Being Mortal

 

Issue No. 394 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Nov. 17, 2018) recommends a MUST READ book on end-of-life issues that also oozes with leadership and management insights. The author notes, “People die only once!” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   Pick One: Custer or Robert E. Lee Apparently, I’m a slow learner. You would think that when your daughter-in-law encourages you to read a book—you would read it. Ditto book recommendations from your wife. Melinda and Joanne—sorry it took me a year to read this. But thank you. Because Being Mortal is now on my Top-10 book list for 2018.  In this riveting book, Dr. Atul Gawande reminds us: “People die only once.” So when facing fork-in-the-road sick and dying decisions, “They have no experience to draw on. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come—and escape a warehouse oblivion that few really want.” Being Mortal: What Matters in the End changed—totally changed—my thoughts about end-of-life decisions. Whew. On one level, I agree that this New York Times bestseller [as of 2026, almosts 50,000 reviews on Amazon!] is a brilliant and deep look at the “…still unresolved argument about what the function of medicine really is—what, in other words, we should and should not be paying for doctors to do.” Yet on another surprising level, this writer (four bestsellers), surgeon, and public health leader—delivers fresh management and leadership insights in every chapter. Custer or Robert E. Lee? The author says that medicine’s job is to fight death and disease—the enemy—but that the enemy eventually wins. “And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end.” Yet Gawande admits, “More often, these days, medicine seems to supply neither Custers nor Lees. We are increasingly the generals who march the soldiers onward, saying all the while, ‘You let me know when you want to stop.’ All-out treatment, we tell the incurably ill, is a train you can get off at any time—just say when. But for most patients and their families we are asking too much. They remain riven by doubt and fear and desperation; some are deluded by a fantasy of what medical science can achieve.” By the way, watch for my review of Leaders: Myth and Reality, by General Stanley McChrystal (US Army, Retired), which includes a 30-page chapter on Robert E. Lee, and why this Civil War general’s picture no longer hangs in McChrystal’s office. What should families do? My suggestion: ask your doctor (like I did this week) if he or she has read Being Mortal. (He had.) Gawande notes that medical school taught him two styles of doctor/patient interactions: paternalistic and informative. The “paternalistic relationship” is the “priestly, doctor-knows-best model, and although often denounced it remains a common mode, especially with vulnerable patients—the frail, the poor, the elderly, and anyone else who tends to do what they’re told.”  Doctors make the critical choices. “If there were a red pill and a blue pill, we would tell you, ‘Take the red pill. It will be good for you.’ We might tell you about the blue pill; but then again, we might not.” The “informative relationship” sounds good, at first. “’Here’s what the red pill does, and here’s what the blue pill does,’ we would say, ‘Which one do you want?’ It’s a retail relationship. The doctor is the technical expert. The patient is the consumer.”  The down side? Doctors become “ever more specialized” and “We know less and less about our patients but more and more about our science.” He writes, “In truth, neither type is quite what people desire. We want information and control, but we also want guidance.” In his medical school, there was also the brief mention of a third type of doctor-patient relationship often labeled “interpretive.” “Here the doctor’s role is to help patients determine what they want. Interpretive doctors ask, ‘What is most important to you? What are your worries?’ Then, when they know your answers, they tell you about the red pill and the blue pill and which one would most help you achieve your priorities.” Makes sense right? Gawande notes that this relationship is also called “shared decision making” and added, “It seemed to us medical students a nice way to work with patients as physicians. But it seemed almost entirely theoretical. Certainly, to the larger medical community, the idea that most doctors would play this kind of role for patients seemed far-fetched at the time. (Surgeons? ‘Interpretive?’ Ha!)” But two decades later, the author describes a meeting with his father (also a surgeon) and his father’s neurosurgeon. The task: review the MRI images of his father’s giant and deadly tumor. The neurosurgeon “saw himself as neither the commander nor a mere technician in the battle but instead as a kind of counselor and contractor on my father’s behalf. It was exactly what my father needed.” To get the conversation going in your family, maybe insert a reminder into your Thanksgiving prayer next Thursday that everyone around the table will die only once! Then, mention this book as required reading for at least one family member. (“Grammy—please pass the turkey and that Being Mortal book.”)  Dr. Gawande is an amazing writer. The poignant stories are page-turners. The innovative solutions—inspiring and encouraging. I’ve already re-told many of the memorable fork-in-the-road stories (tears will flow) to friends and colleagues and ordered the book for several friends. Be sure to read the hilarious story of the very creative nursing home that added two dogs, four cats, and 100 parakeets! (Memo to Purchasing: Next time, order the cages before the birds are delivered!)  I should have jumped on this 2014 book much, much sooner—because I still rave about Gawande’s 2010 insightful bestseller, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (read my review). I had no idea that there were checklist connoisseurs! The Checklist Manifesto moves eloquently through medicine, aeronautics, and sky-scraper construction—noting why checklists will make or break a venture. For example, Boeing’s checklist expert uses “pause points” when designing checklists for pilots in crisis. Within each pause point, he limits the checklist to between five and nine items.  As a staff writer for the New Yorker, Gawande’s latest article, “Why Doctors Hate Their Computers,” was published on Nov. 12, 2018. Click here to read or listen to the article online. (Customer Bucket Pop Quiz: Are computer systems for the doctors or for the patients?)  And—get this—Gawande is also CEO of the health care venture formed by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase to deliver better outcomes, satisfaction, and cost efficiency in care. Stay tuned! To order from Amazon, click on the title for Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande.  Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:  1)  What is your management style? How do you relate to your customers, clients, or donors? A) “Take the red pill—it will be good for you.” B) “There’s a red pill and a blue pill—you pick.” C) “We have some pills, but first, tell me what is most important to you?” 2) Custer, Lee, or Jesus? Read 1 Corinthians 15:57 in The Message and then discuss the ultimate fork-in-the-road end-of-life issues. “…In the resurrection scheme of things, this has to happen: everything perishable taken off the shelves and replaced by the imperishable, this mortal replaced by the immortal.” Who will have the last word?    Is Your Marketing Sick or Dying? Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook (2nd Edition with 17% Fewer Typos!) Speaking of medicine, if your marketing or fundraising is sick or dying, here’s a reminder from The Customer Bucket chapter in Mastering the Management Buckets. Leaders, managers, fundraisers, and marketing specialists must use the right tools for the right people at the right time. One size doesn’t fit all—so if you’re trying to shoehorn all of your messaging to all of your customers and prospects with just one message—you will fail or die. If you need help moving customers from ignorance to purchase—contact Pearpod Media and they’ll help you craft the right message for the right audience within these six distinct levels of awareness:    • Level 1: Ignorance    • Level 2: Awareness    • Level 3: Interest    • Level 4: Trial or Consideration    • Level 5: Preference    • Level 6: Purchase For more help on messaging, check out the free 57-page eBook on ministry branding, by Jason Pearson.               NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.  MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations What are your favorite books on board governance? Check out this series from John Pearson, "18 Best Board Books," originally posted on the ECFA Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations blog--and read why John Carver says boards should never give a "vote of confidence" to their CEOs. Click here.

