LEADERSHIP DISTRACTIONS

Leaders cannot afford to be distracted from their primary objectives by world and national events. Lord knows there are plenty of them. It happened to me over the past two weeks. With the main calendar holidays falling on a Tuesday, many of us just felt out of sorts, so to speak.

TAKE YOUR PICK OR ADD TO THE LIST

Hurricane Sandy, an election, Sandy Hook Elementary School the "Fiscal Cliff" and who cares to add to a long list of others led us to yearend, perhaps a bit numb and well, distracted. At our place, we chose to occupy our down and quiet time reading. Besides interacting with family and close friends, We ignored the nightly news and Sunday talk shows - tired of it all. We reengaged with the world to some degree on January 2.

Since then my conversations with business leaders planted the theme of this post in mind. Leaders cannot afford to be distracted but that doesn't mean they aren't concerned about all of the above. It won't surprise you to know that to a person, they are very concerned about Leadership, theirs' and that of the POTUS, to say nothing of the political morass that swirls thickly around him.

MASTERING THE SKILLS - EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND MORE

Thinking about those leaders I have the privilege of working with; they accept the serious responsibility of leading effectively and diligently incorporating new things learned as societal norms and attitudes shift. All, to one degree or another, possess an emotional intelligence, not unlike that which is discussed in a fine work now dated by some years but pertinent nonetheless , Primal Leadership (Daniel Goleman  @DanielGolemanEI;  Richard Boyatzis  @RBoyatzis, Dr. Annie McKee  @anniemckee; Harvard Press).

They realize that despite whatever regulations, executives orders and government mandates that are imposed upon them, they still must hone their strategic and tactical skills that lead them to become better leaders, making better decisions with better results. With this in mind, as much as I tried, I could not distance myself from wondering about these men and women and how their determination to lead for the greater good would be compared to the tactics of the Leader of the Free World.

HISTORICAL PRECENDENT - NOTHING LIKE IT

I won't dwell on this but it does confuse me because I go back to Eisenhower's days and while admittedly I was much too young to fully appreciate much of anything, from my age of reason on, I haven't observed anything like what we all are watching today. I am thankful for the internet for giving me access to literally thousands of bright, articulate thought-leaders. In the old days, there was a reliable portfolio of great teachers, but today we can learn from untold numbers of them and that's a good thing.

I'll let the historians chronicle the leadership attributes of our current President but I also don't believe that any professionals I work with would attempt to use  or recommend that his model as one for success in their worlds. http://www.franksonnenbergonline.com/blog/counterfeit-leadership/

CORPORATE v. POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

One of the four books I took on over the New Year's long weekend was Managing With A Conscience, 2nd Edition; (Frank Sonnenberg  @FSonnenberg). Frank's one of the folks I'm alluding to above and as you've likely noted, wrote a terrific post to his blog entitled Counterfeit Leadership. When I first came across some of Frank's thoughts, to be honest, I concluded that while well-intentioned, he was perhaps a bit naive. Happily, I read on and began to follow Frank. In so doing, I found that he believes not only in the goodness of humanity but is convinced that leaders must and can lead with "goodness" intact. It wasn't that I thought otherwise, it's just that I had not come across anyone who put it out there in the same way. That's high praise when you consider the many renowned authors that most of us have read.

While time management and priorities require discipline, it is the leaders I speak of who take advantage of the speed and easy access with which we gain the insight shared by so many that leaves us with little excuse than to attempt to become the best leaders we can possibly be.

Leaders cannot afford to be distracted and must go on leading regardless of how difficult and challenging a national or local government may make it. Whether it's a 5-point this or a 10-point that, it is in the thirst for knowledge and better ways of doing things that will be passed from this group of leaders to the next and perhaps it is a foregone conclusion that relying upon government of any kind will distract but will not destroy free enterprising and life-long learning leaders altogether.

Jim Naleid is a Serial Entrepreneur, Change-Agent and Thought Leader, Managing Director of Naleid & Associates and Regional TEC (“The Executive Committee”) Chair leading a group of executives to become Better Leaders, Making Better Decisions with Better Results. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimnaleid

RELEGATING LEADERSHIP to HR

"Tell me it ain't so, Joe!"

