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In his comment earlier, Ron Haynes from over at The Wisdom Journal said, “politicians think only about the next election, but statesmen think about the next generation.”

Think about that when you’re deciding for whom to vote.

Before you choose the ideology that makes you the most comfortable, think about your grandchildren’s children and what kind of world you want to leave as your legacy.

Where do politicians stand with you?

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Entrepreneur. Everyone wants to be one from 20-somethings dreaming in their dorm rooms and retired/displaced boomers to executives tired of the daily big company grind.They see the juicy stock options, media attention, IPOs, and acquisitions, but have little awareness or ability to handle the

• 80+ hour weeks;
• severely restricted resources;
• crowded offices/multiple moves;
• turning on a dime; and
• do it themselves/delegate it (depending on the circumstances)

You have a great product idea that has a sizable market potential. What basic skills do you need to be a good CEO? How do you (in your ‘spare time’) turn yourself into a good CEO?

There’s no way to tell you everything you need to know, but here are ten basics to get you off to a flying start.

1. You may not be a CFO, but you better know your numbers: where they come from, how they interact, and where they’re going.
2. The people with the money want to hear about your market (no matter how cool and cutting-edge your product or e-concept is), so know who will buy it and why, what the competition offers and why yours is better.
3. Every successful company must have a competitive edge, whether it’s unique products/services or lower prices. You must define your competitive edge, and communicate it clearly to the whole company so that everyone is focused on making it happen.
4. You are, above all, the guardian of the big picture. You must clearly identify the goals of the company, then work with your people to turn them into specifics. Get their buy-in by making sure they understand the interaction among their goals, the company’s goals, and those of other people.
5. Hire the smartest people available and give them an environment that enables them to produce; then watch your company’s strengths increase in direct proportion to your people’s growth. Remember, people are most productive if they know, and help determine, their work and the range of their control.
6. There should be an obvious and direct relationship between the rewards people receives—salary, stock, bonuses, medals, whatever—and the success of the company. The biggest rewards should go to those who understand the company’s goals and ethically do whatever it takes to achieve them.
7. Create a culture in which the messenger is never shot; that way you’ll always get the earliest possible warning of potential problems.
8. You set the tone of the organization. If you’re political, secretive, nitpicking, or querulous, then that’s how your organization will be, because no matter what—employees will always do as you do, not as you say.
9. Never criticize an employee in the presence of others. Praise in public, criticize in private.
10. Companies are like tripods, with customers, investors, and employees each representing a leg. Pay equal attention to each or the company will tip over.

Do them all, learn what you don’t know, work at doing them well, and you’ll be well on your way to winning!

What would you add to this list?

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Bob Turek at Project Management 411 has been hosting a discussion on what defines a leader and in a separate post Eric Eggerston added on the need for clarity of vision. So I thought it was only right that I add to the conversation in more than just the comments on the original post.

In general, I’m not a cynical person, In fact, I’ve always said that I’d rather be a chump than a cynic, but I also believe in two old adages,

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

The first time it’s a mistake, the second time it’s experience and the third time it’s stupidity.

I try very hard to avoid the third time.

But time and experience have taken their toll and my cynicism has increased over the years—especially in politics.

We have no leaders, let alone statesmen, just ideologues, elected by like-minded ideologues, who care only about getting reelected, bringing government money back to their constituency and making lucrative connections in the event they aren’t reelected or are caught by term limits.

In most elections I find myself going to the polls, holding my nose and voting for whomever I see as the least offensive candidate—the one I believe will do the least damage—and maybe even buy us a bit more time to find real solutions.

But I don’t hold my breath.

Solutions mean going against entrenched interests—the same interests that pony up the money needed to win the next election.

And so it goes.

Albert Einstein said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

Sad to say we’re at the same level that created them—if not lower.

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Parents are truly our first leaders, although the leading is more along the lines of ‘monkey see/monkey do’ as we copy their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) even as we’re shaping our own. A decade ago, we were treated to the mom in Texas convicted of hiring a hit man.

Ms. Holloway had served six months of a 10-year sentence after pleading no contest to solicitation of capital murder. She will be on probation for the next 9-1/2 years.

It hasn’t improved with time.

Priscilla Ceballos, admitted later Friday that the essay and the military information she provided about her daughter’s father were untrue.

