JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, S.C. –
This week, I spent time talking to several leaders. The subject of self-driven people came up a number of times. Don't we all long to have that warrior whose initiative becomes an inspiration to us and our organizations?
I thought about this for a while. My thoughts transported me to 1998. In one of my leadership courses, I remember talking to students about the tenets of great leaders.
We all can name a few of those tenets: energy, endurance, vision...among all, initiative is perhaps the one! It's a combination of motivation and execution.
All of this discussion reminded me about "A Message to Garcia." Have you read it? This week, I want to share with you an excerpt of this very powerful piece of literature, written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899. Rowan is the example of what we all should strive to be: the person who can carry the message to _____ no matter what.
Here it is; I hope you enjoy it! Always motivated, Jose LugoSantiago
A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard*
IN ALL THIS CUBAN BUSINESS there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion. When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba--no one knew where. No mail or telegraph could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly.
What to do!
Someone said to the President, "There is a fellow by the name of Rowan who will find Garcia for you, if anybody can."
Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and having delivered his letter to Garcia--are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.
The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?"
By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing--"Carry a message to Garcia."
General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias.
No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands are needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man--the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant.
You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office--six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio."
Will the clerk quietly say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task?
On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye, and ask one or more of the following questions:
Who was he?
Where is the encyclopedia?
Was I hired for that?
What's the matter with Charlie doing it?
Is there any hurry?
And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him find Garcia--and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course, I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average I will not.
[...]
My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off," nor has to go on a strike for higher wages.
Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks will be granted. He is wanted in every city, town and village--in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed and needed badly--the man who can "Carry a Message to Garcia."
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*Hubbard, Elbert. "A Message To Garcia @ Foundations Magazine."Character Development | Moral and Social Issues | Wisdom | Foundations Magazine - Ideas to Build Your Life On. Web. 11 Feb. 2012.