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Billionaire businessman Jamie Dimon is a Master of the Universe. He has been chief executive officer of JP Morgan Chase, the biggest of America’s four biggest banks, since 2005. And he is among the most powerful, and widely recognized of all America’s chief executives. This week though has been a bummer for Dimon. By week’s end he was badly embarrassed, his reputation certainly somewhat tarnished.

The slide started slowly. In fact, one could argue that early last week, when JPMorgan announced it planned to improve working conditions for those among its junior ranks, it was doing no more than doing good. But anyone who paid close attention knew that JPMorgan was not being suddenly magnanimous. Rather it was responding to pressure from below.

Five years earlier, JPMorgan had made a similar gesture, promising to ameliorate the hellishly demanding work lives of its younger bankers. But nothing much had changed. The reforms that were promised were never enforced. Why exactly? Because of the bank’s own, admitted, “laziness.”  So, this week, this time in response to angry complaints coming from those in Wall Street’s junior ranks, JPMorgan vowed once again to change its ways. In a major concession Dimon’s minions promised, for instance, to encourage all bankers to go home by 7 pm; to “force” bankers to take at least three weeks vacation every year; and to require group heads frequently to check on their subordinates “to find out what is working.”

Had Dimon’s backtracking ended there it would’ve been one thing. But it did not. For it was revealed later in the week that Dimon was a central player in one of the biggest fiascos – and abject humiliations – the world of sport has ever seen.  

In a letter to JPMorgan shareholders sent early this month Jamie Dimon wrote that “businesses must earn the trust of their customers and communities by acting ethically and morally.” He went on to add that “To a good company, its reputation is everything. That reputation is earned day in and day out with every interaction.” Did he read his own letter? Remember what he himself ostensibly had written? It would appear no. And it would appear no.

Plans for the European Super League – touted as football’s (soccer’s) future – were announced last Tuesday. By last Thursday, 48 hours later, the deal had collapsed. No, it crashed… spectacularly. I will have more to say about this in a subsequent post. Here I will simply point out that had the plan been realized, JPMorgan Chase stood to enormously to profit. Not just now, in the moment, but for the duration of the deal, which was 23 years. For in its original incarnation, it was as The Guardian put it, “probably one of the most lucrative sports financing deals in history.”

For the second time in less than a week, Dimon was obliged to kowtow. Not personally, of course. This time an anonymous spokesperson for the bank issued a short statement that read “We clearly misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community, and how it might affect them in the future. We will learn from this.”

In the shareholder letter referred to earlier, Dimon wrote, “We take great pride in being a responsible citizen at the local level – just like the local bakery.” Really, Jamie?  

My book, The End of Leadership, was published in 2012. In it I made several arguments but, as its title implies, my primary point was that the world was changing and that, increasingly, the powerless were taking on the powerful, demanding, finally, greater equity.

I further pointed out that this was no more than – and, also, no less than – a continuation of what had been an historical trajectory. One in which, over the course of human history, power and influence had generally devolved from the top down.

What I got right was this most fundamental point. But I also got something wrong, something important wrong. I was more optimistic than was warranted that, in consequence of followers getting stronger and leaders weaker, the number of democracies would rise while the number of autocracies would fall. I was, for example, more optimistic about what then was a contemporaneous phenomenon, the Arab Spring, than was, ultimately, merited.

For a time, my prognosis seemed to hold. But within a few years it become clear that the tide had turned. Moreover, by now, the situation is in one critical way reversed; there are fewer democracies in the world today than there were a decade ago. In 2019, Freedom House, which measures such things, found that there is a consistent and continuing decline in global freedom. “Democracy and pluralism are under assault,” it concluded, while “dictators are toiling to stamp out the last vestiges of domestic dissent.”

It was this that I did not foresee. That leaders such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been either Prime Minister or President of Turkey since 2003, would evolve from being reasonably democratic to unreasonably autocratic. Moreover, Erdogan is only a single example of a quite frequent phenomenon. Leaders around the world, from China’s Xi Jinping to Hungary’s Viktor Orban to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, have all tightened their grip on power.

