Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand
yet another business book on the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books
Podcast, we commit to reading, dissecting, and analyzing the great
books of the Western canon. You know, those
books from Jane Austen to Shakespeare and everything else in
between that you might have fallen asleep trying to read in high
school. We do this for our listeners, the owner, the
entrepreneur, the manager, or the civic leader who doesn't have the time
to read, dissect, analyze, and leverage insights from
literature to execute leadership best practices in the
confusing and chaotic postmodern world we all now
inhabit. Welcome to the rescuing of Western
Civilization at the intersection of literature
and leadership. Welcome to the Leadership Lessons from
the Great Books Podcast. Welcome to the Beginning
of the Next Historical High.
But before I get into why this is the beginning
of the next historical high, let me hit you listeners with
some statistics to start off this
new year. According to the National Literacy
Institute, 21% of adults in the United States were
illiterate in 2024
54% of adults have a literacy rate
below a sixth grade reading level. 20%
of adults are below a fifth grade reading
level. Now. Literary
statistics matter a lot to me as I host
a literary and leadership podcast because they
are a bellwether, usually for other more
substantive and systemic problems,
from voting for someone for the local city council to
avoiding being fooled by the products of an online bot farm.
Being able to read the words on the page or on
the phone is important. But even more
important than being able to read the words on the page is the ability to
understand those words and to be able to make meaning from
the words and make decisions from the meaning behind the
words we understand, and even the
ones we don't understand. Nothing
begins without people understanding the words they're reading and
being able to argue and discuss
and contemplate the meaning of those
words. But there's one other area
where we need to have deep
literacy, and I'm not talking about critical thinking here. Critical
thinking comes after literacy and
even after comprehension. We
need the ability to make plans for the future
based on the meaning of the words we
read, the words we comprehend, the
meaning that we seek to understand.
Why is this important? Why am I talking about this right now?
Well, during times of chaos, during times of disruption, during times of a
shifting consensus in a dynamic country like the
United States of America, where I live, making meaning of
words matters quite a bit in the pursuit of defining,
developing, and determining the the nature, depth, and breadth
of problems, the meaning of words
and the ability to Understand the meaning of words becomes even more critical to
track and determine in the transition from a time of chaos
into a time of historical prosperity and
peace. There's an
idea in business around
signal and noise, and words
can be both the signal and the noise. But literacy,
comprehension, and critical thinking, these three are
the tools that we use to separate the signal from
the noise.
Now, I'm going to use a word here or a term here,
and I want you to. I want you to hook onto this one.
The transition from a historical low of chaos and collapse
to a historical high of prosperity and construction
could be defined by the term, by the
words golden age.
But how you comprehend that term, what meaning you make
from it, well, you might need some help
with that part.
A couple of years ago, I expressed the frustration that I have
with our constant mastication over problems without
moving people towards solutions to problems.
Over the last couple of years on this podcast, I have taken time to, at
the end of each of our episodes to discuss with our guests
the solutions or the potential solutions to leadership problems
that are present in our society and culture.
Here at the close of the fourth turning,
which I suspected the fourth turning was beginning to close
back in 2023,
this ongoing frustration over the constant
chewing over of problems led me to cover books
with guests like Shop Class as Soulcraft by
Matthew Crawford, the Omni Americans by Albert Murray,
as well as Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald and
1984 by George Orwell.
These books, along with many others, opens the
door to allow me to talk with my
fellow guests and to talk with you as listeners about the problem
of respecting the followers you have as a leader,
the problem of a return to collectivist thinking,
and not in the way that Lenin or Marx would define it, and
resurrecting such collectivist or collective or communal
thinking from the rubble of the idolatry of individualistic
thinking. These books opened the door to me
being able to talk about putting aside personal trauma in order to
develop other people. And these
books opened the door to me being able to talk with guests about how
to develop serious speech that would
demonstrate the depth of serious thinking
that a leader and quite frankly, everybody should have.
We talked about these problems and we proposed
solutions. And in each one of these areas, along with many
others, we propose solutions that we covered on the show last season.
We actually talked about solutions, some
radical, some more pedestrian, but all
solution based. The guests that we
had actively explored all those potential solutions
and engaged with these ideas in the realm of I
ideas, which of course is what a podcast I believe
fundamentally is for and
now, in 2026, starting the fifth season of the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, we are going
to level up yet again and we're going to begin to
explore ideas. Not only those ideas that
lead to solutions, but also ideas
of restoration in preparation
for a future that I believe we are not
quite yet prepared for.
Whether that is spiritually, morally,
ethically, much less materially,
scientifically or even
biologically. We will be
doing this. We will be holding this
conversation around restoration and preparation for
the future through exploring essays like the Great Instauration
by Francis Bacon. And we will go
through there all the Way to east of Eden
by John Steinbeck. We will wind our way
through A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion, and
we'll talk about the Great book Ben Hur A Tale of the Christ
by Lew Wallace. And towards the end of this
year, we will end up in the space of the U.S. army and Marine
Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual edited by General David
Petraeus, Sarah Sewell and John Nagel. And finally, we
will close out the year by exploring Tolkien and
the children of Huron.
