THE LAW OF PROCESS

  Leadership Develops Daily, Not in a Day

Anne Scheiber  was 101 years old when she died in January of 1995. For years she had lived in a tiny, run-down, rent controlled studio apartment in Manhattan. The paint on the walls was peeling, and the old bookcases that lined the walls were covered in dust. Rent was four hundred dollars a month.

Scheiber lived on Social Security and a small monthly pension, which she started receiving in 1943 when she retired as an auditor for the Internal Revenue Service. She hadn't done very well at the IRS. More specifically, the agency hadn't done right by her. Despite having a law degree and doing excellent work, she was never promoted. And when she  retired at age fifty-one. she was making only $3,150 a year.

"She was treated very, very shabbily," said Benjamin Clark, who knew her as well as anyone did. "She really had to fend for herself in every way. It was really qu9te a struggle."

Scheiber was the model of thrift. She didn't spend money on her self. She didn't buy new furniture as the old pieces she owned became worn out. She didn't even subscribe to a newspaper. About once week, she used to go to the public library to read the Wall Street Journal.

WINDFALL !

Imagine the surprise of Norman Lamm, the president of Yeshiva University in New York City, when he found out that Anne Scheiber, a little old lady whom he had never heard of of - and who had never attended Yeshiva- left nearly her entire estate to the university.

"When I saw the will, it was mind blowing, such an unexpected windfall," said Lamm. "This woman has become a legend overnight."

The estate Anne Scheiber left to Yeshiva University was worth $22 million !

How in the world did a spinster who had been retired for fifty years build an eight-figure fortune ?

Here's the answer. By the time she retired from the IRS in 1943, Anne  Scheiber had maering Plough Cnaged to save $5000. She invested that money in stocks. By 1950, she had made enough profit to buy 1000 share of Schering Plough.Corporation stock, then valued at $10,000. And she held on to that stock, letting its value build. Today, those original shares have split enough times to produce 128,000 shares, worth $7.5 million.

The secret to Scheiber's success was that she spent most of her life building her worth. Whether her stock's values went up of down, she never sold it off with the thought, I'm finished building; now it's time to cash out. She was in for the long haul, the really long haul. When she earned dividends-which kept getting larger and larger-she reinvested them. She spent her whole lifetime building. While other older people worry that they may run out of funds before the end of their lives, the longer she lived, the wealthier she became. When it came to finances, Scheiber understood and applied the Law of Process.

LEADERSHIP IS LIKE INVESTING- IT COMPOUNDS

Becoming a leader is a lot like investing successfully in the stock market. If your hope is to make a fortune in a day, you're not going to be successful. What matters most is what you do day by day over the long haul. My friend Tag Short maintains," The secret of our success is found in our daily agenda." If you continually invest in your leadership development, letting your "assets" compound, the inevitable result is growth over time.

When I teach leadership at conferences, people inevitably ask me whether leader are born. I always answer,"Yes, of course they are..... I've yet to meet one that came into the world any other way!" We all laugh, and then I answer the real question-whether leadership is something a person either possesses or doesn't.

Although it's true that some people are born with greater natural gifts than others, the ability to lead is really a collection of skills, nearly all of which can be learned and improved. But that process doesn't happen overnight. Leadership is complicated. It has many facets: respect, experience, emotional strength, people skills,discipline, vision, momentum, timing the list goes on. As you can see, many factors that come in to play in leadership are intangible. That's only now, at age fifty-one, do I feel that I am truly beginning to understand the many aspects of leadership with clarity.