Ken Shelton's "Field of Leadership" - Review and Endorsement

“FIELD OF LEADERSHIP” AS A PRIMER IN OUR TROUBLED TIMES

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© January 2, 2020

In the current climate, there is a dearth of leadership where a bland of sameness rules the day. We are witnessing an uncharacteristic lack of distinction between triumph and tragedy, success and failure, defeat and victory, faith and agnosticism as absurd as this is. Alas, there are no longer heroes with the courage to step out of the grip of the conformity of the crowd, to lay down “their toys of the mind,” and elevate their consciousness beyond collective mediocrity. In this world of internecine polarity and poverty of Will, we witness a consistent retreat from what we have in common to being stuck in forward inertia.

Ken Shelton steps into this void with “Field of Leadership,” as he has throughout his professional life, presenting a primer that reminds us that it was not always like this. Western man once had the grit to step out of the expected to establish a new identity and purpose. A walk down memory lane of Western history provides perspective.

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In 1945, with the merciful conclusion of WWII, the world of the past was brutally severed from the world of the future. Since then, pundits, philosophers, novelists and journalists have been unable to “let go” of that mesmerizing date of 1945, or to effectively deal with the rush of Western society into the future, wherein everything in human existence took a sudden hit and changed.

Three quarters of a century later, the family, the school, the church, the government, science, technology, philosophy and religion have changed—or so we would imagine. But have they? True, Corporate America has now taken on the role of the global conscience of the West and policeman of the world fabulating an omniscience that was never sustainable.

When you attempt to do for others what they best do for themselves, you corrupt them and burden yourself with demands beyond your capacity to deliver.

Ken Shelton provides a sanity check in the quietude of William James, America’s pragmatist, with a field leadership guide to everyday life for every man in these perplexing times. Indeed, Shelton’s professional life is a reflection of this author’s ‘’The Will to Believe” (1896): “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

“Field Leadership” is a fitting palliative to the first two stormy decades of this new century as this slender volume stands on the shoulders of six centuries of courageous heroes who stepped out of the shadows to mark their times.

It commenced with the long march from the Empire of the City-State of Rome and dogmatic authority of the Roman Catholic Church to launch the EXPLORERS of the 15th century in the persons of Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama and Ferdinand Magellan and others to discover the NEW WORLD and reveal the mysteries of lands and oceans and peoples beyond.

THEOLOGIANS came on the scene as the new leaders emerging from the “Dark Ages” of Western society to breathe new life into the 16th century in the persons of Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, Thomas More and Desiderius Erasmus. The power of the Holy See of Rome was in decline as was Roman Catholic fatalism with evolving Man of Achievement.

The man of property, not the man of poverty enjoyed new eminence. Capitalism, although in its infancy, was secure.

THE PILGRIMS bolted from Europe in the 17th century for the New World to enjoy religious freedom journeying to Plymouth Rock in North America and the Southern Cape of Africa, signaling the formation of New Worlds as Old European Worlds were a crumbling.

INSTITUTIONAL LAWYERS came to prominence in the late 18th century, leading to the defeat of King George of Great Britain in the American Revolution (1776) and of King Louis XVI of France in the French Revolution (1789). CONSTITUTIONAL LAWYERS translated these societal rebellions into permanent rights and freedoms for ordinary citizens.

The leadership of the 19th century was led by ENGINEERS/INVENTORS who rose out of common stock to construct a new world of machines which in turn led to the Industrial Revolution with the opening of the Panama Canal, while changing the landscape of the American continent from uninterrupted farmland to towns and cities across the young American frontier.

Individual enterprise led to the invention of the telegraph, telephone, electricity, the modern factory, the automobile and airplane, the motion picture, the typewriter and the steam engine to power ships and trains. Meanwhile, The American Civil War (1861 – 1865) spawned the Industrial Revolution and a cultural/political breakthrough with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, ending Negro slavery.

Warfare changed with the American Civil War, as submarines and steel armored battleships fought on the high seas with a war of attrition fought on the battlefield while technology was moving warfare in the direction of sophisticated weaponry supplanting massive troop deployments.

This aggressive technology became apparent in the 20th century with the First World War (1914 – 1918) with the introduction of fighter planes, armored tanks, and the introduction of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in the form of poison gas.

Technological warfare was further enhanced in World War Two (1939 – 1945) with the introduction of the atomic bomb which would be used by the United States to decimate the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ostensibly end that war.

Yet, it was the incredible productivity of American manufacturing and the timely logistical support of the troops in the field that became the silent managerial sentinel of that war (as the US was protected by two great oceans when weaponry could not yet cross an ocean) that made the difference.

America’s defense factory and assembly lines operated 24/7 to overcome the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941 by the Empire of Japan with an ever expanding arsenal of devastating weapons. In 1942 and 1943, America produced as many airplanes as the entire Axis powers (i.e., Germany, Japan and Italy) while in 1943 and 1944, the US produced one warship a day and a fighting plane every five minutes. This heroism was symbolized in “Rosie the Riveter” as women assumed industrial jobs in mass for the first time.