It was my privilege to sit next to the Superintendent of Schools of a neighboring community at a luncheon recently. After we worked through our introductions, I asked him what his greatest challenge or frustration was at top-of-mind.

The keynote speaker at this particular event happened to be Scott Walker, the Governor of Wisconsin. Given the governor's dismantling of collective bargaining for public employees shortly after taking office, my false presumption was that I'd hear something related to that.

Wrong. This is what the superintendent told me; "People; if I could just get people to do what they're supposed to do, my life would be better."

THE PROBLEM POOL

What about the demographics of that wayward group? Was it the students, their parents? Nope. It was the personnel in the district that topped the list. Naturally he wasn't referring to the whole and I surmised it may have been his direct reports or at least those he had more occasion to be in contact with. Without relaying the entire conversation that ensued, there was a bigger picture, but I want to focus on the concern expressed by this leader because you and I know that he's not the only one faced with this conundrum.

Diane Stafford, at the Kansas City Star, wrote a short but interesting piece that appeared in our local rag's Sunday edition, entitled "CEOs want nice, flexible workers."

That attracted my attention and as a matter of fact, I sent Diane a note asking if there was more to her column than was published as it's not uncommon for papers to trim, intentionally or otherwise, because a local copywriter arbitrarily decides to. The piece was scanned and sent to Diane with my question. She generously responded and assured me that the entire thing was intact.

CEOs And MISGUIDED EXPECTATIONS

Stafford's report was based upon a panel discussion that included four executives representing different industry sectors with the audience being the KC chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management. The panel was to address two questions posed by SHRM; 1.) What kind of employees are employers looking for? , and 2.) How can human resource officials help?

Stafford summarized the responses to the first question; three that I found more curious than the remaining four of seven. They were:

               

 -  "Key People" who share their (the executives) philosophies about managing and growing their operations.

 -  "Workers who are willing to work" and show up every day.

 -  "Nice people, because you can't train nice."

To round out the sought after attributes; Rainmakers, Flexible, Bright and Team-oriented were the adjectives used to describe prospective candidates.

The CEOs response to the second question suggested that the CEOs believe that the HR departments should not only hire the right kind of people but also provide training that 'increases the value of the people we have.'" I suppose that is all well and good.

Before I get carried away here, let's assume this Q&A session covered 30-45 minutes and due to time and space constrictions, Stafford's mandate is what it is and in deference to the panel participants, the responses were probably more involved.

Being that as it may, my interchange with the school superintendent and corporate leaders I've worked with for the past decade leads me to believe that in many instances, C-level executives frequently overlook the necessity to clearly define their expectations, not only of the HR department, but of themselves!

LACK OF DEFINITION

For convenience sake, let's pick on the four who sat on this Kansas City panel.

My guess is that of the four, you may find one who has clearly defined and committed to writing what he envisions his role at the top of that organization to be. I'd also guess that you'd only find one out of four that has personally committed to writing what he or she believes the organization is and how it should be defined. The percentage doesn't change much when you add that, in all likelihood, only one executive in four has clearly defined the roles he expects his direct reports to fill. All of this, more often than not, gets poured into a "HR bucket" just as the KC panelists evidently did.

Just about every C-level executive I've worked with has all of the above in their heads. I don't know of any that mind-readers on their teams. They then wonder why the people working with them, "just don't get it." It's convenient to rest the blame with the HR folks but it's a significant, and sometimes, fatal flaw in their own leadership that leads to personnel shortcomings, lack of innovation and lackluster profitability when they have failed to make it clear who They are and what They expect of themselves and others.

IT'S MANDATORY - COACH OR GO HOME

If you happen to be a CEO, Business Owner or C-level executive and haven't committed to the reality that your greatest responsibility is to define yourself, your organization, the roles of your direct reports and then to be fully present as the one responsible for developing the team you envision your company to be driven by, well, leaving it up to someone else just won't cut it.

