The Leading o' the Green....

Happy St. Paddy's Day to all!

St. Patrick has a fond place in my heart, not only because I'm Irish, but because he's the patron saint of my ever-loving brother.

Pondering leadership and the Irish reminds me of Thomas Cahill's wonderful book, How the Irish Saved Civilization. As we live in a time when many leaders (read: CEO's) rationalize that their net value to the company is over 400 times that of general "line staff" employees, a passage from Mr. Cahill's book bears repeating at length:

"Perhaps history is always divided into Romans and Catholics--or better, catholics. The romans are the rich and powerful who run things their way and must always acrue more because they instinctively believe that there will never be enough to go around; the catholics, as their name implies, are universalists who instinctively believe that all of humanity makes one family, that every human being is an equal child of God, and that God will provide. The twenty-first century, prophesied Malraux, will be spiritual or it will not be. If our civilization is to be save--forget our civilization...if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints."
(emphasis added)


In these days of the Senate having recently passed a 2.8 trillion budget that projects $350 billion in deficits for this year and the next; with GM just announcing $10.6 billion in losses last year; and with Sherron Watkins, the former VP of Enron who testified this week that her concerns about accounting irregularites in what was the 7th largest company in the U.S. were ignored....

truer words were never spoken.