Decisions

Practical Advice from 23 Men and Women Who Shaped the World

Robert L. Dilenschneider

• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780806540535
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Decision Making
• Index: Business

Your Future Depends on Your Decisions
 
Sorting out our lives amidst chaos, confusion, and innumerable options is a process we all have in common. The decisions we ultimately make can affect our lives and the lives of others. It’s not always easy. In this empowering guide, an expert in business strategies shares the choices of notable, visionary decision-makers—from Harry Truman and Henry Ford to Marie Curie and Malala Yousafzai—and explains how you can apply their principles to your own personal and professional real-life scenarios.
 
Resolve, patience, and practical thinking—take it from these politicians, scientists, economists, inventors, entrepreneurs, theologians, activists, and commanders of war and peace. Their inspiring counsel will give you the tools you need to help change your life. Both big and small, your choices can shape the minutes, days, weeks, and years ahead. This book is the first motivating step in the right direction.
 
“Upgrade your daily decisions with the wisdom of two dozen renowned influencers who changed history.”
— Mehmet Oz, M.D., New York Times bestselling author of You: The Owner’s Manual
 
“A truly inspiring book about how to become a leader. Highly recommended!!” 
— Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of  American Moonshot
 
“The best decision you will make today is to read and learn from this array of bold thinkers.”
— Harvey Mackay, New York Times bestselling author of Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive

PART ONE

War and Peace

1

HARRY TRUMAN

The Buck Stops Here.

—HARRY TRUMAN

YEARS AFTER THE FACT, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 stand in stark relief on history’s timeline. An obvious turning point in history that meant life on earth has never been the same.

Also standing in stark relief is the seemingly lonely figure of the man who “made the decision” to take the step that, yes, effectively ended the carnage of World War II and brought a new kind of carnage. An immediate slew of horrendous death, injury, and destruction was unleashed by the bomb.

The permanent specter of total man-made destruction has stalked and haunted the world since 1945 and is possibly the most salient feature of modern life.

You and I all know that Harry S Truman was the man behind that decision to drop the bomb. That sentence almost seems to beg the use of the word “hiding” to modify “behind”—who would want to be tarred with such a decision? Wouldn’t you want to be invisible or at least anonymous? Yet, in today’s phrase, Truman owned that decision. He made it, he acknowledged, it and he never looked back.

And that sentence, though true on its face, also begs us to ask—How did he do it? How could he do it?

This book starts with Truman’s story because of that decision. And because he was President, America has had a global impact that is still felt today. He left us a model for how we as a country must continue to provide the leadership for which these uncertain times call. I hope some of the thinking in this chapter will affect the thinking of big-time policy makers, and I intend to share what follows and indeed this entire book with heads of all the countries around the world.

* * *

The atomic bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9, 1945.

Barely four months earlier, on April 12, President Roosevelt had died and Vice President Truman had been sworn in to succeed him. Roosevelt had just begun his unprecedented fourth term and had this new VP (two other men had served with him in his previous twelve years in office). Accounts agree that FDR barely acknowledged Truman; in fact, didn’t know him well, only met with him once during the 1944 campaign and twice after they were sworn in. Not the best move by a wartime leader who was visibly staggering under the load of his office, knowing he was near death.

History seems to tell us that Truman knew nothing about the existence of the bomb until about two weeks after he was sworn in; it’s possible that he had been told of it, but only in a cursory way. (Even Truman seemed to contradict himself on this point.) In any event, the scant four months that he was in office was the only time that was available to Truman to ponder the question—hardly seems like enough.

A friend once told me that the most important decisions are made in the first 10 seconds of realizing that they have to be made. I have not been able to find, nor did I actually ask, the factual source to back up that assertion. But I quickly understood he did not mean that those decisions were superficially made, but that they were the product of a lifetime of preparation.

Truman had that lifetime of preparation, with many factors working for and against him. He was what I would call a “man of parts,” a complex man. Every reader has a lifetime of preparation, some good, some insignificant. Consider the following for Truman.

• Intelligent though not well-educated, he knew how to take in new information, how to learn.

• He loved reading and music and was also a warrior.

• As a boy, he was “encouraged” to be a “mama’s boy,” a condition not helped by shyness and bad vision. In his prime, he was jaunty, healthy, athletic, and he dressed well.

• Well into his adulthood (he was thirty-five when he married Bess, whom he first met when he was eight and she was five), he formed a strong marriage and family, and a stable and unpretentious personal life.

• He was a man of regular habits (which, in the White House in those very different times, included a shot of bourbon after morning exercise and a rubdown before breakfast).

