Some reflections on character

I aspire to possess good character — a solid set of values and guiding principles, and a focus on improving the world. I don't always succeed but I keep trying. We need our leadership to aspire to good character.

Some reflections on character
Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

I aspire to possess good character — a solid set of values and guiding principles, and a focus on improving the world.   Do I always succeed?   Of course not, I am human.   I can be impatient, distracted, overcritical, and unsympathetic.   We all have our lesser moments.  I listen to feedback and continually strive to improve.


In my first job, I was a consultant working on an assignment for an automaker.  At one of our first client presentations, a junior person asked a question that I considered to be stupid, and I crushed him in my answer in front of his management chain.   My boss took me aside afterward, pointed out how I had embarrassed the guy, pointed out that it would make my job tougher going forward, and suggested that I develop additional weapons beyond the bazooka.

I was fortunate to have a wiser manager to learn from, and I thought a lot harder about the people I was working with and the overall project when I answered in the future.  It only took me once in my early 20s to learn this lesson.

In my first significant management role, I attempted to motivate and lead the team by pitting them against our competitors: “us — the good guys” against “them — the bad guys.”  I sent emails talking about how we would “destroy” the competition.   A wiser, more experienced executive took me aside and coached me to think about customers, about what we could uniquely provide, and how to build a sustainable product and culture.   The next email I sent out was different — “we want to serve the customers so well that they don’t even think about competitive alternatives”.   Competitors and their products come and go, but a customer-focused approach lasts forever.

It didn’t take me long to learn this lesson.  The “us vs them” approach is easy and cheap, but it creates a negative culture and can lead to bad decisions that don’t really help customers.  And you can’t recruit and retain great people with negative messages; you have to have a positive vision.

I am disappointed that our current political leaders are so abrasive and divisive — “Trump says he hates his opponents”.  Developing leadership skills beyond divisiveness is Leadership 101, things that good leaders learn in their 20s and 30s.


One of my all-time favorite books is The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis — humorous and serious at the same time.  I first stumbled across this book as a teenager after exhausting the Narnia and Perelandra series.  I was raised in a Presbyterian family, and attended church and Sunday school regularly, but organized religion never really made sense to me.  But this book fascinated me — probably the first book I read that thoughtfully and critically discussed religious topics.  There are great discussions on character in here, and it is a great book regardless of the depth of your faith.

One theme in the book is about the slow erosion of character — how small, inattentive steps every day can lead to ruin.  Building and maintaining character requires daily attention and daily work; it does not happen by itself.

So I found this application of the Screwtape Letters to our current society to be very interesting.  Our modern society, with its proliferation of products, content, and convenience, has led to an erosion of spirit, an inability to focus, and an unwillingness to tackle the more challenging tasks before us.  Our leaders instead take the easier ways out — focusing on division and manipulation.


A great deal is happening in the world, and we face significant challenges ahead.  We need the ability to focus and the willingness to tackle the big issues.  

One of the many problems we face is the rising unemployment rate among young males.  The Republican Party has exploited this issue to gain power, but has provided no real solutions.  Instead, they are busy blaming the least powerful people in our society — poor immigrants, underprivileged Americans, anybody at the bottom of the economy.

Krugman suggests that we need to better train young men for the HEAL occupations — specifically, health, education, and services.  Maybe.  However, I’d argue that we have so much infrastructure to repair, so much energy capacity to expand, and so much housing to build, etc. — an excellent issue for the administration to focus on would be figuring out how to ramp up our construction pace of the needed assets.  

Another great issue to focus on is education.  Despite record levels of spending, we are falling behind on basic education.  It is entirely appropriate to question our education system, and to consider radical changes.  But we don’t need to eliminate the Department of Education; we need version 2.0 of the Department of Education.  An organization that honestly looks at the data, encourages the trials of new programs to address the issues, and helps spread the programs that work to the entire nation.

Education and job growth — these are durable issues that will take many years to resolve and require excellent leadership and focus.  Our leaders should get cracking on them and leave the divisive culture nonsense behind us.  The administration really doesn’t have the time to worry about what late-night TV hosts and comedians are saying.


Our corporate leaders are struggling with character as well.  Media companies are caving under the slightest pressure to censorship requests, for fear that their bottom line will suffer.   Remember when the Washington Post had the gumption to stand up to the US Government and publish the Pentagon Papers?  Would that happen today?

It is not just media companies.  Our tech companies are scrambling over each other to sit next to the President and the First Lady.   They are reaping record growth and profits while ramping up layoff activity.  Hard to feel great about the character of the leaders here.

None of us is perfect, and we will all have lapses in character.  It is good to see Disney reversing itself on the Kimmel issue.  It is never too late for leaders to start demonstrating character.  Sadly, the folks at Sinclair are still behaving poorly, but they will continue to learn the harsh lesson that the internet and streaming are eroding their value.


I’m still learning, as I did in my 20s, what character is about.  It is easy to be distracted these days — I often find myself overwhelmed by the news, content, and constant change.  However, I try to refocus myself, reflect on what I have learned, and move forward.  I am still making mistakes and continue to aspire to do better.  

We need leaders — in politics, in business, in culture — who are willing to learn and trying to do better.

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