Vonnegut grabs you. His books call out to you in a real voice. Slaughterhouse 5, his seminal novel, begins with the line, “All this happened, more or less.”  Immediately, you trust the voice and immediately you’re hooked.

But Vonnegut didn’t trip into his success or stumble into his style. He slaved over it. And, as Charles J. Shield’s new biography of Vonnegut, And So it Goes, shows us he paid a high price for it. In Vonnegut’s work ethic there’s a lesson for anyone who wants to improve their ability to chase down their dreams.

Vonnegut, born to a wealthy German-American family in Indianapolis, grew up knowing the value of hard work. His dad was a successful architect even though he had little love for the field and his uncle owned a hardware store that would rely on young Vonnegut’s retail talents during summer breaks.

When Vonnegut was old enough for college  he was shipped off to Cornell and told to learn science even though the field eluded his interests. He did poorly, but found happiness in writing columns of Cornell’s daily newspaper. His articles were filled with humor, wit, and a personality that was always opinionated, dissenting, and wry.

Vonnegut, however, was forced to drop out. His grades couldn’t cut it and he joined the war effort and enlisted in the Army as a private in 1942. He was captured in battle, starved, sent to a prison camp, and eventually shipped to Dresden to make nutritional syrup for pregnant mothers. While he was there he survived the Dresden firebombing and was charged with cleaning up its horrifying aftermath.

At the war’s end he returned to the states and joined the University of Chicago through the GI bill and started to study anthropology. However, his studies were cut short when his wife became pregnant and money became necessary.

Vonnegut started working as a beat reporter in Chicago and learned the effectiveness of short, quick, sentences, that were packed with information. He would later credit his newspaper days with the foundation of his literary style.

But beat reporting didn’t pay enough and couldn’t reliably put food on his family’s table so he moved to upstate New York and started working as a PR man for General Electric—on the recommendation of his brother.

While at GE Vonnegut quickly became disenchanted with his life and his job and resolved to become a writer. This is where most aspiring author’s stories stop—but Vonnegut persevered and spent most evenings in his hallway office banging away on his typewriter.

He wrote short stories exclusively and sent them to every big weekly in America. His tireless efforts went unrewarded for a nearly two years, but one of his stories was finally published after months of desperate writing.

The short story made him $700—the equivalent of two monthly paychecks from GE—and he promptly quit his job and resolved to become a full time writer. It was a risky and brave move. He was a relative unknown attempting to support his family on a career he was untested in.

Vonnegut rented an office and started writing furiously and had marginal successes over a number of years. His fortunes waned and waxed and his obsession with writing tried his young marriage—but he preserved and kept writing.

The rest of Vonnegut’s history is more public. His success, his divorce, and his popularity are common knowledge and his books are on most high school reading lists. What’s remarkable is Vonnegut’s early ability to bear down and work so tirelessly to achieve his goals.

Yet, Vonnegut wasn’t completely happy with his work and his success. In a telling anecdote told by Charles J. Shields—Vonnegut pulled down a musty dictionary from his library and asked Shields to look up, ‘Kerouac’. Shields did so and found an entry about Kerouac, his work, and his influence on the beat generation. Vonnegut then asked Shields to look up ‘Vonnegut’ for which there was no entry at all.

Vonnegut lamented.

Even till the end, Vonnegut tried to refine his work, his image, and his legacy. He was a great writer that did a great amount of work.

You also entered higher ed because you felt it wouldn’t be a pressure cooker and the ruthlessness of the private sector wouldn’t rear its head every time you made a mistake.

Well, things have changed.

In a world where AT&T can’t provide job security and the U.S. auto industry almost disappeared, we can’t assume that you favorite college or university will be there tomorrow.

For years higher ed has been dominated by two mantras. One for administrators: “Leave well enough alone and things will get done in their due time.” The other for academics: “Let’s have a faculty meeting.”

But now the clock is ticking.

Higher ed is no longer the proverbial, angelic, oasis amidst a sea of private-sector sharks (if it ever was). Today, higher-ed organizations must keep moving in order to stay afloat. The Ivy League right down to the smallest of community colleges can no longer be guided by the stars—they need leadership that is proactive, pragmatic, and aware that change is crucial. They need the type of leadership that gets things done.

