(Click here to lean more about Ms. Davis, who, by the way, is still alive.)

Now check out my other WW how not to think

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What do you do and where do you go when you leave a high-stress career that nearly kills you?

If your name is Tom Dunn and you spent 20 years, first as a defense counsel in the Army Trial Defense Service, then stints in Florida, New York State and most recently as head of the nonprofit Georgia Resource Center, you find a less stressful environment in which to indulge your passion.

You teach in a tough middle school in Atlanta, Georgia where “ninety-three percent of students are black and 5 percent Hispanic; some 97 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch.”

Dunn’s prior experience made him a passionate believer in what Frederick Douglass said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

According to principal, Danielle S. Battle, middle school turns off many teachers because it’s where “students’ bodies and minds are changing, and disparities in learning abilities are playing out.”

Dunn found that amusing, “You can’t be a starry-eyed idealist and do defense work in capital cases for 20 years.”

Dunn is the type of teacher that every parent should want for their child, but, as proved in Dallas, teachers are fired for being good—good meaning tough enough to stick to their guns and require kids to learn.

We need more teachers like Dunn; teachers who care and environment that supports their efforts to educate.

But the kids complain to their parents, the parents complain to the school board and the teacher is out—no matter how good the test scores. So tying teacher pay to test scores may not help if the choice is between less money and no job.

What are line managers, AKA principals and teachers, supposed to do when the executive team, AKA, school district board, first gives tacit approval to shipping shoddy products and then formalizes the practice through its work rules and quality processes?

How stupid is it to tie funding to students staying in school and passing and then allow the bar to be lowered in order to achieve the goal?

Does the ability to pass tests accurately reflect an ability to think?

Kids are smart; they know when the system is gamed and how to leverage their power.

Who is in charge here?

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Seems that every day thre’s another news item about a boss who has gone astray in some way.

The bosses who got us into our current economic mess over the last few decades did so because of their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

MAP that kept telling them that they were so brilliant that they knew best; the majority of people bought into that vision—until the house of cards crashed and burned.

But as a wise man said, you can learn from everyone.

When I was growing up I had an aunt with whom I didn’t see eye to eye, to say the least. Yet, it was because of this aunt that I learned something that became a cornerstone of my MAP.

My aunt had a glass topped dressing table and, like many women of that era, she would place inspirational clippings and notes under the glass. That’s where I first saw

Profit from the mistakes of others—you don’t have time to make them all yourself.

As much sense as it makes, even back then, it’s been one of the hardest for me to follow. I seem to profit well from small and medium mistakes, but have an unhappy tendency to make the really large ones myself.

The same can be said for many of our business, financial and political ‘leaders’—not to mention ourselves.

This isn’t the first economic crisis brought about in the name of profit and maximizing shareholder investment, just the worst in a long time.

As I read the news a line from the sixties hit “Where have all the flowers gone…” keeps repeating in my mind—“when will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?”

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Yesterday was Bosses Day and in honor of that I’m going to share some information on bosses—BIG bosses.

These days’ people are incensed with executive pay packages on and off Wall Street.

For years there has been much talk about pay for performance, but I haven’t seen any strong connection—have you?

And certainly not this year.

But the recession doesn’t seem to have slowed down CEO compensation at all and I’m not even referring to Wall Street.

You’ve probably never even heard of the 5 most highly compensated CEOs, unless you are unfortunate enough to own the stock or work or been laid off from the companies. The 5 are Eugene Isenberg, chief of Nabors Industries, Michael Jeffries of Abercrombie & Fitch, Brian Roberts  of Comcast, John Faraci of International Paper and James Stewart of BJ Services. Ugh.

By now you all know that those poor mistreated boys and girls at what used to be Merrill Lynch are getting their bonuses, perhaps if they get over their embarrassment they will start spending and give the economy a real boost.

And then there’s Ken Lewis, the beloved CEO of B of A—the bank we love to hate.

You probably read that Kenny is “stepping down” and has agreed (under duress) to forego his 2009 salary and bonus and repay a whole million dollars. In case you were actually impressed with this, please note that he will walk away with a $53 million pension plan.

