Part Two

PEOPLE

John Guare’s play Six Degrees of Separation takes its title from the belief that anyone can be linked to anyone else by a chain of acquaintance consisting of only five intervening people. How many degrees of separation lay between anyone in late-eighteenth-century America and George Washington? Fewer than six. True, it was a smaller country, but travel was harder, which made it large again. Even so, Washington got around, fighting in five states during the Revolution, visiting all thirteen during his presidency. When he wasn’t on the move, people came to him. One evening he noted in his diary, with some surprise, that he and Martha had dined alone for the first time in twenty years. From the masses he met he picked (or Congress picked for him) his assistants and associates, the men he led most intimately.

Problems, and a leader’s solutions to them, consist of ideas, forces, facts of life. But they are always accompanied by, or incarnated in, people. Judging people accurately and managing them well can make the difference between success and failure.