Branches & Roots V1:E2, Who is in your Final Four.....of all time leaders?

Who is in your Final Four.....of all time leaders?

Welcome to Spring, the beginning of life in the garden, little baby ducks swimming in the ponds, and College basketball's Final Four.

In early March We went to a conference where the topic was "Leadership". This got us to thinking, who are the most important leaders of all time?

We have a "One Question" survey here and would love your thoughts. We will summarize our findings in Mid May.

As for the team at Banyan we covered a lot of ground in the last 45 days, met with a series of very interesting people and found a few items we felt worthy of sharing with our network. We even found a tagline for the company “Corporate Training & Custom Coaching”. Sticking with the format, please enjoy the most recent set of Interesting Articles, Interesting Books and a Golf Tip.

INTERESTING ARTICLES

Anyone have a kid going off to college? It appears you might be on the Hook for more than you thought.
Thanks go to Steve Cutcliffe for this article from The Atlantic which profiles how each year the same “accidents” keep happening. What’s different is where the buck is stopping after the accident. So for those of you with high school students add this to the ever growing list of “things to talk about” before sending them off to the Great American Extended Adolescence Experience known as an undergrad education.

What about if you know someone whose child didn’t get into the school of their choice…
Turns out getting into elite schools like Stanford (read their attempt to explain why here) is becoming more and more of a random process. Who knew growing your student base at 1% when demand is growing at 500% (exaggeration intended) might create some problems? Aside from sharing the facts with the teenager and dealing with it yourself, here is a great post on Resiliency and Grit. We love these words and think they can create contagious attitudes….Got Grit?

On the innovation front it turns out SHOP CLASS maybe making a comeback…
In the 70’s and 80’s shop class was a time to make things, break things and work a different part of your brain. Most of them are long gone, but with the groundswell around 3D printing we think SHOP could be making a comeback and here is an article on the 10 industries that 3D printing may disrupt. Read the article here

INTERESTING BOOKS

“Moon Walking With Einstein” by Joshua Foer
This book has changed the way I open up my public speaking engagements. It’s fun to give everyone a memory palace trick to remember my key points with an image positioned within a place they know really well like the front door of their home. Joshua Foer actually won the US Memory Championships (yes there is such a thing) some years back after covering it as a journalist. These memory stars can take a deck of cards and within 3 minutes have it memorized….wow! How do they do it? With a memory palace. Here is his Google Talk.

“Makers” by Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson is a former editor at Wired Magazine and the Author of an earlier book “The Long Tail” In which he outlines a look at what I was showing you in my earlier parent/grandparent example. In “Makers” he shares his vision for the future of small batch manufacturing in the United States and how a new generation of hands on Entrepreneurs will form. We think this concept of merging manufacturing with software and giving customers’ choice has legs. What do you think? His Google Talk is here.

GOLF TIP

A Tip from an Ol’ Cowpoke..
Sara and I recently went to a dinner to celebrate the coaching career of Wally Goodwin. At 87 Wally still has a twinkle in his eye and 20 of his former players joined 50 more of us for a night of humor and memories.

Sara’s golf career was started from a golf class she took from him at Stanford and the rest is history… Known for his sayings and his success, he was also one for unique training tips and techniques.

So how do you recruit Tiger Woods, Notah Begay, and Casey Martin? You look for good athletes, strong hearts, and you believe in people. In addition, you keep the attitude light, and the pace quick. Wally believed you shouldn’t take too long to play a shot, and that you should have “A Shot” you were going to play most of the time. We agree, get to your ball, get a number, picture a ball flight and then go for it.