Past Track to the Future

These were brash fellows. What's amazing is the pleasure they took in playing a tough, tough game. I love the story you tell of Lincoln. As a young lawyer, Lincoln handed the Illinois Central Railroad Company a bill for $2,000. When they rejected it, he submitted a revised bill for $5,000. When the corporation refused to pay that, he sued them and won. You can almost hear him laughing, like the tortoise who won the race against the hare. That's a strategy worthy of Machiavelli.

Another brash hero is George Washington Carver. He was born a slave. He got himself educated, and he taught the South how to farm. He told the plantation owners, Cotton will destroy your land. You have to start planting peanuts or soybeans. The nitrogen will save the soil. Nobody believed him at first. He saved the economy of the South.

Today, we hear a lot about the importance of doing what you love -- which doesn't actually sound like a formula for turning out heroes. Carver didn't necessarily do what he loved, nor did Lincoln. The heroes you write about seem to be possessed by doing what they have to do, and doing it at great personal sacrifice.

In Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (Simon & Schuster, 1996), I quote a stirring resolution from explorer Meriwether Lewis. He said, "This day I completed my thirty first year. . . . I reflected that I had as yet done very little . . . to further the happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. [I resolve] in the future to live for mankind as I have heretofore lived for myself."

Do you see around you today leaders of the caliber of Lincoln and Dodge and the others?

I see their qualities in William Cohen and in Colin Powell. These men combine the qualities of knowledge, skill, honesty, perseverance, and intense curiosity, which is so important because it means that these leaders know more than others.

That's what makes them the equals of Grenville Dodge, who was a Union general and could be called America's greatest railroad builder. It was said of him that wherever he sat was the head of the table. Lincoln is in a class by himself; there is no Lincoln today. But Dwight Eisenhower, for example, had an insatiable curiosity for details. In the war, he always asked about the weather report -- not just what the forecast was, but how his people came up with the forecast. If he hadn't questioned the weather, his landing at Omaha Beach would have proven to be incorrect, and he would not have landed troops there. You never know when small details will become the determining factor.

What makes people great leaders is an ability to communicate. Eisenhower was a great communicator. He said, "Our job is to make the world safe for democracy for all ages to come." That is a stirring, visionary point of view.

There is one other quality: a sense of the future. Lincoln could imagine a transcontinental railroad when there had never been such a thing, when no one knew the sound of a train whistle in the West.

You are a marvelous storyteller, and business is now recognizing the value of storytelling in marketing, in scenario planning, and in defining a product for funding. How did you learn to tell such well-crafted and compelling stories? And what's the key to telling a great story?

I had to teach kids who came to class early in the morning and who were always in danger of falling asleep. They had other jobs to go to after class. I learned the value of concentrating on people, on their motivations and challenges. I learned to tell a story chronologically, never revealing the end of the story until the end. That's what keeps people interested. You have to focus on the human motivations behind the story.

Alexander the Great went into battles carrying Homer's Iliad. John F. Kennedy hummed the theme song from Camelot. Martin Luther King Jr. was obsessed with Gandhi. And has anyone ever told Steve Jobs that he is not John Lennon (who in turn thought he was Jesus)? The great leaders seem to wear the mythic adornments of historic leaders, or they identify with another time. If you were talking to GE president and chairman-elect Jeffrey Immelt, who is rare among corporate leaders in that he proudly admits to reading nearly a book a week, which historical book would you add to his reading list?

The formative work is Richard Rhodes's The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 1986), his book on the Manhattan Project. That's the defining story for business. But I would also recommend biographies of Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie. Those are the stories of how people got things done. They will be of help to people who are building the future.