Are there requisites for visionary leadership?
I do a fair amount of speaking on leadership, and I’ve always said if you don’t know where you’re going, if you don’t know what’s important to you, if you don’t have a plan you want to accomplish, any road will take you someplace, but it may not be where you really want to go. I’ve always approached things with a goal in mind and with Girl Scouts that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to change the public’s perception, we’re trying to develop new strategies to bring scouting to more girls, to develop new sources of funding. We have a clear picture of where we want to go. If you don’t have that, I think you tend to flounder. You may be lucky, but you won’t be lucky many times. Do you have heroes? Oh, yes. Our founder, Juliette Gordon Low was an amazing woman. In 1912 she had this crazy idea about organizing girls. She lived in Savannah with the genteel set; so she had a fairly radical notion. She also had a disability, hearing problems stemming from a disease, and so from the very