That’s on top of everything he’s made (I refuse to say earned) previously.

The NY Times had an interesting article that explains that Lewis isn’t incompetent, he just can’t lead. But from where I sit by the time anyone makes it to the corner office of a corporation the size of Bank of America should be able to do it all.

A few months ago CEO magazine published Why Smart Chief Executives Make Dumb Decisions; perhaps they should a copy to all the CEOs mentioned in the articles to which I’ve linked.

It probably wouldn’t help, those guys are so smart they don’t need any outside input that doesn’t agree what they think—just ask them.

In closing today, be sure to read Phil Gerbyshak’s description of the boss anyone would kill to have at Slacker Manager.

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Some of the articles I’m sharing today refer to CEOs, but the advice in them can be tweaked to apply to any level in both professional and personal arenas.

First, Steve Tobek, who writes The Corner Office for BNet offers some great thoughts entitlement, which he says has been around for decades. The cure is empowerment backed by accountability. Bull’s-eye, Steve!

Next is a great offering from McKinsey on re-energizing your team. It talks about how to overcome fear, denial and the need to learn and change—emotions that teams at all levels are facing.

By now, everybody knows that President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, But Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership saw the award from a different perspective.

Finally, an article in Success caught my eye when it made a case for using volunteering to connect with stakeholders. “Several experts actually claim that incorporating volunteering into the corporate culture is the management tool of the 21st century.”

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On September 25, 1957, 300 United States Army troops escorted nine black children to Central High School in Little Rock after unruly white crowds had forced them to withdraw.

In 1976, the shooting of a 13-year-old sparked a children’s uprising against apartheid that spread across the country to Cape Town, where students from a mixed-race high school, Salt River, marched in solidarity with black schoolchildren.

September 15, 2009, Seattle schools plan to lower the passing grade from C to D, partly match the rest of the state’s districts and partly to keep their funding by keeping kids in school.

On September 24, 2009, thousands of South African children peacefully marched to City Hall demanding better schools, libraries and librarians.

September 2009 a debate at Answers.com is hosting a wiki debate on the value of homework. (Read it and weep at the language skills that dominate the anti-homework crowd who are your future employees.)

Finally, I just received an email (thanks Sunie!) with this picture and comments on the spelling of “bokay.” Many florists use this spelling in their marketing, but one of the comments made me cringe, “I thought is was spelled bowkay” and the writer seemed serious.

I wonder what would happen if

• school became a right that could only be earned by the child’s effort, not by the parent’s efforts or their money;
• student performance, not attendance, was the criterion for funding;
• being a ‘tough’ teacher by demanding performance was encouraged;
• kids had to work at whatever menial job they could find when they chose not to perform in school

None of this will ever happen, but it is interesting conjecture.

What do you think?

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Cheating isn’t new, nor is my writing about it.

It probably dates back to the cavemen, but it’s become more acceptable with the passage of time. Or maybe it’s just that the level of cheating needed to upset people and the stakes involved have increased so much.

An article in the Sun Journal gives an excellent overview of the pervasiveness of cheating.

Of course, the best thing to do if you’re going to cheat is don’t get caught, but if you do and lie about it the penalties increase exponentially.

For some reason people are tolerant of the cheating, in some cases they even seem to expect it, but they go totally ballistic when they get denial and lies from the cheaters when they are caught.

Nixon and the Watergate tapes are a case in point. Dirty tricks in politics were nothing new; it was his blatant lying and lack of remorse that resulted in his impeachment.

When Nixon was up there denying that he edited the tapes and claiming to know nothing about it one thought kept going through my mind and my conversations, “How stupid does he thing we (the American people) are?” and that reaction hasn’t changed with any of the hundreds (thousands?) of accusation/proof/denial scenarios that have played out since, whether in politics, business, religion, sports or any other arena.

It takes a great deal from our so-called leaders to get a reaction beyond a shrug of disgust from me, probably because I have no-to-low expectations.

But treating me as if I am stupid will send me around the bend in no time flat.

I have no liking for Bernie Madoff, but at least he had the guts to plead guilty as opposed to Jeff Skilling, who added the cost of his trials and appeals to the rest of his fraud believing that we were too stupid to see/understand what he did.

