I wrote a couple of posts about Senator Ted Stevens, King of Pork—more than 3.4 billion dollars worth—and Senator Ted Stevens, convicted felon—all seven counts.

So I thought it only fair to add another chapter just in case you hadn’t kept up.

Stevens was up for re-election and as soon as the conviction was announced he flew straight back to Alaska to campaign.

He refused to resign from the Senate, said he would appeal his conviction and was reelected by a 1% margin—given to him by old (over 30) guys.

Now, I’d always heard that convicted felons had to jump through various hoops, depending on which state they lived in, if they wanted to vote.

So what about Alaska?

“Alaska law states that convicted felons are barred from voting if their crime is one of “moral turpitude,” which in Alaska includes a wide swath of illegal activities.”Receiving a bribe” is listed among them…the Alaska Division of Elections announced that the senator’s crimes were, in fact, of moral turpitude but that a guilty verdict wasn’t enough to make him a convicted felon for purposes of voting.

State law does stipulate that a candidate for the Senate must be a registered voter—and thus not a felon who committed acts of moral turpitude—when he files for the office. But Stevens had not yet been found guilty when he filed.”

Makes your head spin.

There are two things I’m taking away from this.

The first is a question; if a ‘normal’ Alaskan was convicted of moral turpitude would he just continue merrily on his way?

And the second is that this is pretty graphic proof that, to a majority of voters, pork and familiarity trumps ethics any day.

Not that any of this matters. In his final days, George W. will pardon Uncle Ted just as he pardoned Scooter.

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With the economy in turmoil and companies laying off right and left it’s easy for manager’s to lose sight of one of their prime responsibilities—preventing/reducing turnover.

Retention is even more critical when layoffs are happening, since the need for productivity goes up, not down.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post that I think will be even more useful now, so here it is again.

As a manager, who are your customers?

Customer service is a major topic these days, as is employee retention, but do they really have anything in common? You bet!

No matter your position, from CEO to team leader, your people are your customers.

That’s right, customers. That makes you an ESM—employee service manager.

Why do you service your people? To help them achieve their full potential;

• assure high productivity;
• lower turnover; and
• create an environment that’s a talent magnet.

How do you service your people? By

• cultivating the kind of MAP that truly values people and understands how important it is to manifest that;
• offering high-grade professional challenges to all your people and, then, making sure that they have the resources and all the information necessary to achieve success;
• fostering fairness so that people know they are evaluated on their merits and favoritism plays no part; and always walking your talk and living up to your commitments.

What’s in it for you?

• Better reviews, promotions and raises;
• increased professional development;
• less turnover and easier staffing; and
  
• what goes around comes around—everything that you give your people will come back to you ten-fold!

These are, or should be, basic tenets for managers at any level—how do you grade yourself on each? How would your people grade you?

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Even before the economic meltdown you heard constantly about all the reasons you needed to do things differently; all the problems inherent in hiring managing a four-generational workforce; all the new technology you needed in order to succeed.

In short, all the changes coming up, down and around the pike.

And as everyone know, change isn’t easy.

A few months ago IBM produced and excellent research study called The Enterprise of the Future (requires free registration), which was the basis of a series I wrote at Leadership Turn.

There’a new module out called Making Change Work and it offers up some interesting stats.

“Over a two-year period, the percentage of CEOs expecting substantial change climbed from 65 percent in 2006 to 83 percent in 2008 but those reporting they had successfully managed change in the past rose just 4 percentage points, up from 57 percent in 2006 to 61 percent in 2008… The major obstacles to implementing change in an enterprise are centered on people and corporate culture. Nearly 60 percent of the executives and project managers surveyed say changing mind sets and attitudes is the biggest challenge to implementing change in an enterprise, followed by corporate culture at 49 percent. These challenges were flagged as more important than shortage of resources, highlighting that these problems are seen as inherently more difficult to solve even if given sufficient resources. “

Lots of advice on inaugurating change and how to make it happen smoothly, but I think that this study is a great place to start. It has four sections

• Real Insights, Real Actions
• Solid Methods, Solid Benefits
• Better Skills, Better Change
• Right Investment, Right Impact

packed with solid information and useful information on what global bosses are doing.