First and foremost leaders in higher ed must understand the three reasons universities and colleges often resist change.

1. Intransigent culture: Leaders in higher ed must appreciate how to subtly move around the deep culture which has been celebrated and worked for so long. The very culture that has given higher ed its identity must now be adjusted.
2. Turf protection: Higher ed is an arena of turf and silos. In a world of minimum resources, zero-sum games, and department elimination, this is becoming more evident. We need leaders who have political competence and can mobilize around these issues.
3. Tension between administration & faculty: Traditionally, there has always been tension between administrators and faculty and each group quickly dismisses the other. Each has their own stereotypes of the other. It’s the false distinction between a stereotypical bureaucrat and a stereotypical academic. In a world where we want to increase shared services and shared missions, leaders must help administrators and faculty come together.

In the context of all this leaders within both the faculty and the administration must develop a degree of political competence. They must understand how to bring people together, mobilize around agendas, and sustain change.

A number of years ago, a colleague of mine told me, when assuming the chair of a large science department, “I don’t do politics.”

My answer was, “Don’t be a chairperson.”

The university is a maze of mixed interests, mixed agendas, and inconsistent visions. Political competence is the minimum we should ask of leaders in higher ed.

Dead Ideas Sometimes Come Back to Life: The Case of Education Reform

Most of the 1980s I spent writing and researching schools and organizations. My work culminated in an edited volume entitled Education Reform: Making Sense of It All which had a forward written by governor’s William Clinton and Thomas Kean.

In the 90s I decided that my time had come to move on. It seemed academia and practitioners were engaging in the education reform business and they were just repeating the same ideas over and over.

A few weeks ago someone asked me to reexamine the state of education reform and, what do you know?–the same debates are still raging. Merit pay versus the unified salary schedule. Career development, standards, participation is schools, teacher involvement, standardized testing, and the professionalization of teachers, etc., etc.

It’s been almost 30 years after Reagan gave his famous education reform speech and we’re still discussing the same constructs and the same ideas.

When will it stop? When will we at least repackage the debate?

But there is a critical lesson here for leaders who want to push for change in institutions and organizations: beware of new ideas. In reality, they may be dormant ideas coming back to life.

There’s always an interest in discussing old ideas. It’s easy and tempting. We’ve already developed the lingua franca. And, after a few tweaks, old ideas help us feel like we’re on the cutting edge—but that’s not enough.

As Cohen, March, and Olsen pointed out in the A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice—problems don’t search for solution. Instead, existing solutions somehow get linked up with emerging problems.

In the case of education reform we keep juggling the same set of problems and solutions within the bounded constraint of the Garbage Can Model.  In all organizational settings we must be sure that we break out our old habits. We can’t simply resurrect old ideas, shuffle them in a can, and hope they match emerging problems.

True change demands moving new ideas forward, expanding them, building on them, and throwing out those that don’t work.

Remember quality circles? Remember re-engineering? They had their heyday. But they now emerge as something else. So, just as people concerned with education reform should worry about not repeating old concepts and tired vocabulary so should all change leaders.

In order to be creative, we’d be wise to turn to Tham Khai Meng, Worldwide Creative Director of Ogilvy. In the video below he doesn’t talk about leadership. Or management. Or organizational behavior. He talks about the unnerving process of coming up with fresh ideas.

Next time you’re face-to-face with a challenge try Mr. Meng’s approach. Take a sheet of paper, draw boxes on it, and start to think.

But how was this even possible with such severe public backlash against the financial sector?

The answer is the strategic and tactical leadership from Henry Paulson which turned impossibility into solution. A request for information under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the Federal Reserve loaned 7.7 trillion dollars to US banks which allowed banks not only to stay afloat but also sustain profits.

There are four ways to push an agenda that has stalled in the face of opposition. You can convert your opponents, compromise, shave off parts of your plan to make it more accommodating, or you could attempt to ram it through. These first three options require patience and time, but with the survival of the US financial industry teetering on an edge—time was a luxury Paulson did not have. So he took the last option and proceeded to redefine what it meant to “ram” your plan through.

