Joe is fast becoming a young man during the 1930's and 40's, an almost forgotten era. The Austin's live in rural Tennessee, where Daddy farms. Despite the hardships that they have to endure, they are certain of two things. God and Family are everything. Joe loses his baby sister and they do their best to remain steadfast. The Austin's find happiness when a new little sister is born, and later, another. A raging fire soon destroys most of their home. Momma gets sick, and Joe is forced to become a surrogate parent to his younger sisters. How can Joe keep everything together? How can he do all that he is forced to do when he is only eleven years old?

When people complain about poor communications the real problem is often lack of agreement. We need a strategy that assumes disagreement. We need to take off our glasses and look through glasses of a different color. Colorful leaders spin the filters to get a clear, rich, natural color image. How others feel, what they think, and where they want to go, matters a great deal. The colorful leadership discipline is to look for the zone of overlap, similar to the way your TV combines red, green and blue lights to make white light and color images. By viewing business and personal needs from thee perspectives you avoid getting stuck with your single point of view. To survive, a business needs people and how people feel is absolutely critical, but it is not the only thing. You also need a quality service or product that can compete in the market. The market is unfeeling. Your product must stand on its own. Quality and good feelings are essential, but not sufficient. To survive long term you must adapt to a changing world. The economy, politics, climate, and a host of unpredictable factors require that you constantly innovate and adapt. Looking from all three perspectives all the time is what the Colorful Leadership Discipline is all about. You will never achieve total agreement on these multiple factors, but where they overlap is the sweet spot were effective leaders focus their attention to maximize their long-term results.

Inside the cabin of a B-29 on a 3,000 mile trip to bomb Japan!
Larry Nelson, a farm boy from South Dakota, enlisted in the Army Air Corps to fulfill a romantic dream to become a pilot. Romance turned to harsh reality when he failed an eye exam and became a navigator instead. Harsh reality became terror inside the cabin of a B-29. When high altitude bombing raids on Japan failed, they turned to devastating night fire raids on Japanese cities. These raids resulted in the near total destruction of Tokyo-Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka and other smaller cities.