Ideas enter the process fuzzy, weak, and partially baked. Using the eleven steps–

Distinction (seeing something new),
Identity (knowing who you are and why you are driven to share your idea),
Implications (exploring every possible consequence of your idea),
Testing (find the breaking point),
Precedent (who else has done something like this),
Need (who will it be most valuable for / focus on your audience),
Foundation (discover the underlying principles or rules),
Completion (can your idea stand on its own),
Connecting (flattening the learning curve),
Impact (is the impact of your idea in alignment with your goals)
and Advocacy (you must champion your ideas)

You can check out his post here and while your at it, check out the rest of his site. I regularly find myself saving his stuff to think about and chew on for later.

There are so many great lines in this speech. Here are my top 5:
1)”‘Duty, Honor, Country’ — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.”
2)”But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.”
3) “I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.”
4) “They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease.”
5)”His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy’s breast.”

And here’s the speech in its entirety
—————————————

General Westmoreland, General Groves, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps,

As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, “Where are you bound for, General?” and when I replied, “West Point,” he remarked, “Beautiful place: have you ever been there before?” (people laugh)

No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this, coming from a profession I have served so long and a people I have loved so well. It fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily to honor a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code — the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the animation of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal, arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always.

“Duty, Honor, Country” — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule. But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation’s defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease.

They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?

Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefield many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world’s noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy’s breast.

But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.

In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people. From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage.

As I listened to those songs, in memory’s eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle-deep through the mire of shell-pocked roads, to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory.

Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as we soughtº the way and the light and the truth.º And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, againº the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those broilingº suns ofº relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropicalº disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.

Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory — always victory, always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of Duty, Honor, Country.

The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral law and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promoted for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong. The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training: sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death, he disposes those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in His own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the divine help which alone can sustain him. However hard the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind. º

You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite spheres and missiles markº a beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind.º In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and asº yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheardº synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purifyº sea water for our drink; of mining the ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundreds of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of spaceships to the Moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations;ºd of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; ofº such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.

And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purposes,º all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishment;º but you are the ones who are trained to fight. Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.

Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men’s minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation’s war guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice. Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government: whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should be; these great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.

You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation’s destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.

The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray,º would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”c

The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished — tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory alwaysº I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.

Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.

I bid you farewell.

“Leaders can fail all on their own but can only succeed with the entire team.”

Questions to ask yourself as a leader:

Leaders are recruiters. You need to know how to find good people and build strong teams. You need to understand what the team needs to accomplish and which players are needed to get it done.

Why would the best people want to work on your team?
– example – google and netflix have “10 reasons why you should work for us”

How do you know when you’ve found a good person?

Can you find the great people who aren’t looking for you?
– example – needing to look outside, for example, southwest goes to schools to find burnt out teachers for stewardesses, or burnt out police officers and fireman for baggage handlers.

Are you as tough on yourself as you are on the people you work with?
– it is all about humility. It is about the collective brain and resources of the group. You do not have to be the smartest person in the room.

Growing up, my parents often did spank me, for very serious things, but most things were worth correcting but weren’t serious enough for a spanking. There is a place for strong verbal reprimand, but I was raised through reason, so I think that drips through to who I am and how I lead today.

I remember as a kid, there was a time when I really wanted to get an earring. My Dad thought that was a ridiculous idea. He could have yelled at me and told me that was the dumbest thing I ever heard. He could have made sure I was never able to physically get to the mall to do it. Or he could have done what he did, and just talked me through it. He asked, “so why do you want one?” and the conversation went like this:

Dad: So why do you want one?
me age 9: because its cool. Sean has one and look at how cool he looks. Vanilla ice has one too, and he’s super cool.
Dad: ok, I can see why you think they are cool. Well, so you think computers are cool right?
me: yeah, I love them. obviously. you know that.
Dad: yeah. well, are you going to get a job someday working with computers?
me: yeah, that would be awesome.
Dad: Do you think they will like your earing at the interview?
me: hmm. I can take it off.
Dad: Can you take away the hole that it is going to make in your ear too?
me: hmmm. no.
Dad: Well, if you don’t want that earring then, why should you want it now? Once you do this, you can’t go back to not having a hole in your ear.
me: ok Dad. I see what you mean.

It’s funny for me to think back to that. I currently still don’t have an earing in either ear. I can’t believe I thought vanilla ice was that cool. My dad chose to believe that I was smart enough to figure it out. I’ve tried to live that way too, believing that with some talking through things, most people that we work with in our lives are smart enough to see things for what we believe they are, and if they aren’t that way, perhaps we will learn from them on how things really are.

Am I against really coming down on something if it warrants it? No, I do believe there are times when being extremely stern, especially if we are talking about safety issues, may be necessary. But I think what my father has taught me about leadership is that we need to take care to teach without breaking the person. Just like Steven Covey talks about the story of the Goose with the Golden Eggs, we need to treat people that we work with carefully, and find ways to keep things working without killing them off to try to get more out of them. I try to make it a rule of mine to talk to someone about an issue in private at least once, and normally after things have cooled down, before ever having to confront them publicly. Life has a lot of lessons to learn. Good leaders and good friends should be there to help us learn them. At least that’s what I think my Dad has always tried to instill in me. Here’s a few things from proverbs that came to mind when I was thinking about all of this.

Proverbs 15:31 – The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise.

Proverbs 15:5 – A fool despiseth his father’s instruction: but he that regardeth reproof is prudent.

Proverbs 17:10 – A reproof entereth more into a wise man than an hundred stripes into a fool.

He compares this to the literature found in the other 150 years of our US history. He classifies this as “Character Ethic”. The focus of those books tend to be on and I quote, “things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty and the Golden Rule.” Basically, it is centered around the understanding that there are bed rock foundations to success which are deep in who you are and not what you do. I think he says in it that “Who you are screams so much louder than what you say”.

This shift seemed to happen after World War I. Alright, lunch is about to end, so its time to hit the phones again, but I definitely wanted to get to share this before I forgot. Would love to hear people’s thoughts on this.