This week's book: "The Wisdom of the Bullfrog" by Admiral William H. McRaven.
"If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed."
Admiral William H. McRaven
It's Saturday, so let's pull the week together.
This week was about a single idea McRaven puts right in his subtitle: leadership is simple, but not easy. The principles are easy to understand and hard to live by, and the space in between is the whole ballgame.
Here's this week’s recap in a few lines. We started with character and honor and asked what personal code you live by. We discussed Sua Sponte, stepping up of your own accord, and I told you about the opportunity I was “too busy” to take forty years ago while my friend Rich stepped right into it. We talked about how hope is not a strategy, and how my occasional habit of trying to hope my way out of a bad morning in the trading pit rarely worked. And we sat with the long green table, McRaven's test of whether you can look back at every decision and know it was moral, legal, and ethical. I told you my own long green table is my three grown sons.
My honest take on the book: it's the rare leadership book I'd hand to anyone without a single second thought. Short, plain, no filler, and every chapter is its own great lesson. If you want one book on leadership that respects your time, this is it. I highly recommend it.
One last story that McRaven closes with is one that captures the whole thing.
In his own book, It Worked for Me, Colin Powell tells of a young lieutenant who asked him what it takes to become a general. Powell's answer, roughly: work like a dog, never stop studying, train your people hard and take care of them, stay loyal up and down the chain, give everything to every mission, and love the work enough to lay it all on the line. The lieutenant grinned and said… “So that's how you make general.” And Powell told him… “No, that's how you make first lieutenant. Just keep doing it over and over, and let them see what you've got.”
That one made me smile, because it's what McRaven is saying throughout the whole book. Success rarely comes from chasing the next title. It comes from performing well today. And here's the trap: after a little early success, too many of us take our eye off the ball. We get ahead of ourselves and forget to do today's actual job exceptionally well.
Whether you're leading a business, raising a family, coaching a team, or starting something brand new, the formula barely changes.
Show up. Do the work. Keep learning. Take care of people. Repeat. Eventually, people notice.
Leadership really is simple. But as McRaven reminds us in every chapter, it isn't easy.
One challenge for the week ahead
Take ten minutes and write your own leadership code. Not a mission statement, just the handful of principles you want to be known for. Then, at the end of the week, ask yourself one honest question: did my actions match it?
What's one line that belongs in your code? Hit reply, I read every one.
I'll go first: mine starts with the one I got from my grandfather, proud yet humble. Everything else I try to live by starts with that.
Next week
We're reading "The Charisma Myth" by Olivia Fox Cabane, a research-backed look at presence, warmth, and how we come across to others. We spent this week on the code you carry on the inside. Next week we turn to how that shows up on the outside. If you'd like to read along, this weekend's a good time to grab a copy, and the Kindle version is instant.
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I'll be back Monday,
Mike
Practical wisdom for the life you're building