Jim Naleid is a Life-long Entrepreneur, Change-Agent and Thought Leader, Managing Director of Naleid & Associates and Regional TEC (“The Executive Committee”) Chair leading a group of executives to become Better Leaders, Making Better Decisions with Better Results. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimnaleid

Pile It On...Knock It Off!

Depending on your point of view, it'd be easier to knock the piled up snow off a deck rail or lantern top than it is to clean up a real or figurative list of things that have been put off since before the last snow storm. In these parts it hadn't snowed for some 300 hundred days. That by historical standards is unusual in itself.

Just days ago one was able to hike across a trail through the nearby river valley marsh on a sunny, typical brisk December afternoon. With a 10-day forecast in mind, the sense was this may be the last such hike for the season unless the forecasters were wrong.

When I opened the blinds to our rear deck this morning, it didn't surprise me to see that the overnight snowfall left added weight to the hanging lanterns and height to the deck rails. Perverse as it may be, one thought I had was to get out there and liberate the lanterns and knock the snow off the rails. The dilettante am I kept me from doing so.

However, it did occur to me that like a list of things that had appeared to accumulate overnight, so is the hazard of awakening one morning to realize that as many as 300-days worth of little things have remained undone.

"Procrastination is the Thief of time" is attributed to a number of different prominent literary figures over the centuries and American literary critic and educator E.D. Hirsch, Jr., who is best known for his Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987) believes it is one of 265 proverbs on his list of proverbs that every American needs to know.

The big difference between a newly dressed snowscape and a leader's lost list is significant in this respect; the lanterns and rail have no need to be liberated from the accumulation while a list of even a dozen things left unfinished by a leader of others should be considered inexcusable.

THEY DON'T KNOW and IT DOESN"T MATTER

Admittedly, those that are being led may not have any idea of the number of things that warrant inclusion on this list but one thing is for sure, they know it when something that directly affects them should be but there is no visible sign that leads them to believe it is or ever has been. That's a bigger problem.

Over the years exhaustive research has been done and all sorts of remedies to cure one of procrastination or sheer laziness have been suggested. Today, we can still use the rather archaic tools of pencil and paper, notepads and such, or buy an elaborate Franklin© personal planner with calendars, color cards and stuff and beyond that go high-tech with voice recognition software and speak these reminders and "must-dos" into cyber-space. The issue with all of the above comes back to the same old thing; What to do with them then?

KNOCK IT OFF

Here's the deal; if you've allowed yourself to get away with piling things up that you know darn well should have been dealt with 300 or 3 days ago, knock it off!

We could re-circulate a 10-point "Best" list of things a leader can do to take care of business, the small and the great, but the truth of the matter is we all know what's on that list and simply need to be reminded that good and effective leaders manage to get bogged down too. Better leaders simply keep the lists short (yes they make lists) while adding and subtracting to them every new day.

Jim Naleid is a Life-long Entrepreneur, Change-Agent and Thought Leader, Managing Director of Naleid & Associates and Regional TEC (“The Executive Committee”) Chair leading a group of executives to become Better Leaders, Making Better Decisions with Better Results. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimnaleid

LEADING WITH A CLENCHED FIST

"Men with clenched fists cannot shake hands." - Ghandi

A competitive young COO recently admitted to me that anger gets the best of him now and then.  Being a bit older I had to think back on the people I've worked for or with that had that same tendency. None came to mind.  Now either my experience is very unusual or my memory has conveniently erased any semblance of a distinctly angry cohort, colleague or person to whom I reported.

CLENCHED FISTS

It should be a relatively easy thing to admit that we all succumb to anger occasionally but acting out or "clenching a fist" in the ring of supposed collaboration doesn't cut it. Mike Tyson, the infamous and former heavy-weight champ shared an interesting observation and put it this way; "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face." Evidently, Mr. Tyson came face to face with one or more who lead with "clenched fists."

The leader mentioned above will be meeting with me later this month, and thus, anger is on my mind. Ghandi's quote noted here, excuse the expression, struck me as did another I found nearby, "'Anger' is just one letter short of danger."