Eisenhower 1956

 

Issue No. 221 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (June 30, 2011) highlights a timely book for my U.S. readers as we approach the 4th of July. Timely--because, hmmm, Egypt is next to Libya...and Congress and the President disagree...and, oh yes, an election is coming. If you think you have it tough, read this hot-off-the-press book on President Eisenhower. Plus, this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.


President Eisenhower: "Plans are worthless but planning is everything." (Graphic: ChatGPT)
 

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Ike’s White-knuckle Crisis

OK. I know this is a stretch to cajole you into reading a book about a dead president. But hang with me a minute—and let me try.

Two-term U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs that “October 20, 1956, was the start of the most crowded and demanding three weeks of my entire presidency.” And according to author David Nichols, “During this period, Eisenhower embodied the wisdom of his preachment that ‘plans are worthless but planning is everything,’ enabling him to ‘do the normal thing when everyone else is going nuts.’”

There’s one big reason you should read this book: crisis management (The Crisis Bucket).  Nichols summarizes this stunning account—and Eisenhower himself—on the book’s last page with this one-liner, “By any standard, his was a virtuoso presidential performance—an enduring model for effective crisis management.”

Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War is unlike any book I’ve read. It covers mostly one year, 1956, with the greatest focus on Ike’s most demanding three weeks of his presidency. (I study leaders. Ike was a leader, not just a general.)

For starters—have you ever had a couple of weeks like this?

   --Eisenhower couldn’t convince Congress to use foreign aid to fund Egypt’s proposed Aswan Dam project, so after a soft commitment to Egypt’s President Nasser, Ike pulled the plug on the deal.

   --In response, Egypt’s President Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal.

   --Oops! Western Europe is almost totally dependent on the flow of oil through the canal (with oil reserves of just 15 to 30 days).

   --Ike’s best friends—Britain and France, the nations he rescued in World War II—plotted secretly and devised clever smoke screens to keep the U.S. not just ill-informed but misinformed about their intentions. Read: bald-faced lies!

   --Britain, France and Israel go to war against Egypt.

   --Ike refuses to provide cover to his double-dealing, deceptive friends, and suggested they “be left to burn in their own oil.”

   --At one point, commenting on the flurry of cables between London and Washington, he quipped that it had turned into a “trans-Atlantic essay contest.”

Oh…and did I mention: The President had a heart attack on a trip in the fall of 1955, requiring seven weeks off in Denver, and then more surgery later in 1956 for a cancerous tumor the doctors and staff had kept from him.

Doctors told him to take it easy—and in that we get a humorous picture of Ike. He wrote a friend that he had been ordered “to avoid all situations that tend to bring about such reactions as irritation, frustration, anxiety, fear and, above all anger.” So he had snapped at the doctors, “Just what do you think the presidency is?”

Yet, he decides he’s healthy enough to run for a second term; Adlai Stevenson, his opponent, disagrees. Often. And quite publically!

“The real reason a President wants to run again,” suggested aide Sherman Adams, “is because he doesn’t think anybody else can do as good a job as he’s doing.”

Oops! Then during the campaign, the Soviet Union hustles tanks into Hungary.

 

So whatever your current leadership or management crisis is (you’ve had some doozies and will continue to have them), you gotta admit…it ain’t as challenging as Ike’s crises in 1956.  At one point he whined to his personal secretary, Ann Whitman, “why anyone would want such a job as that of the President.”

If you’re not a history buff or a dead presidents buff, you may find the first half of the book slow-going, even tedious perhaps—but the beauty of this one-year historical feast is the author’s amazing quilt of quotations he threads together from newly released sources like the top secret minutes of the National Security Council and Oval Office meetings.

But keep reading, because when Nichols (a former prof and academic dean) hits Ike’s three most demanding weeks of his life, it’s a page-turner—and I don’t use that phrase lightly. The crisis management insights and best practices are served up on almost every page. 

His campaign buttons announced, “I LIKE IKE.” Ditto. I was so sad when page 286 arrived that I even read the “Acknowledgments,” hoping for another crumb or two. I got ‘em!

To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War, by David A. Nichols.

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:

1) On addressing Ike’s response to the Soviet occupation of Hungary, the author writes, “This was standard Eisenhower doctrine, to give an opponent an escape hatch from a confrontation that could escalate into great conflict.” Think of your last crisis—did it escalate unnecessarily?

2) Nichols writes, “Eisenhower had long ago perfected the art of embracing a messianic mission and making it sound like a simple soldier’s call to duty.”  Does our organization have a big vision—and is it stated simply enough?

Top-10 Customer Hunches - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in the Customer Bucket, Chapter 2, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to learn how your customers will change.

Try a stand-up meeting. With bagels. 

“OK. For the next 20 minutes, we’re going to fill this flipchart with all of our best guesses on how our primary customer (per Peter Drucker’s definition) will change in the next 36 months.

“Then, we’ll vote for the 10 most likely changes and assign people to do some in-the-trenches customer research to discern if our hunches are accurate.  We’re going to do something very, very radical this month: talk to our customers!”

For more resources from the Customer Bucket, including book recommendations, visit the Customer Bucket webpage.

2026 Update: For more books on U.S. Presidents and American history, see the list and links posted at "250 Years of USA Books" at the Pails in Comparison blog.

MORE RESOURCES:

• BLOG: Pails in Comparison
• SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews
• JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon 
• WEBSITE: Management Buckets
• BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations

NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon. 

