The tactics of the Indians [during the Little Bighorn campaign] resulted in their doing to Custer exactly what Custer had planned tactically to do to them. And they were able to do it because they had the leaders, the arms and the overwhelming forces, none of which facts were known or appreciated by the Seventh Cavalry. Their numbers had been underestimated; their leadership and fighting capacity undervalued; their superiority in arms not even suspected. The Seventh Cavalry paid the penalty for national stupidity.
Lt. Col. W. A. Graham
And so begins the book, The Genius of Sitting Bull, 13 Heroic Strategies for Today's Business Leaders
National stupidity. That's a good phrase for it. It's a few days after the latest election in my home state of California. The state is facing a budget deficit of $24 billion. In human terms, that means the state is shortly going to run out of money. Our governor says teachers will lose their jobs, firefighters will be laid off and college students will not get grants for tuition this fall.
Murphy & Snell, the authors of the Sitting Bull book say,
What has all of this got to do with Sitting Bull and our current mess in California and the nation? Let's take Custer as an example of the same type of management that got us into this mess, since, at least in his case, we can see how it turned out.
What mess are we in? Well, in California and the nation we have spent money we didn't have for a very long time. We did this as individuals, states and a country. People took out loans they had no way to repay in the belief that their house would rise in value, they would sell it for a profit and pay back the loan. They believed this because they did not know the facts. Like Custer, they had 'advance scouts' telling them the signs that the facts were different than they believed, but they refused to listen.
Sycophant. There's a word you don't hear every day but it is very appropriate here. A sycophant is someone who flatters his superiors, who hides from them information they may find unpleasant and never disagrees with them. There are a lot of other less kind words for people like this and our organizations are full of them.
How did state government in California get so over budget and why did the people refuse to allow any changes to bail them out?
One way is lack of honesty, generosity, fortitude and courage, those virtues which were the foundation of traditional Sioux culture. Let's take the most recent fiasco. The state has a budget crisis. We are going to cut teachers, the police force, fire department and grants to students.
Why those areas?
Large organizations have project managers, administrative assistants, "communication specialists" who produce the department newsletter, benefits specialists who help employees with completing health care forms, and a hundred other job descriptions. If each of those areas cut one position, yes, it might be inconvenient to get department news quarterly instead of monthly, to have to wait to get your office supplies or trip scheduled. HOWEVER, it probably is not nearly as inconvenient as having 35 first-graders in a classroom or having your house burn down or not being able to go to college.
Let's look at how the failure of traditional Dakota values led to these cuts:
Generosity - Sitting Bull sacrificed along with his people. He ate what they ate, slept where they slept. Custer rode while his men walked, ate while they went hungry. Without having shared in their hardships he was not fully aware of how unprepared his army was in terms of arms and supplies.
In California, our "leaders" are asking the people, both taxpayers and those relying on tax-funded programs, to sacrifice while there has been relatively little discussion of cutting budgets for the numerous boards and commissions filled by political appointments or cutting the support staff who provide services to government employees. Because Sitting Bull lived among his people, living the same lifestyle they did, he understood them. He understood their needs, what they could and could not do. Since the ballot measures in California have failed, I have seen many reports from politicians and career government officials who claimed that ,
It was, in fact, those in government who didn't get it. They did not get two facts, due to their disconnect with the people. The first fact is that the public sees a lot of places where government services can be cut that bureaucrats don't consider, because those positions, like having a personal secretary, benefit them, not their people. The second fact is that people just don't have the extra money. After my husband passed away, there were a couple of tough years while I paid off the funeral bills, medical bills and others that had stacked up. My daughters would occasionally argue with me that they NEEDED a new backpack, or new Nike running shoes because it was for school, or the track team. They somehow thought if they just made me see that it was for a good cause, that they could get me to pay for it. What they failed to understand is that if I just did not have the money, it did not matter how badly they needed it, I could not get it for them. Now, that is excusable when you are a child of ten or fifteen, but the failure of our state leaders is for the same reason, they just don't understand the position of the average person. Unlike my daughters, our state government leaders are old enough to know better.
HOWEVER, this lack of generosity is not limited to politicians. Over the years, I have reviewed many grant proposals for services that were just not needed. Disability services - how could we be so stingy as to deny services to people unable to care for themselves? Reading the proposals that began, "Everyone deserves a home of their own, eating dinner with a tablecloth on the table..."
In one grant review, I stopped and asked my fellow reviewers,
In the latest round of stimulus grants, I heard complaints that money was not being given to arts organizations, instead going in large bulk to the National Institutes on Health.
Yes, art is wonderful and every time I go into a museum or some beautiful public place like the Los Angeles public library, it reinforces my faith in the goodness and generosity of humanity. If you have $300 million and you give $10 million to build a museum, I think that is fabulous.
If you don't have a job or any skills and you think that one hundred of your neighbors should each pay $1,000 so you can have a house, I think you are very selfish. If you think your neighbors should each pay $500 so you can have a job using your talents and preference, then you're selfish.
Lt. Col. W. A. Graham
And so begins the book, The Genius of Sitting Bull, 13 Heroic Strategies for Today's Business Leaders
National stupidity. That's a good phrase for it. It's a few days after the latest election in my home state of California. The state is facing a budget deficit of $24 billion. In human terms, that means the state is shortly going to run out of money. Our governor says teachers will lose their jobs, firefighters will be laid off and college students will not get grants for tuition this fall.