We will use these books to connect with literate leaders
with high comprehension, deep compassion,
and literate leaders who have impatience,
who are experiencing impatience with the speed
of the coming historical high,
and of course who are looking for ideas,
looking for solutions to what restoration
would potentially look like.
So here's a few questions to sort of set yourself up
for the upcoming podcasting
season. Why do smart leaders read Voltaire instead of the
Harvard Business Review? What are the implications
of addressing diversity challenges as a conflict of visions
rather than as a world ending existential crisis?
What is a Tim show? And why does knowing what it is matter
to building for the good rather than just maintaining a position
in stasis? And what is the
importance of decentralized decision making?
I am fascinated by the difference between
what questions and why questions. Why
questions tend to be problem oriented and the
endless pressing of the algorithm in our
lives has flooded us with why questions,
why this, why that, and why the other.
But what questions are solution focused?
What is the problem? What can we do about it?
What are the options? These
types of questions, questions that begin with the word what
are more interesting than asking endless why? Questions that
merely serve to drive or
feed the algorithm. These are the questions
that drive thinking about solutions and implementing
those solutions rather than continuing to drive a problem
based narrative. The lessons we can learn from
reading the great Books have been the primary focus of this show for
the last five years and great
books Ask and Answer what
Questions this
year we are moving with several partners and current
and former guests into two areas of
great impact and of great interest in 2026 that will
further allow us to explore the answers to what questions.
We are starting to bring together ideas we've explored on this show
since season one into writing a book series
with contributions from current and former guests, focusing
on our discussion of the potential
leadership models that arise when you read
books written by Jane Austen, plays written by William
Shakespeare, books written by John Steinbeck and Ernest
Hemingway, or even solutions to life
proposed by Booker T. Washington and
many, many others. It turns out that a
lot of these books have the
answers to the why embedded in the
what deeply in
narrative structures.
We're also exploring
a project, and I'm not going to give the name of it right now, but
we're exploring a project, developing it
with other partners to leverage the insights, the commentary
and the conclusions from the podcast
episodes we've done over the last few years,
moving those into a working leadership
education platform. This idea
is still in its genesis, it's still
in the planning stages, it's still in the paper and pencil
sort of mode. And so stay tuned for
more details as we move this project
forward.
I once heard years ago as an entrepreneur, and I've taken this
throughout my entire life, that and my
career actually, that it takes 10 years to become a
quote unquote, overnight success, whether you're an
entrepreneur or a business owner. Over the course of my
life, over the course of my adulthood, I've. I've taken on
a lot of other hard things. And you know what I found out? I found
out that it takes 10 to 12 years to get your black belt in the
martial art of jiu jitsu. It takes 10,000 hours or
10 years to move from being a novice to beginning to
starting to be a master at any pursuit worth
taking up. Anything worth doing takes
about 10 years to begin to get even remotely good at
the same thing. It turns out with
podcasting, I'm heading into the fifth year of
hosting this show. Hosting a podcast
like this, with a lot of moving parts involves learning, developing and executing
the skills of writing, speaking, recording, editing,
marketing, and finally distributing.
I think at this point I'm about halfway through
a 10 year long process to get
better, to move from
novice to beginning to be a master.
And underneath it all, underneath all of this journey, underneath
all this process, underneath all of this writing
and speaking and recording and editing and marketing and distributing,
the most valuable skill. Well, not even
valuable skill, the most valuable thing I'm earning
consistently by showing up week in and week out every week
is is is permission.
The permission to speak into your ears and the
permission to have your retention to build a future.
To sincerely build a future. I think
we want to actually leave for the people
coming after us. I look
forward to continuing to earn the
ears and attention of some of the most literate leaders, visionaries,
builders and executors who listen to this show in
2026. And I thank
you for what you have given me so
far. Happy New Year
and welcome to the next historical high.
And well, that's it for
me. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books
Podcast today. And now that you've made it this far,
you should subscribe to the audio version of this show on all the major
podcast players, including Apple, iTunes, Spotify,
YouTube, music and everywhere else where podcasts are available.
There's also a video version of our. Podcast on our YouTube
channel like and subscribe to the video version of this podcast on
the Leadership toolbox channel on YouTube. Just, just search for Leadership
Toolbox and hit the subscribe button there on YouTube.
And while you're doing that, leave a five star review. If you like
what we're doing here on Apple, Spotify and
YouTube, just go below the player and hit five stars.
We need those reviews to grow and it's the easiest way to help grow this
show and tell all your friends, of course, in
Leadership. By the way, if you don't like what we're doing here,
well, you can always listen to another leadership show. There are several
other good ones out there. At least that's
what I've heard. All right, well,
that's it for me.