Awhile back Wally Bock wrote what I think is a very important post about leadership that I want to share with you.

It’s something that you should keep in the forefront of your mind, especially during election season this year and every year.

Think about today’s leaders.

Be it Congress, the White House, governors, or politicians at any level.

How many of them would meet the Hickory leadership test?

How many corporate leaders? How many educational leaders? How many religious leaders?

Sadly, I doubt that even 1% would qualify, no matter how you grouped them.

I sincerely wish I was wrong.

At the very least, we deserve leaders who consider us of equal priority to themselves and not a (very) distant second — or lower.

Andrew Jackson and Leadership in Adversity

In January 1813, Andrew Jackson marched south from Tennessee with a force of 2000 to bolster the defense of New Orleans. When he got to Natchez, some 500 miles from home, he received orders to dismiss his troops.

The order was for him simply to dismiss the troops and turn over his supplies to General James Wilkinson. Apparently, Jackson’s men were expected to make their own way home and find ways to feed themselves. They were in hostile territory and, by then, over a hundred of Jackson’s men were ill. Fifty-six couldn’t even sit upright. Jackson turned over his supplies, as ordered, but he vowed to take all his men home.

The problem was that the expedition had only eleven wagons. When Dr. Samuel Hogg asked Jackson what he should do, Jackson replied simply, “You are not to leave a man on the ground.”

Hogg reminded Jackson that the wagons were already filled with the sick. There was no more room. Jackson’s solution was straightforward.

“Let some of the troops dismount. The officers must give up their horses. Not a man must be left behind.”

I can imagine Hogg screwing up his courage then. Jackson was known for a volatile temper. But he also had a horse. Hogg asked for Jackson’s horse for the sick. Jackson turned over the reins.

Jackson led the troops home, paying out of his own pocket for their provisions, and walking all of the five hundred miles. He laid out his thinking in a letter to Felix Grundy.

“I shall march them to Nashville or bury them with the honors of war. Should I die, I know they would bury me.”

Leadership is about accomplishing your mission and caring for your people. And how you do both speaks volumes about the kind of leader and person you are. Jackson’s actions are a stark contrast to “leaders” who put their welfare first.

This incident was the making of Jackson’s reputation as a general. During the march, his men started calling him “Hickory” because he was so tough. That became “Old Hickory,” the nickname he would carry for life.

Boss’s Bottom Line

What I love about this story is that Jackson did what he thought was the right thing, without much thought about the consequences or how things might look. At the time he chose to get all his men home, walking himself and paying for their food, he could not have known how things would play out later in his life. When you lead, we expect you to do the right thing, all the time, not just when it’s convenient or when it looks good.

Resources

Jon Meacham’s biography of Andrew Jackson, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, is a great biography, but it concentrates on Jackson the President and skips over most of his early life. If you want an overview of Jackson’s life, I recommend Robert Rimini’s one volume Life of Andrew Jackson.

Image credit: Three Star Leadership

Read all Role Model posts here.

These days, people are fixated on success and finding ways to live longer. The latter doesn’t particularly interest me, but I’ve been conscious of the former from early on.

The first thing I did was figure out what “success” meant to me and I’m happy to say I’ve accomplished exactly what I set out to do. I suppose I could still screw it up, but I’d have to work very hard and have no reason or incentive to do so.

Interestingly, I defined it the same way that billionaire Jon huntsman did and for the same reasons.

“I have attended many funerals in my life,” Huntsman said, adding that he had conducted almost 200. “I have never heard in a funeral that this person made a lot of money or is politically very strong. They never discuss that. In a funeral, people discuss how this person was kind or gracious or had character and integrity. … For some people who are not kind, thoughtful or gracious, their funerals are very short. Nobody has anything to say. I learned from the funerals that we must plan our funerals when we are young. Plan your funeral, start early, by being kind.”

One has to wonder what will be said at the funerals of those who choose to do business and act like Travis Kalanick.

