Memorial Day Sacrifice

To start I would like to remember and honor the military personnel who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country this Memorial Day weekend.

This Memorial Day weekend has certainly not started out as safe as we would have hope for. As I awoke this morning, again I read the fatal reports from two different districts, at times this can seem like our efforts are without recompense. I will assure you that is not the case, we must keep up the good fight against drunk and drugged drivers, while assuring that Tennesseans are utilizing their restraint devices, that is their best defense in the event of a serious crash. As the Colonel stated, as leaders, we must get our hands around the distracted driver issue, so we must find a way to

This understanding does not come automatically. We make a conscious choice to challenge our assumptions and models. And usually, we do so as the result of a failure. This has been true from the time we first tried to walk or ride a bicycle. We fall down, it hurts, and we try another approach. An amazing number of high-ranking executives report that early failures in their careers taught them lessons that ultimately led to their success. Failure provides a motivation for organizations to learn,

Not necessarily. The reality is that while a success (or a string of successes) may mean you’re on the right track, you can’t assume this to be true without further testing, experimentation, and reflection. You should use success to breed more success by understanding it. Consider Jobs’s decision to launch the iPhone, learn from that experience, and apply that knowledge to launch the iPad. Jobs and others at Apple were undoubtedly wary of plunging ahead with the iPad first because of the failure of Apple’s Newton tablet in the 1990s. In a brilliant move, they recognized that a touchphone would be easier to launch, given the existing smartphone market, making it the ideal vehicle for Apple to learn about and perfect touch devices.

This example points to a better model for learning, one in which failure and success are on equal footing and both trigger further investigation that helps us revise our assumptions, models, and