Five Leadership Lessons of James T. Kirk: The Movie (Or, How Alex Knapp Plans To Conquer The Universe)

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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14 Responses

  1. Katherine says:

    Along with Five Leadership Lessons of Jean-Luc Picard and Five Leadership Mistakes of the Galactic Empire.  Is it Geek Week at Forbes, Alex?

    The Kirk one is very nicely tongue-in-cheek:

    With his boots on the ground, he was always able to make quick assessments of the situation, leading to superior results. At least, superior for everyone with a name and not wearing a red shirt.Report

  2. J.L. Wall says:

    Enough with leadership!  I’m looking forward to “Five Objections to Technological Progress from Dr. Leonard H. McCoy.”  Either that, or “Five Tips for Interstellar Romance from Commander William Riker.”

    But these were great.Report

  3. BlaiseP says:

    The Five Leadership Lessons of Col. Walter Kurtz:

    1.   If all around  you failure and incompetence run rampant…. run.

    2.   Never trust anyone without ass meat on the line.

    3.   Accountability, like power, varies with the inverse square of distance.

    4.   Where other forms of persuasion fail, fear works miracles.

    5.   To thine own self be true, for you can bet your bottom dollar nobody else wants to hear it.Report

    • Chris in reply to BlaiseP says:

      Sell the house.

      Sell the car.

      Sell the kids.

      Find someone else.

      Forget it. I’m never coming back. Forget it.Report

      • BlaiseP in reply to Chris says:

        It seems, as one becomes older,
        That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
        Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
        Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
        Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
        The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
        Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
        Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
        We had the experience but missed the meaning,
        And approach to the meaning restores the experience
        In a different form, beyond any meaning
        We can assign to happiness. I have said before
        That the past experience revived in the meaning
        Is not the experience of one life only
        But of many generations—not forgetting
        Something that is probably quite ineffable:
        The backward look behind the assurance
        Of recorded history, the backward half-look
        Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.Report

    • Tod Kelly in reply to BlaiseP says:

      I’m a little disappointed that not one of the five involve putting someone’s head on a pike.Report

  4. Tod Kelly says:

    Alex – when you are a multimillionaire best-selling business book author, will you take me with you to your land of milk and honey?Report

    • BlaiseP in reply to Tod Kelly says:

      Those that can, do.   Those that can’t write books on the subject.Report

      • BlaiseP in reply to BlaiseP says:

        ,,, may I hasten to add, present company excepted.    Still, I could make a fire to be seen for miles with first editions of worthless management books.   Nor have I seen anyone with an MBA capable of managing his way out of a paper bag.Report

        • Patrick Cahalan in reply to BlaiseP says:

          I’ve actually read a number of good management books, maybe I just have selection bias since I don’t browse.

          On the other hand, I’m entirely certain that most people who get an MBA walk into an organization having spent all their time obsessing about quant stuff and probably not paying much attention at all in the organizational behavior classes.

          It’s a very weird phenomenon.Report