Month: September 2012

• One day after my blog appeared titled The Long Arm of the Law, there was this headline in the Wall Street Journal (9/29-30): “BofA Takes New Crisis-Era Hit.” The law wrenched from the Bank of America a settlement of $2.43 billion to appease claims it misled investors. This figure is the largest settlement of a shareholder claim by a financial-services firm since the financial crisis started. Even the WSJ acknowledged that the “deal is a sign that the U. S. banks’ battle to contain the high cost of the crisis continues to escalate, despite a four-year slog of lawsuits, losses and profit-sapping regulations.”

In this case, as in most others, an institution is being held responsible – not an individual or even a few individuals. Therefore, one might reasonably argue that this does not really count. No single person is being made to pay for the wrongdoing, but rather a large, amorphous organization – which means that accountability has been diffused. (Among ethicists this is referred to as the “problem of many hands.”) True enough – and it’s an important distinction. Still, diffused accountability does not mean zero accountability.

• It was announced that Cambodia has asked the U. S. to help it recover a 10th century Khmer sandstone statue from the Norton Simon Museum in California. It’s only the latest example of a major trend in recent years: relatively powerless countries seek to retrieve from relatively powerful countries what in the 21st century they have come to consider rightfully theirs. It is, if you will, a cultural leveling, in which countries of origin demand the return of various objects, usually art objects, that earlier were removed and taken elsewhere. In the past, such transfers were widely accepted, and in fact most of the world’s great museums, especially in Europe and America, were built in part on treasures that were, in today’s parlance, looted, stolen, or plundered. But times change. Such transfers are now often considered outright illegal, which is why countries such as Cambodia will not be mollified until they regain what they believe they lost. Egypt is at the forefront of this movement, having had retrieved in recent years objects of art from countries as various as the U. S. Australia, England, and Spain.

• Poor Tim Cook. For all his growing fame and fortune he has the bad luck to follow in the footsteps of the iconic Steve Jobs. Poor Tim Cook. This week, when users of the new iPhone 5 became more and more angry and then more and more vocal over Apple’s misguided mobile maps, Cook was forced to retreat. Poor Tim Cook. He felt compelled to apologize: “We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers, and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.” Poor Tim Cook. He was reduced to recommending the competition, map apps that were other than Apple’s. How much humbling can one man take? In this day and age, not much. Having been forced to eat humble pie this once, Cook cannot consume it easily again.

• In Spain and Portugal tens of thousands took again to the streets, raging against increased taxes, decreased government services, and high unemployment.

A conventional wisdom about the recent financial crisis is that no one paid a price for what went wrong. Crooks and con men are thought to have got off Scot free, unpunished and even untarnished by whatever their culpability and venality.

To a degree the conventional wisdom holds true. It is correct to conclude that most of the large cast of characters who played a role in what befell us have never and will never pay the piper.

But it is similarly correct to conclude that there are significant exceptions to this general rule. Since the long arm of the law is slow to reach out, the story is not yet over. In fact, there have been and will continue to be high level leaders who have been charged in a court of law with one or another misdeed, ranging from misconduct to a crime. Moreover bills such as Dodd-Frank have proven to have teeth, to be, at a minimum, a pain in the neck to those would try to cut corners at their convenience.

For several reasons, including the expense involved and the difficulty of obtaining enough evidence, legal recourse is hardly an everyday occurrence. But it is one way plain people have – the state has – of taking on leaders. It is one way of going after and bringing down people in positions of authority. Examples abound of those who have been or are being investigated or even prosecuted for what they did and did not do – some of them with marquee names from the past (Jeffrey Skilling, former CEO of Enron, and Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco), and from the present (Jon Corzine, former Governor of New Jersey and former CEO of MF Global Holdings, and Bob Diamond, former CEO of Barclays). Similarly there are examples of investigators who have made a name for themselves by taking on the high and mighty, for example, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who seems to specialize in going after high profile individuals and institutions famously (or infamously) seeming to smack of excess.

Look at what’s happening with Libor: More than ten governments around the world are looking into whether big banks rigged rates in a big way. While the case likely will drag on for years, it’s hard to imagine that in the end no one will be held liable. In fact, Barclays has already paid $450 million to settle charges it had reported false rates. For the Big Bank $450 mill is of course a mere pittance. But in this case at least, it’s likely to be a harbinger of more, far more, to come – which means that some individuals and some institutions will probably be brought to account.

Here’s the point: It’s difficult or even impossible for most of us directly to take on those who have far more money and power than we. In this significant sense, the law is our stand-in, our surrogate. It does, or at least sometimes it tries to do what we cannot: to bring to justice parties guilty of crimes and misdemeanors for which the rest of us have already had to pay.

Here and there was mention it had been a hard week at the State Department. Here and there were questions about security after the attack in Benghazi that resulted in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens. And here and there were concessions by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, implicit or explicit, that something in Libya, and in Egypt, had gone badly wrong. (Just before the events in Libya, protesters had managed to scale the walls of the U. S. Embassy in Cairo, leap into the courtyard, and tear down the American flag.)

To her credit, Clinton appeared appropriately stricken, she announced the creation of a board to investigate what had happend, and she briefed members of Congress. But by and large Clinton has emerged otherwise unscathed, certainly by the liberal media that chose generally to downplay or ignore altogether what by any measure was her ultimate responsibility – unless you go to the top, to President Barack Obama.

To be sure, this story is not yet over. Even now the State Department is facing Congressional demands for an independent investigation. And even the liberal opposition – for example, Maine’s Republican Senator Susan Collins – is gunning for a better accounting. Collins argued the attack in Benghazi was not a black swan, “but rather an attack that should have been anticipated, based on the previous attacks against Western targets, the proliferation of dangerous weapons in Libya, the presence of Al Qaeda in the country and the overall threat environment.” Still, because Hillary Clinton is a liberal darling, her culpability in this matter has been sidestepped – both by her and by her natural allies.

It is, of course, possible if not probable that she is taking her marching orders on what publicly to say direct from the White House. Obviously the last thing the Obama administration, the Obama campaign, now needs is a foreign policy debacle for which the president and his team can reasonably be held responsible. Nevertheless it would have been seemly for the Secretary of State to display some small measure of contrition, and some small measure of individual and institutional responsibility. Similarly, it would have been seemly for a liberal outlet such as the New York Times not to bury the lead in an article titled, “After Libya Attack, a Fleeting Sense of Survival.” It would have been better and more to the point to take a tack similar to that of the conservative Wall Street Journal, which titled its article on the same story on the same day, “Miscues Before Libya Assault: Limited Security in Benghazi … Contributed to Tragedy.”

We Americans are generally so myopic as to ignore events beyond our own shores – unless somehow the U. S. is directly and obviously involved.

But it happens that in the last couple of days history was made in South Africa, when a small group of rebels won for the nation’s workers one of their most remarkable victories ever. By banding together and forming an upstart union, miners secured for themselves what by nearly every measure was a major victory. Lonmin management – Lonmin is a company that mines for platinum – agreed both to a hefty pay increase and to a bonus, which together total more than twice the gains typically secured by mainstream miners’ unions.

The illegal strike came at considerable cost: 45 lives were lost, most when early in the strike the police shot and killed 34 protesters, who allegedly were threatening them with makeshift weapons. Moreover the strike has increasingly been viewed as a direct challenge to its authority by the South African government, which now fears the unrest might spread to other of the nation’s platinum and gold mining regions. So the government has straddled the line between patience and militancy, having finally called out the military to prevent the spread of further worker violence.

Of course Lonmin laborers did not lose this battle – they won it. The question is, will they win the war? Will the thousands of other South African miners eventually similarly benefit? Likely the answer is yes, for this first group of protesters, whatever their methods, drew the nation’s attention to the miserable conditions under which the overwhelming majority of South Africa’s miners continue to mine.

A postscript: As some of my earlier blogs pointed out, the American labor movement is not dead and gone. Most recently, while Chicago’s teachers did not get all of what they wanted, they did get some of what they wanted – certainly more than they would have received had they not gone out on strike. Meantime, unions representing 45,000 Verizon workers reached a contract they generally consider highly satisfactory; American Airline pilots are threatening a work stoppage; and the Canadian Autoworkers Union is poised to start a strike against General Motors. Labor dead and gone? Not hardly.

In my last post – “Death of an American Ambassador” – I commented on how a small group or even a single individual now has the power to change the debate. While the anger that fuelled the anti-American protests in some 20 countries in the Middle East and beyond was not new, the spark that lit the fires was that miserable video first pasted and then posted, on line, by a small knot of nobodies.

It is the on line part that’s key here. Never before the Internet would this sort of thing have been possible. To be sure, there have been moments in history when the act of one person – typically an assassin – changed everything. For example, World War I is reputed to have been ignited by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. But that was an act of violence against one of the most important men in early 20th century Europe. This is something different. This is a cheap and tawdry video that – because it was sent in an instant to everyone everywhere – led to a series of events with implications that are impossible now precisely to calculate.

But what we do know now is this: the nobodies who made the film had the capacity to create change on a massive scale. These few followers impacted a good number of the most prominent and, ostensibly, powerful political leaders – demonstrating again the shifting balance between leaders and followers. Presidents and prime ministers from Washington to Cairo, from Berlin to Khartoum, and from Tunis to Tehran were dragged into the mayhem and maelstrom, none exempt from the fallout of the film.

Moreover the story is far from over. Case in point: American Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The more we learn the more it seems clear that Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador to Libya who last week was murdered, was inadequately guarded and protected. Given the context in which he served, and given the constant cautions to the Americans even by the Libyan government, the question inevitably arises: did the
U. S. State Department fall down on the job? Should the Americans have done a better job guarding the Benghazi compound that was housing their ambassador? Does this buck stop at the desk of Secretary Clinton?

I have no idea how all this will wash out. But if Hillary Clinton does ever decide to run for president, I suspect the tragic death of Ambassador Stevens will resurface. It’s a vivid example of how the powerless now impinge on the powerful – the tail that wags the dog.

From what we know now, the American Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, died as the result of a small, violent mob, enraged by a video What kind of a video? It was an amateur anti-Muslim screed, made by an extremist in the U. S., that denigrated the Islamic prophet Mohammed – and was posted on line.

Here’s what I wrote about the impact of technology on relations between leaders and led in my book, The End of Leadership:

“Using information technology to overthrow [or attack] the old is not new. Martin Luther employed a newfangled device, the printing press, to foment revolt against the authority of the papacy. In late-eighteenth-century America it was newspapers that did this sort of work, convincing “colonial readers of their personal stake in political protests against the English crown. And in mid to late twentieth century Europe, specifically in the Soviet bloc, dissidents used copy and fax machines to incite against communist autocrats in the Soviet Union and East Europe. So the Internet is only the latest iteration of technologies that have for centuries been used by the many without power, authority, and influence against the few with.”

I do not compare this most recent incident to the above-mentioned crusades. What I do point out is how new technologies have always cut two ways. Moreover in the 21st century, they can incite and empower the powerless, even a powerless few, with an intensity and alacrity the rest of the world finds shocking.

What happened in Libya is a wrenching reminder of how a small number of individuals – at home and abroad – now have the capacity to intrude on and unsettle the international system. Remember 9/11?.

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Little did I know when I wrote my most recent blog, titled “Hired Hands,” that just a few days later labor unrest would hit the front pages – not abroad but at home.

Little did Rahm Emanuel know at the Democratic Convention that just a week later he would be transformed from big man on the Dems’ campus to embattled mayor – challenged by a monster teachers’ strike that is crippling his city of Chicago.

Emanuel emerged more powerful than ever from Charlotte, having been asked to raise money for one of the Democrats’ most important super PACs, Priorities USA Action. As Nicholas Confessore wrote in the New York Times, the move thrust Emanuel into “the kind of role long played by Karl Rove,” arguably the most prominent of professional Republican pols. But Emanuel’s moment to bask in his newfound power was short-lived. For the past couple of days the city of which he is mayor has been rocked and roiled by some 20,000 teachers who walked off their jobs, and by a union that chose to take a stand against what it charged were unfair labor practices. (This fight is not about money but about other issues, such as how teachers get evaluated.)

Americans by and large are piling on the union, castigating it for selfishness and greed at a time when the city’s youngest and most vulnerable need nothing so much as good schooling. Moreover the strike gets at the heart of some of the most sensitive issues in American education – which itself has long been the subject of national hand-wringing. But whatever you think of the union’s decision to call a strike, its decision to face off is a timely and necessary reminder that, as I said in “Hired Hands,” rumors of labor’s death are greatly exaggerated.

As to Emanuel, he likely will emerge from this flight slightly bloodied but completely unbowed. Still, he’s been put on notice: uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

Labor is dead and unions are dead and workers of the world have done anything but unite. Marx and Engels turn in their graves!

But with Labor Day come and gone, it’s a good time to ask: is labor really dead? Or is it just that in the year 2012 labor looks different from the way it did – not only at home but abroad? Is it just that the strength of unions – our traditional way of measuring the American labor movement – is less than it was, and not labor more generally?

There is of course no question that unions are diminished. At their peak, in the 1950s, some 34% of American workers belonged to unions; now membership is closer to 12%. Moreover among younger workers, the figures are even lower.

But, unions are still among the living. They are not without power, and they are not without money, and they are not without a voice in American politics and markets. In fact, notwithstanding that North Carolina has the lowest unionization rate in the country (about 2%), the presence of unions was strongly felt at this week’s Democratic convention. Mary Kay Henry, president of the Services Employees International, gave a prominent speech, as did United Auto Workers president, Bob King. Over and over again we heard how the Democrats have supported labor by, for example, rescuing the American automobile industry. And the overriding theme – jobs, jobs, jobs – was as at the Republican convention: intended to warm the hearts of American workers, the middle class, above all.

Moreover labor is finding ways other than through unions to express its needs, wants, and wishes.The recently touted Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is just one example of how the law has been used to further the cause, here working women demanding their fair share. Similarly the media – new and old – can jumpstart the effort to press a point, as did the New York Times, when it ran a long piece of investigative journalism on how Chinese workers who produced parts for Apple were underpaid and even maltreated.

This is not for a moment to suggest that unions are unimportant, or that American workers would not benefit from having unions that were bigger and stronger than they are now. Rather it is to point out that unions are not the only game in town, and that some workers some of the time have taken a creative approach to showing some muscle.

One final point: some workers in some place are restive. In South Africa a series of illegal wildcat strikes have hit the country’s coal mines, profoundly unsettling the nation’s political establishment. In Bangladesh protests are breaking out in the huge, previously docile garment sector, threatening the country’s image and industry worldwide. In China there is growing social awareness of issues pertaining to workplace safety, especially in the nation’s coal industry, which has been the scene of a spate of recent fatal accidents. And millions of European workers have for years now engaged in massive public protests against their governments’ unwillingness or inability to give them what they want when they want it.

The growing income disparity in the U. S. testifies vividly to the fact that labor is weaker than it once was. Still, rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated.

Everyone’s chattering this morning about how Michelle Obama’s splendid speech of last evening helped tee up her husband. As far as I’m concerned, what she really teed up was her own future political career.

Of course Michelle Obama first came to national prominence as her husband’s helpmate. That was then. Now she is poised to follow in the footsteps of one of her recent predecessors, Hillary Clinton.

Like Clinton, Obama first came to Washington as First Lady, as wife and mother. Like Clinton, Obama is coming to be recognized as a political force to be reckoned with in her own right. Like Clinton, her daughter(s) will be up and out of the house not long after she is out of the White House (whether after one or two terms). And, like Clinton, she is highly unlikely simply to return, at least metaphorically, to whence she came.

Keep your eye on the First Lady! Not far into the future she’s going to aim to claim other firsts as well.

OUR LINE OF WORK IS LEADERSHIP. I STUDY IT. YOU LIKELY ALREADY HAVE, OR YOU WILL, EXERCISE IT. BUT WE ARE NOT ALONE IN OUR FIXATION ON LEADERSHIP – THIS FIXATION IS A PHENOMENON THAT IS UNIVERSALLY SHARED. WE OBSESS ABOUT PERSONS IN POSITIONS OF OSTENSIBLE POWER, IMAGINING THEY SOMEHOW ARE ABLE, QUITE LITERALLY, TO CONTROL THE ACTION. IN THE U.S. FOR EXAMPLE, WE HAVE FOR MANY MONTHS NOW BEEN COMPLETELY CONSUMED BY THE CONTEST BETWEEN BARACK OBAMA AND MITT ROMNEY – THOUGH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION REMAINS EVEN NOW A SEASON AWAY.
I, HOWEVER, AM A CONTRARIAN. I TRY TO PRY PEOPLE – IN THIS CASE YOU – AWAY FROM THEIR OBSESSION WITH THE LEADER, AND TOWARD TWO OTHER PHENOMENA, WHICH TO MY MIND, AND IN LINE WITH MY RESEARCH, ARE EVERY BIT AS SIGNIFICANT. THE FIRST OF THESE IS CONTEXT – AN ALL-IMPORTANT BUT LARGELY NEGLECTED EXPLANATION FOR WHY THINGS HAPPEN THE WAY THEY DO. I AM ESPECIALLY INTERESTED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONTEXTUAL INTELLIGENCE, WHICH IN THE 21ST CENTURY IS EVERY BIT AS IMPORTANT AS THE OTHER INTELLIGENCES, SUCH AS, FOR EXAMPLE, EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.
THINK OF CONTEXT AS A SERIES OF CONCENTRIC CIRCLES – RATHER LIKE TOSSING A STONE INTO A POND AND SEEING ENSUE THE TYPICAL RIPPLE EFFECT. FIRST THE INNER CIRCLE, THEN THE NEXT SUCH CIRCLE, AND THE NEXT, AN EVER-WIDENING SERIES OF CONCENTRIC CIRCLES BEFORE FADING INTO THE DISTANCE.
SO, WE SIT HERE TODAY, ON THE 25TH DAY OF THE MONTH OF AUGUST IN THE YEAR 2012. IT MATTERS THAT THIS IS THE DAY ON WHICH YOU ARE GRADUATES! IT MATTERS THAT AS YOU STEP FORTH, MBA DEGREE NOW IN HAND, YOU LOOK AT THIS DAY IN A TEMPORAL SENSE, ONE THAT TAKES INTO ACCOUNT OUR DISTANT HISTORY, AND THE RECENT HISTORY OF, SAY, GLOBAL POLITICS AND MARKETS.
AS TIME MATTERS TO CONTEXT – DISTANT, RECENT, AND CONTEMPORANEOUS – SO DOES SPACE. WE SIT HERE TODAY IN THE TOWN OF ST. GALLEN, IN THE COUNTRY OF SWITZERLAND, ON THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE. THESE SITES – AGAIN THOSE THAT ARE IMMEDIATE AND THOSE THAT ARE MORE DISTANT – ALONG WITH YOUR PLACE OF ORIGIN, HAVE AN IMPACT ON WHO YOU ARE, AND ON HOW AND WHAT YOU THINK, YOUR WELTANSCHAUUNG. THE FACT THAT YOU ARE GRADUATES OF THIS PARTICULAR BUSINESS SCHOOL IN THIS PARTICULAR UNIVERSITY– AS OPPOSED TO ANOTHER IN ANOTHER TIME AND ANOTHER PLACE – ALLOWS FOR CERTAIN OPPORTUNITIES, AND SETS CERTAIN CONSTRAINTS.
AND, IF YOU ARE AMONG THE LUCKY ONES, THE ONES WHO ALREADY HAVE SECURED A JOB THAT LIKELY WILL SATISFY, YOUR PARTICULAR WORKPLACE AND YOUR PARTICULAR ORGANIZATION WILL COME TO DEFINE WHO YOU ARE, WHAT YOU DO, AND HOW YOU DO IT. WHAT I AM ARGUING, IN OTHER WORDS, IS THAT CONTEXT, CONTEXTUAL AWARENESS, MATTERS EVERY BIT AS MUCH AND MAYBE EVEN MORE THAN DOES SELF-AWARENESS.
I RECOMMEND, THEREFORE, THAT NOTWITHSTANDING OUR COLLECTIVE OBSESSION WITH LEADERS, AND WITH US AS LEADERS AND MANAGERS, THAT YOU LOOK OUTWARD EVERY BIT AS MUCH AS YOU LOOK INWARD. THE IMPORTANCE OF ASSUMING THIS EXPANSIVE VIEW IS ONE OF THE SEVERAL REASONS WHY LEADERSHIP EDUCATION AND TRAINING SHOULD, IN MY VIEW, BE LESS ABOUT DEVELOPING THE INDIVIDUAL PER SE, AND MORE ABOUT DEVELOPING THE INDIVIDUAL AS A MEMBER OF A SERIES OF COMMUNITIES WHICH, AGAIN, ARE IN SOME CASES IN CLOSE PROXIMITY, AND IN OTHERS MORE DISTAL, EVEN GLOBAL.
LET ME ADD THAT THIS EXPANSIVE SENSE OF CONTEXT IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY THE LIBERAL ARTS PERTAIN EVEN NOW, AS MUCH TO STUDENTS OF BUSINESS AS THEY DO TO STUDENTS OF ANYTHING ELSE. SUBJECTS SUCH AS HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY, AND LITERATURE ARE UNIVERSAL IN THEIR APPLICATION, WHICH MAKES THEM ANYTHING OTHER THAN OBSOLETE, OR IRRELVANT, NO MATTER YOUR LINE OF WORK. SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE AND CONFUCIOUS AND FREUD AND KUROSAWA AND PLATO AND PICASSO AND PROKOVIEV TEACH US TO BE EXPANSIVE, TO THINK BIG AND BROAD, RATHER THAN MERELY SMALL AND NARROW. TOGETHER THEY ENABLE US TO TRANSCEND THE HERE AND NOW, AND TO ENTER ANOTHER REALM ENTIRELY.
SO WHAT ARE THE ASPECTS OF CONTEXT THAT PERTAIN TO LEADERS AND MANAGERS IN PARTICULAR? FIRST THERE IS CULTURE – A CULTURE THAT HAS CHANGED THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY, AND THAT CONTINUES TO CHANGE AS I SPEAK. WHAT’S MOST STRIKING ABOUT THIS CULTURE FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS CONVERSATION IS THE CONTINUING SHIFT IN POWER AND INFLUENCE FROM LEADERS TO FOLLOWERS, TO ORDINARY PEOPLE WHO, WHETHER IN THE CLASSROOM OR IN THE COURTROOM, IN THE WORKPLACE OR THE TOWN SQUARE, ARE FEELING INCREASINGLY ENTITLED AND EMBOLDENED – TO THE POINT OF PRECLUDING LEADERS FROM DOING WHAT THEY WANT AND INTEND. MOST OF THE EUROPEAN ELECTORATES, AND CERTAINLY THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE – ARE CASES IN POINT. VOTERS, FOLLOWERS, ALL WANT MORE AND MORE IN A WORLD IN WHICH THERE IS LESS AND LESS – AND SO WE THREATEN OUR POLITICAL LEADERS WITH EVICTION UNLESS THEY PROMISE WHAT THEY CANNOT POSSIBLY DELIVER.
THE SECOND COMPONENT OF CONTEXT TO WHICH EACH OF YOU MUST, REALLY MUST, PAY RELENTLESS ATTENTION IS TECHNOLOGY. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERESTIMATE THE DEGREE TO WHICH TECHNOLOGY IMPACTS ON PATTERNS OF DOMINANCE AND DEFERENCE. PUT DIRECTLY, THE CHANGING TECHNOLOGIES ENABLE A DEGREE OF INDIVIDUAL EMPOWERMENT UNPRECEDENTED IN ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY.
SOCIAL MEDIA IN PARTICULAR ENABLE THE SPREAD OF INFORMATION. AND THEY PROVIDE A MEANS OF EXPRESSION. AND THEY ALLOW FOR CONNECTION. THINK OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN OPEN RESOURCE, AVAILABLE TO MOST ANYONE ANYWHERE – WHICH EMPOWERS MOST ANYONE ANYWHERE IN WAYS THAT HISTORICLALY ARE UNPRECEDENTED.
THE SO-CALLED ARAB SPRING IS JUST ONE OF THE MANY GLARING EXAMPLES OF WHAT CAN HAPPEN WHEN SOCIAL MEDIA ENABLE THOSE WITHOUT APPARENT POWER, AUTHORITY, OR INFLUENCE TO UNDERCUT THE EXISTING SOCIAL CONTRACT – TO UNCEREMONIOUSLY DUMP THE OLD GUARD IN FAVOR OF THE YOUNG AND RESTLESS, ARMED WITH LITTLE MORE THAN A SMARTPHONE. AS LEADERS WORLDWIDE ARE BEGINNING TO DISCOVER, INFORMATION, EXPRESSION, AND CONNECTION CAN BE COMBUSTIBLE MIX IN WHICH THE OUTCOME IS ACTION.