Common sense and personal experience teach us that anger, in just about any form, accomplishes little. So let's think about this.

LONG STANDING ANGER

Westerners look at the turmoil in the Middle East and sense there is a seething anger that spills out into the streets frequently and has done so apparently for thousands of years. Don't you wonder how a 12-year kid develops enough anger to pick up rocks and then passes that characteristic on to one generation after another? Historians and social scientists study and surmise but in the end it comes down to one thing, nobody is shaking hands and meaning it.

Citizens all across Europe seem to be angry too. Some say it's only a matter of time, perhaps less than we imagine, that more anger than has already been displayed in this country will overflow into the streets as well. Heck, it's already underway and recorded in the annals of recent history. People are still hanging out in Wisconsin's capitol building, not happy about one thing or another. The good news is while mobs trashed the capitol grounds earlier this year, Molotov cocktails and rock throwing are not in the order of the day.

ANGER INTROSPECTION

Workplace violence is another thing and for the sake of not allowing to go overboard on the subject, let's hope the isolated but frightful instances that appear to be on an upward trend will not escalate to the point of being commonplace or so frequent that we become sensitized, especially when it comes to corporate responsibility and leadership with a much better purpose.

This discussion can't help but call for some introspection. When was the last time anger got away from me? Was I really angry or deeply disappointed. How did the display of anger appear to others? They say I wear my feelings on my sleeve. If that's the case, did my personal assessment of my behavior align with what others experienced?

If asked, many of us would not be as candid as our COO. As he talked about that issue and responded to some of my questions about it, we both concluded that whether one of his direct reports screwed up or the company missed a significant bid, allowing anger to foment at the top, no matter how one might rationalize or justify it "is just  one letter away from danger."

THE WORST OF TACTICAL WEAPONS

James Autry put it this way in his book,  Love & Profit - The Art of Caring Leadership ; "Anger as a weapon, frequently leads to humiliation, and humiliation is the one thing no employee will ever forgive you." If prone to anger, Autry further admonishes leaders that, "You cannot afford to do something with such long-term negative impact. It will come back to haunt you more than you'll ever believe."

The truth of the matter is that somewhere along the line, we've all met with circumstances that resulted in anger being expressed toward us or the converse also being true. Anger is not only a bad deal awaiting a transaction but it may also be the weakest link in the chain of one's leadership aspirations that result in handshakes meeting up with clenched fists.

If any of this applies to you personally, as it does me, we can be reminded that open palms and calm hearts are precursors to sound,  genuine handshakes and commitment.

Jim Naleid is a Life-long Entrepreneur, Change-Agent and Thought Leader, Managing Director of Naleid & Associates and Regional TEC (“The Executive Committee”) Chair leading a group of executives to become Better Leaders, Making Better Decisions with Better Results. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimnaleid

HIGH PERFORMANCE DRIVERS

" What is the most important Driver leading to a High Performing Company?"

Unscientific Polling

Just in; the results of a poll I conducted via LinkedIn and distributed for respondents at Twitter and Facebook. Seventy-one percent (71%) expressed their confidence in PEOPLE, fourteen-percent (14%) in STRATEGY, and fourteen-percent (14%) in CULTURE  while none placed a marker for SYSTEMS.

First off, the poll was grossly unscientific as only 14 responded.

Assessing the Results

One could come to a number of conclusions as to the small sampling. For instance:

        - The highly-charged political season wasn't a good time to initiate a poll, i.e., "poll fatigue"

2      - The wording of the poll wasn't structured effectively utilizing SEO strategies

3      - The four options given were too broad

4      - While my personal Twitter followers and Facebook friends are few, my LinkedIn network links me to

           nearly 8 million - LOL - most busy leaders have better things to do!    

Admittedly, a pollster I'm not, so, I'll concede points one through three above. More than anything else though, I am curious about No. 4. The poll sat out there about a month and I re-submitted it through all three pipelines weekly. Only three of the respondents took time to comment.

