Sean Kelly of Franchise Pick, one of the best bloggers I know, sent an email to his Bizzia colleagues suggesting that we might find it interesting to weigh in from our own perspective regarding the couple who just won Sean’s Franchisee From Hell Award. (Don’t miss the Biz Levity and Small Business Boomers take on it.)

In short, Lacey, Washington Pizza Time franchise owner Luke Benjamin kept the thermostat set at 55 degrees with a policy to turn the furnace off at night, but the employees forgot one night. Benjamin’s solution was to shut off the heat completely (in an area where outside temperatures may sink to 19 degrees) and post the following notice:

“If you don’t want to work here quit, otherwise shut up and do your job. The next person I hear complaining is off for two weeks. We don’t have heat!! You guys screwed up, not us. You want to blame someone, look in the mirror.”

Since Benjamin confirmed the story to King 5 News, including the fact that 1) his wife has a space heater in her accounting office at the facility and 2) that she is the actual boss, Sean (the big softy) is now wondering if they can be saved from themselves.

Specifically, Sean said, “Miki, do they display the leadership qualities of Attila the Hun, had Attila made pizza?”

The answer is no, in spite of them forcing their people to work with no heat.

Attila never screwed his workers, unlike the Benjamins, they may have been pushed hard, but they had a charismatic leader who was no fool and not only allowed, but encouraged, them to rape and pillage to their hearts content. (Note: Leaders have been using rape and pillage to offset hardship for eons. Think earmarks.)

So what about the Benjamins?

Do I think they will change? Not a chance in hell (from whence came their award), since that would involve a change in their MAP, which ain’t gonna happen as long as they think they’re right.

About the only thing I can see making a difference is a swift kick where it hurts the most—their pocketbook—to be administered by their pizza customers and boss-wife-with-heat Benjamin’s Accurate Accounting customers; as one commenter pointed out, it is tax time, AKA accounting profit time.

But the boycott would have to be substantial and last a significant amount of time to have the desired effect. Sadly, and I’m sure the Benjamins are counting on this, ire diffuses quickly when up against convenience and I wonder if the good intentions of those who are incensed now will last when the item is off the current news radar.

Would you remember? Would you do business with them?

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The end of the year is all about wrap-ups, so why fight the trend? So here are two detailing the best and the worst leaders and one fun one about you.

First is John Baldoni’s Awards for Poor Leadership along with his reasoning. Hopefully Baldoni doesn’t consider this list complete when it barely scratches the surface, but it’s an interesting sampling from several different arenas.

Then comes glassdoor.com’s employee-generated top 10 list of “naughty and nice” CEOs—naughty having the highest disapproval ratings while nice had the opposite.

It’s always nice when egg is faces other than business, so my third offering is from the sports world, plus, I found a Best & Worst 2008: The Weird Wide Web link at the bottom—and they really are pretty weird.

Finally, here are 50 Ways to Improve Your World in 2009 from US News & World Reports. Interesting, useful and quirky if you take a few minutes to click around.

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It seems that every time the leader of a corporation-in-trouble replies to the question, “What happened…?” the answer is that a ‘perfect storm’ of factors caused the problems.

Steven Pearlstein offers some great comments on this attitude, but it was what he said near the end that really resonated with me.

“What capsized the economy was not a perfect storm but a widespread failure of business leadership — a failure that is only compounded when executives refuse to take responsibility for their misjudgments and apologize.”

Accountability and remorse.

We demand these from our kids when they screw up and our mates if they cheat, but we seem willing to accept “reasons” from our corporate leaders.

Over the years we watched corporate leaders in Japan and Korea apologize publicly, heads bowed, for their actions and then resign in shame. Many of us considered it a quaint action stemming from a culture far different than ours. Some found it amusing and a few thought it was faked.

But think about it, how many of the executives you saw apologizing for the problems they caused have surfaced as head of another major corporation or in other leadership roles. In the US they land on their feet before the dust settles.