Ramming it through requires covering your base and making sure you have enough people in your corner to provide active support. Luckily, Paulson was put on a team with two leaders of the Federal Reserve and developed a strong relationship with Bernanke and Geithner because of it. In addition to the resources of the Fed behind him, Paulson was essentially given complete control over economic policy and with it, widespread popular acclaim.

But even with this much political clout, passing TARP proved difficult when countless numbers of Americans called their congressmen to reject the bill. Paulson realized that pushing for an even larger bailout through congress would be impossible. Having a bounded set of choices, his best option was to go to Bernanke, the “lender of last resort.” The Federal Reserve, however, typically makes emergency loans significantly more expensive than market value to discourage banks from reckless speculation. But because of Paulson’s special relationship with Bernanke and Geithner, the loans were given out at 0.01% interest.

Ramming an agenda through requires governing from the center which could lead to a sense that everything is being pushed by an inner circle. That is why keeping this loan program secret was top priority. The Treasury’s TARP investment would evaporate unless they were supported by additional loans. However, if Congress knew about the clandestine lending, they would have structured the lending programs very differently. Furthermore, if investors knew, they would have avoided banks that borrowed from the Fed and the banks that needed additional loans could have collapsed due to their reluctance to borrow.

Timing was critical to Paulson’s success and he knew the right moment to push his agenda. To prevent media detection most of the biggest transactions were carried out when everyone had their eyes on Congress at the end of 2008. JP Morgan received $59 billion to acquire Bear Sterns and Morgan Stanley took $107 billion that September — just to name a few. The secret was broken only after a two year lawsuit and a judicial order to release 29,000 Federal Reserve documents.

With the help of an amazing supporting cast, Stern revolutionized the business of sports. His use of aggressive marketing and expansion, made basketball more than just the sport you watched between the NFL and MLB season. Without David Stern there would be no modern NBA.

Sounds great right? Who wouldn’t love a story about a outstanding leader saving an authentically American sport from the ash-heap of history? But there is a downside. There is a negative to be found and in late 2011 it’s on display for everyone to see.

The current NBA lockout, which threatens to take with it the entire 2010-2011 NBA season, is not only a function of the players demanding a larger (or at least not a smaller) share of the billions of dollars the NBA earns but also a function of those same players wanting to separate the NBA from David Stern. It is really not so much a classic battle of player versus owner but more of a battle for the soul of the league itself. Most players and even a few owners have grown tired of being dictated to by Stern. No one can deny that Stern’s brilliance has made a whole lot of people rich and famous and perhaps it’s true that Stern is just trying to save the NBA from financial ruin down the road. If the economy stays in the gutter and the league can’t groom superstars to replace Lebron and Kobe, there is no guarantee that the NBA will continue to be the money making behemoth it is today.  But it seems to me that we are getting to a point where the animosity between the players and David Stern has overtaken the realities of the situation. The leader and institution have become far too entwined.

I doubt seriously that David Stern will walk away from this fight. In reality the odds are good that he will win in the end, it’s what he does. But going forward it’s clear that for the sake of the NBA as a whole David Stern, the leader, will either have to choose to separate himself from the institution or the institution will do it for him, if it survives.

The recent NBA lockout can teach us six lessons about how to better lead and pursue your agenda while negotiating with another party.

1. Know where they’re coming from. Make sure you know the resistance points of the other side. Neither side understood how far the other side was willing to go.

2. Don’t throw pebbles into the pond. Stern didn’t need to add fuel to the fire by delegitimizing the union (He’s quoted as saying: “The union decided in its infinite wisdom that the proposal would not be presented to membership [for a vote].”)  Insults only intensify short-term resistance.

3. Remember coalitions die and rarely get resurrected. Billy Hunter didn’t make the long-term implications clear to players. There might not be any more games (or paychecks) for a long time to come.

4. Keep your eye on the prize. Once you have an agreement, don’t get distracted by ‘system issues’ and red-tape details.

5. Lock yourself into finding a solution before you find yourself locked out. The NFL was able to avoid a lockout by staying focused on the core issues and taking the time to stay at the table.

