009; 01:49 PM ET | Comments (6)
Strategic Pandering
If President Obama did not pander to the crowd on this one, he would have begun to distance himself from huge numbers of people whose support he needs to get his budget, his subsequent recovery plans, and his ambitious domestic agenda enacted.
By Marty Linsky | March 22, 2009; 10:07 PM ET | Comments (5)
The Emotional Slam Dunk
We experience the financial crisis emotionally, not just rationally. Therefore, the willingness of leaders to tangibly acknowledge the stress their people are experiencing is a central element of sustained recovery.
By Marty Linsky | March 15, 2009; 10:17 PM ET | Comments (0)
Imagining "Ellen" Greenspan
There is little doubt that with more women in top positions in Wall Street and government, the economic crisis would have been less severe.
By Marty Linsky | March 9, 2009; 04:22 AM ET | Comments (1)
Why Less Is More
On ambitious proposals like this, leaders who do all the work for everyone, laying out a detailed plan, become easy targets for criticism, like the Clintons did. Better to step back and let others craft the details.
By Marty Linsky | March 2, 2009; 12:00 PM ET | Comments (0)
When "Good Soldier" Is Impossible
No way will Livni be able to salute to the Netanyahu strategy on the biggest challenge facing her country.
By Marty Linsky | February 23, 2009; 10:04 AM ET | Comments (0)
"Twelve Angry Men"
"Juror Eight" took heat from his peers, ignored personal attacks and held steady under enormous criticism, all in the service of mobilizing people in the service of something he believed deeply.
By Marty Linsky | February 17, 2009; 11:04 AM ET | Comments (0)
Left Behind
Don't be like the pharmaceutical company that recently laid off workers by e-mail: How you fire people communicates a message to those still employed.
By Marty Linsky | February 9, 2009; 09:54 AM ET | Comments (0)
Spoiled by the Public
By catering and pandering to them, we the public, have played no small role in creating and nurturing the destructive environment in which CEOs and other big-name figures have become so out of touch with the real world.
By Marty Linsky | February 2, 2009; 01:04 PM ET | Comments (1)
Hard To Say Good-bye
In most professional realms, non-succession plans seem to be a bigger problem than failing to recognize that there is still some life in the old folks.
By Marty Linsky | January 25, 2009; 11:21 PM ET | Comments (0)
A Cautious Beginning
Obama's cautious inaugural address lacked FDR's insight about our nation's distress, Churchill's brutal honesty and JFK's request for help and sacrifice.
By Marty Linsky | January 21, 2009; 11:28 AM ET | Comments (0)
Not Afraid to Disappoint
In rebuffing the gas tax and tapping Rick Warren, Obama has demonstrated the courage and skill needed to disappoint his own supporters at a rate they can absorb.
By Marty Linsky | January 12, 2009; 02:04 PM ET | Comments (0)
Gen. David Petraeus, with runners-up
General David Petraeus has brilliantly redefined the war-on-terrorism strategy to mean engagement with the Muslim world. Runners-up are: Australian PM Kevin Rudd, British PM Gordon Brown and Bill Richardson.
By Marty Linsky | December 30, 2008; 10:03 AM ET | Comments (3)