The Softer Side of Leadership

 

Issue No. 385 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (May 16, 2018) highlights the “softer side” of leadership—and this challenge: if you actually read some of the sections to your spouse (or a colleague), you are in the right lane. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies).   "Hello Marylou!" Ken Blanchard suggests you read fewer books, but—get this—read a book four times because “…the gap between knowing and doing is probably wider than the gap between ignorance and knowledge.” Today, I’m halfway through my second read of Eugene B. Habecker’s powerful new book, The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead. First read: insightful and helpful. Second read: transformational. (I may run out of adjectives for the third and fourth read!) Remember the toe-tapping Ricky Nelson classic, “Hello Mary Lou?” Click here to listen, but this warning: if you skip this two-minute break—read Chapter 4 first, “Stay Connected to the Heart,” or Chapter 6, “Cultivate Creativity.” Why the "Mary Lou" reference? Gene Habecker invites his wife, Marylou, into several chapters—and Gene’s transparency is so, so refreshing. Example: Reflecting on Frederick Buechner’s insights on how life batters leaders—prompting us to bury our true selves then “live out all the other selves, which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather…”—Habecker writes: “…I can remember a very specific situation in which I was so bruised and battered by a particular leadership issue that I had functionally abdicated my presidential leadership assignment to an outside consultant. I remember walking around the block, complaining all the while about this to Marylou. Finally, she looked at me and simply said, ‘You need to go back upstairs and be the president.'” Hello Marylou! Blind spots? Habecker says all leaders have blind spots. The problem: we’re blind to our own blind spots—and that creates frightening situations. He quotes Henri Nouwen in the important chapter, “Welcome Self-Discovery Learning.” Nouwen: “…the house I had finally found had no floors…. It seemed as if a door to my interior life had been opened, a door that had remained locked during my youth and most of my adult life… The interruption…forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there.” So Habecker reflects on one blind spot: busyness. “When Marylou and I were on our last sabbatical, she threatened to give me an ‘F’ in Sabbatical because I found it was very hard to detach from work in the way Nouwen describes…” Hello Marylou! Now here’s a gut check for you (no pun intended). One of the essential soft skills of leaders is addressed in the chapter, “Practice Consistent Fitness Renewal.” The dilemma: so much to do, so little time. Who has time for fitness renewal? Gene and Marylou were discussing John 17:4, “I have brought glory to you here on earth by doing everything you gave me to do.” Habecker notes, “I focused on ‘doing everything,’ and eagerly launched into my speech about needing to be better organized, more productive, and more effective so I could get more done. Frankly, my ‘to-do’ list was already becoming unmanageable. Marylou patiently listened, then she quietly, but importantly, reminded me that I had missed one part of the main teachings of the verse. “She focused on the words, ‘you gave me to do.’ As she explained it, based on this verse and others, our priority work ought to be focused not on everything that could be done, but rather on what God has specifically given or called us to do. And that is the agenda that becomes our priority. Not my agenda, but His agenda.” Hello Marylou! In addition to the “Hello Marylou” interludes, you will deeply appreciate this one-of-a-kind Leadership 401 grad school course on the softer side of leadership (never taught and rarely caught). Habecker’s diligent work is easy-to-read on a challenging-to-live topic:    • Each chapter includes a summary page, “The Chapter Idea.”    • Each chapter concludes with “Putting the Idea to Work.”    • A final “To Summarize” paragraph nails the big ideas. Certain themes will resonate with certain leaders. Some of us are blessed with “Marylou’s” in our lives (thanks, Joanne!) which helps. Maybe a test of your leadership will be if you read the most convicting paragraphs to your spouse or a colleague. Yikes. My favorite think-about topics (during my second read): two questions from Patrick Lencioni; five questions from the HBR article, “Being a Strategic Leader Is About Asking the Right Questions;” charismatic listeners; what the 9/11 Museum missed; self-abandonment vs. self-fulfillment; and this from Simone Weil: “There are only two things that pierce the human heart. One is beauty. The other is affliction.” Habecker’s footnotes invite leaders into a treasury of deep thought about the softer side of leadership from not-so-softies. His quotes from The Seeking Heart, by Fenelon, prompted me to pull out my unread copy and add it to my summer reading list. On difficult circumstances, Fenelon inspires: “The events of life are like a furnace for the heart. All your impurities are melted and your old ways are lost…” Finally, Gene’s chapter on creativity is a whack-on-the-side-of-the-head. Convicting, but inspiring! I’m a big fan of creativity—but it challenged me in new and fun ways. Read about his reluctant visit to the Crayola Experience (now in four cities) when guess who admonished him, “Why are you just standing there watching and observing? Grab some paper, crayons, and start coloring something—anything—and don’t be afraid to color outside the lines.” Hello Marylou! To order from Amazon, click on the title for The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead, by Eugene B. Habecker with Marylou Habecke. (And…thanks to Gene for the advance review copy. The book will be released on May 17, 2018. See the 2024 edition here. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:  1) In his chapter, “Stay Connected to the Heart,” Habecker writes, “As heart work is done, focus more on asking ‘what’ questions, not just ‘why’ questions. Rather than asking, ‘Why did that happen to me?’ focus more on questions such as, ‘So what can I learn from this situation? How can I grow?’” Share two more “what” questions with us. 2) In the chapter, “Protect Sacred Space and Enable Deep Thinking,” he notes, “If what people experience on the outside, however, is not grounded by some kind of transcendent or spiritual depth on the inside, the leadership persona or façade will be eviscerated the first time an organizational storm is experienced.” What patterns do you have in your life to ensure the presence of sacred space?  Five-Finger Feedback Insights from ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson (2019) Order from Amazon “Five-Finger Feedback” is one of the 22 tools and templates I’ve used regularly. At the end of any meeting, ask each participant to rate the effectiveness of the meeting on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 is high), by holding up one to five fingers. You can also survey each participant twice: Question 1: My engagement in this meeting was a _____. Question 2: The overall effectiveness of this meeting was a _____. The workbook includes access to all 22 downloadable templates including: the “Prime Responsibility Chart” (one-page), the “Board’s Annual Self-Assessment Survey,” the “CEO Monthly Dashboard Report,” and the "Rolling 3-Year Strategic Plan Placemat" and more. When you use all 22 of these time-saving solutions, you'll wonder why you didn't discover them sooner.  For more resources, visit the Board Bucket webpage, one of 20 buckets in Mastering the Management Buckets. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations         LESSONS FROM THE NONPROFIT BOARDROOM Dan Busby and John Pearson are authors of the new book, Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom. Order from Amazon and follow the "40 Blogs. 40 Wednesdays."  guest bloggers each week here.  "Do I Still Have Fire in My Belly?" is the eighth in a series of blogs on succession planning, from John Pearson, on the ECFA Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations blog. Read it here. NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

