Take Care of the Horses

In the early days of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln received telegraphs with various updates from the battlefields.

“The Confederates have just raided a Union outpost out by Fairfax Station, and they’ve captured 100 horses and the brigadier general,” one message read.

Lincoln sighed and said, “Oh God. I hate to lose 100 horses.”

When the telegraph operator asked why he wasn’t more concerned about the brigadier general, Lincoln replied, “I can make a brigadier general in five minutes, but it’s hard to replace 100 horses.”

Former Secretary of State and Four-Star General Colin Powell shared that anecdote in David Rubenstein’s book “How to Lead.”

“It always reminded me that ‘Your job, Powell, is to take care of the horses.’ Don’t worry about being a brigadier general. Take care of the horses, the soldiers, the employees, the clerks, the students, the faculty, whatever it takes to be successful in whatever it is you’re trying to achieve,” Powell said.

Who are your horses? Who should you be paying more attention to? What should you be caring about more than you are currently are?

We as leaders often put too much emphasis on the wrong details within our organizations. We prioritize the wrong people, determine poor key performance indicators and spend way too many hours obsessing over what ultimately becomes trivial.

Let’s take a few minutes to consider some people on our teams whom we’ve maybe taken for granted. Then, let’s determine how we can better prioritize them moving forward.

The people we might be overlooking today could easily weaken our team should they leave tomorrow.

We need to do everything we can to save our horses.