The title of Al Kaltman’s guide to the Union’s winningest Civil War general and America’s 18th president as a model for business managers, Cigars, Whiskey and Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant, is fun but misleading.
Grant didn’t achieve so much winning through anything connected with either whiskey or cigars. In fact, both of the latter were harmful to Grant. Whiskey he managed to conquer through constant vigilance by himself, his wife Julia, and others close to him, to avoid drinking. And smoking too many cigars (up to a couple dozen a day) wound up giving Grant throat cancer that killed him.
Fortunately, Kaltman’s book is very little about smokes or drinks but mostly about about winning, how the lessons of Grant’s victories on the battlefield in the Civil War can offer lessons to contemporary business managers to also win success.
And Kaltman makes a surprisingly good case that Grant’s soldiering and generalship applies well to managing employees and fighting competitors today. Two hundred and fifty lessons include “The Folly of Swearing” (Grant avoided profanity), “Know Your Competition” (Grant got to know future Confederate adversaries when serving with them on the same side during the Mexican War) and “Everyone Is Mortal” (Grant was immune to the widespread overestimation of Robert E. Lee even in the North).
A good read for advice on business and as a quick, lively introduction to the life and military career of Grant as well.
