My apologies if there has been too much politics lately, but you have to admit it’s difficult to avoid when so much of it is tied to “leadership” issues.

Or the lack thereof.

I rarely read op-ed pieces, but the title caught my, Awful, Awfuler, Awfulest; wouldn’t you click on that?

The author, Gail Collins, had written an article debating which state had the worst “leaders” running for election and chose Nevada as the winner.

Immediately, there were outcries from voters who believed their state had been unfairly overlooked on the dreadfulness meter.

Maine has a candidate for governor whose wife and kids live in their “primary residence” in Florida (the the other house is in Maine); Missouri has honors as the state with the least variety, 26 different candidates since 1980 from just two families; Florida has the dubious honor of a gubernatorial candidate whose company was fined $1.7 billion for fraudulent Medicare billing.

She says that in Net York’s race one candidate seems to tie every issue to his opponent’s sex life, while the main opponent doesn’t talk at all and a minor one is a self-proclaimed madam.

Nevada still won and you’ll have to click the link to learn why. (Hint: One of the candidates claims that Dearborn, Mich., and Frankford, Texas (a ghost town) are governed under Sharia, which is Islamic law.)  And take a moment to read some of the 229 comments for more hilarious examples and observations.

Why do we continue to accept acts from those in public service that we would condemn in other circumstances?

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Leadership is all the rage, people go to classes for it, attend conferences about it, read books and blogs, discuss it and obsess about it.

Every person in the leadership industry says over and over that leadership means caring—primarily about people.

But as Bret Simmons points out in Too Busy To Care, knowing about leadership doesn’t mean you will lead when a sudden opportunity opens up—especially if it is inconvenient. I really respect Brett for being so honest, even as to whether it will change.

I recognize that I need to behave differently, and I give intellectual assent to the fact that I want to behave differently, but I honestly don’t know that I will.

There is no aspect of leadership that has value unless it goes hand-in-glove with initiative; in other words, if leadership is yin, then initiative is yang.

Here’s a suggestion for you, skip the culture of leadership and build a culture of initiative—being careful not to kill it.

The funny thing about doing this is that by focusing on initiative, on being willing to take time instead of walking by, you and your people will become stronger leaders without even trying.

(Note: I kept this post short so you will have time to read all three links.)

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Jim Stroup is one of my favorite leadership commentators; additionally, he writes one of the most erudite blogs in cyberspace. He was kind enough to offer this post to introduce you to his thinking. He is well worth any time you spend with him. I highly recommend a subscription to his blog as well as his book, Managing Leadership, which I reviewed here.

Summarizing the fallacy of individual leadership

I’ve covered a lot of ground over the past several years on Managing Leadership. I’ve talked about everything from free-market capitalism to history – even physics. But at bottom, it all has been about management and leadership; in particular, how the former is a proper and honorable individual undertaking in an organization, and how the latter is, not to put to fine a point on it, neither.

I will be talking more about what leadership in an organization really is, and how to manage it at my blog, but for this post, I’d like to take a moment to summarize the fundamental problems with the current state of things – the intractable contradictions inextricably woven into the concept of individual leadership:

• It is inescapably about the person – not the work. It encourages personal ties which rise to the level of cultishness. It describes these ties as existing between the “leader” and his or her “followers” – not among colleagues and their businesses or organizations.
• It suggests that individual leadership can be developed. There is, however, no proof whatever for this contention.
• It fails to connect leadership (especially inspirational or charismatic) with successful business management.
• It is filled with fallacious proofs consisting of examples that seem to support it, but which ignore the multiples of examples that satisfy the posited parameters while still failing to support it, or that even contradict it.
• Neither its presence nor its potential can be predicted.
• It encourages adults to attempt to develop personality characteristics that may not be natural to them. This has not been demonstrated as possible; it may actually be harmful.
• It further encourages adults to focus on developing these personal characteristics in order to attain a personally aggrandizing persona, rather than to improve their ability to contribute as part of a team to organizational work.
• By seeking a universal individual leadership model it fails to see how individuals in “leadership” positions learn on their own to evaluate what’s working, what isn’t, and how to adapt to keep things going or to improve them.
• It is irretrievably run through with contradictions – the most obvious being those among the widely touted and disparate lists of “essential” leadership traits.
• It (often actively) encourages unaccountability by its recourse to superlative leadership skills and “intuition” beyond the ken of the rest of us.
• As a really rather obvious result, it is irrelevant, distracting, and thus destructive on numerous levels.
• Flowing inevitably from the above, in its lack of system, resistance to definition, and inability to develop practitioners or predict outcomes, it is inherently unprofessional.

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Now read Jim’s complimentary post, Exuding something, that looks at the flip side of individual leadership.

Easily among the most disagreeable aspects of the generally disagreeable concept of exceptional individual leadership is the noxious notion of “followership.”

Image credit: Managing Leadership

See all mY generation posts here.

