Cigars, Whiskey and Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant

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Long before leadership became identified as the catalyst for corporate success, the Civil War s winning general was showing the world how dynamic leadership is the crucial determinant of victory or defeat.Ulysses S. Grant never sought fame of glory, nor did he try to tie his performance to personal reward. Instead, he concentrated on contribution and service. He looked upon being given increased responsibility not as increasing his power, but as increasing his ability to get the job done. "The great thing about Grant...is his perfect correctness and persistency of purpose." (Abraham Lincoln)

In this masterful retelling of Grant s story, Al Kaltman draws on Grant s writings and life experiences to present a series of practical lessons on how to get superior performance from the troops.

Going beyond mere "how-to s", Cigars, Whiskey & Winning deals with character traits, core beliefs, and fundamental values to reveal the secrets to becoming a winning leader that are as much about "who to be" as "what to do". And there isn t a chart, table, or checklist in sight-just a handy index of lessons for ready inspiration on demand."Ulysses S. Grant was a perceptive and surprisingly modern manager," writes Al Kaltman. "A pragmatist who learned from his own and others successes and failures, he brought new dimensions to strategic planning. He was adept at seizing and exploiting opportunities as they presented themselves, and he boldly shattered paradigms long before the term paradigm had made its way into the management jargon."

Kaltman uses Grant s military career, beginning with his enrollment at West Point through his early successes in the Civil War to his eventual command of the entire Union Army, to illustrate 250 basic principles of business success, from "Bureaucrats do the dumbest things" to "You can t stop the clock." In an afterword, Kaltman considers how President Grant failed to live up to the principles of teamwork and planning that led General Grant to victory, with a resultant career as chief executive whose legacy has been less than stellar.