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Keys to the Corner Office

May 29, 2015

On those rare Sunday mornings when I’m not traveling for one reason or another, my routine is a very early walk during which I purchase the Sunday New York Times.

Reading the Sunday Times has a routine as well: first the Travel section, next Business, then Opinion; and after that, national news and sports and theater in no particular order. And I always read the top of page 2 of the Business section, a regular Q and A by Adam Bryant who features successful businessmen and women. It’s called “Corner Office.”

Week after week, the people profiled will credit the extracurricular activities of their formal education for launching their successful careers. For example ...


  • The chief executive of Bluemercury cited volleyball.


  • The chief executive of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt cited “clubs and sports in high school.”


  • The chief executive of the Hogan Lovells law firm was captain of his high school football team and president of the student council.

Obviously, there are many individuals who participated in those school activities and did not ascend to chief executive status, just as many other CEOs earned the keys to their corner office without participation in school athletics and activities.

But it has been difficult for me to miss how routine it is for the “Corner Office” to make the same connection I do – that outside the classroom school sports and activities are linked both anecdotally and statistically to leadership in later life pursuits.

Politics and Sports

April 3, 2012

The acrimonious, winner-take-all GOP presidential primary and a premature posturing for the general election campaigns in the fall caused Portland (OR)-based author Tom Krattenmaker to write in the March 26, 2012 USA Today:  “Many of us seem to engage in politics the same way we follow sports:  What strategy will it take for my team to stick it to the opponent . . . ?”

It saddens me to see that analogy.

If that’s the general opinion of sports in America, sports is failing its purposes, which at higher levels is to entertain the public, at lower levels is to provide for recreation and better health, and at our level is to help educate students.

If at all these levels, we do not find willing respect for excellent efforts and execution and graceful sportsmanship in winning and losing, leaders of sports on all levels are failing their principal duty.  If stick-it-to-them strategy is the prevailing theme of the enterprise of sports at any level, that enterprise is worthless, or worse.