Saturday, May 5, 2012

The wisdom of Arnold H. Glasow

"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to
          recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency."


Arnold H. Glasow (1905-1998)
American humorist

OK, now here is one fascinating guy. In the humorist field, he's well known.... he published jokes for 60 years…..and he doesn't have a Wikipedia page. I think I'll start being on the lookout for people who are somehow celebrities but don't have a Wikipedia page.


Anyway, his pronouncement on leadership rings a familiar bell for me, I'd be rich if I had pocketed $20 during my working career every time somebody said to me "Susan hasn't filed the variance reports for the last three months, and our quarterly report has to be sent in today" or "the vendor just called, we were supposed to get our regular monthly shipment tomorrow but it's going to be late" or something along those lines. Somebody, somewhere, was in charge but didn't take action when the problem was just getting started. Somebody, somewhere, was in charge but didn't routinely ask every day "How are things going? Are we having any problems?" Maybe nothing like this ever happened to you.

Maybe today you'll see some little problem that you can nip in the bud.

Go ahead, nip.

No comments:

Post a Comment