{"id":624,"date":"2009-12-09T15:05:53","date_gmt":"2009-12-09T20:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.darden.virginia.edu\/brunerblog\/?p=624"},"modified":"2013-09-18T15:55:58","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T19:55:58","slug":"a-great-and-sublime-fool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.darden.virginia.edu\/brunerblog\/2009\/12\/a-great-and-sublime-fool\/","title":{"rendered":"A Great and Sublime Fool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&ldquo;Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God&#8217;s fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>                                                                           &#8211;                   Mark Twain<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"has-dropcap\">I<\/span>n <a href=\"http:\/\/views.washingtonpost.com\/leadership\/panelists\/2009\/12\/gods-own-fool.html\">my posting this morning<\/a> to the &ldquo;On Leadership&rdquo; blog at washingtonpost.com, I reflected on this famous quotation from Mark Twain and recent headlines about Tiger Woods, Max Baucus, Raj Rajaratnam, and Henry Blodget.     What do we do with a leader who fails us?   And when do we let a miscreant get on with his or her life?<\/p>\n<p>I said that it is complicated: the answer must depend on the gravity of the crime; restitution for anyone injured; propensity to repeat; truth-telling and transparency about the issue; sincerity of regret and commitment to do differently in the future; competence and reliability to tread a new and better path; the incentives your decision might create for the future.   The point is that we need to avoid snap judgments and actually &ldquo;contemplate with respect&rdquo; the miscreants we encounter.   See my posting for the full argument.<\/p>\n<p>An added thought: was Mark Twain just being a wuss?   Not necessarily.   Like all great writers, he produced enough verbiage for any good investigator to find a counteropposing view in his own words.   For instance, he also supposedly said, &ldquo;The trouble ain&#8217;t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain&#8217;t distributed right.&rdquo;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&ldquo;Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God&#8217;s fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.&rdquo; &#8211; Mark Twain In my posting this morning to the &ldquo;On Leadership&rdquo; blog at washingtonpost.com, I reflected on this famous quotation from Mark Twain and recent headlines about Tiger Woods, Max [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59636],"tags":[490,208,505,507,520,543,553],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership-2","tag-henry-blodget","tag-leadership","tag-mark-twain","tag-max-baucus","tag-raj-rajaratnam","tag-tiger-woods","tag-washington-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v20.10 (Yoast SEO v28.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A Great and Sublime Fool - Robert F. 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But then I am God&#039;s fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.&rdquo; - Mark Twain In my\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.darden.virginia.edu\/brunerblog\/2009\/12\/a-great-and-sublime-fool\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Robert F. 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