“We did the essay and that’s what we did to win. We did whatever we could do to win,” Ceballos said in an interview Friday with KDFW-TV of Dallas. “But when (Caulfield) asked me if this essay is true, I said ‘No, this essay is not true.'”

I get the feeling that she thought it was OK as long as (a) they weren’t caught and (b) she admitted it right away when they were.

(I find it a bit weird that they’re both from Texas:)

These days, more and more parents seem to be teaching their kids that winning is everything and if you don’t it’s probably not your fault.

What are you teaching your kids these days?

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Over the last several decades we’ve been treated to an extensive collection of corporate scandals and various cases of fraud, some of the perpetrators walked, but recently more and more of them are ending up doing time and being stripped of much of their wealth.

With each incident, I find myself asking the same question—what about the lawyers?

Not just why didn’t they act to prevent whatever was done, but why do they seem to have no accountability in the aftermath?

But I’m wondering if that’s changing.

Refco Inc.’s former lawyer Joseph Collins was indicted by a federal jury for allegedly helping the futures brokerage hide bad debts from investors, in an unusual prosecution of an outside counsel in a corporate fraud case.

Collins, a partner in Mayer Brown LLP’s Chicago office, allegedly drafted documents for transactions that hid loans and public filings Refco used in attracting $2.4 billion from banks and investors before the company went bankrupt in 2005, according to a federal indictment unsealed in New York today.

Prosecutors took the rare step of targeting an outside lawyer because Collins played such a “vital” part in the scheme, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia told journalists today…

“Collins was in a perfect position to protect investors from being harmed, but chose instead to perpetuate the deception by actively assisting Refco’s fraud,” said Scott Friestad, an associate director of SEC enforcement who oversaw its probe.

For a great discussion of this check out Why Do Lawyers Acquiesce In Their Clients’ Misconduct? – Part I, Part II, Part III, by Sung Hui Kim.

What responsibility do you think lawyers bear in past and present scandals?

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The beginning of the year is a time when people take stock and all kinds of list appear, so why should MAPpingCompanySuccess be any different?

No matter what you read or whom you talk with, chances are that the topic will involve change. Change is happening at an ever-faster rate and we recognize that easily when it comes to electronics, but let’s look a little further for our perspective to 1907.

Think about it, 100 years is really not that long a time, but in 1907

• the average life expectancy was 47 years;
• two out of every ten adults couldn’t read or write and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school;
  there were only about 230 reported murders in the entire country;
• the population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was 30 people;
  just 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub and only 8% of homes had a telephone;
  there were only 8,000 cars, 144 miles of paved roads and the maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph;
• the average wage in 1907 was 22 cents per hour and the average worker made $200 – $400 per year, while a competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year (An engineer earned double a dentist?!);
• sugar cost four cents a pound; eggs were fourteen cents a dozen, coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
  Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented;
• marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores, pharmacists said, ‘Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates
• the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health;’
• more than 95 percent of all births took place at home; and
• 90 percent of all doctors had no college education, instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and the government as substandard.

During the last 100 years, the pace of change itself has sped up beyond our wildest conjectures and shows no hint of slowing down.

What do you imagine it might be like 100 years from now?
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I’ve always believed that boxes get a bad rap and that understanding them is the key to enhancing your creativity.During a conversation on changing the culture in his company, a CEO said, “It’s hard to think about getting outside of the box, because sometimes I forget the box is there.” Don’t we all.

But that’s OK. Actually, I think we all have a box. The creativity difference is in the size of our box. Steve Jobs’ and Steven Spielberg’s boxes are immense, far larger than most, yet they both continue to enlarge them.

And therein lies one of the secrets of a creative organization.

It’s not just encouraging your people to “think outside the box,” it’s helping them understand their box and how to enlarge it.

That’s how it works. As soon as you get outside your own box, a new one forms. Once you totally use up its content and find its sides you go outside that box, a new one forms and the process begins again.

If you work at it, this process continues throughout your life—although some never start it and some get comfortable in a certain box and retain it.

It’s a matter of choice, your choice, within your control to make it happen.

There will always be a box, but with effort you can enlarge it enough to encompass galaxies—and even entire universes.

It’s all yours for the choosing.

What have you done to enlarge your box?

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New books on leadership seem to appear almost daily and many of them have useful insights, but Epic Change: How to Lead Change in the Global Age by Timothy R Clark is one of the best I’ve read.

