Leadership

I started reading Leadership by Rudy Giuliani. I have a lot of time on my hands these days and figured it would be a good read going into b-school.

The book is a pretty easy read. To put things in perspective – I NEVER read books. The last book I read was in 2002, and I pretty much read half of Leadership in a day. A lot of it has to do with how he handled the events and aftermath of 9/11. As I was in the city at the time, it is interesting to see how he balanced running the city and not letting his emotions get the best of him. Don’t get me wrong, it was a time where you should show your emotions, but a lot of people looked up to him and he was responsible for getting the city back to normal as quickly as possible. He did a great job in my opinion.

I agree with a lot of the things he says on leadership. For example, one of his principles is to “Always sweat the small stuff.” Basically, it is the manager’s responsibility to know what’s going on with the organization he is running. If he knows why his people is asking him for something, he won’t need them to explain why they need what they’re asking for every time need something. It’s also good to know why an organization does things a certain way. Not everyone will love every aspect of their job, but if they know how it fits into the big picture then it certainly makes it easier for them to bear doing the things they don’t like to do.

Got some good news yesterday – I got into University of Washington Foster School of Business. I guess the admissions director liked what she saw as I was not expecting to hear from them until the end of March. The early notification also bumped up my interest in Foster. Not to say I wasn’t interested (I did in fact apply there), but as I mentioned in my last post - it's nice to feel wanted. After I received word I did a lot of research on living in Seattle. It sounds like a fun town.

So far here’s the tally:

Maryland – IN
Foster – IN
Texas/McCombs – Anxiously waiting to hear from them on a final decision. Should be any day now.
USC – Interview and campus visit on March 2
Hawaii – They never received my transcript so I had to resend it. This was delayed about a week due to the Northeastern snowstorm. Hopefully they received it.
Duke – 95% chance I am getting flat out rejected. No waitlist no nothing.

I will be in the states March 1-11 looking at schools - LA, Austin, College Park, Seattle and back to LA in that order. I didn’t plan on going back again before school started but I anticipate my decision being harder than I initially thought. This trip should make it a little easier.

One last thing, James and I will be doing my last bartending gig at IBEX on Sunday, March 21. Proceeds going to BEER FOR BOOKS charity. Details below. Please stop by. It’s for the KIDS!

Event page here.

When: Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 8:00pm
Where: IBEX Roppongi - ARIES BLD 4F, 3-15-24, Roppongi, Minato-ku
Cost: FREE, 100 yen of each drink will go to Beer for Books charity
Entertainment: DJ spinning R&B/Hip-hop, pole dancers, stud bartenders

Map: http://bit.ly/cpOH9k