In the startup world failure is considered a badge of success, but only if the person has learned from it.

You can’t learn from something if you don’t recognize and admit your responsibility and feel remorse for mistakes that were avoidable.

A truly perfect storm would come without any warning and that probably doesn’t happen even once a century.

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As you probably guessed from the title I’m not a fan of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. I don’t trust him to do the tough stuff that a leader needs to do. He’s not only missing vision, he can’t seem to see the forest for his friends.

Actually, I think he’d be served best with butter and maple syrup.

Here are a few historical gems.

“We’re all trying to get our heads above the battle smoke and look for the real meaning of Enron to put it in perspective.” (What perspective? Enron’s leaders played illegal games that destroyed thousands of people’s lives and got caught. Seems pretty clear to me.)

“I don’t see (subprime mortgage market troubles) imposing a serious problem. I think it’s going to be largely contained.” April 2007 (How’s that for an insightful statement?)

“I don’t think it [the subprime mess] poses any threat to the overall economy.” July 2007 (At least he’s consistent.)

“The US banking system is well-capitalized and ‘we have a strong deposit insurance system that provides good coverage for the savings of hard-working Americans.” December 2007 (Of which we have fewer and fewer every day.)

“Looking forward, I expect that financial markets will be driven less by the recent turmoil and more by broader economic conditions and, specifically, by the recovery of the housing sector.” May 2008 (There spoke a Treasury Secretary with a real handle on reality.)

“It’s a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.” July 2008 (I want some of what he was on!)

“This market has for all practical purposes ground to a halt. Today, the illiquidity in this sector is raising the cost and reducing the availability of car loans, student loans and credit cards. This is creating a heavy burden on the American people and reducing the number of jobs in our economy.” November 2008 (Ya think?)

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I love it! I just read a great article called Leadership Malpractice. Not by the media or some external pundit, but by Harvard Public Leadership Lecturer Barbara Kellerman, author of Bad Leadership and Followership.

What a terrific idea. Kellerman says that since “leadership is increasingly considered a profession,” so leaders should be subject to the same punishments as other professionals, such as doctors and lawyers.

Doesn’t that sound like an idea whose time has come?

Kellerman points out that business leaders are appointed; “in the first nine months of this year a record 1,132 CEOs quit or were shown the door” due to poor corporate performance, a few are behind bars, but even truly rotten performance carried no serious consequences, in fact, “most left with their financial futures handsomely secured.”

“No insignificant number of top executives have been culpable of negligence, failures that caused injury to others. To take only a few glaring examples, top executives at A.I.G., Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, or for that matter at General Motors, all failed abysmally to protect employees and stockholders alike.”

Leadership has become a profession in and of itself.

“It is taught in professional schools, in schools of government and public administration, and in nearly all business schools. There are countless books on how to exercise good leadership, and countless courses and seminars, both in and out of the academy, in which leadership is taught. It’s time then to apply to leadership the same standard that we apply to other professions. Similarly, when this standard is not met, even minimally, it’s time to hold leaders accountable by suing them for malpractice.”

Once someone is on the ‘leadership track’ they move forward with amazing speed—and less and less scrutiny the higher they go. When they foul up, they are often eased out, rather than being fired—an action that would make the person who hired/promoted them look bad.

By the time they’re appointed to the corner office they are practically untouchable; with few exceptions this applies to the entire C suite. Oh, they can be fired, and they often are, but that rarely impacts their career.

There is much talk of accountability, but most is empty.

Perhaps leadership malpractice would finally bring some serious accountability to the guys out front—the same guys whose monster egos and Teflon finishes keep them walking away unscathed.

What do you think?

PS: Here’s your chance to nominate the best and the worst for Business Week’s Managers of the Year.

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Starting last June a college professor, who goes by CandidProf, has been writing a series of posts based on his first hand experiences with students and administrators.

