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President's Message
 Who are the Best?
What companies "do" leadership best? Well, according to a recent survey conducted by BusinessWeek.com/Hay Group, the ranking of the 20 Best Companies for Leadership includes companies as varied as General Electric, Southwest Airlines, IKEA and Zappos. While these organizations certainly have different leadership challenges unique to their individual industries and cultures, the "best" do seem to share certain key characteristics.
They include addressing leadership at all levels of an organization, moving the focus from execution to strategy and, above all, continuing to make leadership development a priority—despite the economic downturn and chaotic business environment of the past year.
Here are some interesting findings from the study that tie directly into the LLI curriculum:
- 64% of respondents from "best companies" say leadership is expected in their organization—even if the individual is not in a formal position of authority—while, in other companies, only 35% of respondents report this is expected. Think about transformational leadership on Little Round Top
- When asked about their most critical focus, 81.9% of "best companies" said "positioning for the future," compared to 65.1% of others. Think about the strategic advantage of the High Ground
The study also revealed that three types of learning organizations are prominent among the 20 best. These include "modern, learning-oriented, fun workplaces," such as Zappos.com and Southwest; "complex companies with cultures that are more traditional," like GE and P&G; and companies that are "collaborative for innovation" focusing on self-organizing teams and problem solving, such as ABB.
So think about your organization, team or work group. Do you "do" leadership in these ways? Are you being transformational and positioning your organization for success? Are there ways you can create or nurture one of the three best types of learning organizations? I'm confident that you can learn from the "best" to make your organization's leadership even better!
To read the complete article, click here.
Please read on in this month's issue to learn about what the 16th president ate, our nation's first "social security" program and the 2010 Lincoln Prize winner.
Steven B. Wiley, president & founder
The Lincoln Leadership Institute at Gettysburg www.lincolnleadershipinstitute.com
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Burlingame wins Lincoln Prize |
A two-volume biography 30 years in the making, by one of the foremost living authorities on Abraham Lincoln, has won the 2010 Lincoln Prize.
On April 27, Michael Burlingame will be awarded the $50,000 Lincoln Prize for his book, "Abraham Lincoln: A Life" (Johns Hopkins University Press), as well as a bronze replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens life-size bust, "Lincoln the Man." Burlingame is the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. The prize is sponsored by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The book is a comprehensive look at Lincoln's life, from growing up impoverished in rural Kentucky and Indiana to building a career as an ambitious politician that led him to become the 16th president of the United States. Burlingame writes about the trials and tribulations Lincoln experienced as commander-in-chief and focuses on his leadership during the Civil War. Nothing is off limits for Burlingame, from private sorrows to public disasters, as he tells the whole story of one of America's greatest presidents.
"Burlingame's massive biography of Abraham Lincoln is a landmark of American historical scholarship. Nothing surpasses Burlingame's comprehensive and detailed research into the entire life of Lincoln," said Lewis Lehrman, co-chairman of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York and co-creator of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the largest private archives of documents and artifacts in the nation. "His prose and arguments are always clear and straightforward, even if some judgments will be vigorously debated. Because the author of this extraordinary biography has unearthed new evidence and reviewed all previous scholarship, these debates will have to contend with the vast document-based evidence, which this Lincoln Prize winner brings to bear on the life of Lincoln. Every member of the literate general public, interested in Abraham Lincoln, is surely indebted to Burlingame for his tireless research into archives and newspapers never before examined."
Author James L. Swanson writes in Publisher's Weekly: "Burlingame's Lincoln comes alive as the author unfolds vast amounts of new research while breathing new life into familiar stories. This is a critical, skeptical, loving but never fawning tribute to the man Burlingame praises for 'achiev[ing] a level of psychological maturity unmatched in the history of American public life.'"
To learn more, visit www.gettysburg.edu/news_events/press_release_detail.dot?id=2686109. |
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 Civil War Pensions: America's First "Social Security" Program
By Joe Mieczkowski
Although Social Security did not really arrive in America until 1935, there was one important precursor that offered something we could recognize as a social security program offered to one special segment of the American population. The aftermath of the Civil War left hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans and disabled veterans. In fact, immediately following the Civil War, a much higher proportion of the population was disabled or survivors of deceased breadwinners than at any time in America's history. This led to the development of a generous pension program. It was with the creation of Civil War pensions that a full-fledged pension system developed in America for the first time.
Beginning in 1861, the U.S. government generously attended to the need of its soldiers and sailors or their dependents. Because the federal government did not implement conscription until 1863, these first Civil War benefits in many ways were an attempt to induce men to volunteer. Although altered somewhat over the years, the 1862 statute remained the foundation of the federal pension system until the 1890s. It stipulated that only those soldiers whose disability was "incurred as a direct consequence of … Military duty" or developed after combat "from causes which can be directly traced to injuries received or diseases contacted while in military service" could collect pension benefits. The amount of each pension depended upon the veteran's military rank and level of disability.
Both the federal government and Southern state governments continued to provide pensions for Civil War veterans and their widows well into the middle of the 20th century. In all, billions of dollars were expended by both sides in an effort to "reward" the survivors of America's costliest war. Because of the high rates of expansion in both the federal and Confederate systems, critics frequently accused pensioners and officials alike of corruption and fraud. Those pensioners most often labeled as frauds were widows, especially young women who had married veterans much older than themselves. Indeed, there were still surviving widows of Civil War veterans receiving Civil War pensions as late as 1999!
To read more, visit www.ssa.gov/history. |
Bob Kirby—new superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park
James Robert (Bob) Kirby assumed his post as the new superintendent of Gettysburg National Military Park and Eisenhower National Historic Site this month.
Before coming to Gettysburg, Kirby most recently served as superintendent of Petersburg National Battlefield in Virginia.
"Historic sites are rich classrooms where we can explore our development as a nation," said Kirby. "Few other nations openly reveal their history—the good and the bad—as we do here in the United States. That alone makes managing the national treasures in Gettysburg a profoundly humbling and vastly rewarding experience."
Kirby has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Recreation and Leisure Studies and a Master of Science degree in Recreation and Park Management from San Francisco State University. He and his wife Beth have two children, Megan and James. |
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 Abe's Eats
An article in the Chicago Tribune examines Abraham Lincoln's culinary tastes. The consensus? Lincoln was not a gourmand; it appears as though he simply ate whatever was placed on his plate. However, the article does include a recipe for Young Abe's Gingerbread Men—a food that Lincoln cherished as a child and that gave him a story he incorporated into the Lincoln-Douglas debates. |
Dance your way to the top
 This humorous video demonstrates that you should never be afraid to set yourself apart from the crowd. You never know what results you may receive!
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Copyright 2010, The Lincoln Leadership Institute at Gettysburg |
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Steve brought a bit of Gettysburg to Las Vegas when he spoke at the national sales meeting for Nationwide Insurance Feb. 25.