The Road to Someplace Better: From the Segregated South to Harvard Business School and Beyond Review

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The Road to Someplace Better: From the Segregated South to Harvard Business School and Beyond ReviewA line-by-line, precept-by-precept portrayal of the intricacies of growing up materially poor and disadvantaged, but concurrently internalizing the need for discipline, good work habits, & core Christian values. These all produced inner strengths that sustained Lillian beyond those formative years; these traits compelled her to keep pushing forward & upward until she exhausted the challenges that landed her at her ultimate destiny; or, until she reached the ceiling of her potential ascribed and achieved talents.

The book demonstrates how one can use obstacles & barriers as stepping stones to higher levels of achievement & success; one important object lesson in the book is that regardless of how dismal one's past, we can't assume that that individual will not effectively use the "rod that's in his/her hand,", i.e., how their foundation will manifest in adulthood as one implements the gifts/skills endowed at birth. Also, it is an object lesson from the African proverb that, "it takes a village to raise a child." The importance of maintaining active family relationships, church connections, peer acquaintances, provided her resources to always return to & get re-energized before resuming the intense pursuit to the challenge of her per-ordained destiny.

Her memoir will be a reward to her family, educators, religious leaders, and others who poured their abilities/skills/talents into her during her formative years; which, in turn, served as her plumbline once she graduated from their tutelage. The details of her memoir demonstrated that our life's journey is not a one-person show, i.e., we're not islands unto ourselves - but involves many contributors.
No doubt this memoir will be a special blessing to her grand-and-great grandchildren, i.e., this generation of their roots will be in place always to inspire, encourage, and reinforce boldness and a "can-do" attitude. The memoirs to her family might be compared to what the Bible is to Christians, i.e., "it's in the word."
Finally, no doubt staying connected to her geographical roots served as a double-edged sword - re-energizing, but also re-enforcing a determination to move "fast and far" for fear of becoming entrapped in the once mundane life on the farm. I recommend that this book be found in all households where children reside whose parents desire that they excel in the 21st-century economy.
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Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership (Jb Warren Bennis) Review

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Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership (Jb Warren Bennis) Review
I have read and reviewed most (if not all) of Warren Bennis' books and most of his articles. This book is different from anything he has written previously because Bennis allows his student to accompany him on a journey back in time. Written with the considerable assistance of Patricia Ward Biederman (who was also centrally involved with earlier works such as Organizing Genius, Transparency, and The Essential Bennis), this volume combines a wealth of historical information with Bennis' comments on those he believes to have had the greatest influence on both his personal and professional development as well as reminiscences on those experiences, events, successes and especially failures, defining moments, and cultural forces that serve as a frame-of-reference for the evolution of his personal and professional relationships.
Bennis was born on March 5, 1925, and grew up in Westwood, NJ. However, he does not follow a chronological sequence when developing his narrative. In the first chapter, "The Crucible of War," he focuses on his World War Two experiences in the U.S. Army at age 19, "the rawest second lieutenant in the U.S. Army." Following the conclusion of the war, he realized that he didn't want his old life back and probably could not have had it even if he wanted it. "I wanted to invent a new one." The next chapter focuses on his years as a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The contrasts between the indescribable horrors of the battlefield and the pastoral innocence and serenity of a liberal college campus are especially striking. Although deeply grateful for the experiences both worlds provided (especially what he learned from mentors such as Captain Bessinger and Douglas McGregor) but ever restless, Bennis and his newlywed wife (the former Lucille Rose) relocated to the Boston area where he continued his formal education at MIT.
To this point and indeed until the conclusion of the book, the reader tags along as a companion to whom Bennis confides without hesitation but with selection of what (then or now) most interests him as well as what perplexes, irritates, and even angers him. At times, at least to this reader, he seems 85, at other times the age he was in a given situation or stage of his journey. The nature of the memoir is that it consists of what the memory recalls, to be sure, but also what it selects to share. Bennis remembers more than he shares, for obvious reasons, but the accumulative effect is one of candor. He maintains an informal, almost conversational tone with his reader without seeming disingenuous or self-serving.
He discusses his year abroad studying at the London School of Economics, his renewed association with MIT and the intellectual community in Cambridge, his involvement with the National Training Laboratories and its T-groups, the Institute for Management and IMEDE in Lausanne, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Southern California; also time on the faculties of Harvard and Boston University, the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), INSEAD and IMD. He also discusses his service as chairman of the Advisory Board of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's Kennedy School, as a visiting professor of leadership at the University of Exeter (UK) and as a senior fellow at UCLA's School of Public Policy and Social Research.
If there were a Mt. Rushmore monument for the business world, Bennis would probably be among the honorees (surely joined by Peter Drucker and hopefully by one of my intellectual heroines, Mary Parker Follett). Although Bennis shares a number of personal details, such as those concerning his various marriages, I have no interest in them as a reviewer of this book but mention those disclosures merely to suggest that -as is also true of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln - Warren Bennis is an imperfect human being.
As the title of this review suggests, I very much admire his insatiable curiosity that continues to explore and his sense of wonder that continues to encounter delight. With book in hand, and as an eager companion, I hope to share at least some of the new adventures that await this pilgrim who is "still surprised."
To those who share my high regard for this book, I also recommend other memoirs such as Peter Drucker's Adventures of a Bystander, Andrew Grove's Swimming Across, Alfred Sloan's My Years with General Motors, and John Whitehead's A Life in Leadership.Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership (Jb Warren Bennis) Overview

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