A century-old leadership style revitalizes the heroic hospital

"Those who fail history are destined to repeat it." Emmett C. Murphy, Ph.D., an international business consultant found that the key to individual and organizational leadership is a heroic commitment to service and the reengineering of the work that it requires. Murphy, whose clients include IBM, General Motors, Johns Hopkins, Centers for Disease Control, Johnson & Johnson, and Memorial Sloan Kettering; was a consultant with Booz-Allen Hamilton and served on the faculties of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the State University of New York before founding E. C. Murphy, Ltd. His firm focuses on the application of quality improvement and work reengineering strategies for creating a patient-focused "heroic" organization. Recently, Dr. Murphy and Michael Snell co-authored an intriguing management book based on the fundamental business strategies historically found in an unlikely western figure. The The Genius of Sitting Bull (Prentice Hall, 1993), Murphy and Snell examine the leadership styles of the Sioux chief and General Custer at the peaks of their careers and used 13 heroic strategies common to Sitting Bull's management style as a metaphor for for successful leadership on the great plains of American health care and business life.