Learning Curve

The learning curve taught me several things:

·         I did something for the first time and it didn't hurt

·         I've acquired a new appreciation for pollsters

·         Others didn't care about the subject, dislike polls or prefer much deeper, intellectual challenges

·         Had those who responded left their names and contact information, I'd invite them to come together and have a meaningful discussion on the topic . Just think what else we would learn.

The other significant lesson here rests in the notion that likely all four of the choices as selections are merely a starting points. Beginning with these proposed Drivers, most companies should be in a position to chart a course or map their route to the High Performance Company status. Of course there are alternative starting points.

Engage with High Performance

The mistake for any of us as individuals or business leaders is to assume we are High Performing Leaders of High Performing Companies when in fact, we haven't ever given it a thought. If that is the case, isn't it time to engage yourself, your teammates and stakeholders in the pursuit of High Performance? Perhaps you too will be doing something for the first time...and it won't hurt.

Jim Naleid is a Life-long Entrepreneur, Change-Agent and Thought Leader, Managing Director of Naleid & Associates and Regional TEC (“The Executive Committee”) Chair leading a group of executives to become Better Leaders, Making Better Decisions with Better Results. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimnaleid

25 Years and Then Some...

From Carter to Obama and a Sense of the 'In-Between'

The events of this very day and the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the October 19, 1987 stock market crash gives impetus to the reflection of those of us who were there then and are alive to talk about it now with decades of perspective in hand.

THE EVENTS OF THE DAY

This evening, Americans in an uncertain number will watch the final of three presidential debates between incumbent Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney. Pundits and historians both have highlighted correlations between Carter and Obama; the former presided over a morose economy and evidently was incapable of turning it around. Historians have saddled Carter with a legacy of a disastrous foreign policy despite certain accomplishments. Those paying attention see the current president's term as a sort of Carter Déjà 'vu. Never mind the 'why-fors.'

Today, Why I Left Goldman Sachs; authored by one Greg Smith, is being released at your favorite book store and online. Smith, a former mid-level 'deal-maker' that reportedly earned a half million dollars a year, created quite a stir when he submitted his story, as an op-ed, to the Wall Street Journal. The author claims the book is not meant to be a tell-all expose but rather a composite lesson meant for unwary investors. I haven't read it but critics and insiders are dismissive. Go figure.

What may overshadow both of the above is the Monday Night Football contest between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. What could be more symbolic? The president's hometown team doing battle with the city whose major industry he saved, or some say rescued, is likely to dilute the viewing audience of what is indeed a crucial debate for both men.

STARTING POINT

Ronald Reagan swept the November election in 1980 over Jimmy Carter by taking 44 states and 489 electoral college votes - a landslide. Reagan began is eight-year stay in the White House in January of 1981, the year I began my career as a stock broker with a blue-chip regional firm. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had spent 70s below the 1,000 mark and the economy had been languishing for nearly the previous decade. Back then, there weren't such things as Investment Advisors, Certified Financial Planners and other so-titled financial professionals. We were stock and bond brokers, and proud of it.

Mutual funds were just beginning to come into vogue. The old pros, our mentors then, looked upon packaged products and funds as cop-outs or short-cuts and were dismayed with the burgeoning proliferation of such. They believed that if someone wanted to be a member of their community, they had better know how to pick a stock and value it properly. The same was true of bonds.

Warren Buffet's publicly-traded Berkshire Hathaway shares traded in the open market for around $2,000 a share. My brother and I discussed putting our resources together with the purpose a buying a share. With our careers just underway neither of us felt we could afford to do so. On this Monday morning, that same share, yes one share, is trading at $133,222 each. We could have each at least put one of our kids through college, maybe one and half kids.

WALL STREET INGENUITY AND PACKAGED PRODCUTS

It was in the late summer of 1982 that the stock market and the economy began its upward climb. Wall Street kicked into high-gear. There are very smart and creative folks out there and one thing the industry has been particularly good it is creating concepts, products and financial advantage or at least the perception of it.