Recently I was asked why I included them in Leadership Turn; it isn’t an education blog and what exactly did the topic have to do with leadership. To be honest the question floored me.

The only thing I can think of that has more to do with leadership than education is parenting.

Both require serious leadership skills, but beyond that their focus, kids, are leadership’s future.

CP is on hiatus for now, but that doesn’t reduce the need to focus on what could become the greatest leadership void ever faced.

Not the positional leaders who posture and strut, but the real leaders who step up in that instant when initiative is required and retire when the situation moves on. In other words, the thousands of regular folks on which every business and society depends—“…leadership is for instances. How people react to the things that happen around them—that’s the crux of life.”

Parents are the first and foremost source of leadership skills, not because they actively teach them, but because ‘monkey see, monkey do’. Unfortunately, as a whole, the job done leaves much to be desired.

Now we’re facing a gift-giving season in the worst economy in decades. You would think this was a great chance to teach children that they can’t have everything; that instant gratification isn’t guaranteed; that they aren’t entitled.

But it’s not happening. In article after article parents, especially moms, say the same thing. That they plan to cut everything—except the kids presents. “I want her to be able to look back and say, ‘Even though they were tough times, my mom was still able to give me stuff.”

Financial experts, such as Michelle Singletary, disagree, “By discussing with them that money is tight, you are admitting that at times you can’t do or get what you want. You are teaching them you can’t spend what you don’t have… Make the choice not to spend if you can’t afford it this year. Love your children like never before, but don’t go shopping out of guilt if you don’t have the cash.”

Even better than the economic lesson, which in itself has great value, you will start your children to understanding that not everything is within their control (or yours); that they aren’t entitled to have their every wish come true; that ‘instant’ isn’t their birthright, ‘gratification’ doesn’t always happen and that they really won’t die if they don’t get <fill in the blank>.

Who’s right? All the sacrificing moms or the minority like Singletary and me?

What do you think?

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I’ve come to the conclusion that the road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions; it’s paved with ”leaders with intentions”—good, bad or indifferent.

I figured this out based on media coverage of leaders. After all, have you ever seen a media treatment of a follower?

Media co-opted ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ decades ago and increasingly diluted the meaning until it disappeared.

Along with dilution, the media gave those they termed leaders the same treatment that was previously reserved for extraordinary athletes, celebrities and rock stars.

In doing so they created the monstrous, indestructible, uncontrollable ego found in every leader who bought into their hype; and reflected in compensation packages more fit for royalty than for business people.

And in case you haven’t noticed, you can find many of those massive egos in (surprise, surprise) investment banking, hedge funds, insurance and other sectors of financial services. But you knew that.

In fact, ego-mania has percolated throughout all industries, with little consideration for the size of the organization or its mission.

Further, in throwing the leader term around so loosely the media helped enlarge politicians’ already super-sized egos still more and extended the ego franchise to religious heads.

Not only are those egos super-sized, they also seem to be bulletproof.

How many of these ‘leaders’ have actually taken responsibility for what they’ve caused?

Have you seen them apologizing for their share of bringing down the global economy? Did I miss it? Boy, I hope you Tivoed it for posterity.

But the media’s gone pretty silent on the subject; lauding corporate heads seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird. But dodos aren’t the only extinct bird, the phoenix is, too. And like the phoenix, media leadership hype will rise again just as soon as we all forget—which, unfortunately, we will and that’s a historically proven fact.

By the way, I’m not the only one; Jim Stroup noticed the silence, too, only from a different perspective.

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By Wes Ball. Wes is a strategic innovation consultant and author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success (Westlyn Publishing, 2008) and writes for Leadership Turn every Tuesday. See all his posts here. Wes can be reached at www.ballgroup.com.

The government is changing its mind faster than a three year old.

No wonder the stock market is scared silly.

Let’s get this straight.