The saddest part is the example these clowns set for younger generations.

What really happens to those like Nixon, Ebbers, Skilling, and all the lesser cheats?

Some serve a few months or years in jail; they might lose their “good name,” although that will fade in time, but they won’t be left destitute. Most go back to their old life; if they can’t do that they can always write a book, become a guest speaker or go on the talk show circuit.

The same actions that brought them down will serve to lift them up, so what’s the big deal?

As to the sports arena, another athlete on steroids or some other performance-enhancing drug is barely news these days.

“The Canadian sprinter stunned the world by running 100 meters in 9.79 seconds. Oops. Busted. Turned out Ben Johnson was the world’s fastest steroid abuser.

“How many athletes are using performance-enhancing substances? The answer is, everyone who’s willing to.” says Jay Coakley, author of Sport in Society: Issues and Controversies.

“Every athlete looks for an edge,” says Charles Maher, Cleveland Indians team psychologist. “Some are conflicted about it. They want a competitive advantage but they don’t want to damage themselves.”

With no real consequences in the vast majority of cases, and whatever penalties there are quickly forgotten, why not cheat?

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I must say that although I write about it and disagree vehemently with it, leadership is a growth industry, even going so far as to offer PhDs in Leadership.

Those of you who also read Leadership Turn know my thoughts on the subject, but the profile has gotten so high that it reminded me of an article I read last year called Leadership Malpractice.

It’s not a media product or authored by some external pundit, but comes from Harvard Public Leadership Lecturer Barbara Kellerman, author of Bad Leadership and Followership.

Kellerman says that since “leadership is increasingly considered a profession,” 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? Especially if schools are going to offer advanced degrees in it.

Kellerman points out that business leaders are appointed; “in the first nine months of this year [2008] a record 1,132 CEOs quit or were shown the door.”

They were let go due to poor corporate performance, but even truly rotten performance carried no serious consequences, in fact, “most left with their financial futures handsomely secured.” Sure, a few are behind bars, but when they emerge they will bear no serious financial hardships.

“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 or board that 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 while the rest of us are strung up and left to twist in the economic winds.

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I’d never heard of Gerald W. Johnson when I came across this excellent quote, “The closed mind, if closed long enough, can be opened by nothing short of dynamite.”

It was so perfectly aimed, so true and so applicable that I went looking for what else he said.
There’s not a lot, but you’ll love what I did find. Johnson’s comments seem especially pithy and apropos for our world today.

Consider this, “No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility.” These days, the higher you go the harder it is to find anyone who has been saddled.

Of course, give it a few years—the economy will recover, the jail sentences will be over, and all those leaders who wouldn’t know a responsibility if it jumped up and bit them will be back taking risks and influencing right and left. This will happen because, as Johnson said, “Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.” Or what they choose to remember.

Heroes aren’t really in style these days, so I thought I’d bring the final quote up to date.

“Heroes Leaders are created by popular demand, sometimes out of the scantiest materials.”

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In a comment on my September 11 post Kate Lavender said, “I have always believed that quote “we are not made, or unmade, by the things that happen to us but by our reactions to them” – I had lost sight of that of late and your story brings the importance of personal choices being who we are back full force.”

I’m grateful to Kate; it’s good to know my point was made with at least one person.

This is as true for companies as it is for individuals and especially true in the current economic environment.

We can use this economic debacle to change the way we live, do business and innovate; we can stop up-sizing and down-sizing and learn to right-size; we can learn that keeping all our balls in the air isn’t the same as having all the balls existent.

We can start by recognizing that the current mess is substantially of our own making. It started years ago as we turned our personal responsibility over to our leaders, whether political, religious or business. (See Jim Stroup’s excellent post on this subject.)

Along with this abdication of responsibility we chose decades ago to forget/ignore another bit of ancient wisdom, “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.”

How else to explain the number of Ponzi schemes unraveling, the most recent is 30 years old, not because the good guys caught the bad guys, but as fallout from the recession.

Returning to Kate’s quote, will our reactions to what is going on make or unmake us?

What do you think?

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