Huntsman wrote several books, among them his 2014 memoir Barefoot to Billionaire: Reflections on a Life’s Work and a Promise to Cure Cancer,

“I desire to leave this world as I entered it — barefoot and broke. To many, that may seem like an odd, unrealistic, even foolish thing. Not to me. Too many wealthy people hoard their riches, believing that dying with a large bank account is a virtue. I read about one woman who died and left her dog $10 million. What’s a dog going to do with that kind of money? Help other dogs? I see it another way: If I die with nothing because I have given it away, humanity is the beneficiary.”

Through both word and deed we all can learn from Jon Huntsman — most especially those who move in the world of tech where kindness is in such short supply.

Image credit: Wikipedia

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I hold very specific views when it comes to MAP and how people conduct themselves — some would even call me opinionated and I wouldn’t argue. But opinionated or not, I do my best to evaluate based on what is, as opposed to what I wish.

So it was with major regret that I realized this post is no longer what is — at least in Silicon Valley, other startup ecosystems, too many parts of corporate America and large swaths of the public (dis)service, AKA, politicians — it’s what I wish.

And I’m sure others do, too.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I was reading Oscar de la Renta’s obituary (fascinating guy) and a quote from him caught my eye.

“Being well dressed hasn’t much to do with having good clothes. It’s a question of good balance and good common sense.”

What grabbed me was the second sentence.

Because it doesn’t matter what you set out to do or how much money you spend on accouterments.

It doesn’t matter who you know, where you went to school, how many hours you work or how brilliant your vision.

It doesn’t matter because without balance and common sense you will fail.

Because balance and common sense are the foundation of anything you choose to accomplish.

Flickr image credit: James Jordan

Ironic, isn’t it. Right on top of yesterday’s post about ethics, comes this.

Most people even slightly in touch with the tech scene have heard about the Apple engineer who was fired for allowing his daughter to show off features of the new iPhone X in a YouTube video.

The engineer who was fired, Peterson’s father Ken Bauer, is seen in the video using Apple Pay on the iPhone X. He hands the phone to his daughter, and she walks through various features.

The daughter posted a follow-up video saying,

“Apple let him go. At the end of the day, when you work for Apple, it doesn’t matter how good of a person you are. If you break a rule, they just have no tolerance.”

How ‘bout that.

Dad knew he shouldn’t do it, but did it anyway.

Daughter takes no responsibility and says Apple is the bad guy.

What is wrong with this scenario?

Companies don’t make rules for the fun of it.

Rules are there to ensure certain actions are or are not taken.

Rules are not there to break.

Most companies (all?) would consider giving public exposure to a yet-to-be released product a firing offense.

Hopefully Bauer learned his lesson and won’t do the same thing at his next company; however, his actions will give pause and make many hiring managers skittish.

Cynic that I am, I wonder what, if anything, his daughter will learn from this experience. She doesn’t look all that young, so you have to wonder what her actions will be when she starts working.

Image credit: Joshua Smith

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

This post was written in 2009, but could just as well have been written yesterday based on currents events. There’s no question that whether it’s in business, politics, religion, or our personal relationships people in the US and the rest of the world are suffering from a major shortage of ethics.

However, what’s missing and what’s needed to correct the problems depends on your point of view. (And perhaps the image should be updated to read ’22nd Century’.)

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Last Friday I wrote that ‘right’ and wrong’ were moving targets.

With the large number of companies that have been destroyed or severely damaged by behavior ranging from stupid through unethical to downright illegal there is a call for more ethics to be taught at ever level.

Everywhere you turn you hear people saying that we need more ethics, but ‘ethics’ have never been clear cut.
Actually, I think they’ve always been situational, fluid and simultaneously contradictory. Look at the definitions from dictionary.com

1. (used with a singular or plural verb) a system of moral principles: the ethics of a culture.
2. the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.
3. moral principles, as of an individual: His ethics forbade betrayal of a confidence.
4. (usually used with a singular verb ) that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions.

All of the descriptions use words with no absolute concrete meaning; sticking to my usual example, murder has always been considered wrong, but the definition of murder, even today, keeps changing and often isn’t agreed upon even within the same society, e.g., the pro-choice/anti-abortion war.

Now look at the first four definitions for moral, the usual synonym,

1. of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical: moral attitudes.
2. expressing or conveying truths or counsel as to right conduct, as a speaker or a literary work; moralizing: a moral novel.
3. founded on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom: moral obligations.
4. capable of conforming to the rules of right conduct: a moral being.