Clark left Oxford to find an academic position in the US, but instead spent eight years as a plant manager before the company closed its doors—a victim of global competition.

Considering that the average tenure of CEOs is 44 months and that the primary reasons are lack of vision and inability to deal with change the book is of paramount importance because of its insights on dealing with change, but it’s a good read that won’t put you to sleep.

As Clark points out, change is happening at a faster rate and a grander scale than ever before and the need to adapt to that change is critical to the very survival of a company.

“Randy MacDonald, senior vice president of human resources at IBM, which employs 330,000 people around the world, estimates that 22 percent of the organization’s workforce will have obsolete skills in only three years.”

To the oft cited three types of knowledge—personal, organizational and market—needed to lead, Clark adds a fourth—global.

How can you innovate if your thinking is confined to your existing market…you must keep your eyebrows raised to macrolevel trends… Leaders are now obliged to scale their awareness and push out traditional boundaries because what’s distant, remote or removed today can threaten your competitiveness tomorrow.”

Beyond his own shattering personal experience watching the death throes of his employer, Clark analyzed 53 organizations across the spectrum—business, education, health-care, government and non-profits—going through a variety of changes—mission shifts, new business models, mergers/acquisitions—and found four stages that each passed through, with success a function of how well each stage was accomplished.

The stages are evaluation, preparation, implementation and consolidation.

In their proper order, the pragmatic terms describing the four stages are the source for both the name of the book and the structure of Clark’s EPIC Methodology.

The bulleted summary at the end of each chapter provides an excellent reminder for leaders intent on using the methodology.

EPIC Change has enormous value to those responsible for leading, but it also has real value for those who follow—no matter the level at which you work.

Knowledgeable followers are of the greatest value to good leaders as well as being the bane of the bad and inept ones.

Being knowledgeable yields up an additional benefit for followers—with your eyes open to what should be you’re more aware when it isn’t and therefore more able to make informed personal decisions regarding when to stay and when to leave.

I highly recommend EPIC Change, I think you’ll enjoy it and find it extremely useful.

How well do you/your leaders handle the challenge of change?

New for 2008 is a category to cover all the things that are done, often under the guise of leadership, by people who ought to know better—actions that are illegal, immoral, unethical, etc.—and not just the ones that make the front page. I’ll do my best to avoid subjective judgments and promise to clearly label those that are.

So, first up.

Who always considers themselves leaders in their communities? Doctors.

Who always presents themselves as taking the ethical high road? Doctors.

Which medical profession is the most highly paid? Invasive Cardiology with average earnings of $460,000.

For the heart surgeons from Cardiovascular Surgical Associates, Oct. 17, 2002, was another typically busy morning, with three bypass surgeries in three operating rooms at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene.
In OR 16, Dr. David Duke started his coronary artery bypass grafting, known as CABG, at 8:20 a.m. His colleague, Dr. Richard Hicks, was listed as the assistant surgeon on the case, according to federal investigators’ records.
Over in OR 15, another member of the practice, Dr. Stanley Baldwin started a bypass surgery at 8:24 a.m. Dr. Hicks was listed as the assistant on the case, the records show.
And in OR 3, Dr. Rob Burnett was the primary surgeon on yet another CABG, starting at 8:25 a.m. Assisting on the case: Dr. Hicks.
How Hicks was able to assist three different surgeries going on simultaneously in three different operating rooms is unclear. But that practice was repeated on other days, with different combinations of doctors listed as primary and assistant surgeons on cases going on at the same time, the federal records show.
This pattern of overlapping, intertwined surgeons and their assistants appears to be central to the federal government’s long-running investigation into four Eugene heart surgeons: Drs. Duke, Baldwin, Hicks, who is now retired, and Warren Glover. Dr. Burnett left the practice in 2003 to work in Idaho and has not been implicated in the case.

Anyone who watches Grey’s Anatomy knows that assisting on a surgery means being hands-on in the OR, but according to

“Donald Diment, a Eugene attorney representing Glover, said the surgery times listed on paper can be misleading, and that it doesn’t necessarily mean the surgeon is standing at the operating table. In the long haul, all of us believe strongly our clients will be exonerated.”

But that was then and this is now.

On December 28, 2007, the four agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle the allegations, but, of course, none of them admitted liability or wrong doing.

Do stories such as this annoy/disgust/revolt you? Have you seen a leadership breach in your own community?

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