The Week Ahead

A preview of some of the community, county, school and town events and meetings coming up in this final week of February that includes Leap Year Day on Friday, the 29th, and the start of March on Saturday, when a lion or lamb will join us.

A school deadline

The last day for filing a petition to become a candidate for a local board of education occurs this week.

Elections to fill seats on local and regional school boards and to vote on their proposed tax levies in support of the new school year budgets are on April 15.

A candidate kit with complete information is available at the Web site of the N.J. School Boards Association, www.njsba.org/PI, or at local school district offices.

Monday, 4 p.m., offices of local school board secretary/business administrator.

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Guiding leaders to advance firms' tribes to higher values

In light of the intense focus these days on athletes who have used performance-enhancing chemicals, management consultants Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright might have chosen a better way to describe Gallup Organization chief executive officer Jim Clifton than "a Tribal Leader on steroids." Obviously, they do not mean to suggest in their book, Tribal Leadership, that Clifton uses steroids. But the hyperbolic statement could be wrenched out of context for mirthful purposes. The authors' intent is to underscore how Clifton has guided the Gallup Organization to the highest stage of corporate or organizational culture. Logan, King and Fischer-Wright designate that cultural level as "Stage 5," or the "Life is great" stage, which is a plateau beyond "We are great" (Stage 4) and even further up on the scale of cultural improvement than "I'm great" (Stage 3), "My life sucks" (Stage 2), and "Life sucks" (Stage 1).


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Zara Phillips reveals her ruthless streak

Winners need to believe that they are, beyond all shadow of a doubt, the best. You may think that being royal helps, but it doesn't. Winners also need humility - you can't improve without believing that there is room for improvement. You may think that being royal would get in the way, but it doesn't. Not with Zara Phillips, anyway. Phillips is a professional athlete, a world champion, a red-hot Olympic prospect. She has all the obsession and narrowness that any exceptional athlete in training must possess. That's how she sees herself; that's what she is.

You catch the royal stuff only at the margins: the perfectly understandable wariness of strangers with notebooks, the supremely confident ability to withhold all signs of friendliness, the freezing temperature of those blue eyes.

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