Do you remember Collateralized Mortgage Obligations or CMOs? They 'hit the street' sometime in 1983 and were to be the answer for investors to benefit from falling interest rates. Essentially they were complicated instruments comprised of a pool of mortgages that were purchased by Wall Street firms from their issuers, the mortgage lenders. Segregated into tranches of varying risk, CMOs took on a life of their own and were placed first in the hands of institutional investors such as pension funds and large foundations. It didn't take long though for Wall Street to sense as great an opportunity to create retail CMO products for distribution to individual investors as well. This despite the inherent risks embedded in them:

                Prepayment Risk | Interest Rate Risk | Reinvestment Risk |Default Risk

Brokers were paid well to place these investments with their clients.

A few years later, the now defunct Wall Street firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert introduced Collateralized Debt Obligations or CDOs. Similar to their predecessor CMOs, CDOs were complicated baskets of debt obligations, once again carved into tranches or varying degrees of risk. If you don't have the recollection of Drexel et al in particular, you might recall the name, Milken. Michael Milken is widely associated with the ever-popular Junk Bonds that were issued regardless of credit worthiness. These were used largely to fund mergers and acquisitions of the late 80s that culminated in the October 19, 1987 stock market crash, a crash of greater breadth and depth than the October crash of 1929. Milken, by the way, spent some time in the slammer later for various securities violations.

BEYOND THE CRASH OF '87

Those who were in the business on that October 19th date twenty-five years ago haven't forgotten it. They likely remember exactly where they were and how the Dow's free fall impacted them and their clients. Some brokers took their own lives, jumped out of windows. My guess, and it's an unfounded guess, is that those who lost the most money for their clients were those who made an extraordinary amount of money selling packaged products and the latest ingenious financial tool Wall Street had to offer. For this, Wall Street is not entirely to blame. I hold equally as responsible unscrupulous brokers, purveyors of promised high returns and investors themselves that did not take the time to carefully examine and understand what they were investing in.

THE DEMISE OF GLASS STEAGALL

The Banking Act of 1933, more commonly referred to as the Glass-Steagall Act, came into being following the stock market crash of 1929. Its intent was keeping banks from intermingling their lending operations from underwriting and selling far-riskier things like stocks.

Beginning in the early 60s however, banks and brokerage firms began to court each other once again. Thirty years later, Bill Clinton deemed the Glass-Steagall Act irrelevant for modern society and backed the bill to render it so with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill of 1999. With virtually all barriers removed, banks moved aggressively to participate by acquiring money management firms, brokerage companies and investment banking operations. It took only seven years for the sub-prime mortgage crisis to unfold and unfold it did. Connect the dots.

FIGHTING BACK

No one individual or administration is responsible for this. The financial markets have managed to rebound in significant ways for more than 200 years now. There are many who believe that will be the case today and in fact, if you separate the stock market from the economic reality, you'd have to admit that the stock market has done quite well since Mr. Obama took office.

What I find so interesting, however, is that given the 25 to 30 history we've consolidated here, we can't seem to uniformly grasp that capital formation and investment in entrepreneurs and those willing to invest with them has always been the precursor to a better economy.

I noticed a You Tube video on LinkedIn the other day posted that made a good attempt of explaining why Mr. Romney's 14% tax rate, given his capital investments in less than three minutes. Whether you agree with the overall purpose of LinkedIn or not, another person who evidently also viewed the video complained by inference that it had been placed on the sight for political reasons. He didn't think it should have, saying, " I truly hope the next 30 days on LinkedIn stays about business and networking."

Tax rates are integral to business, perhaps not to networking so much, but the day we separate one from the other, as of no consequence, may be the day we're all essentially working for the government. Heck, we're only five or six months a year away from that anyway!

So that's what I've been thinking about this Monday, the Twenty-second of October, Two Thousand and Twelve.

Jim Naleid is a Life-long Entrepreneur, Change-Agent and Thought Leader, Managing Director of Naleid & Associates and Regional TEC (“The Executive Committee”) Chair leading a group of executives to become Better Leaders, Making Better Decisions with Better Results. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimnaleid

Bennett's Bug

Is the business and management advice we're bombarded with every day better or changed in significant ways?