6. Lay off the drama. Negotiations don’t end, like David Stern claimed, in a “nuclear winter.”

In the final analysis, leadership is about your capacity to move things ahead and create change while understanding that your leadership position demands you deal with minutia, but don’t get trapped by the little minuets between you and those you are negotiating with. It’s about your political and managerial competence.

Leadership is about making sure that when you charge ahead you don’t take them over the cliff.

We were just meeting for a cup of coffee on 7^th avenue, but the conversation quickly spilled into leadership. It usually does when business people meet academics.

“You guys don’t understand–we run a monster.  Everyday I worry about thousands of people,” said the CEO. “Try to do what I do and you’ll have a different concept of leadership!”

The debate began. The CEO declared that as a master of the universe he had unfathomable skills.

Does the size of the organization and the complexity of the organization necessitate a completely unique type of leadership? To put it differently, if you are the limo-driven CEO instead of the taxi-riding small-business guy or the subway-hitching first-level start-up entrepreneur, do you really have a different model of leadership in your head?

That was the gist of the discussion.

The young entrepreneur was talking about getting venture capital, trying to sell his ideas and get his foot in the door. The taxi-riding small-business guy talked about keeping his group together and getting their products to market without being overwhelmed by excess demand or limited resources. The CEO spent a disproportionate amount of time talking about keeping his VP’s moving along, his organization upbeat, and the board of directors off his neck.

Sounds like different types of leadership right?

No. Not at all.

It became clear that all of them were simply concerned with their capacity to move their ideas, keep people in their corners, and make sure they didn’t drop the ball. They were all concerned about the micro-skills of persuasion and  mobilizing.

In a taxi, in a limo, or in the subway, these leaders are thinking about the same type of leadership–it’s leadership with a small ‘l’ and it’s leadership as a specific set of tools.

Clearly each leader has a different agenda. The CEO has to balance multiple agendas of many stakeholders. The young entrepreneur has to push one or two agendas up the hill. And the small-business guy has to juggle his unique set of priorities to keep the ship moving. But in each case they need leadership that gives them the capacity to build and move things alone.

So, the important lesson: it’s about the nuts and bolts, about your micro skills of leadership no matter how big your organization is and no matter how small your responsibilities are. Whether you are limo-driven CEO, cab-hopping leader of a small business, or a start-up entrepreneur riding the subway, you essentially have to develop and maintain the same leadership skills.

Cain began by pleading ignorance for three of the alleged cases and downplaying the incident for the other claiming that he was only commenting that the women was “as tall as my [Herman Cain’s] wife… five feet tall.”  Two the accusers, however, have already identified themselves.

Sharon Bailek was the first woman to publicly allege Cain of sexual harassment and as heroic or victimized the media portrays Baiek’s testimony to be, it isn’t the silver bullet to bring down Cain’s campaign. As far as the public knowledge is concerned, no lawsuit or EEOC complaint was filed nor was there a deposition.

The dearth of documented facts forces the situation into a he-said-she-said scenario. In a sexual harassment debacle like this one, the politician involved needs to double down and deny everything until the smoking gun is waved in his face.

Consider the example of Clarence Thomas and his assistant Anita Hill. Thomas’s confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court were reopened when Anita Hill publicly testified that Thomas had sexually harassed her during his term in the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission. Although her statement was corroborated by witnesses and confirmed by a polygraph test Thomas vehemently denied the allegations and labeled the hearing as a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.” Consequently, Clarence Thomas is still sitting comfortably at his tenured seat on the Supreme Court bench.

New developments, however, are about to put Cain’s political skills to the test. The first anonymous accuser, Karen Kraushaar, has now revealed herself and she apparently has documented copies of her allegations. The documents could contain evidence and filings with government agencies like the E.E.O.C.

If it is truly the case that Herman Cain is being less than truthful in regards to the incidents involving these three women and there is proof beyond the circumstantial supporting their allegations, Cain needs to drop the act and apologize, apologize, apologize. Although his accusers now seem to control the fate of his campaign, paradoxically, Cain, himself, has all the information necessary to make the best decision in this moment of uncertainty.

Zuckerberg on Jobs and the entire Charlie Rose interview (video)