Stronger Through Adversity: World-Class Leaders Share Pandemic-Tested Lessons on Thriving During the Toughest Challenges

  CHAPTER 5  

Set Safety Supreme

The purpose is clear.It is safety with solvency.

—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER,thirty-fourth president of the United States

AS TRUE TODAY AS IT WAS TWO MILLENNIA AGO

The more things change, the more they stay the same or so it would seem from reading Marcus Tullius Cicero’s writings. Cicero was a Roman statesman and orator who lived from 106–43 BC. Not only did Cicero’s ideas impact the Roman Empire, but they resurfaced at the beginning of the Renaissance in the fourteenth century. One of Cicero’s maxims remained keenly relevant for those leading during the pandemic, and the idea behind it resurfaced again and again during my interviews. Cicero observed, “Salus populi suprema lex,” which translates from the Latin to ...