Halftime - Moving From Success to Significance

 

Issue No. 34 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (April 23, 2007) is another book and a bucket for the management library at your organization. Bob Buford wrote, “I truly believe that God uses people in their areas of strength and is unlikely to send us into areas in which we are likely to be amateurs and incompetents.” Plus, this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. Add in the coffee and donuts, the occasional lunch to thank volunteers, phone and email time—and what is that volunteer team really costing you?  Sometimes, it’s smarter and more cost-effective to hire a minimum wage person to get the job done.  Or is it? (Graphic: ChatGPT)   Moving From Success to Insignificance Joanne and I were shocked—dumbfounded—to recently read a megachurch’s blurb about their senior adult ministry. The church’s four-color brochure and their sophisticated website both had the same message: “We encourage seniors to share their time and expertise by helping others. You can help provide a birthday celebration for foster kids, assemble bulletins for the weekend worship services, or provide a listening ear to others in times of illness, sorrow or need.” Assemble bulletins? That’s significant volunteer work for retired executives, accountants, and sales people—who are in the second half of their life? Someone—quick! Ship a case of Bob Buford’s book to this megachurch!   Clearly Buford’s book deserves a high spot on my Top 100 Books List. Published in 1994, the message is even more important today—because so many younger pastors and parachurch leaders don’t get it. Halftime: Changing Your Game Plan from Success to Significance redefined the “second half of life” for Builders and Boomers. Since you read this eNews, I’m sure you get it. I now challenge you to become a Halftime Evangelist.    Click on the title for the updated version from Amazon: Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance, by Bob Buford (foreword by Jim Collins). Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) Bob Buford (1939-2018) wrote that people in “Halftime” should ask the following questions: What am I really good at? What do I want to do? What is most important to me? What do I want to be remembered for? If my life were absolutely perfect, what would it look like? 2) How effective is your organization, or church, in helping people in the second half of their lives move “from success to significance?” Bob Buford’s life coach asked him a life-changing question, “What’s in the box?” Read Bob’s response. (See the second article in Issue No. 383.) The Real Cost of the Coffee and Donuts: Insights from the Management Buckets Workshop Experience Peter Drucker said there are two kinds of volunteers: paid (your staff) and unpaid (your volunteers). Smart leaders and managers keep a calculator close when evaluating their volunteer programs. Take church bulletin assembly work or your annual volunteer spring cleaning day. The staff person who supervises volunteers has multiple functions: volunteer recruiting, training, supervising, thanking, rewarding, celebrating, record-keeping and volunteer gap-filling.   Add in the coffee and donuts, the occasional lunch to thank volunteers, phone and email time—and what is that volunteer team really costing you?  Sometimes, it’s smarter and more cost-effective to hire a minimum wage person to get the job done.  Other times, the volunteer tasks will build community, relationships and even outreach opportunities—and you’ll have expertise well beyond the experience of your paid staff. Effective leaders know that The Volunteer Bucket often has holes in it.  Evaluate this bucket at least twice a year based on your written goals and objectives and a thoughtful feedback process. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