• After a difficult childhood (poverty and thwarted dreams), he came to know himself and be comfortable in his own skin.

• A man of deep but not overt faith, he had a strong moral sense that encompassed all situations, public and private.

• He was plainspoken and forthright, saying pretty much what he meant and meaning what he said.

• His work and then political life in Missouri (he held odd jobs, and was also a farmer, a soldier and a judge) and in Washington D.C. (a decade as a Senator) entailed many years of weighing conflicting courses of action aimed at doing the right thing.

• He was popular and collegial, with many “buddies” as well as close friends and intimates. Not all of these people had unblemished characters, shall I say, but somehow their mud did not stick to him.

I say all this (and could say more) to show that Truman was not a saint and that things did not come easily to him. In fact, the circumstances of his early life were enough to kill many a future, and as an adult, he did not win every battle. But I think his ground must have been exceptionally fertile when it came to making the key decision of his and millions of other people’s lives.

Look at the points cited here. How many apply to you? What could you add?

* * *

By all accounts, including Truman’s own, he was good at making decisions. And he had developed a philosophy for doing so that involved taking in all available information and seeking appropriate advice.

This point about philosophy is so important that I will turn to what Truman himself wrote about decision-making in his book Where the Buck Stops. He was referring specifically to presidential decision-making, but see if his advice is pertinent to you. It has always seemed right to me.

The ability to make up your mind sounds as if it speaks for itself, but it really isn’t as simple as all that. First of all, the president has got to get all the information he possibly can as to what’s best for the most people in the Country, and that takes both basic character and self-education. He’s not only got to decide what’s right according to the principles by which he’s been raised and educated, but he also has to be willing to listen to a lot of people, all kinds of people, and find out what effect the decision he’s about to make will have on the people. And when he makes up his mind that his decision is correct, he mustn’t let himself be moved from that decision under any consideration. He must go through with that program and not be swayed by the pressures that are put on him by people who tell him that his decision is wrong. If the decision is wrong, all he has to do is get some more information and make another decision, because he’s also got to have the ability to change his mind and start over.

Looking back at 1945 from the vantage point of more than seventy-five years, it sometimes seems that Truman’s decision to actually use the bomb and thereby end World War II, came out of the blue. But there was a lot of background.

The bomb’s technology was steeped in many years of development by Allies and Americans, development that was targeted to use in the military, not in any peacetime setting such as power generation. The situation in the Pacific theater of war, always horrific, was rapidly becoming even more so—and options had run out. It was almost a given among Truman’s world leadership peers that the terrible weapon would be used. In some ways, it was a fait accompli.

But as the weapon was essentially viewed as US property, only the American president’s finger was on the trigger. One man’s finger. Only Truman had the “nuclear codes.”

When the time came to face the decision of using the atomic bomb, Truman had plenty of resources at hand. His philosophy. His character. A cohort of advisors. Reality.

But still . . .

I cannot help but think how lonely and frightened Truman must have felt at this time. Though obviously not on the same scale, I think you and I can relate. I have faced significant decisions in my life, as have you. At some point, no matter how much help is available, it falls to you and you alone.

By most accounts, the tipping point for Truman was that he could not stomach the human cost of not ending the war as soon as possible. Yes, the Japanese were on the run; they were probably just months from being defeated. But Truman’s military advisors estimated that the casualties from continuing to follow the Japanese from small island to small island in the Pacific and ultimately to the large home islands—continuing to allow the enemy to set the pace and draw the Allies along—would have doubled the number of deaths and injuries that had already been suffered in the entire war effort. Brutal mathematics, with human lives the digits.

It was immediately apparent that the bomb’s toll had been even more gruesome than had been imagined. That led to public second-guessing that persists to this day. Even as more nations develop nuclear capabilities that aren’t entirely military, the fact remains that a very small number of nations possess the ability to unleash “the” bomb in its full destruction. Two of those nations, as we know, are the United States and North Korea.

* * *

So far in this book, I have emphasized that Truman had and took full responsibility for the atomic bomb decision. But he did not work in a vacuum. In his toolbox was his group of advisers, both informal and official. You and I have this same tool.

Truman had many people happy to tell him what to do. He smoked cigars and often played cards with them late at night. And some of these people would have been trusted friends of long association from his personal life and his decade in the Senate. We all have such people in our lives.