Because of where I live I have the dubious pleasure of being inundated by both Washington (my state) and Oregon (across the river) political ads. So I went looking for comments that might add some intelligence to the standard political garbage in which we’re all drowning.

Let’s start with some commentary from across the pond.

For the cynics among us, George Bernard Shaw offers an excellent definition of democracy, “Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

And a bit of levity from Jessica Mitford, “Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don’t ‘stand for election’, they ‘run for office.'”

Of course they run, since, as H. L. Mencken said, “Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

Politicians have been known to lie—frequently, so that’s nothing new. It probably dates back as far as politics and is part of the human condition; as Otto von Bismark said, “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.”

While that is true, Cal Thomas’ words offer a viable explanation of why they lie, “One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are.”

Have you ever wondered why modern politicians rarely, if ever, earn the sobriquet “statesman?” We probably need a new song, along the lines of ‘Where have all the statement gone, longtime passing…’ They aren’t endangered, they’re extinct. James Freeman Clarke explained why when he said, “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.”

It’s a sad state of affairs, but the general population is just as responsible, because, as Bill Vaughan said, “A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.”

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Today’s offering includes three fascinating examples of lousy leadership at work, two explanations of the worst traits of lousy leadership and a review of a remedial book for lousy leaders.

The first example of lousy leadership is personally embarrassing, not because it’s about me, but because in January 2008 and again in April I lauded this lousy leader for creating a great culture. Little did I know. The lousy leader is Sam Zell and his hand-picked executive Randy Michaels, now CEO, created a culture that rivals or exceeds anything you’ve heard about on Wall Street.

Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel… After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts.

And it went downhill from there.

Next we have a pair of lousy leader brothers, Sam and Charles Wyly, who have avoided paying taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars by using trusts and tax haven-based shell corporations. And these two Texas swashbucklers are sure that the upcoming election will see an end to their problems.

“I think it’s good politics to beat up on big companies and rich people,” said Sam Wyly. Soon, he said, “the election will be over, and this will be forgotten about, or lost, be shut down, be gone, will be nothing.”

The third is Goldman Sachs, a company stuffed with lots of lousy leaders. Not another article, but a recommendation to watch CNBC’s Goldman Sachs: Power and Peril when it repeats October 26 at 8pm ET in case you missed it last Sunday.

Greed is a constant hallmark of lousy leaders. According to Andrew Lo, an MIT professor who researches the relationship between neuroscience and economics, greed actually has a chemical basis.

“When a person acquires resources, chemicals are released in the brain that cause the sensation of pleasure. Greed is simply the addiction to that release.”

Can corporate culture turn good leaders into lousy leaders?

Organizations have more power to direct employee ethical behavior of than we previously knew.

That’s the bottom line of new research from the University of Washington Foster School of Business that demonstrates, for the first time, the relationship between moral intuition—a reflexive perception of what is right and wrong—and moral behavior.

Finally, the perfect gift for lousy leaders—a copy of Marshall Goldsmith’s new book, Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, and How to Get It Back If You Lose It

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Mid-term elections are coming up, so I thought I would share some something I wrote a couple of years ago.

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,

(This post generated some interesting comments.)

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.

(This post generated some interesting comments.)

Einstein also said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Americans must be insane; we will go to the polls flip the party in charge and expect different results.

Based on the past, what we will get is a different ideology that screws up differently, not better results.

Better results would require real leaders and even a few statesmen if we were lucky, but again, I’m not holding my breath.

What do you think would really make a difference?

Image credit: Atom Smasher

Education innovation is on everybody’s mind, because anyone who looks at the sorry state of American education knows that something needs to be done.

Business innovation is on everyone’s mind who holds or wants a job. Without considerable across-the-board innovation, not just products, but process as well, American business and, therefore the country, is in deep doodoo.

Parenting could use some innovation, especially in terms of curtailing the hovering and we’ll-fix-it mentality of too many of today’s parents. We need to find better ways of giving kids the chance to learn about initiative, responsibility, accountability and consequences, so their intangible side can grow to adulthood in conjunction with their physical side.

I’ve been writing about all of the above for years, sharing links to research and stories of what’s being tried, following innovation that does succeed and it got me to thinking.

What’s stopping us? We have the ideas and in many cases they have been tried and have worked.

Why aren’t more of them being implemented on a wider scale?

The same reasons that have always retarded or curtailed innovation.

1. The frequency of the ubiquitous “prove it” typically spoken by the “we’ve always done it this way” crowd. To those looking for new approaches, answers and products, “prove it” are not only the most dreaded two words, but also the most stupid. Just think what would have happened if the Apple board had insisted that Steve Jobs prove that the world wanted an iPod.

1. The not-invented-here syndrome has extended itself to schools, as can be seen in this comment with regards to teaching Singapore Math (although it’s been proven to work).
   “…there has also been skepticism from school board members and parents about importing a foreign math program.”

So the next time you find yourself chafing at the lack of innovation or the slowness of implementing it, first look in the mirror and if you don’t find the culprit there look for the person or group that is crying for proof or bemoaning the source.

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