William Deresiewicz has published a recent speech he gave to the plebe class at West Point in this month's The American Scholar. Mr. Dereesiewicz is a former professor at Yale, one of the most prominent literary critiques in the U.S. and often controversial in his writings. In the American Scholar article "Solitude and Leadership" he shares some very thoughtful insights on leadership, thinking and bureaucracies. His major points are summarized below:
- The best people in a bureaucracy (not a pejorative term for WD) are stuck in middle management and the senior people who lead got there because they could get along with other people and not rock the boat.
- Such leaders have created a complacent U.S. with a "crisis of leadership" regardless of the institution where they are in charge, e.g. the U.S. military, General Motors, etc. American leaders today, trained to succeed in bureaucracies, think about how to do things and do not question often enough the value in doing something or the implicit moral values underlying an objective.
- What the U.S. lacks today are thinkers, people with vision who think things through for themselves and then act on their conclusions.
- Multi-tasking, the great pursuit of youth, interferes with quality thinking; a recent scientific study not cited by WD confirms this point.
- "...by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play", that's what produces quality thinking; the ideas of others obtained through media, whether it be social media, television or newspapers, probably corrupt this process.
- Time alone is probably the best way to achieve quality thinking.
