And a “leader” shall lead them?
By Herb Drill
If Mikhail Gorbachev had been the czar, my father wouldn’t have left Mother Russia. After all, Mr. Gorbachev ignited the move to a market economy and personal freedom, and poured hot beef borscht on the Cold War.
Premier Vladimir Putin should be grateful to him; perhaps send him a case of revered beluga caviar. Comrade Gorbachev was a leader in the truest sense: he considered the welfare of the people he governed.
The folks who considers themselves Corporate America should have been in the audience when Mikhail spoke at the University of North Florida campus in Jacksonville, or in Philadelphia.
Mark Woods, an erudite, intelligent, and sensitive man who writes a column for the Metro section of the Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville’s daily/Sunday newspaper, observed that “Gorbachev affected more than history. Mikhail Gorbachev helped microwave the Cold War and freeze the nuclear arms race. He opened the former Soviet Union to free enterprise and newspapers and religion. He won a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Woods, in a column regarding the adoption of Russian orphans by Floridians, remarked how Mikhail had "changed life” in spots around the globe with "glasnost" and "perestroika."
Maybe a corporate chief was in the Philadelphia audience and took Mr. Gorbachev’s words to heart. Sometime later, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported Drexel University's business school had launched an institute to help organizations develop leaders - with the help of $500,000 from Sovereign Bank. The LeBow College of Business established the Institute for Strategic Leadership and said the Wyomissing, Pa.-based bank was the initial sponsor.
"The whole initiative is based on the need to educate the future managers [of organizations] ... but at the same time to offer a lot of services to the broad community, corporations, and individuals alike," said George Tsetsekos, dean of the LeBow College of Business. Sovereign is the first company to have an academy set up for itself within the institute. The Sovereign Bank Leadership Academy will use Drexel faculty and students and Sovereign personnel to come up with a leadership-development
program for the bank.
Can you believe it? I say “wow” – leadership, what a concept!