The Presidents Club

 

Issue No. 252 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (July 5, 2012) features a formidable, but fun book for your summer reading (or winter reading for my friends in the Southern Hemisphere). This treasure will be on my Top-10 list for 2012. Plus, this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings. (Note: The Presidents Club review also appeared on July 12, 2016.) This massive book, The Presidents Club, is one of 19 featured books in the 2026 series, "250 Years of USA Books," on U.S. Presidents and American History. See the list here. (Graphic: ChatGPT)   The 16-Hour Thank-a-thon! Woody Allen once said, “I took a speed-reading course where you run your finger down the middle of the page and was able to read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.” Faithful readers of this eNews often ask me if I’m a speed reader.  I’m not. I read with pen in hand and am slowed down even further by reading memorable stuff out loud to my long-suffering wife/listener, Joanne. Speed reading would have helped as I tackled this issue’s 641-page book, The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity. While the notes and index are over 100 pages, it still left 527 pages of serious reading. But a speed reader would have missed the juicy morsels, laugh-out-loud humor and the incredible connect-the-dots leadership lessons of recent U.S. presidents. (And Joanne would have missed my constant interruptions.) Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duff, editors at Time, have delivered what they call “the first history of the private relationships among modern American presidents—their backroom deals, rescue missions, secret alliances, and enduring rivalries.” And let me add: the interplay and conflicts between their unique leadership and management styles. Even my readers outside of the U.S. will enjoy this book. This presidential behind-the-scenes read-a-thon starts with “Truman and Hoover: The Return of the Exile” and ends with “Obama and His Club: The Learning Curve.” (I read that chapter first—and I was hooked.) In between, there are 24 chapters with memorable match-ups like “Careful Courtship, Bitter Breakup,” “The Hazing,” “Blood Brothers,” “Two Scorpions in a Bottle” (Johnson and Nixon), “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” and “The Rascal and the Rebel.” This book is a leadership case study on multiple levels. CEOs in transition (retirement, termination or promotion) will especially appreciate this revealing inside look at the new guy/old guy relationships in the Oval Office. The book will trigger all your emotions (as it did for each president): mad, glad and sad. Here’s a taste:    --George H.W. Bush, commenting on Bill Clinton’s general lack of discipline and long campaign speeches, “A good leader sets priorities—he doesn’t just list.”    --“The most precious commodity of the United States of America is neither the gold bullion in  Fort Knox nor the launch codes in its ballistic missiles. It is the time of the commander in chief: there is only so much of it, and how it is spent shapes pretty much everything else.”    --On Gerald Ford: “Worse, perhaps, even though he had inherited the title, the job was not yet his.”    --Lyndon B. Johnson: “He moved Eisenhower’s portrait to a more prominent position, so that it would be visible in the background of pictures of Johnson greeting various White House guests.”    --Henry Kissinger on Egypt’s president: “Sadat handled four American presidents with consummate psychological skill. He treated Nixon as a great statesman, Ford as a living manifestation of good will, Carter as a missionary almost too decent for the world and Reagan as the benevolent leader of a popular revolution subtly appealing to each man’s conception of himself and gaining the confidence of each.”    --Nixon: “The best politics is poetry, not prose.  Jesse Jackson is a poet. Mario Cuomo is a poet and [Michael] Dukakis is a word processor.”    --Nixon: “It is necessary to struggle, to be embattled, to be knocked down and to have to get up. Renewal. Americans are crazy about renewal.”    --On George H.W. Bush upon losing the election to Bill Clinton: “…at five the next morning [Bush] got out his list of several hundred people he needed to thank and reached for the phone. He got off sixteen hours later.”    --Bush 41 (writing to his sons about Nixon): [per the authors, Bush’s letter is] “as good a psychological profile of Nixon as any that exists. Nixon was a great leader, he told his boys, and a first-rate intellect but also a third-rate person.” Bush added, “He surrounded himself on his personal staff with people unwilling to question the unlovely instincts we all have—and that he has in spades.”    --“History doesn’t repeat itself, Mark Twain said, but it rhymes.”    --Bush 41 offered new perks to the Club, sending National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft to personally visit every former president (Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan). “Scowcroft asked what, now that Bush was president, they might want in the way of regular briefings and other logistical favors. This was self-protection on Bush’s part: he knew that his predecessors could be excellent allies on all sorts of issues; and regular briefings in advance of big decisions could keep them sounding supportive when reporters called.” After Clinton’s election victory, he called on an aging Reagan at his Club office in Los Angeles. The Gipper had two pieces of advice for the young president-elect: 1) Go to Camp David and relax as many weekends as possible, and 2) Learn how to salute! “And so the 81-year-old Reagan proceeded to give the 46-year-old Clinton a private tutorial. The two men stood there in Reagan’s L.A. office, 34 floors above Beverly Hills, perfecting their salutes.” Once in office, Clinton called another Club member, Nixon, to ask how he had structured his daily White House schedule—seeking guidance on how best to use his limited time. And just like in real life (with incoming and outgoing CEOs), the relationships covered the continuum from angry to loving. The unusual friendship between Bush 41 and Clinton, as they teamed up to address the tsunami and Katrina crises, was outside-the-textbook stunning. So much so that at a 2011 Kennedy Center event honoring George H.W. Bush, 27 members of the Bush family assembled for a family portrait and Neil Bush called for Bill Clinton to join the family photo! He did. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity, by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duff. Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions: 1) The authors note that John F. Kennedy asked Clark Clifford for counsel on how to navigate the transition into the White House. Kennedy’s team, said Clifford, “behaved as though history had begun with them. The new elite did not appear to show much interest in history.” He added, “I regarded this as a form of arrogance.” So…in your next transition, how do you avoid the triple sins of ego, ignorance and arrogance? 2) Eisenhower’s people held rehearsals for Cabinet meetings. Kennedy was restless in long meetings; he hated them.  (But after the Bay of Pigs debacle, he called Eisenhower for advice and changed his approach to meetings.) So…when you inherit a new boss (or board chair), how do you get-up-to-speed on your new leader’s style (and idiosyncrasies)? Life-long Learning Revolution - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit One of the big ideas in Chapter 11 in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets, is to scrutinize our fundraising methodologies not against what works, but against God-honoring principles. To stay aligned with biblical principles and current trends, in what Wes Willmer calls the “revolution in generosity,” requires intentionality in monthly, quarterly and annual doses of life-long learning. So…what is your 12-month learning plan in the Donor Bucket? To create the first step of a life-long learning plan for yourself and your direct reports, download Resource #20.4: "My Annual Professional Development Plan" from the Meetings Bucket webpage and check out other resources at the Donor Bucket webpage. ECFA Blog: “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations” Add your thoughts and comments to John Pearson’s weekly blog posts, including the latest, “The ‘Quieter’ Pool of Board Members” and how to engage the silent types on your board. MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE: Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.