thoughtLEADERS, LLC Blog: Do Anything! Just Do It Now! - The 10th Leadership Principle

Ah yes, this was a blog post that caught my attention. Anytime someone can find leadership principles from a story like 'The Outsiders," that is a post worth reading.

The post can be found here:

thoughtLEADERS, LLC Blog: Do Anything! Just Do It Now! - The 10th Leadership Principle

I pretty much agreed with his analysis though I barely got through the movie. I know the scenes he referenced primarily through the book, which I can recite pretty much by heart.

Regarding making 'sounder' decisions: don't know that Ponyboy or Johnny could have made a sounder decision not to go in after the kids. A recurring theme in many of SE Hinton's books is the fact that adults tend to be kinda impotent and when things need to be done, they choose not to act or act in a way that they think they are supposed to without realizing how useless they really are. Even misanthropic Dallas Winston went after Johnny and tried to do something.

Also we do forget that Pony was all of 14 when he made many of his decisions in this story-some good and some less good (much to the frustration of his oldest brother Darry, who I personally think he had more in common with than he realized at the time, but I view that from the perspective of an adult well over 18, than the 11 year old I was when I first read the story and wanted Darry to lay off Ponyboy.) Given some of the background of many of the characters, it is a wonder that they made some of sound decisions they did. I liked the fact that again and again it was shown Ponyboy and his friends demonstrated how decent they basically, even if some of the gang demonstrated less than decent behaviour at times.

I sometimes think that the reason that some people wish they were young again is because it seems that youth can be as decisive and actionable as Ponyboy and Johnny. Maybe, maybe not. I think that we do well to see how and where in our lives we can make sound decisions and take decisive action.

After all, the greasers can't have all the fun, can they?