Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand

yet another business book on the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

Podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting, and analyzing the great

books of the Western canon. You know, those

books from Jane Austen to Shakespeare and everything else in

between that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in high

school. We do this for our listeners, the owner, the

entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn't have the time

to read, dissect, analyze, and leverage insights from

literature to execute leadership best practices in the

confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now

inhabit. Welcome to the rescuing of Western

Civilization at the intersection of literature

and leadership. Welcome to the Leadership Lessons from

the Great Books Podcast. Welcome to the Beginning

of the Next Historical High.

But before I get into why this is the beginning

of the next historical high, let me hit you listeners with

some statistics to start off this

new year. According to the National Literacy

Institute, 21% of adults in the United States were

illiterate in 2024

54% of adults have a literacy rate

below a sixth grade reading level. 20%

of adults are below a fifth grade reading

level. Now. Literary

statistics matter a lot to me as I host

a literary and leadership podcast because they

are a bellwether, usually for other more

substantive and systemic problems,

from voting for someone for the local city council to

avoiding being fooled by the products of an online bot farm.

Being able to read the words on the page or on

the phone is important. But even more

important than being able to read the words on the page is the ability to

understand those words and to be able to make meaning from

the words and make decisions from the meaning behind the

words we understand, and even the

ones we don't understand. Nothing

begins without people understanding the words they're reading and

being able to argue and discuss

and contemplate the meaning of those

words. But there's one other area

where we need to have deep

literacy, and I'm not talking about critical thinking here. Critical

thinking comes after literacy and

even after comprehension. We

need the ability to make plans for the future

based on the meaning of the words we

read, the words we comprehend, the

meaning that we seek to understand.

Why is this important? Why am I talking about this right now?

Well, during times of chaos, during times of disruption, during times of a

shifting consensus in a dynamic country like the

United States of America, where I live, making meaning of

words matters quite a bit in the pursuit of defining,

developing, and determining the the nature, depth, and breadth

of problems, the meaning of words

and the ability to Understand the meaning of words becomes even more critical to

track and determine in the transition from a time of chaos

into a time of historical prosperity and

peace. There's an

idea in business around

signal and noise, and words

can be both the signal and the noise. But literacy,

comprehension, and critical thinking, these three are

the tools that we use to separate the signal from

the noise.

Now, I'm going to use a word here or a term here,

and I want you to. I want you to hook onto this one.

The transition from a historical low of chaos and collapse

to a historical high of prosperity and construction

could be defined by the term, by the

words golden age.

But how you comprehend that term, what meaning you make

from it, well, you might need some help

with that part.

A couple of years ago, I expressed the frustration that I have

with our constant mastication over problems without

moving people towards solutions to problems.

Over the last couple of years on this podcast, I have taken time to, at

the end of each of our episodes to discuss with our guests

the solutions or the potential solutions to leadership problems

that are present in our society and culture.

Here at the close of the fourth turning,

which I suspected the fourth turning was beginning to close

back in 2023,

this ongoing frustration over the constant

chewing over of problems led me to cover books

with guests like Shop Class as Soulcraft by

Matthew Crawford, the Omni Americans by Albert Murray,

as well as Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald and

1984 by George Orwell.

These books, along with many others, opens the

door to allow me to talk with my

fellow guests and to talk with you as listeners about the problem

of respecting the followers you have as a leader,

the problem of a return to collectivist thinking,

and not in the way that Lenin or Marx would define it, and

resurrecting such collectivist or collective or communal

thinking from the rubble of the idolatry of individualistic

thinking. These books opened the door to me

being able to talk about putting aside personal trauma in order to

develop other people. And these

books opened the door to me being able to talk with guests about how

to develop serious speech that would

demonstrate the depth of serious thinking

that a leader and quite frankly, everybody should have.

We talked about these problems and we proposed

solutions. And in each one of these areas, along with many

others, we propose solutions that we covered on the show last season.

We actually talked about solutions, some

radical, some more pedestrian, but all

solution based. The guests that we

had actively explored all those potential solutions

and engaged with these ideas in the realm of I

ideas, which of course is what a podcast I believe

fundamentally is for and

now, in 2026, starting the fifth season of the

Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, we are going

to level up yet again and we're going to begin to

explore ideas. Not only those ideas that

lead to solutions, but also ideas

of restoration in preparation

for a future that I believe we are not

quite yet prepared for.

