UNCONVENTIONAL THINKING BLOG

America is the oldest enduring republic in the world. And the finest. By a mile and a half.

Its greatness has been driven by many, sung and unsung, rich and poor, black and white, men and women. But by none more so than by its soldiers of war and its army of entrepreneurs.

Every time I meet someone whose business has or is about to implode, they have this dumb founded look on their faces, as if the disaster rode in under cover of night, without a scintilla of a warning.

The reality is, they had box seats at the gathering storm but preferred to bury their heads in a book called “Denial.”

Right this moment, this very scenario is playing out at thousands, likely millions of companies– including, perhaps, the one that has your name on the door. The impending disaster can be blamed on all manner of straw men, but the culprit is always leadership. Or rather, a lack of it. Yours.

All around me, I see people undergoing nervous breakdowns. Perhaps not in the clinical sense as defined by the Harvard Medical School crowd but nervous breakdowns nevertheless.

They wring their hands about:

* Legislators defy their state Constitution and the very fabric of American democracy by running away with their hair on fire rather than standing up and taking a vote.

* Our southern border is wide open to criminal elements who enter our nation with impunity and then become a privileged class entitled to our dwindling largess.

* Average people who find a way to innovate, take risk, invent the proverbial better mousetrap and succeed beyond all odds, are vilified as wealthy demons who have somehow gamed the system.

I remember the sleek black limo gliding through the wrought iron gates of the Bel Air mansion known to the Hollywood crowd as Playboy West.

I was arriving to spend a day talking business with Hugh Hefner. It turned out to be a far more complex and darkly intriguing experience than I expected it to be.