The Daily Sandbox!: Guide to Global Leadership: Two Recommended “Must Reads” for Corporate Executives

By Kevin M. Nixon, MSA, CISSP^©, CISM^©, CGEIT^©

“The Age of the Unthinkable” by Joshua Cooper Ramo

Do not pass Go! Do not collect $200! Go directly online and buy “The Age of the Unthinkable” by Joshua Cooper Ramo. I have been telling everyone I know about this book and now I am writing about it too.

We can all agree, that each day we hear yet another discouraging news report on how something else unexpected has gone to hell in a hand-basket. Just this past November 2008, Alan Greenspan in testimony before Congress said “I’ve discovered a flaw.” The Congressman questioning Mr. Greenspan asked him to explain, and with much bewilderment Mr. Greenspan said that “using the vast knowledge he had accumulated of the last 40 years and on which he had based his most trusted decisions, was no longer valid.”

Hearing that from Alan Greenspan must have had the same impact as someone overhearing Warren Buffet say “oops, I only wanted to buy 10% of that company and I accidentally added an extra zero. Now I own 100%. Can I change that order?”

Here is some background on the author:

Joshua Cooper Ramo is the managing director at Kissinger Associates, one of the world’s leading geostrategic advisory firms and the former foreign editor and assistant managing editor of Time magazine.

Mr. Ramo has recently released an audio book entitled “The Age of the Unthinkable – Why the new world disorder constantly surprises us and what we can do about it”

Here is a brief section of the book’s introduction:

“Just a few years into a new century, we’ve arrived at a moment of peril that not long ago would have seemed unimaginable. All around us, the ideas and institutions that we once relied on for our safety and security are failing, and the best ideas of our leaders seem to make our problems worse, not better. A global war on terror produces, in the end, more dangerous terrorists. The fight to stop financial crisis seems to accelerate its arrival. Carefully negotiated peace plans produce less peace.

This wasn’t always the case. For decades, our engagement with the world was based on the seductive belief that there was a logical relationship between the power of states and the physics of change. But that traditional physics of power has been replaced by something radically different. Drawing upon history, economics, complexity theory, psychology, human immunology, and the science of networks we learn about a landscape of inherent unpredictability and remarkable possibility.”

"ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum

Most of what we really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, we learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand box at nursery school.

These are the things we learned.

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don't hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life.

Learn some and think some and draw some and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out in the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Be aware of wonder.

Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why. We are like that.

And then remember that book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK! Everything you need to know is there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology, and politics and the sane living.

Think of what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Kevin M. Nixon, MSA, CISSP®, CISM®, CGEIT®, has testified as an expert witness before the Congressional High Tech Task Force, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He has also served on infrastructure security boards and committees including the Disaster Recovery Workgroup for the Office of Homeland Security, and as a consultant to the Federal Trade Commission.

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