“Mikey, why am I out?” – Tom Hagan
“You’re not a wartime consigliere, Tom.” – Michael Corleone
You don’t have a gardener fight your wars, and you don’t have a warrior plant your garden.
Too often today we expect the wrong people to do a job, so it never gets done, or it’s done poorly.
The problem is we assume that someone in a leadership position possesses certain qualities that work well when the group is not in danger. They keep the peace. But peacemakers don’t fight wars.
Some men are suited best to lead during certain times, and when it is over they step down. Some are best suited to preserve and maintain what is; others are good at restoring.
Then there are those are good at destruction.
There is a chronic inability today to differentiate them.
The decay and demise of many institutions come as a surprise to people because they assumed, incorrectly, that those in charge were the kind of men who would hold the line. They weren’t. And the type of men they expect to fix things won’t, because that’s not who they are and never was.
If things get fixed, it will be done by men who do so in spite of intense opposition from the very people they seek to help. If it happens at all.
