If the world depended on a man,
who would you trust? If a message had to get through to save your country, who
would you trust to take it?
A book written in 1899 and Bill
Gates don’t seem like a likely combination; however, when I discovered “A
Message to Garcia,” it challenged me to think of who I would put my money on to
get a letter to Garcia today. Who would I trust to do a job that would change
the world? I could think of no greater person than Bill Gates.
Throughout history, “A Message
to Garcia” has been one of the most powerful books ever written on leadership.
It was written in one hour. It is only nine pages long, and yet there have been
over 100,000,000 copies sold, and it has been translated into 37 languages and
made into two movies. This book has been held up by US, Russian, and Japanese
militaries and businesses for over 100 years as an example of the perfect
leader.
We have all heard of Mission
Impossible. It is something we have become familiar with seeing in movies. The
hero, often a retired CIA agent, is given a secret mission, which would be
impossible for mortal men. However, the hero is no mortal man. His influence
overcomes mere men, the most beautiful women, and incredible obstacles. In the
end, he saves the princess and the world from the evil dictator.
The truth is, there really was
such a hero, and he did save a large part of the world…and that’s how this book
originated.
Rowan was an American Army
Officer from West Virginia. In 1899, the Civil war in Cuba took a major turn
when unknown forces sank the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor.
America entered the war, but to succeed, they required the support of the insurgent
forces.
The leader of the insurgent
forces was General Garcia. He was hiding in the Oriente Province in the most
eastern region of Cuba. It stretches across 14,641 square miles (37,920 km2)
and consists of various mountain ranges with the Sierra Maestra region having
Cuba’s highest mountain peak and elevation in Pico Turquino. No mail nor
telegraph message could reach him.
The US president must secure
his cooperation, and quickly, but how? who? Someone said to the President,
“There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody
can.”
Rowan was sent for and given a
letter to be delivered to Garcia. “The fellow by the name of Rowan took the
letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, and in
four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat. He
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 delivered his
letter to Garcia.”
The book became the stuff of
legends.
·
After publication, reprint orders began trickling in, which wasn’t
unusual. The trickle became a flood, prompting Hubbard to ask which article
triggered the interest. It was “the stuff about Garcia,” he was told.
·
Then, a telegram arrived from George H. Daniels of the New York Central
Railroad asking for a price on 1,000 copies of the Rowan article in pamphlet
form. Hubbard didn’t have the capacity to fill the order, so he granted
permission to reprint. Daniels eventually printed and distributed half a
million copies under the title, “A Message to Garcia.”
·
One copy found its way into the hands of Prince Hilakoff, Director of
Russian Railways, who had the booklet translated and given to every railroad
employee in Russia.
·
The booklet spread to Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, India, and China.
·
Japanese soldiers found the booklet on Russian prisoners during the war
and had it translated, distributing it to every Japanese government employee.
Over 100 million copies of “A Message to Garcia” were sold, achieving a larger
circulation than any other literary venture in the lifetime of the author.
The United States won the
Spanish-American War. As a result, Spain ceded Puerto Rico, the Philippines,
and Guam to the United States and abandoned all claims to Cuba (which became
independent in 1902).
Rowan, by then Colonel Rowan,
was decorated for his achievement by the commander of the United States Army,
who said, "I regard this achievement as one of the most hazardous and
heroic deeds in military warfare."
The forward of the booklet
says, "This was undoubtedly true, but it is for his fine moral character,
rather than for his military prowess, that Lieutenant Andrew Summers Rowan will
always be remembered."
I believe in every generation
there must be people who could deliver a letter to Garcia, people who can
change the world, people who can make a difference, and one of those is Bill
Gates.
Reason 1 - Bill Gates continually puts
himself in the right place.
A number of years ago, Bill
Gates was interviewed by Larry King. He said this: "I was in the right
place, at the right time, and luck had a lot to do with it. However, there were
many others in the same place as I was when computers began to gain popularity."
If you want to be a world class
actor you don’t go to Diomede, the most remote city in Alaska to live. You go
to Hollywood. If you want to develop an App that will make a billion dollars
you go to Silicon Valley to live. You put yourself in the right place.
People who want to be great
leaders need to put themselves under a great leader. They need to be trained by
great leaders and learn from great leaders.
Bill Gates wasn’t in the right
place by luck alone. He was in the right place because he had been preparing
himself since he was 13. His parents saw his potential and put him in a leading
school, one of the first to have a computer. That’s where he began working on
his first computer and developing programs for it. He became so good that the
school asked him to write programs to schedule students in class. He then went
to Harvard.
Reason 2- Bill Gates sees the future
and researches his subject with a passion
Great leaders not only put
themselves in the best possible place to be trained, coached, and mentored, but
they have vision. They see the future and then they learn all that is possible
about their subject.
In the interview, he said, “I
had a long-term vision of how the personal computer would revolutionize every
facet of life. Once again, there were many others with the same vision I
had."
There may have been many others
who also had a vision, but Bill Gates' vision was bigger than building a
computer or a software program. His vision was global—he had a vision to change
the world.
Reason 3: Bill Gates is a man of
massive and immediate action.
In the interview, Gates said,
"I took massive, immediate action. This is where the rubber meets the
road.”
In the book “A Letter to
Garcia,” Hubbard says, "By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should
be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college in 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!”
In this interview Bill Gates
finished saying, “If you're in the right place at the right time and have a
vision to see where a new technology is going, but don't take action ... you'll
never be successful... Without all three components in place, you're
doomed."
No comments:
Post a Comment