Category: Book Summaries

Happy Veteran’s Day 2019!  In honor of the day, I thought it would be timely to summarize Brad Johnson And Gregory Harper’s Becoming a Leader the Annapolis Way:  12 Combat Lessons from the Navy’s Leadership Laboratory.

I picked up this book last Summer after NASA’s new Administrator—a former Naval aviator—mentioned that he appreciates the military’s model for developing leaders.

A common refrain at the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA) goes something like this, “Every graduate of USNA receives a degree in leadership.”  Johnson and Harper asked themselves, “How can modern day civilian organizations take USNA’s key leader development lessons and apply them successfully in honing their own talent?”

Their mission is straightforward, but probably not simple: to translate the relevant portions of the leadership development program at USNA into a set of applicable lessons for managers and organizational leaders.

At Navy, leader building is at the bedrock of what they do.  Creating the finest leaders in the military and the country at large is what the Navy is all about.  At USNA, leadership development is deliberate and intentional.

Click here to learn 12 Lessons from the Navy’s Leadership Lab

November 4^th is the birth date of actor Will Rogers, who once said, “Common sense ain’t that common.”  So, we celebrate today as Common Sense Day.

In 1776, American Founding Father Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called Common Sense, arguing for independence of the 13 British colonies in North America from Britain. Paine’s pamphlet was one of the inspirations of the American Revolution.

What leadership lesson should we target today?  Recently, I read Lee Cockerell’s Creating Magic: 10 Common Sense Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney.  While Disney’s journey and leadership lessons gleaned from it are dense, I encourage you to check them out.

Click here for a summary of Creating Magic