Murphy & Snell, the authors of the Sitting Bull book say,
"The ultimate tragedy of Custer and leaders like him is that they repay their societies for the privileges they've received by damaging them. Like so many of America's Eighties generation of "me-first" leaders, Custer symbolizes the greed and insensitivity of predatory values. Leaders like Custer measure success in simple, one-dimensional terms with such tangible rulers as position or money. As a result, they pursue single-minded objectives that distort their own personal missions and those of their organizations, corrupting the very foundation of leadership. Existing only for themselves and the sycophants who protect them, they create a black hole of selfishness that ultimately collapses in on itself. Just as Michael R. Milken's selfish vision bankrupted Drexel Burnham Lambert, destroyed the financial lives of thousands of individual investors, and cost the FDIC and American taxpayers billions through the sale of phony junk bonds, Custer's vision of personal glory at any price cost the Seventh Cavalry their lives."
What has all of this got to do with Sitting Bull and our current mess in California and the nation? Let's take Custer as an example of the same type of management that got us into this mess, since, at least in his case, we can see how it turned out.What mess are we in? Well, in California and the nation we have spent money we didn't have for a very long time. We did this as individuals, states and a country. People took out loans they had no way to repay in the belief that their house would rise in value, they would sell it for a profit and pay back the loan. They believed this because they did not know the facts. Like Custer, they had 'advance scouts' telling them the signs that the facts were different than they believed, but they refused to listen.
Sycophant. There's a word you don't hear every day but it is very appropriate here. A sycophant is someone who flatters his superiors, who hides from them information they may find unpleasant and never disagrees with them. There are a lot of other less kind words for people like this and our organizations are full of them.
How did state government in California get so over budget and why did the people refuse to allow any changes to bail them out?
One way is lack of honesty, generosity, fortitude and courage, those virtues which were the foundation of traditional Sioux culture. Let's take the most recent fiasco. The state has a budget crisis. We are going to cut teachers, the police force, fire department and grants to students.
Why those areas?
Large organizations have project managers, administrative assistants, "communication specialists" who produce the department newsletter, benefits specialists who help employees with completing health care forms, and a hundred other job descriptions. If each of those areas cut one position, yes, it might be inconvenient to get department news quarterly instead of monthly, to have to wait to get your office supplies or trip scheduled. HOWEVER, it probably is not nearly as inconvenient as having 35 first-graders in a classroom or having your house burn down or not being able to go to college.
Let's look at how the failure of traditional Dakota values led to these cuts:
Generosity - Sitting Bull sacrificed along with his people. He ate what they ate, slept where they slept. Custer rode while his men walked, ate while they went hungry. Without having shared in their hardships he was not fully aware of how unprepared his army was in terms of arms and supplies.
In California, our "leaders" are asking the people, both taxpayers and those relying on tax-funded programs, to sacrifice while there has been relatively little discussion of cutting budgets for the numerous boards and commissions filled by political appointments or cutting the support staff who provide services to government employees. Because Sitting Bull lived among his people, living the same lifestyle they did, he understood them. He understood their needs, what they could and could not do. Since the ballot measures in California have failed, I have seen many reports from politicians and career government officials who claimed that ,
"The public just didn't get it. They thought we were bluffing about these cuts in programs coming. These cuts are really going to happen."
It was, in fact, those in government who didn't get it. They did not get two facts, due to their disconnect with the people. The first fact is that the public sees a lot of places where government services can be cut that bureaucrats don't consider, because those positions, like having a personal secretary, benefit them, not their people. The second fact is that people just don't have the extra money. After my husband passed away, there were a couple of tough years while I paid off the funeral bills, medical bills and others that had stacked up. My daughters would occasionally argue with me that they NEEDED a new backpack, or new Nike running shoes because it was for school, or the track team. They somehow thought if they just made me see that it was for a good cause, that they could get me to pay for it. What they failed to understand is that if I just did not have the money, it did not matter how badly they needed it, I could not get it for them. Now, that is excusable when you are a child of ten or fifteen, but the failure of our state leaders is for the same reason, they just don't understand the position of the average person. Unlike my daughters, our state government leaders are old enough to know better.
HOWEVER, this lack of generosity is not limited to politicians. Over the years, I have reviewed many grant proposals for services that were just not needed. Disability services - how could we be so stingy as to deny services to people unable to care for themselves? Reading the proposals that began, "Everyone deserves a home of their own, eating dinner with a tablecloth on the table..."
In one grant review, I stopped and asked my fellow reviewers,
"Says who? I don't own my own home and I don't understand why I should pay for you to have one."
In the latest round of stimulus grants, I heard complaints that money was not being given to arts organizations, instead going in large bulk to the National Institutes on Health.
Yes, art is wonderful and every time I go into a museum or some beautiful public place like the Los Angeles public library, it reinforces my faith in the goodness and generosity of humanity. If you have $300 million and you give $10 million to build a museum, I think that is fabulous.
If you don't have a job or any skills and you think that one hundred of your neighbors should each pay $1,000 so you can have a house, I think you are very selfish. If you think your neighbors should each pay $500 so you can have a job using your talents and preference, then you're selfish.
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