In an attempt to help more people gain “the American dream” of owning a home, the U.S.  It even went so far as to set up organizations to help resell those loans, so the risk was spread around to unsuspecting investors.

Then, when it looks like some people are being irresponsible with this program, and actually putting people at risk of losing everything, the government says, “Oh, that’s really OK, because it is achieving the goal of putting more people in homes.”

Then, when it all collapses and a lot more than just the 6% of loans that were risky start to go bad, the government says, “Let’s buy up those bad assets and free up the credit markets.”  Then, finally, just as the financial industry is starting to believe that perhaps there will be some stability and security ahead, the government changes its mind and decides to focus on consumers and saving a broad range of hurting companies instead, government put pressure on banks to loan money to people who really could not afford it.

Is it any wonder that the stock market is going through such wild swings?  Can anyone blame corporate executives for being terrified?  With the children running things, who can guess what’s next?

One thing is certain:  leadership is supposed to provide vision and a sense of predictability and stability.

Can anyone call what we are seeing “leadership?”

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What a difference a day—or in this case a couple of years—makes.Here are quotes by and about four of the leaders whose vision helped lead us to our present situation. These are the same guys lauded by universities, the media, leadership pundits and themselves just short time ago.

“Bad behavior is aberrational…never is a big word…the chances of [the company] getting into trouble again are virtually nil.”— Chuck Prince Citigroup Dec. 16, 2005 at the annual Citigroup Investor Day,

“We’re sticking with [Angelo] Mozilo because he has built a top-notch organization with strong risk controls that could emerge even stronger from the current subprime meltdown.” Barron’s, April 18, 2007

“The vision is to hire terrific people who will be the next generation of leaders and the people who will take this firm to the next level.” Richard Fuld, Knowledge@Wharton, January 10, 2007 (link includes his five qualities for leadership)

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Considering what’s going on in the world I thought I’d republish a guest post by Kevin Dwyer (I added some formatting) that really resonates with today’s headlines.So, without more ado, here it is…

“Since When Did I Become a Grumpy Old Man?”
By Kevin Dwyer

Something insidious seems to have happened as I have got older. The world as seen through the prism of popular culture continues to be dumbed down. Stupid seems to have become mainstream. This appears to have occurred both in general and business society.

Now, it may well be that I am just becoming one of the grumpy old men from The Muppet Show. I offer the following for you to judge.

• CEOs and their executive teams who preside over share prices which fall, are involved in scandals, or are sold on to private equity firms because the executive team cannot get sufficient value out of the assets are given bonuses on top of extremely high salaries.

• Politicians not only get away with plausible deniability, but seem to believe that it is a legitimate tactic in executing their responsibility to spend our individual money to build a collective future society for our children, better than the one we were born into. Promises become core promises and non-core promises. The truth becomes what people believe is the truth, not necessarily what is the truth.

• People who would be lucky to have a serious following of friends at their local pub, gain national and international notoriety based on actions within a voyeur’s house that would have had them arrested or ostracised from a society with reasonable morals.

• Buzz words dominate business. “Going forward” is used as a phrase relating to time used instead of next month or next year, a minimum of ten times in a morning television business news report. If they can do the opposite of going forward in time, then I’d really be listening. Phrases which confuse rather than inform become the norm, for example, “People” becomes “Human capital”, “Employees” becomes “Associates” and organisations “Push the envelope”.

• Athletes who can perform their particular skill at a higher level than most others and are paid astronomical salaries to do so, become a protected species if they lose their way and succumb to repeated use of drugs, both legal and illegal. Compared with the “man in the street” they get repeated chances for redemption before the law is applied.

• Leaders do not lead. They prefer to pretend that they are like us; so as not to scare us and possibly lose our support. They do not see their role as envisioning and building a better future, persuading us along the way by the force and logic of their idea. Rather they want us to see them as their mates, liking them and supporting them as evidenced by opinion polls.

What about it? Do you relate?

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