Thanks for your visit, your (past and ongoing) service to the country and community, and your work and writing.

Semper Fi to you!

From one Marine to another, Semper Fi.

Thanks for your visit, your generous comments, and your work.

“Many of you know that the US Marine Corps has a hard-earned reputation in its field. I am here to tell you that it didn’t come from reading books on inspirational leadership, taking seminars on the latest management craze, or getting worked up about “cutting edge” organizational design theory.”

And

“What they can learn from, however, is the internal dynamics of military organizations; the way they prepare for and respond to the stress of discharging their mission.”

Semper Fi.

Thanks for stopping in with your birthday wishes, and with your kind comments.

If people took the time to consider the goal-oriented definition you provide of servant leadership, we’d be able to focus much more productively on a smaller number of more important things.

Thanks again for your visit and, as always, for your work.

Happy Marine Corps Anniversary! Thank you for sharing such a personal story. This relevance to your topic hones, clarifies, and carries the message.

“With a servant’s heart” is the management approach sorely missing in all those books, seminars, and ‘off-sites’.

Knowing the awesome responsibility that comes with leading people, more managers would do well by adopting your message:

Know your goals, make sure your people know their goals, and do whatever you’re able to help (not control, diminish, do for) them achieve these goals.

Best,
Joe

I agree with you that the military is very good at integrating the principle of accountability into its goal-selection, organization, processes, and assessment. And this does help greatly to remove or reduce the worst sorts of personal aggrandizement that one sees all too often.

This is a good example of what I mean by how civilian organizations can learn from the military organization – rather than the individual military leader. Thanks for pointing it out!

And thanks again for your visit, your insight, and your work.

I appreciate your service and that of all the US Military.

One of the things the military does without an iota of ambiguity is clarify accountabilities and authorities. Why? Because the consequence of ambiguity can be death.

If organizations adopted this one idea, instead of leaving employees to enter into power struggles, manipulation and even sabotage in order to get their work done, we would see a huge leap in productivity and engagement.

Regards,

Michelle Malay Carter