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In 1959, a forty-five-year-old Vince Lombardi was hired as head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers. It was his first NFL head coaching job, and he had a daunting task before him: How do you turn around a franchise that had not produced a winning season in over a decade?

The legendary basketball coach John Wooden put it best in his book “Wooden on Leadership,” where he wrote: “A volatile leader is like a bottle of nitroglycerine: The slightest knock and it blows up. Those around nitroglycerine or a temperamental boss spend all their time carefully tiptoeing back and forth rather than doing their jobs. It is not an environment, in my opinion, conducive to a winning organization.”

If you follow professional sports, you’ve heard the saying: “Winning covers over a multitude of sins.”

“It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.” That’s one of the Navy SEAL mottos that former SEAL, and now bestselling author, Jocko Willink shares in his book, “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win.”

Last month, Travis Kalanick was ousted as CEO of ride-sharing giant Uber after a litany of high-profile incidents that put public pressure on the company to make a leadership change.

I am pleased to announce the promotion of Russ Clemmer from Vice President of Marketing and Business Development to President. Russ has been with Legacy Advisory Partners for 4 years. He will be gaining strategic planning and implementation duties while continuing to lead our management consulting division.

Enron, Tyco, Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, Bernie Madoff—these are just a few high-profile examples of how unfettered greed can take down an organization and upend the lives of many innocent people.

Orrin Woodward, co-author of the book, “Launching a Leadership Revolution: Mastering the Five Levels of Influence,” put it best when he said, “Success is simple but isn't easy because it demands execution, not intentions.”

In a previous post, I shared a story about how at Legacy Advisory Partners we arrived at the decision to forgo developing a list of corporate values for our company in favor of adopting what we have since coined “The Great 8” leadership virtues -- which form the foundation for my new book The Great 8: A New Paradigm for Leadership.

When it grips us, we’re tempted to make peace with it.

We rationalize by calling it Wisdom, Prudence or Caution, even though it impairs our ability to make sound decisions.