Developing Next Generation Leaders

August 4, 2025

Good morning! Rain + hot air + high humidity + long sunlit days = perfect corn growing weather. Gotta love it, especially since we’ve been in a drought for a decade or more. The corn, thank god, is ready! Among the great pleasures of life:  Watching the sunflower move its sunny blossom from facing east to completely 180-degrees the opposite direction during the day…… and here’s the mystery?  When does it turn back around?  Slowly or quickly?  Who is watching at 2 AM?

• What happened to Ben’s beloved postal service?
  • I would appreciate primary source data and an informed, detailed forensic analysis
  • Will it ever recover?
• Coming faster than a Russian tsunami:  Data Centers — and their voracious dinosaurean appetites for energy, water, land, copper, infrastructure
  • Actually, that’s a poor analogy since the 8.8 earthquake didn’t yet yield the expected tsunami…  (Careful of the next one!  Don’t cry Wolf!)
• CEOs and their teams should be laser-focused on developing next-generation leaders with the unique skills and capabilities to perform and thrive in challenging times.  (Sternfels, Etc., et al.)
  • Leading is more difficult now than ever before.
  • Every hour brings leaders and their teams a flood of new information about tariffs, geopolitical instability, social unrest, the rise of artificial intelligence and other technologies…
  • …shifting demographics and work force expectations, the business impacts of climate change, and much more.  (Ibid.)
  • CEOs should address these and other compounding business challenges and make decisions as quickly, and as accurately as possible —
  • The highest-performing leaders understand that along with every obstacle there may be a business opportunity — 
  • — if they can approach periods of disquiet with calm, clarity, confidence, and a focus on future needs as well as current emergencies
  • Some leaders might be born, but ALL leaders must continually develop six critical traits for leadership success:
    1. Positive energy, personal balance, and inspiration
    2. Servant and selfless leadership
    3. Continuous learning and a humble mindset
    4. Grit and resilience
    5. Levity
       • Imagine being told you must be funny — or at least jovial — 50 years ago?!
    6. Stewardship (Ibid.)
  • Now, more than ever, future CEOs must be involved, deeply and personally, in the leadership development process.
    1. Create a CEO-led leadership factory — at industrial speed and scale
    2. Outline the traits and attributes you want future leaders to have
    3. Engage your high potentials and mavericks — and get them into the field quickly
    4. Champion new approaches to risk-taking and learning
    5. “A Culture of experimentation and learning is essential for leadership development — but it must be actively pursued.”  (Sternfels, Etc., et al.)
    6. Shape and own high-impact interventions for leadership development
    7. Simplify and rewire the organization for faster decision-making
    8. Measure the impact of your leadership factory  — to make sure it is delivering the intended outcomes..
  • “As we rethink the future of work in a world of traditions, as well as artificial and agentic intelligence, the one role that we know won’t be disintermediated in that of the leader.  (Ibid.)
  • “Building a leadership factory is not just a strategic imperative, it’s a survival mechanism.”  (Ibid.)
• Could it be $1,000 put into the child’s taxable future savings account just isn’t enough?
• One — or two? — is the loneliest number…
  • With the cooperation of 3,600 women worldwide, Peanut conducted in-depth research on the experience of birthing and caring for children.
  • A majority of women feel they have less of a village than their mothers or grandmothers did.
  • “With 75% of women feeling invisible in their journey and 94% feeling unappreciated, unacknowledged, or unseen…
  • it’s time for society to value and support women for who they are and all they do.  (Peanut)
  • (U.S. data are aggregated.)
• For the first time in 15 years, wage growth for U.S. job-stayers now outpaces that for job-switchers.  (The Economist)
  • “It is a visible sign of a wider trend.”
• The vertical plunge is greater than a mile over a relatively short 30-mile stretch — and it’s a hyuuuge volume of water stretching from West to East along Tibet’s southern border.
  • It’s the massive Yarlung Zangbo River — perhaps somewhat analogous to the Colorado River, but bigger, longer, and more voluminous.
  • Think of the horsepower!
  • China did… it thought of the power, hydro power, that is.
  • For $170 billion, China is building the world’s largest hydropower dam.
  • The dam, once finished, is estimated to produce 300 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year.
    • By comparison:  Hoover = 4 billion    Grand Coulee (largest in U.S.) = 21 billion
  • Using 2022 as a baseline, this amount of electricity represents 10% of ALL the world’s electricity; wow!  Ten  percent in one dam.  (Reuters)
  • The thing is, with artificial intelligence announcing its voracious appetite, that unparalleled amount of production is already spoken for!
  • Now, what about the environmental, geographical, and topographical impact, positive and negative — and/or neutral?  I haven’t dug that deep into those data, but be my guest.