Only a few people that know me and knew Peter Bennett may relate to the sense of yesteryear that overcame me as a 1963 Volkswagen 'Bug' with that classic sea-foam green paint job rumbled past me while heading home from my bike ride today.

Peter owned more than one of these iconic roadsters but it was that sea-foam convertible that takes me back on the highway of time. Stuart Cook had one too but his was white. Monique Mendoza's folks let her use their red hard-top until we got broad-sided in the middle of the intersection of Masonic & Oak at the Panhandle in San Francisco one dark, late night. The guy that hit us came from the Haight-Ashbury at a much faster speed than we had figured. No one was seriously injured even though the 'Bug' flipped on its side. Mendoza's 'Bug'  died that night but Bennett's rolled on.

Bennett was the most creative writer, lovable, moody, out-right hilarious guy I had ever met. This time with Bennett and Mendoza, et al, was San Francisco at its best, circa 1970. Bennett though turned dark and Mendoza moved on, as we all did. No one really knows what pushed Peter to the edge of curiosity or despair when we learned that he took his own life just few short years later.

This isn't about morbidity. This is about a question that has been dogging me for the past month or so.

"Is the business and management advice we're bombarded with these days better or changed in significant ways?"

The sight and sound today that reminded me of Bennett's 'Bug' provided the kick in the pants I needed to sit down and deal with it.

My business 'teeth' were cut on the writings of Peter Drucker and Benjamin Graham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Graham). My dad's oldest brother, the financier in the family who is still alive today, presented me with Graham & Dodd's Security Analysis [Graham and Dodd. 1934. Security Analysis: Principles and Technique, 1E. New York and London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. ] when I embarked on my career in the securities industry in early 1981.

Notable investors alive today, Buffett, Gabelli and untold others are listed among the many that were influenced by Graham & Dodd. While the underlying principles providing support for Graham's understanding and shared insights remain largely intact, few dispute that the nanosecond-type speed with which markets move today has altered the once revered approach to long-term, asset value investing that Warren Buffett would credit most of his success to. That time-honored strategy is being challenged in ways Buffett could not have imagined just a few short years ago.

Peter Drucker was (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker) a notorious management guru of sorts. His 1971 book, Drucker on Management is probably the first of his books I read. Drucker's first was published in 1939 and he continued to influence managers until his death at age 95 in 2005 at his home in Claremont, CA, the same neighborhood Mendoza's 'Bug' lived in before it met its demise.

Not everyone agreed with the positions Drucker took and he out-and-out managed to irritate and sometimes anger those companies he critiqued as case studies from the "how-not-to-do-things" perspective.

Recently Stephen Covey left the scene but think of those whose thoughts and management insights led many of us through the past 25 or 30 years; the likes of Maxwell, McKay, Peters, Autry, Welch, to name only a very few. In many respects I've found the insight and advice that come from the 'old school' timeless. The professors, if you will, from Graham to Covey are among them. Dust off one of the old books and take a ride in Bennett's 'Bug'.

This is not to criticize the abundance of useful thought and leadership techniques that have required re-tooling these days. My mornings begin with a rapid walk down Twitter and LinkedIn Avenues. The traffic is fast; coming and going at speeds difficult to judge. Few of us keep up. Not a day goes by that something very new, very fresh and very fast, gives me the sensation that I might have read something like it before. It's merely the difference between Bennett's 'Bug' and a turbo-charged Passat - seat belts required.

One can't help but be impressed with all this knowledge flyin' around and the ease with which a question can be answered or a desired executive skill set can be found. It's a fascinating time. I tell those I have an opportunity to influence to read, apply, and share their abundance but in the midst of all of this, take trip back now and then. The ride in Bennett's 'Bug' may be as classic now as it was then.

Jim Naleid is a Life-long Entrepreneur, Change-Agent and Thought Leader, Managing Director of Naleid & Associates and Regional TEC (“The Executive Committee”) Chair leading a group of executives to become Better Leaders, Making Better Decisions with Better Results. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimnaleid