Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day with the goal to “unleash your inner buccaneer.”Black humor indeed, considering the financial headlines this week.

Wall Street not only unleashed its inner buccaneer, it walked the pirate talk to financially rape and pillage with nary a thought to the consequences.

That’s what 30 years of bipartisan deregulation (three Republican and two Democratic Presidents) gets you.

Not that I think regulation always works, nor that Congress crafts good regulation, since it’s heavily influenced by lobbyists, PACs, and other special interests.

But assuming that “leaders” will act in the best interests of all is way beyond stupidity.

To add to the hilarity, the folks on Capitol Hill are debating whether to allow the same financial institutions that are melting down to take over private pension funds.

Only this time the totally unregulated, shrouded-in-secrecy, completely opaque hedge funds want a piece of the action, too.

So if bailed-out AIG, Chapter 11 Lehman and the already acquired Merrlil Lynch haven’t given you nightmares this certainly should.

Maybe we should all just walk the plank and get it over with.

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Image credit: slightlywinded   CC license

Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: PuffinArt

Another Fun Friday here at the biz channel. Usually we all write about the same picture, but this week we’re each choosing our own.

The media is awash in “leaders,” be they business, political, religious, social, whatever and this guy reminds me of so many of them.

I’m not saying that they actually resemble him, although the look on their faces is eerily similar, but somehow that’s what I think of when I look at this picture.

What chord does it strike in you?

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Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: sekimura

By Wes Ball, author of ­ The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success. Read all of Wes’ posts here.

Most employees of larger corporations would agree that the majority of the persons they see being moved upward are not leaders.

In many cases, they aren’t even very good managers. They just happen to be willing to stay around and put up with more #*&@ than other people around them.

Is that too harsh? I speak not just from all the research I did into “Alpha” companies for my book, The Alpha Factor, but also from personal experience working for one Fortune 100 and one Fortune 500 company. In most cases, the best (who stick around) eventually do filter to the top, but I have often questioned the process larger companies follow that allows restrictive, managerial personalities to rise so high in the ranks where they can negatively affect so many other people by their focus upon managing more than leading, nurturing, or inspiring.

The result is most often that all the entrepreneurial personalities drift out into the marketplace, when most of them would much rather have been able to practice their innovative thinking within the structure and using the resources of a larger organization.

Ouch?

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Post from Leadership Turn Image credit: lusi

As mentioned, today starts a seven part series discussing Warren Bennis’ 13 differences between leaders and managers in light of today’s modern workforce. The series will address two items each day and runs through May 9 (except for Sunday and Wednesday, they have their own agendas).

To give us common ground, I’m using these descriptions of leadership as the basis of my comments, but feel free to disagree. Unfortunately, I haven’t found comparable descriptions of managers—if you know of any please share them—so my thoughts are based on the best managers I’ve read about and known.

I sincerely hope that many of you will weigh in with your own thoughts.

The manager administers; the leader innovates

Given the pressure to raise productivity, reduce attrition, cut costs, encourage a “culture of innovation” and in general do more with less how can a manager manage today’s highly mobile, independent workforce without innovating? Nobody can supply the sheer quantity of innovation needed to thrive in today’s global economy, because there is no way for to be knowledgeable of every process, facet, product, market, etc. that is ripe for innovation.

The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.

Copy of what? The nearest leader? Every human has his/her own MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) which is a product of their life experiences and therefore unique; everything they learn is learned through the prism of their MAP. Over the years companies have tried to clone both managers and leaders with little success, while today’s enlightened workforce makes the possibility even more remote.

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