Incidentally, informal groups like Truman’s have come to be called the “kitchen cabinet.” Now a familiar colloquialism, the term was first used to attack President Andrew Jackson’s “ginger group,” another great colloquialism. Jackson had purged the official Cabinet, thus called the “parlor cabinet,” in 1831 during a scandal known as the Eaton affair or the petticoat affair; for information on that, well, as Casey Stengel often said, “you could look it up.” Some things don’t change.

And what about Bess, his wife, whom Truman called his closest political adviser, “the Boss”? In fact, she knew nothing of the bomb, and was “very angry” and “deeply disturbed” when she, like most of the rest of the world, found out about its deployment. Again, very relatable.

When he was sworn in on April 12, 1945, Truman of course inherited what I would call his “official” advisers—Cabinet members from the Roosevelt administration, and generals who were conducting the war. His trusted colleagues from his decade in the Senate did not disappear. He had peers on the world stage, the other Allied leaders Churchill and Stalin. And he had his generals—George Patton, Douglas McArthur, and others—most of whom had no reluctance to offer their views.

When you think about it, you and I have plenty of such “official” advisors, too. That said, you and I need to be careful. Truman gauged the interests and intent and motivation of his “advisors.” Advice was not always offered with best thinking. You and I need to understand this, too.

* * *

In Truman’s new role, it probably took a while for genuine personal and political trust to develop, but he seemed to know that these people knew more than he did. He was not going to derail the process into which he had abruptly been thrust. And certainly, he was keenly aware of the need for national stability at a time of great trauma; The New York Times story announcing Roosevelt’s death noted that “Mr. Truman immediately let it be known that Mr. Roosevelt’s Cabinet is remaining in office at his request.” (It was not until 1946 that he made his own first Cabinet appointment.)

The Presidency and politics—and business, too, where I have spent my whole career—are areas of life where you can meet someone once, shake hands, communicate through interpreters if necessary and then pronounce each other “my very good friend.”

How superficial!

This recalls my earlier point about Truman being in a lonely position. I think he had to depend a lot on his own sense of judgment, which was both innate and well-honed.

Consider that Truman had been vice president for five months. He was president for barely four months when he made the bomb decision. He is not known to have been present at any of the meetings among FDR, Stalin, and Churchill, and there was only one face-to-face among Truman, Stalin and Churchill. Presumably there were secure cables, telegrams, and phone calls for these world war leaders, but the age of instantaneous communication that you and I take for granted today was not even a glimmer on the horizon.

Truman seems to have been very cagey regarding Stalin. It was no secret that the U.S, was rapidly developing a useable atomic bomb. But Truman did not explicitly acknowledge this to Stalin, and Stalin apparently made the judgment the Americans would do what they needed to do to address Japan.

Churchill minced no words about the use of the atomic bomb. Referring to the July 4 meeting among the war leaders, he later wrote:

British consent in principle to the use of the weapon had been given . . . The final decision now lay in the main with President Truman, who had the weapon; but I never doubted what it would be, nor have I ever doubted since that he was right. There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table; nor did I ever hear the slightest suggestion that we should do otherwise.

That meeting, Churchill’s first with Truman, may have also been their last official communication. The Conservative party lost the general election on July 5 and Churchill was therefore no longer prime minister. (All this in spite of the fact, which I have always found very curious, of the German surrender on May 7, a success that Churchill could lay some fair claim to. But other issues were obviously the deciding factor.)

* * *

As for Truman, he did not look back: “All my life, whenever it comes to me to make a decision, I make it and forget about it . . . That’s all you can do.”

Truman guided the United States through many other turning points in the seven years of his public life as President. The surrender of Germany. Potsdam. The surrender of Japan. The Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan. The Cold War. Communism. The Civil Rights movement, including the desegregation of the armed forces. The National Security Act. The creation of Israel. The West Berlin blockade. The Fair Deal. Korea. MacArthur. (And much more!)

* * *

Here are the top lessons I take from Truman’s decision-making process.

1. It is essential to have your own “code,” made up of your life experience, your education, your conscience, and all the other building blocks of character. Often this is called having a “moral compass.”

2. Courage in making big decisions is not easy, and you will get plenty of “advice.” Stick to your convictions. Have courage.

3. Try to have as many of the facts at hand as possible. Avoid taking shots in the dark.

4. Have a group of trusted advisors already at hand—family, friends, colleagues—and do not be afraid to reach beyond that close circle to bring in experts as appropriate. Consult these people! Always gauge their motivation. And then test their...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Also by
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD by Steve Forbes
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE - War and Peace
• PART TWO - Commerce and Invention
• PART THREE - Science
• PART FOUR - Breaking Boundaries
• AFTERWORD by Klaus Schwab
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS