The Financial Redress

Three score and four years ago our fathers brought forth upon this earthen sphere, a new order conceived in economic liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all trade is created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great idea war, testing whether trade, or any human interaction so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great trading floor of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of our future income, as a resting place for those banks who here gave their shares that financial markets might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – liberal trade. The brave institutions, past and present, who traded here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the remaining, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these failed institutions we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these liberal efforts shall not have died in vain; that this world under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this world order of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.

Management is a form of herding.  Sometimes shepherding, sometimes cat-herding, but most of the time it’s much more complicated — like guiding a distrusting group of friends, who’ve grown apart, to regain the vaguely shared glory of some imagined past.  Envision herding a group of lions and lambs, foxes and hens, insects and birds to a meadow where the herder is paid based on how many people mistake this motley crew for a circus.

Leadership is different: leaders are to groups what cowbells are to cows — they provide a signal that others can follow.  A successful leader polishes the bell, tunes it to the sound of success, and convinces all it is the purest note ever struck.  But a false leader cannot sustain the true tone for long.  The inherent challenge of leadership is then to stay true in times of trouble, to appear — and to be — an honest broker among competing interests.  There are not many leadership tools available, other than experience, intellect, and integrity.  Not the type of things they stock at your local Home Depot. 

One constant I have observed in great leaders is that they allow — demand really — that each person they interact with become better than that person really thought they could be.   There is complexity in this.  A great leader in times of war — Churchill comes to mind — may not be so great in times of tranquility, and of course the other way around as well. 

So, are great leaders born?  Yes, of course.  They are just not born great leaders.