Management was in charge of this strategic and tactical display of excellence. Management would become known as Corporate America with its dominance and control entering every fissure of American society to the present day.

A retinue of post-WWII pundits: academics and social scholars stepped in to explain this corporate phenomenon and emerging NEW MANAGEMENT CLASS.

There was Saul Gellerman’s “Management by Motivation” (1968), Frederick Herzberg’s “Work and the Nature of Man” (1966), David McClelland’s “The Achieving Society” (1961), Douglas McGregor’s “Human Side of Enterprise” (1960), Rensis Likert’s “The Human Organization” (1967), Kurt Lewin’s “Field Theory in Social Science” (1951), Abraham Maslow’s “Motivation and Personality” (1970), Peter Drucker’s “Management” (1973), Blake & Mouton’s “The Managerial Grid” (1964), Warren Bennis’s “The Unconscious Conspiracy” (1976), James J. Cribbin’s “Leadership” (1981), Paul Hersey & Ken Blanchard’s “Management of Organizational Behavior” (1969), among many others.

The metamorphosis of this management class progressed from initially a modest body to metastasize to an institutional verity dictating and controlling organizational life with infallible authority of work, workers and the workplace with a bevy of systemic principles: from policies and procedures to command and control hierarchies. While this power structure is still in place, it is no longer functioning effectively.

Management guru Peter Drucker brought attention to the prominence of management with the treatment of people as things to be managed, while academic Warren Bennis elevated the function of management to leadership promoting the idea of “doing the right things“ (leadership) instead of “doing everything right” (management).

A century of war, exploding science and technology, the displacement of conventional cultural verities such as family, church, school and work as once known, along with the radical shift from “position power” to “knowledge power” has placed management at the unforeseen door of redundancy. How so?

Tens of thousands of Americans fighting men and women came out of World War Two, armed with the G.I. Bill, bent on pursuing a college education. Once this pattern was established, formal academic credentials became common to literally millions of Americans. Meanwhile, post-WWII, Europe and Asia were now successfully competing with American markets that no longer dominated the industrial world. At the same time, due to such scientific breakthroughs as relativity and quantum mechanics, the “Electronic Revolution” suddenly surfaced along with the “Information Age” of the 1980s.

But these scientific breakthroughs (i.e., relativity and quantum mechanics) first led to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima with an explosive yield of 15,000 tons of TNT. The thermonuclear bomb, often known as the “hydrogen bomb,” that has since been developed has a feasible yield of 100 million tons of TNT. The United States and Russia have such bombs. In fact, they have an arsenal of thermonuclear bombs, products of the “Arms Race’” of the 20th century, bombs that are wasting away in silos of both countries.

Meanwhile, on Christmas Day, 2019, President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced his country now has a hypersonic delivery system of these bombs which can travel at five times the speed of sound (MACH 5 and faster) covering vast distances (even across the Atlantic and/or Pacific Ocean) in minutes. The Pentagon and the United States have been working on hypersonic weapons. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper says it is “probably a couple of years” before the US has such technology.

Granted, this same science has led to such innovations as personal computers, cell phones, the World Wide Web, the Internet, robotics, digital printers and mini drones; breakthroughs now treated as cultural necessities leading to the blurring of gender and sex role identities while giving birth to a menagerie of competing delusions and aberrant diversions.

While absurdities persist in the 21st century, there are no longer the marked distinctions over the centuries such as the Explorer (15th), theologian (16th), Pilgrim (17th), Constitutional Lawyer (18th), Engineer/Inventor (19th), and Manager (20th century) once provided.

The story of the times, while identity is a problem with all people, remains intimately linked with the culture of things nuclear. Trillions of dollars have already been spent on these WMDs, weapons, if used, could annihilate inhabitants of this planet.

Then imagine if this wealth had been used for societal purposes rather than to placate our fears and anxieties by assuaging our collective conscience with the false premise that might makes right.

Ken Shelton has stepped intrepidly into this mind-field of despair with a common sense “Field Guide to Leadership” as he has previously done with Executive Excellence and Personal Excellence and other publications. As an interpreter of person-to-person communion, he has much in common with Dale Carnegie who published “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1936) during the height of The Great Depression (1929 - 1939) and “How to Stop Worrying & Start Living” (1948) following the ambiguities that plagued average citizens after WWII.

Shelton is an unabashed moralists who has faith and belief in God with a cache of sensible ideas relevant to the adage, everyone is a leader or no one is.

As CEO, editor and publisher of Leadership Excellent Publications, as well as the author of countless articles and books on common themes of faith and belief, “Field Leadership” is a page-turner and a timely guide to a happier and more satisfying life. I strongly recommend this book as it speaks to my own needs, and I suspect to the reader’s as well.