The information is useful whether your company is global or local, because you’re both dealing with the same problems—people and the need to change corporate culture in order to survive and thrive.

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If we wait for them to fix it nothing will happen.

Only WE can change it.

Don’t miss my other WW: leadership fools means poverty rules

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Dan McCarthy, a very cool guy who is head of leadership and management development at Paychex and writes a great blog on leadership and management issues, included me in his current edition of the Leadership Development Carnival. The best part is that the content applies to all parts of life, no matter what you do.

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As mentioned yesterday, clients are pushing law firms into increasingly diverse hiring that more accurately reflects today’s juries—forcing change into hide-bound corporate cultures that need to hang onto women. And, with the exception of a few firms, the general progress proceeds at a glacial pace.

So, how are women doing on the financial front? Not so good.

“Researchers…studied bonuses paid to 96 pairs of executive-level men and women in Britain with similar experience. Women, they found, were rewarded less for improved results. Indeed, when the worst-performing companies began doing very well, men’s bonuses rose 263% on average, vs. 4% for women.”

Women are gaining—just a 259% difference.

Over on this side of the pond it turns out that chauvinism is what really pays according to a study published in the September, 2008 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Researchers followed 12,686 people, aged 14 to 22 at the start of the study, with a 60% retention rate, for 26 years.

“Their analyses showed that men in the study who said they had more traditional gender role attitudes made an average of about $8,500 more annually than those who had less traditional attitudes… Women who held more traditional views about gender roles made an average of $1,500 less annually than the women with more egalitarian views.”

Not a pretty picture.

But four years ago, the McKinsey Leadership Project (requires free registration) was created to help women both internally and externally.

“A new approach to leadership can help women become more self-confident and effective business leaders.”

Granted, these are women from the top, strong and well-educated no matter what their original background, but it still offers pointers for all.

McKinsey calls it model centered leadership, derived from the interviews and other research, distilled into five broad, interrelated concepts…

• meaning, or finding your strengths and putting them to work in the service of an inspiring purpose;

• managing energy, or knowing where your energy comes from, where it goes, and what you can do to manage it;

• positive framing, or adopting a more constructive way to view your world, expand your horizons, and gain the resilience to move ahead even when bad things happen;

• connecting, or identifying who can help you grow, building stronger relationships, and increasing your sense of belonging; and

• engaging, or finding your voice, becoming self-reliant and confident by accepting opportunities and the inherent risks they bring, and collaborating with others.

Does it have value for you? Yes!

Does it offer anything to you if you’re not a woman? Absolutely.

None of this will change the world, but as long as you understand that leadership isn’t positional you can apply these skills throughout your world to help you create a fuller, more rewarding life.

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This is part 1 in an ongoing discussion.
Evolution may be one of the most powerful forces in the world. It is certainly one of the most peculiar natural forces, with the unusual characteristic of being a long-term, natural statistical process with no particular goal. Because it is statistical it is not as dependable as the law of gravity. Because it is statistical, it operates over thousands of trials, so it operates over long time scales – often millions of years. It does not have any particular goal, but it does seem to move in particular directions. Finally, it operates with a very simple set of rules, needing only some life and three actions to work its magic:

• Replication (Reproduction)
• Variation (Mutation)
• Selection (Survival)

Evolution starts the survivors of the last generation and uses them to produce the next generation. Replication is very good, but not perfect, so a few variations creep in. This new generation, with its variations, competes in the environment. The survivors then seed the next generation. While this process appears almost trivial, over millions of generations (or statistical trials) the random process of evolution has created some amazing forms of life, including people who are reading and writing this blog.

If evolution is so powerful, can we use its basic principles to drive improvements in a business? Yes, but the deeper question is how. Before digging into that question, let’s investigate three environmental conditions required for evolution to operate.

• Evolution requires many trials in each generation, because it is a random process. Fail often.
• Evolution operates only over a large number of generations. Fail fast.
• The external selection criteria (the measure of fitness) must be stable over many generations.