ONE FINAL POINT ON TECHNOLOGY IN PARTICULAR: IN THE NOT DISTANT FUTURE, IT WILL EMPOWER NOT ONLY THOSE HAVE-NOTS WHO ARE FAMILIAR, BUT ALSO THOSE WHO ARE UNFAMILIAR, THOSE IN DISTANT LANDS WHO EACH DAY HAVE ACCESS TO INFORMATION THAT PREVIOUSLY WAS INACCESSIBLE. AND … IF YOU DON’T THINK THAT INFORMATION IN AND OF ITSELF EMPOWERS THE PREVIOUSLY POWERLESS, WELL, THEN, THINK AGAIN. THE SIMPLE ACT OF BUYING AND SELLING, IS INCREASINGLY CONTROLLED BY BUYERS WHO HAVE IN HAND, LITERALLY, ONE OR ANOTHER DEVICE THAT ENABLES THEM TO COMPARISON SHOP IN THE ROUGH EQUIVALENT OF THE PROVERBIAL HEARTBEAT.
THIS BRINGS ME TO WHAT I CONSIDER THE SECOND SERIOUS OMISSION FROM THE LEADERSHIP CURRICULUM – IN ADDITION TO CONTEXT – THE FOLLOWER. FOLLOWERS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN LEADERSHIP EXPERTS GIVE THEM CREDIT FOR. BUT, AS I JUST SUGGESTED, THEY ARE MORE IMPORTANT NOW THAN EVER BEFORE. PUT DIRECTLY, AS I IMPLY IN MY REMARKS, LEADERS ARE WEAKER THAN BEFORE, AND FOLLOWERS ARE STRONGER. ORDINARY PEOPLE ARE LOUDER AND NOISIER, MORE STRIDENT, MORE CRITICAL, MORE, IF YOU WILL, DEMOCRATIC IN THEIR EXPECTATIONS. TRADITIONAL PATRIARCHAL FAMILY STRUCTURES HAVE BEEN TURNED ON THEIR HEADS. TOTALITARIAN AND EVEN AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENTS HAVE BEEN REDUCED TO AN INCREASINGLY DWINDLING NUMBER. WORKPLACE STRUCTURES, PREVIOUSLY HIERARCHIES, HAVE BEEN FLATTENED. AND SOCIAL MEDIA GIVE EVERYONE A PLATFORM FROM WHICH THEY CAN, IF THEY WANT, HAVE THEIR SAY. LIFE, IN OTHER WORDS, HAS CHANGED – CHANGED FROM BEING SOMETHING OF A SPECTATOR SPORT TO A GAME IN WHICH EVERYONE WANTS, AND INCREASINLGY EXPECTS, A PIECE OF THE ACTION.
GIVEN ALL THIS ROILING AND RAILING, IT’S NO WONDER THAT YOUR DEGREE, THE MBA DEGREE, HAS BECOME IN THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS ITSELF AN OBJECT OF SCRUTINY. CERTAINLY IN THE U.S., THE DEGREE IS BEING RECONSIDERED AND REVAMPED AND REVISED AT MANY OF THE NATION’S BEST BUSINESS SCHOOLS, INCLUDING AT THE HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL, WHERE, IN THE LAST TWO YEARS, UNDER A NEW DEAN, THE MBA CURRICULUM HAS BEEN EXTENSIVELY REDRAWN.
MBA PROGRAMS HAVE BEEN A QUINTESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF WHAT I CALL THE LEADERSHIP INDUSTRY – MY TERM FOR THE PLETHORA OF LEADERSHIP INITITAIVES THAT DURING THE LAST FORTY YEARS HAVE COME TO DOT THE GLOBAL LANDSCAPE. BUT WHERE HAS THIS HEROIC ATTEMPT AT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT – INCIDENTALLY, I MYSELF AM A CARD-CARRYING MEMBER OF THE LEADERSHIP INDUSTRY – GOT US? NOT NEARLYAS FAR AS WE HAD HOPED AND WANTED AND INTENDED SEVERAL DECADES AGO.
LET’S BE HONEST. NOTWITHSTANDING THE THRIVING LEADERSHIP INDUSTRY, THE TIMES IN WHICH WE LIVE ARE POCKMARKED BY LEADERS WHO SEEM NOT IN THE LEAST TO HAVE BEEN BETTERED BY THEIR GENERALLY SUPERLATIVE EDUCATIONS. IT’S CLEAR BY NOW THAT NO SCHOOL ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET, AND NO NUMBER OF LEADERSHIP COURSES, OR ETHICS COURSES, OR ANY OTHER KINDS OF COURSES, HAVE BEEN ABLE TO STEM EGREGIOUS WRONGDOING – IN POLITICS, IN BUSINESS, IN THE PRESS, IN THE ACADEMY, IN RELIGION, IN SPORT . . . I COULD GO ON.