Same thing, there are no absolute terms with which to define it.

Perhaps, then, ethics should be defined by current law, but that certainly hasn’t worked. It’s far too easy to adhere to the letter of the law and totally ignore the spirit of it. That keeps you out of jail, but certainly doesn’t make you ethical.

As a friend said the other day, “An ethical man knows it’s wrong to cheat on his wife; a moral man doesn’t cheat.”

Further, there can be conflicts between personal ethics and law, where adhering to one violates the other. Should law prevail or personal ethics? Whichever you choose, it’s because you agree on a subjective level.

People say that those decisions should be made for “the greater good.” Again, by whose definitions? I’m sure that Hitler believed his actions in “purifying the races” were for the greater good—as he saw it—however I, and a large number of other people, don’t agree.

But even though this example seems so black and white, you’ll find people who still agree with Hitler’s reasoning and work to carry it forward.

In 2007 research from Harvard Business School showed the wide gap between what we think/say and what we actually do.

In that light “more ethics” becomes somewhat problematical.

What do you think the answer to being “more ethical” is?

Image credit: Samuel Mann

Have you ever taken time to wonder why there is a holiday dedicated to people who work?

No?

Then before you get too caught up in shopping, beer and BBQ, take a minute to learn exactly where the holiday comes from.

It’s the result of an 1894 labor strike against the Pullman Company (think aspirational, luxury private railroad cars).

Engineer and industrialist George Pullman’s workers all lived in company-owned buildings. The town was highly stratified. Pullman himself lived in a mansion, managers resided in houses, skilled workers lived in small apartments, and laborers stayed in barracks-style dormitories. The housing conditions were cramped by modern standards, but the town was sanitary and safe, and even included paved streets and stores.

Then the disastrous economic depression of the 1890s struck. Pullman made a decision to cut costs — by lowering wages.

In a sense, workers throughout Chicago, and the country at large, were in the same boat as the Pullman employees. Wages dropped across the board, and prices fell. However, after cutting pay by nearly 30%, Pullman refused to lower the rent on the company-owned buildings and the prices in the company-owned stores accordingly.

Federal troops used extreme force to break the strike resulting in 30 deaths, while rioting and sabotage left 80 million dollars worth of damage in its wake.

Indiana state professor and labor historian Richard Schneirov said President Grover Cleveland’s decision to declare Labor Day as a holiday for workers was likely a move meant to please his constituents after the controversial handling of the strike. The president was a Democrat, and most urban laborers at the time were Catholic Democrats.

Congress approved (knowing their constituents would also be pleased).

Makes you wonder what the current president and congress would do.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Note: It’s imperative to recognize that culture has nothing to do with perks, such as free food, fancy offices, free services, etc.

Culture is about values and how they play out in both the internal and external functioning of the company.

But company culture isn’t the end game — micro cultures are.

Micro cultures are based on individual bosses’ values.

Both cultures are fundamental to that perennially popular subject, employee engagement.

HBS’ Jim Heskett recently asked his audience what’s needed to engender employee engagement given that engaged employees are 2.7% more productive.

Most of the responses talked about the need for managers to respect their people, listen to ideas from everyone, have better people skills, etc., and several mentioned the skills acquired with an MBA.

But, as I pointed out, and Heskett cited in his summary, “Respect and valuing employee input have little to do with education and much to do with personal values.”

Unfortunately, education is no guarantee of values.

Colleges are no different, with MBA students leading the pack. “56 percent of MBA students admitted to cheating…  In 1997, McCabe did a survey in which 84 percent of undergraduate business students admitted cheating versus 72 percent of engineering students and 66 percent of all students. In a 1964 survey by Columbia University, 66 percent of business students surveyed at 99 campuses said they cheated at least once.”

If scholastic success was based on cheating it’s likely that that lack of respect/get-ahead-at-all-costs mentality would carry over to their management style.

Yesterday’s post ended with this comment,

That [provide an environment in which people can learn, grow and excel] is what a good boss is supposed to do.

But it’s the great ones who actually do it.

In fact, they go beyond that and shelter their people from any kind of toxic culture coming down from above.