In short, evolution won’t work in any environment that does not provide these three conditions. Some operations within a business might provide these conditions, while other business operations might not.

Celebrate Failure—Fail fast, fail often.

In the late nineties (in the last century), many business books and business consultants preached about “celebrating failure.” One popular expert took the concept even further, exhorting his readers to “fail fast, and fail often.” Little did he know he was advocating an evolutionary approach to business. While it makes no sense to celebrate failure per se, it does make sense to celebrate failures which identify dead-end paths. The quicker a company can explore and eliminate opportunities, the quicker it will find good opportunities to exploit. A business seeks successful markets, successful products and successful customers. In the search for these successes a business will encounter many dead-ends, or failures. Failing fast and failing often will accelerate the discovery of the successful markets and products. In evolutionary terms, the business will discover survivable niches in its environment only as rapidly as it explores its business environment. Therefore, don’t celebrate failure, but work hard to fail fast and often.

Evolution has a high failure rate at every level. Within a single generation, very few of the members survive to propagate. Of all the acorns an oak tree grows, almost none actually grow to be another oak. Most don’t even survive to become a sprout. Within each single generation, evolution fulfills the exhortation to “fail often.”

Evolution also prefers to “fail fast.” In the mammal kingdom, evolution starts a new generation every year for large animals, even if an individual mammal may survive many years. But evolution is not locked into the annual calendar. At the bacteria level, evolution can starts a new generation every few hours or so. In a business what are the natural generation time cycles for various operations? How can a business accelerate its generational cycles to “fail faster?”

Selection Criteria – External, not Internal

Evolution simply provides the experiments, by creating variations. The environment provides the selection criteria that pick the winners. Each species “discovers” these environmental selection criteria by watching which the variations survive. Each of these variations contributes a small amount of improved survivability to the species.  It is critical to understand that the selection criteria are not provided internally, by a president, business owner, or central planner. The business must discover the natural selection criteria in its environment—its customers, competitors, suppliers, and partners. This is particularly difficult for most businesses because, as business leaders and owners, we think we should “lead” the business.

In addition to being hidden in the environment, selection criteria also change over time, usually slowly, but sometimes suddenly. Dinosaurs thrived largely unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. Over that time the environment changed little, so the selection criteria for survival changed very little. Dinosaurs, already pretty good at surviving in a hot, humid environment, continued to thrive while evolution made only small changes at the margins. However, a sudden cataclysm (huge meteor, giant sunspot, massive volcanic eruption or something else?) changed the environment almost instantly. Hot and humid switched to cool and dry. Swamps dried up, plants changed and selection criteria for survival changed accordingly, faster than dinosaurs could adjust. A previously marginal species—prototype mammals—had the unusual ability to regulate its body temperature internally. While dinosaurs could not stay warm in the new environment, the prototype mammals thrived.

Several million years later, we are reading and writing business blogs. In this environment of constant change, the selection criteria for survival in business change swiftly, sometimes overnight.

Business leaders and owners have great difficulty in discovering the selection criteria for business survival. Even worse, when a business leader finally does “get it right,” the criteria for business survival change, leaving the business leaders leading furiously in the wrong direction.

So, what do we do? The good news is that business leaders are not evolving into extinction. But, the requirements for business success are evolving, swiftly.

Are you leading your company into extinction?

Tune in next week as we explore in depth how a business can evolve toward success.

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This is a guest post by Korn/Ferry International’s Kevin Cashman and Ken Brousseau (detailed bios at end of post.), in which they apply their CEO assessment, expertise and constructs to the Presidential candidates.
Note: The candidates are discussed in random order and reflects no preference by the authors.

Voters commonly cast their ballots based on the critical issues and policies, but what about the equally crucial assessment of a candidate’s leadership strengths and approaches?

• Who is the leader beneath the speeches, policies and ads?
• How would experts describe the unique leadership styles of Barrack Obama and John McCain if they were being assessed for a global CEO position?

Two leadership authorities from one of the world’s largest talent management firms, Korn/Ferry International, point to four critical and differentiating facets of Obama and McCain’s leadership:

• decision-making styles;
• emotional temperaments;
• learning agility; and
• power-of-voice versus power-of-connection.

