Colin Powell
So I went to hear Colin Powell speak last night, as part of the celebrity forum at DeAnza College. A pretty well polished speaker, I must say. He was very eloquent, very concise, and when he wasn’t speaking on politics (about half the time), he was genuinely entertaining.
His most insightful comments were surrounding leadership, and specifically, on being a black man in a position of power. He pointed out that those who are discriminated against have the opportunity to simply outperform those who are discriminating against them. Then the percieved racial malady becomes the problem of the other person when they’re left behind the person they shut down. It’s simple, but it’s clever.
There was another very interesting parable regarding Gobachev, during his early days when he was trying to change the USSR. Colin Powell wasn’t believing the statements that Gorbachev was making, and Gorbachev knew it. He smiled, and then told Powell that he’d have to find a new enemy. And Powell realized that it was this he was afraid of. He’d had excellent success with *this* enemy, and he wasn’t interested in finding a new one.
People don’t like to change enemies. Including me. That was my most substantial learning point of the evening. It’s something I have resolved to get better at, now that I can see it. (thankfully, I don’t really have any ‘enemies’ per se, but the sentiment carries across many facets of the genre)
He also pointed out something interesting about China: that as they grow, the likelihood of war between China and an independent Taiwan increases proportionally, and that it’s the USA that helps to balance that relationship. The USA relies heavily on Taiwan exports (bikes are a shining example – nearly the whole industry sources products there), and so the USA (and other consuming countries) are placed in a delecate balance between these two powers (China and Taiwan). It’s a tough place to be.
There were a few late-in-the-show vocal audience members who spoke out to the entire auditorium about their views, mostly regarding the US occupation of Iraq and Colin’s address to congress regarding the WMD’s that were never there. He did what they’ve been doing for a while: he said that based on the evidence he had, that was the right thing to say. And that it turned out to be wrong. Nothing new there. Nothing new in any of the politically-focused stuff, really. Perhaps that’s why it wasn’t all that interesting.
He did talk about his new Corvette. That was kinda fun.