President's Message

There are many measures and metrics we use to gauge our success in business. Regardless of our field of work – be it manufacturing, the pharmaceutical industry, governance, or law – we regularly use hard numbers to chart our growth, profits and losses and retention. As a nation, one measure we look at regularly is our GNP or Gross National Product. I’m sure there is a comparable measure that you use in your organization.

However, I wonder what would happen to our organizations if we took a page out of the book of the country of Bhutan. Bhutan is tiny mountainous country about the size of Maryland located between India and Tibet. It is famously isolated and insular with aspects of modern life such as cell phones and television only recently introduced. I would guess none of us have ever been there.

The thing I love about Bhutan is that they don’t pay much attention to their GNP – rather they focus on their GNH or Gross National Happiness. Really – they measure their success based on how happy they are as a nation. They are focused on the “promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance”.

What would happen to our organizations if we started to care not only about the bottom line but also about our organizational GNH? What would our happen to our relationships at work? To our level of productivity? To the relationships we hold with clients and other stake holders? Try it for a day or a week - focus on the GNH of your organization. Care about the economic development but also care about the cultures, the environment and the governance unique to your organization. Make it a happier place to be all day. I bet you’ll be pleased with the results!

Steve Wiley

The David Wills House Grand Opening Approaches

In honor of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday on February 12, 2009, the David Wills House in downtown Gettysburg will celebrate its Grand Opening. The Wills House is the new home of the Lincoln Leadership Institute (LLI) and also offers visitors a world-class museum experience that tells the story of Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address.  Grand Opening events will take place from February 12 - 16, 2009.

David Wills’ home was not just the center of Gettysburg -- it was the center of the immense clean-up process after the Battle of Gettysburg and where President Lincoln put the finishing touches on the Gettysburg Address. The speech transformed Gettysburg's community from a place of devastation to the symbol of our nation's new birth of freedom. It is now also the place where corporate executives from around the country come to put the finishing touch on their leadership and executive presence skills through LLI offerings.

Leaders of Swagelok / North Carolina take a Transformational Journey from Gettysburg

CEO Steve Smith of the valve and fitting company Swagelok / North Carolina brought four of his top team members to the Journeys program this fall for three days of valuable leadership lessons.

“Part of being a good leader is listening and learning from other leaders,” says Smith, who has attended the program three times in the last few years. “Each time I come, I learn something new."

Smith got his first taste of the LLI in 2006 when the CEO of Swagelok had an idea to get all of his top employees on the same page so they could work better as a team. Today, it is one of Smith’s favorite leadership retreats.

"I keep coming back to the Lincoln Leadership Institute because Steve Wiley’s program fits in perfectly with our goals,” Smith notes. “In fact, I've now hired Steve to come to our offices in North Carolina to work the rest of our staff members so we'll all have a common language. I absolutely love this program for it helps my team work like a well-oiled machine.”

Smith’s director of sales, Ron Player, attended the Journeys program for the first time in the fall of 2008 and says he can’t wait to do it again.

"The Journeys program was a wonderful combination of history, analysis, humor, and insight into what his team is doing right — and what can be improved on," Player says. "Just hours after Steve Smith explained some of the theories and strategies to us about the Battle of Gettysburg, my team began using terms like left flank and high ground. Our experience in Gettysburg has been invaluable.”