Image credit: thinkpublic

Do you watch Shark Tank? I do, but there is one thing that drives me nuts.

It’s the constant reference by all the Sharks, especially Mark Cuban, to the American Dream.

It’s the idea that starting a business and financial success is proof that the American (every country has it’s own version) Dream is alive and well.

Only problem is that making money and owning a house were never what the original dream was about.

The term was popularized in a 1931 book, “The Epic of America,” by James Truslow Adams, and referred to far more intrinsic values and I seriously doubt that even .05% of people are aware of the original meaning.

Mr. Adams emphasized ideals rather than material goods, a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” And he clarified, “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and recognized by others for what they are.”

We’ve come a long way since 1931, but seem to have forgotten to bring our values along.

Thanks to KG for sending the article.

Image credit: ethos.org

I’m assuming you’ve read the anti-diversity manifesto, or articles about it, from the Google engineer decrying his company’s diversity efforts and harking back to the ancient reasoning that women are biologically incapable of being good coders, cops and firemen, among other incapables.

(It’s always sad to see this level of scientific ignorance in a technical person. Of course, it’s not easier in a (supposedly) educated politician.)

There are dozens of responses, but Yonatan Zunger’s is the best I’ve seen (hat tip to KG for sending it).

Zunger is a 14 year Google veteran, who left last week to join a startup. He not only refutes it, but analyzes why the damage goes well beyond the obvious. If you haven’t seen it, it is well worth the few minutes it will take to read.

Ayori Selassie’s is shorter and I’ve reproduced it in full below.

The penis doesn’t write code, the brain does.

Women also have a brain therefore they write code too.

There, I fixed your #GoogleManifesto.

The one thing in the manifesto I do agree with is that freedom of speech should mean that anyone can speak their mind without fear of shaming or harassment.

However, the tactics he describes that are commonly used in liberal bastions on those espousing right and alt-right attitudes are exactly the same tactics used on progressives and liberals in conservative strongholds.

It boils down to the age-old us / them attitude.

Join me tomorrow for a look at the skills that will power your career now and in the future — and have nothing to do with STEM.

Image credit: Yahoo

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Heroes. Humanity has always had heroes. While it’s doubtful that will ever change, what constitutes a hero has changed radically over the centuries. I wrote this post in 2009, as the trend of elevating the most inane individuals, and even the dregs of society, to hero/role model status. As the old saying goes, something’s got to give.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Last Friday I wrote Narcissism and Leadership and how much narcissism has increased over the last few years.

I’ve never understood the preoccupation with the glitterati, but I have wondered how much our celebrity-worshiping culture affects kids?

According to Drew Pinsky MD, AKA, Dr. Drew on radio and TV, and S. Mark Young, a social scientist it may be especially dangerous for young people, who view celebrities as role models.

“They are the sponges of our culture. Their values are now being set. Are they really the values we want our young people to be absorbing? … It harkens back to the question of how much are young people affected by models of social learning. Humans are the only animals who learn by watching other humans.”

Worse than dysfunctional celebs is our penchant for making heroes out of the bad guys.

18 year-old, 6-foot-5, 200-pound “Colton Harris-Moore is suspected in about 50 burglary cases since he slipped away from a halfway house in April 2008. Now, authorities say, he may have adopted a more dangerous hobby: stealing airplanes.”

Adin Stevens of Seattle is selling T-shirts celebrating him and there is a fan club on Facebook.

I’m not surprised, in a world where serial killers have groupies and people fight for souvenirs of death-row inmates it figures that they’re going to romanticize someone who manages to not get caught.

But what makes me ill are his mother’s comments, “I hope to hell he stole those airplanes – I would be so proud,” Pam Kohler said, noting her son’s lack of training. “But put in there that I want him to wear a parachute next time.”

It’s tough enough to grow up these days; it’s tougher in a dysfunctional home or in areas that are gang-controlled, but what kid stands a chance with parents like this?

What can we do? Where can we find more positive role models that have the glamour that mesmerizes kids and grownups alike?

When will we glorify function instead of dysfunction? Meaning instead of money?

Image credit: Chesi – Fotos CC on flickr

Join me tomorrow for Wally Bock’s take on heroes and how they need to change.