Overall, Cashman and Brousseau say that

• McCain’s strengths appear to be action-orientation, adherence to principle and a fiery tenacity to achieving results, whereas

• Obama tends to demonstrate exceptional learning agility, collaboration and is calmer under pressure.

1. Decision-Making Styles - Cashman and Brousseau assert that both candidates are principled decision-makers, but differ in their propensities to quickly or analytically make decisions and hone in on single versus multiple courses of action. Korn/Ferry’s research (see this Harvard Business Review article) at  shows that those unable to lead in a “complex style” have low likelihoods of succeeding in their positions, yet once they’ve risen to a top level, it’s possible to succeed with multiple approaches.  They observe:

• McCain is a more uni-focused thinker who focuses on one key principle or goal and tenaciously holds to a particular action rather than changing positions. When not in action-mode, he shifts to a more complex style that’s both analytic and uni-focused, efficiently studying the facts, and making and sticking to what he senses is the best decision.

• Obama also operates in the complex mode, but more often uses a creative and integrative style that is analytic and more open to alternate possibilities.  Before making a judgment, he studies an extensive array of information and options, then gradually forms a strategy combining multiple objectives, actions and viewpoints.

2. Emotional Temperaments - The ability to manage the emotions of one’s self and those around them is a defining aspect of leadership at any level.

• When principles are challenged or threatened, McCain seems to be more emotive and combative to win the day. Achieving high performance works best for him in a high-octane pace where things are very active.

• Obama tends to maintain equanimity and gets introspective to sort out the best solutions to win, asking his staff to provide him with some reflective time each day.  His high performance is achieved by reflecting, synthesizing and collaborating.

3. Leadership Agility and Ability to Deal with Ambiguity -The key leadership competency in shortest supply is the ability to deal with ambiguity, according to the research of Korn/Ferry and others and supported by past Presidents who’ve described the job as “everything happening all at once.” Though we often dub political leaders who change their positions as wishy-washy, Cashman and Brousseau say that can be a sign of agility, as good leaders summon past lessons and observations to reframe thinking in first-time contexts or changing global environments. Agility - found to be much more predictive of potential and success than raw intelligence - has components related to mental, people, results and change.

• Obama demonstrates exceptional mental agility and has proclivity for dealing with change and people, but critics may question if his results agility on a large-scale have been sufficiently demonstrated.

• McCain, in contrast, shows a strong results orientation and a measure of mental agility, but his history of working amid volatility and commitment to tradition may call his agility with people and change into question.

4. Exerting Power-of-Voice or Power-of-Connection - Cashman and Brousseau say that many leaders can be understood as either heroic leaders who assert their power-of-voice or more interpersonally inclined leaders who employ power-of-connection. The key is being able to exercise the weaker, non-default area.  According to research by Zenger and Folkman, leaders who excel in people or results only, reach the 90th percentile of leadership effectiveness nine or 13 percent of the time, but those who possess both reach that level of success in two-thirds of instances.

• McCain, as someone who forcefully asserts for results, best typifies the heroic “I” type of leader, who leverages personal influence to impact results.  The downside can be too much drive and not enough relational connection.

• Obama and his collaborative approach characterize “We” leaders, who leverage collaboration, relationship and synergy to get results. In crisis situations, however, sometimes more “I” is required.

The leadership experts say Obama fits the overall archetype of a “magician” leader, someone who blends ideas and people to produce new solutions to unsolved problems.

McCain, on the other hand, is more of the traditional “warrior” leader, bringing about results through force of will or assertion with little fear of adversarial relationships or situations.

About the authors:
Kevin Cashman, author of the newly expanded book Leadership from the Inside Out, founded LeaderSource, a Minneapolis-based international leadership development, executive coaching and team effectiveness consultancy that joined with Korn/Ferry International in 2006. Leadership from the Inside Out, available in second edition in September, was named the #1 best-selling business book of 2000 by CEO-READ and one of the top 20 best-selling business books of the decade.  Over the past 25+ years, Cashman and his team have coached thousands of senior executives and teams to enhance performance.