TO TAKE JUST ONE STRIKING EXAMPLE – FROM FINANCIAL MARKETS – LIBOR. THE LIBOR INDEX IS WIDELY CONSIDERED THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT SET OF NUMBERS IN THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM. YET AS WE LEARNED ONLY RECENTLY, LIBOR RATES HAVE BEEN RIGGED FOP YEARS, JIGGERED IN WAYS THAT ADVANTAGED BANKS AND DISADVANTAGED NEAR EVERYONE ELSE. MOREOVER, AS JAMES SUROWIECKI HAS POINTED OUT, RIGGING LIBOR WAS SHOCKINGLY EASY. THE BANKS – THAT IS, THE PEOPLE RUNNING THE BANKS – HAD ONLY TO TELL SOME SIMPLE LIES. WHY? BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT BEING MONITORED OR REGULATED, THEY WERE NOT HELD TO ACCOUNT IN WAYS THAT WOULD HAVE MOTIVATED THEM SUFFICIENTLY STRONGLY TO TELL THE TRUTH.
THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE FIXATE ON INDIVIDUALS AND IGNORE INSTITUTIONS. THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE FIXATE ON LEADERS AND IGNORE FOLLOWERS. THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE FIXATE ON SELF INTEREST AND IGNORE THE PUBLIC INTEREST. AND… THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE NEGLECT THE LESSONS OF HUMAN HISTORY, WHICH TEACH REPEATEDLY THAT SELF-REGULATION DOES NOT WORK IN FINANCE ANY MORE THAN IT DOES ANY WHERE ELSE. MONTESQUIEU AND JOHN LOCKE AND JAMES MADISON UNDERSTOOD IT TAKES FOLLOWERS TO CONTAIN AND CONSTRAIN LEADERS – AND IT TAKES A CONTEXT CONTAINING CODES OF CONDUCT AS WELL. IT TURNS OUT WE ARE ALL NO MORE THAN MERE MORTALS – WE REQUIRE RULES AND REGULATIONS TO PUT A LID ON GREED, GREED FOR MONEY AND GREED FOR POWER.
NONE OF THIS IS TO SAY THAT LEADERSHIP – LEADERS – ARE UNIMPORTANT. OF COURSE NOT! BUT IT IS TO ARGUE THAT THEY ARE NOT ALL-IMPORTANT. AND IT IS TO SUGGEST THAT AS FRESHLY-MINTED MBA GRADUATES YOU BEAR IN MIND BOTH THE TRAJECTORY OF HISTORY, AND THE COMPLEXITY OF THE CONTEMPORANEOUS CONTEXT. YOU ARE GRADUATING INTO A WORLD IN WHICH EUROPEAN LEADERS HAVE BEEN CONSTRAINED AND ULTIMATELY UPENDED IN RECORD NUMBERS; IN WHICH AMERICAN LEADERS ARE FRAGMENTED AND FRACTIOUS TO A DEGREE THAT IS UNPRECEDENTED; IN WHICH A TYPICAL RUSSIAN STRONGMAN IS HAVING TO WATCH HIS BACK AT EVERY TURN; IN WHICH CHINESE AUTHORITIES ARE PRECARIOUSLY PERCHED BETWEEN MARKET AUTHORITARIANISM ON THE ONE HAND AND CITIZEN ACTIVISM ON THE OTHER; IN WHICH JAPAN HAS BEEN BESET BY AN INCESSENT PARADE OF PRIME MINISTERS; IN WHICH THE MIDDLE EAST OF 2012 BEARS NEARLY NO RESEMBLANCE TO THE MIDDLE EAST OF 2010; AND IN WHICH COUNTRIES THAT ONLY FIVE MINUTES AGO SEEMED ENTIRELY INTRACTABLE, SUCH AS BURMA, ARE SHOWING SIGNS OF UNHINGING PREVIOUSLY EXTANT RELATIONS BETWEEN LEADERS AND THE LED.
THE CHANGES OF WHICH I SPEAK ARE SEMINAL. AND THEY ARE GLOBAL. AND THEY ARE IRREVERSIBLE. NO INDIVIDUAL OR INSTITUTION IS IMMUNE FROM THE GLOBAL CONTAGION. SO IT’S UP TO YOU, GRADUATES, TO CATCH THE WAVE, TO RIDE THE TIDE OF CHANGE BRAVELY AND BOLDLY – BUT WITHOUT DELUDING YOURSELVES INTO THINKING THAT CHANGE IS YOURS COMPLETELY TO CONTROL.