Julia Kirby wrote a great post over at the Harvard Business Review blog about the impressive progress that Amrita
Mahale, James Thompson, Svetla Alexandrov, and Dave Hughes made over the past couple weeks in starting a movement and debate about whether to close the main drag in downtown Palo Alto and turn it into a pedestrian mall. As I wrote last week, this has sparked a heated and serious debate in the community. And a lot of press coverage. Today, it was picked-up by Julia over at HBR, who focused on Dave Hughes (an Army Captain and Iraq veteran who is teaching at West Point next year), and what he learned about leadership from the experience.
Mahale, James Thompson, Svetla Alexandrov, and Dave Hughes made over the past couple weeks in starting a movement and debate about whether to close the main drag in downtown Palo Alto and turn it into a pedestrian mall. As I wrote last week, this has sparked a heated and serious debate in the community. And a lot of press coverage. Today, it was picked-up by Julia over at HBR, who focused on Dave Hughes (an Army Captain and Iraq veteran who is teaching at West Point next year), and what he learned about leadership from the experience.
I have had the pleasure of teaching Dave in three different classes, and he is a delight (Also, talk about a no excuses guy — he did make it to class when he spent the night before in the hospital, but asked to be excused on the day his wife had a baby!). He also has wonderful leadership skills, as the article with Julia implies. But I also want to make sure and emphasize that the other members of Team Wildfire, Amrita, James, and Svetla did a marvelous job as well — although we also understand that Dave's experience in Iraq (he flew helicopters and coordinated hundreds of missions) definitely makes a great story. If you are curious, check out Starting a Movement, Learning to Lead. Also, I think I learned a lot more about leadership from watching Dave in action than he ever learned from me and other Stanford faculty. In any event, as always, anything that Julia writes is a delight to read.
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