The man who saved the world, is how some people have described Gary Slaughter. Gary is a fellow author and during the Cuban Missile Crisis he was serving as a naval officer on the destroyer, USS Cony facing off a nuclear armed Soviet submarine. The events that had the world teetering on the brink of nuclear war are told in Slaughter’s book, Sea Stories: A Memoir of a Naval Officer. Under tremendous pressure, with time running out, horror was avoided—but only because of the decisions made by those on the front lines.

Slaughter is a participant along with Svetlana Savranskaya, and Modupe Akinola in a Choiceology podcast titled Under Pressure-- How can we make important decisions when time is scarce, and the stakes are high? Click on Choiceology to access the podcast.

Works by Slaughter include:

Sea Stories: A Memoir of a Naval Office
WW II POWs in America and Abroad: Astounding Facts about the Imprisonment of Military and Civilians During the War
The Journey of an Inquiring Mind: From Scholar, Naval Officer, and Entrepreneur to Novelist
The four book Series Cottonwood— Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall
And the 1979 work— Data processing training handbook: Cost justification, measurement, and evaluation (PBI series for the computer and data processing)

Gary also wrote a review of my book, The Language of Excellence for the literary magazine, 2nd & Church, In commenting on the book, he said:

“In my judgment, The Language of Excellence by Tom Collins is among the best five books I have ever read on this subject.
Tom Collins’ The Language of Excellence just may be the only guidebook to personal and business excellence you will ever need to read. Borrowing from a lifetime of achievement, Collins lays out clear guidelines that can help you find your own success while enabling you to offer others the same excellence that has marked both his life and career. A must-read for achievers.”

All of my books are available from Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million as well as your favorite neighborhood bookstore. Ebook and print editions are also available on Amazon, Google Play, Apple iBooks, Smashwords, and other online bookstores. Audio editions are available on Amazon, iTunes and directly from Audible.com. The latest book, Exploring Asheville, was the winner of the Independent Press Award for its literary category.

In a prior post, I referenced “Tyranny of the OR,” and, apparently, the reference was new to many people.

In the book Built to Last by Jim Collins and Scott Porras, the authors noted that the common decision process is merely choosing between two or more choices—it is an “either/or” process. For example, shall we minimize cost or maximize quality. It is an approach that “…pushes people to believe things must be either A OR B, but not both.” That, of course, dampens the imagination, limiting the possible. It is this Tyranny of the OR that led President Kennedy to say, “We need men who can dream of things that never were.”

The authors describe the Tyranny of the OR as a rational view that cannot easily accept paradox. Influenced by the Tyranny of the OR, these men and women cannot deal with two seemingly contradictory forces or ideas at the same time. On the other hand, what distinguishes the truly remarkable leader and organization is, in the words of the authors, “The Genius of the AND.” Groundbreaking individuals and organizations have replaced the traditional OR approach to decision making with an AND approach—for example, rather than choose between low cost or high quality, they ask, “Why not both?” “Why not give our customers both the highest quality at the lowest cost?”

Consider Apple and its leader, Steve Jobs. Given the choice between robust complexity and simplicity—Steve Jobs insisted on both, complexity and simplicity. Given the choice between utility and beauty, Steve Jobs chose both. “The Genius of the AND” is to dream of things that never were and say why not now! Because Steve Jobs did, Apple changed the world.

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Tom Collins’ books include his book on leadership, The Language of Excellence, and his mystery novels including Mark Rollins’ New Career, Mark Rollins and the Rainmaker, Mark Rollins and the Puppeteer and the newest mystery, The Claret Murders. For signed copies, go to the author’s online store. unsigned print and ebook editions are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online bookstores. For an audio edition of The Claret Murders go to http://amzn.com/B00IV5ZJEI. The ebook edition for the iPad is available through Apple iTunes’ iBookstore.