Archive for August, 2010
Three Reminders from the Arlington Cemetery Mess August 2 2010 one response
One of the stories that registered with me while I was on vacation last week was an extended video clip I saw of Senator Claire McCaskill grilling the former superintendent and deputy superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery at a congressional hearing. Since I was out of town, I had missed the investigative piece in the Washington Post last week that detailed decades of mismanagement at Arlington. The result of the poor leadership and management includes mismarked graves, unmarked graves, split graves and at least four burial urns that somehow ended up in a landfill. I don’t think it’s overstating the case to say that the whole situation is a travesty.
When I got back home over the weekend, I read the Post article to try to understand how such a thing could happen. You should read it for yourself, but the highlights include a feud between the superintendent and his deputy that dated back to 1992, a lack of a computerized system to map and manage the cemetery and a contracting process that was out of control. The mess at Arlington reminds me of three truths that are critical to the effective management of any organization.
Scott Eblin is an executive coach, speaker and author of 
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