3. Preparation
If leaders really are looking to the horizon, as Bennis said, it’s not for the scenic view. Good leaders keep their finger on the pulse of what’s going on around them as well as what’s coming around the bend so they can prepare their companies for the future.
Preparation, if you ask Bogle, combines awareness with foresight.
“The best leaders have to be looking around the corner all the time and not looking straight down the street,” he says. “Think about what’s around the corner often in terms of challenges and opportunities.”
Because what’s even worse than never getting a break in life?
“It’s a lot sadder when we get our breaks and haven’t readied ourselves to make the most of them,” Bogle says. “You have to be ready when opportunity knocks.”
Q. How do you stay prepared for the future?
First, you have to educate yourself every single day. One of the jobs of a leader is to learn, even as another job of the leader is to teach. Learning means not only staying up to date on what’s going on in the nation and around the globe — you can’t ignore current events — you also can’t ignore history. I just finished reading one of the great biographies of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, the struggles he went through to try and get America going down the right course.
So reading — but not just reading business stuff, which all of us do — but reading history and, where possible, even reading the classics. It’s amazing to me how much we can learn if you read Seneca, Fontaine, Socrates, Sophocles, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Locke: all the great thinkers of the Enlightenment. It’s an extremely important part of educating yourself.
So staying in touch with the classics, learning from history — that’s readiness, I think. You can never be totally ready. No one knows everything. But you do your best to make your mind a little bit bigger and a little bit better every single day.
Q. How does history prepare you for the future?
There’s this wonderful saying that says those that do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat it. For example, for a nation, we look at the history of the Roman Empire and it finally collapsed. We should look at that and say, ‘Is that in store for the U.S.?’ Or in a much, much smaller way: ‘Is that in store for our company?’
To look at leadership as an isolated thing where you know more about your little, infinitely tiny, small company than anyone in the world — I’d rather know a little bit less about the detail and a little bit more about what’s gone before.
How to reach: The Vanguard Group Inc., (877) 662-7447 or www.vanguard.com
