Re “Reinvention and Survival, Circa 1915” (Dec. 25), Nancy F. Koehn saw several business leadership lessons in the failed expedition of the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.
In describing Shackleton and his crew, the article said that “whatever came before them on the ice, their leader would give his all to bring them home alive.” Today, however, chief executives fail to understand that this is a leader’s primary responsibility.
Corporate tyrants are laying off employees the minute the value of their own stock options threatens to decrease by a penny. Driven by greed, these executives lack what your article called a “credible commitment to a larger purpose and flexible, imaginative methods to achieve a goal,” where the larger purpose is the prosperity of the human race as a whole, not the magnitude of their personal portfolios.
Bill Appledorf
San Francisco, Dec. 25
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To the Editor:
In the article, Professor Koehn says Shackleton’s ability to adapt to new circumstances could be applied to various recent events: the financial crisis of 2008, the gulf oil spill and the Japanese nuclear disaster.
That’s not the right message. The right message is a little thinking ahead can prevent crises.
Shackleton led a disastrous misadventure to traverse the South Pole, and didn’t listen to warnings. While reacting correctly to a crisis is admirable, thinking ahead to prevent the crisis is a lot better.
Looking at the 2008 financial crisis, why did we previously relax regulations on financial institutions? As for the oil spill, why did we not have strong controls on offshore drilling? And in the case of the nuclear disaster, why build a nuclear plant on the coast in an earthquake zone?
Roger Craine
Berkeley, Calif., Dec. 25
The writer is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
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To the Editor:
As a retired Latin teacher, I suspect that Shackleton kept in mind a particular scene early in “The Aeneid” by Virgil, where a small band fleeing the Greeks’ destruction of Troy and newly shipwrecked on unknown land — wet, hungry and despairing — is nonetheless rallied to survival by its leader, Aeneas. He assures the group that someday it will recall this moment with something like pleasure.
But Virgil tells us that, even as Aeneas utters these hopeful words, he presses grief deep into his heart, lest his true feelings unnerve his followers.
Hannah Metzger
Chicago, Dec. 27
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To the Editor:
When discussing leadership, many people miss one key ingredient: A great leader never accomplishes his goals alone. One of the first principles of leadership is to surround yourself with highly competent people and let them do whatever it is they do best.
In the case of Shackleton’s crew, Frank Worsley stands out as such a person. He was instrumental in guiding the small lifeboat from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island to seek help in rescuing the stranded crew. He had to navigate through some of the worst seas in the world, in conditions of unbelievably bad weather.
Ernest Fitzgerald
New Orleans, Dec. 26
The writer is a retired Marine lieutenant colonel.
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