Whether that is spiritually, morally,

ethically, much less materially,

scientifically or even

biologically. We will be

doing this. We will be holding this

conversation around restoration and preparation for

the future through exploring essays like the Great Instauration

by Francis Bacon. And we will go

through there all the Way to east of Eden

by John Steinbeck. We will wind our way

through A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion, and

we'll talk about the Great book Ben Hur A Tale of the Christ

by Lew Wallace. And towards the end of this

year, we will end up in the space of the U.S. army and Marine

Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual edited by General David

Petraeus, Sarah Sewell and John Nagel. And finally, we

will close out the year by exploring Tolkien and

the children of Huron.

We will use these books to connect with literate leaders

with high comprehension, deep compassion,

and literate leaders who have impatience,

who are experiencing impatience with the speed

of the coming historical high,

and of course who are looking for ideas,

looking for solutions to what restoration

would potentially look like.

So here's a few questions to sort of set yourself up

for the upcoming podcasting

season. Why do smart leaders read Voltaire instead of the

Harvard Business Review? What are the implications

of addressing diversity challenges as a conflict of visions

rather than as a world ending existential crisis?

What is a Tim show? And why does knowing what it is matter

to building for the good rather than just maintaining a position

in stasis? And what is the

importance of decentralized decision making?

I am fascinated by the difference between

what questions and why questions. Why

questions tend to be problem oriented and the

endless pressing of the algorithm in our

lives has flooded us with why questions,

why this, why that, and why the other.

But what questions are solution focused?

What is the problem? What can we do about it?

What are the options? These

types of questions, questions that begin with the word what

are more interesting than asking endless why? Questions that

merely serve to drive or

feed the algorithm. These are the questions

that drive thinking about solutions and implementing

those solutions rather than continuing to drive a problem

based narrative. The lessons we can learn from

reading the great Books have been the primary focus of this show for

the last five years and great

books Ask and Answer what

Questions this

year we are moving with several partners and current

and former guests into two areas of

great impact and of great interest in 2026 that will

further allow us to explore the answers to what questions.

We are starting to bring together ideas we've explored on this show

since season one into writing a book series

with contributions from current and former guests, focusing

on our discussion of the potential

leadership models that arise when you read

books written by Jane Austen, plays written by William

Shakespeare, books written by John Steinbeck and Ernest

Hemingway, or even solutions to life

proposed by Booker T. Washington and

many, many others. It turns out that a

lot of these books have the

answers to the why embedded in the

what deeply in

narrative structures.

We're also exploring

a project, and I'm not going to give the name of it right now, but

we're exploring a project, developing it

with other partners to leverage the insights, the commentary

and the conclusions from the podcast

episodes we've done over the last few years,

moving those into a working leadership

education platform. This idea

is still in its genesis, it's still

in the planning stages, it's still in the paper and pencil

sort of mode. And so stay tuned for

more details as we move this project

forward.

I once heard years ago as an entrepreneur, and I've taken this

throughout my entire life, that and my

career actually, that it takes 10 years to become a

quote unquote, overnight success, whether you're an

entrepreneur or a business owner. Over the course of my

life, over the course of my adulthood, I've. I've taken on

a lot of other hard things. And you know what I found out? I found

out that it takes 10 to 12 years to get your black belt in the

martial art of jiu jitsu. It takes 10,000 hours or

10 years to move from being a novice to beginning to

starting to be a master at any pursuit worth

taking up. Anything worth doing takes

about 10 years to begin to get even remotely good at

the same thing. It turns out with

podcasting, I'm heading into the fifth year of

hosting this show. Hosting a podcast

like this, with a lot of moving parts involves learning, developing and executing

the skills of writing, speaking, recording, editing,

marketing, and finally distributing.

I think at this point I'm about halfway through

a 10 year long process to get

better, to move from

novice to beginning to be a master.

And underneath it all, underneath all of this journey, underneath

all this process, underneath all of this writing

and speaking and recording and editing and marketing and distributing,

the most valuable skill. Well, not even

valuable skill, the most valuable thing I'm earning

consistently by showing up week in and week out every week

is is is permission.

The permission to speak into your ears and the

permission to have your retention to build a future.

To sincerely build a future. I think

we want to actually leave for the people

coming after us. I look

forward to continuing to earn the

ears and attention of some of the most literate leaders, visionaries,

builders and executors who listen to this show in

2026. And I thank

you for what you have given me so

far. Happy New Year

and welcome to the next historical high.

And well, that's it for

me. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

Podcast today. And now that you've made it this far,

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other good ones out there. At least that's

what I've heard. All right, well,

that's it for me.