Kenneth Brousseau, Ph.D., is CEO and co-founder of Decision Dynamics LLC, a firm specializing in behavior profiling and human resource systems design. Prior to forming Decision Dynamics, he served as a management and organization professor at the University of Southern California Graduate School of Business Administration.  Dr. Brousseau specializes in behavioral assessment systems for purposes of employee selection, organizational development and career management.  He is coauthor of The Dynamic Decision Maker, and he has authored articles on career development, work system design, team development and organizational design in publications such as Harvard Business Review, the Journal of Applied Psychology and the Academy of Management Executive.

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Rhetoric is interesting; tell people the same thing for enough years and they’ll believe it’s true no matter the facts. This is especially true when it comes to political rhetoric.

For instance, everybody knows that Democrats are “tax and spend liberals,” whereas Republicans are “fiscal conservatives.” Right?

Oops, the numbers don’t seem to back that up.

First the deficit…

• George W. Bush - $482 billion
• Bill Clinton - $200+ billion
• George Bush – $300 billion
• Ronald Reagan – $200 billion

The other thing that everybody knows is that the economy does better under a Republican Administration than a Democratic one. Right?

Oops, the numbers don’t to back that up, either.

In his new book Unequal Democracy, Princeton political science professor Larry M. Bartels analyzes the post-World War II era economy.

It will probably come as a surprise to many that “the United States economy has grown faster, on average, under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.”

Here are some pertinent snippets.

• Data for the whole period from 1948 to 2007, during which Republicans occupied the White House for 34 years and Democrats for 26, show average annual growth of real gross national product of

• “Over the entire 60-year period, income inequality trended substantially upward under Republican presidents but slightly downward under Democrats, thus accounting for the widening income gaps over all.

• …families at the 95th percentile fared almost as well under Republican presidents as under Democrats (1.90 percent growth per year, versus 2.12 percent), giving them little stake, economically, in election outcomes. But the stakes were enormous for the less well-to-do. Families at the 20th percentile fared much worse under Republicans than under Democrats (0.43 percent versus 2.64 percent). Eight years of growth at an annual rate of 0.43 percent increases a family’s income by just 3.5 percent, while eight years of growth at 2.64 percent raises it by 23.2 percent.”

Although rhetoric and spin often fly in the face of facts they still take on a life of their own.

The lesson to be learned from all this, and the reason I brought it to your attention, is that you shouldn’t believe what ‘everybody’ knows, AKA, popular wisdom—not in politics, not in your company, not in advertising or anywhere else.

In the wake of current economic problems, if you do only one thing differently in the future than in the past, I hope that you’ll question rhetoric, check the facts and think for yourself.

In other words, if it walks like a goose and honks like a goose, it probably is a goose—even if “everybody” says it’s a duck.

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Oh what fun. I do love a good scandal, preferable in business, because usually the players more interesting to me, but now and then a political one blows that tickles my fancy.

And it just happened.

Here’s the deal. The Interior Department spent two years and $5.3 million to discover that for four years “nearly a third of the Denver office staff — received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies, including Chevron Corp., Shell, Hess Corp. and Denver-based Gary-Williams Energy Corp.”

That’s the Minerals Management Service office—the folks who collect royalties from the oil companies, in case you didn’t know.

The investigation found a “culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” where “employees frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and natural gas company representatives” who referred to some of the government workers as the “MMS Chicks.”

Whoo hoo, hot stuff. Oh, and don’t forget “the director of the royalty program had a consulting job on the side for a company that paid him $30,000 for marketing its services to various oil and gas companies.”

In a gross understatement, Inspector General Earl E. Devaney called it “a culture of ethical failure.” No kidding, makes you wonder what was taught in the ethics class all but one took.

But what really makes this hilariously ironic is the timing.

Because these are also the people who approve offshore drilling permits and some in “Congress are starting debates pressing to expand oil and gas development off America’s beaches while trying to stave off an election-year rush by Democrats to impose new taxes and royalties on the oil industry.”

So besides a juicy scandal we have a giant load of political…hay.

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