Led by John Podesto (former Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton), the Obama transition team has gone back 50 years to study other transitions, hour by hour in some cases, seeking to tease out key lessons.  The lessons they emphasised include:

• Getting going quickly but deliberately
• Being careful
• Being thorough in analysis

If you are managing a key transition in your organisation could you benefit from taking a leaf out Obama’s transition team?

Yesterday, I posted this about the importance of better managing how you panic. It turns out that the Democratic Party is in something of a panic because Obama appears too relaxed. When interviewed for an article in the September 18th 2008 issue of Time magazine Obama provided a lucid rationale for not being too hot under the collar. He argues that he knows the history, current situation, and propensities of his opponent and the party he represents.

The article in Time puts it thus:

“…but Obama doesn’t do spontaneous combustion.  And he’s keenly away of the deeper danger of fire for America’s first black presidential nominee.  Over the past 19 months, he’s been attacked as a naive novice, an empty suit, a tax-and-spend liberal, an arugula-grazing elitist and a corrupt ward heeler, but the attacks that nearly derailed him involved the Rev. Jeremiah Wright - attacks designed to portray Obama as an angry black man.  White America has embraced unthreatening African Americans like Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, and Colin Powell, but this is still a majority-white country, and Obama does not want to be stereotyped as a race man like Malcolm X”.

As you learn to panic more effectively, chose your stereotype well.

Image courtesy of Beth Can.

Sometimes leadership means that either/or situations are merely a trap for the unsuspecting and the experienced alike. Prior to the overseas trip Senator McCain was justifiably inviting the American electorate to join him in having concerns about Senator Obama’s lack of international and military experience.

Many observers and commentators are of the view that Mr Obama’s overseas trip has been a success. But, there ends the either/or aspect of the gauntlet. For, as the New York Times puts it today:

The quandary for Mr. Obama is that while his trip clearly presented an opportunity for him — even many Republicans conceded that he seized it masterfully with eight days of appearances in troubled lands, meetings with foreign leaders and visits to soldiers — it also fuelled the questions his critics have used to try to undercut him: whether he is arrogant and taking his election for granted.

At a much smaller scale, as a leader you may find that some of your days are similarly dogged by paradox much like the senator’s European trip which ended today.  What  skills and approaches have worked particularly well for you?