But one could argue, and I do, that they have done so precisely because of the trajectory to which I just alluded. Dictators like these fully recognize that if they do not squeeze their followers, hold them tight in their iron grip, these self- same followers will, one day, overtake and finally overwhelm them.  For years Vladimir Putin tolerated the man who was his most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny. But in the last year Putin tried, unsuccessfully, fatally to poison him. And now he has thrown Navalny in prison and, to all appearances, thrown away the key. (As I write, Navalny is said by his prison doctor to be at death’s door.)

In stark contrast to what has transpired in recent years in systems that are authoritarian or even totalitarian, is what has transpired in those that are not. In liberal democracies the trend I predicted has held. That is, leaders, especially people in positions of authority, continue to get weaker, and followers stronger. Traditional systems of maintaining control are fraying, while everywhere there are upstarts, people out to challenge the status quo. To this movement, or these movements, which are entirely in keeping with the trajectory of history, there is no end in sight.

• Robin Hood Markets is taking on traditional financial services companies by offering commission-free trading of stocks and exchange-traded funds via a mobile app. You prefer to trade in cryptocurrencies – about which no one had even heard just a few years ago? If yes, rather than put up with stodgy American regulators, you can turn to FTX, founded by a 29-year-old billionaire by the name of Sam Bankman-Fried. He operates out of Hong Kong. Living in Hong Kong is stifling and even dangerous – if you’re a Hong Konger who is politically active. But it is decidedly not stifling or even dangerous if you’re a hugely rich American who wants only to be left alone to do his own thing. Further evidence that Big Finance, Wall Street, is ripe for an upstart takeover or, at least, a tech makeover, is the degree to which start-ups are circumventing traditional Wall Street channels to raise the money they need to launch, and then sustain them. According to the New York Times, “Venture capital investors poured $44.4 billion into financial technology start-ups last year, up from $1.1 billion in 2009. Many investors are now making bold predictions that these start ups will upend big banks, established credit card providers, and in some cases, the entire financial system.” I am not predicting that the heyday of big banks is over. I am however maintaining they best watch their backs – lest they play toad to some start-up hare.  
• Amazon won the battle of Alabama. But it is not at all clear that Amazon will win the war. Union organizers in Bessemer, Alabama were thumped in a recent election in which local Amazon workers voted decisively not to unionize, at least not now. Though a deep disappointment to those who foretold a resurgence of the union movement, one could argue it was a near miracle that the election took place at all. Invariably, Amazon throws its humungous weight behind every effort to stop its workers from organizing. But it has not been able to prevent growing numbers of them from complaining loudly and bitterly about their working conditions. Amazon is an employment behemoth. Some 1.3 million people work at the company, making it the nation’s second largest private employer, after Walmart. Moreover in at least two important ways Amazon treats its workers well. The company provides good health benefits and, in 2018, it instituted a nationwide minimum hourly wage of $15 – not bad in comparison with most other companies that are similar, but much more miserly. But as others have pointed out, the fact that Amazon’s employees suffer injuries at far higher rates than the national average is impossible any longer to hide, and hence to ignore. Which is precisely why Amazon’s iconic leader, Jeff Bezos, was obliged finally to admit, just two days ago, that Amazon “needs to do a better job” for its employees.
• For years, for decades, forever, major American sports leagues and even the most prominent among American athletes have taken pains to stay above, or at least out of, the fray. They have done what they could to stay away from any of the contentious concerns of the day, especially if they centered on third rail issues such as race and gender. But, in recent years and especially in recent months it has become difficult if not impossible for them to be like Switzerland, relentlessly neutral. Individually and collectively leading figures from the world of sports have felt obliged – either morally or politically – to take a stand. To take sides publicly, sometimes forcefully, on issues such as police brutality, gun violence, and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, with some even putting their money where their mouths are. Just a few years ago Colin Kaepernick was marginalized for protesting racism by kneeling during the national anthem. Those days are over. Major players speak out when it damn well suits them. Major leagues bankroll new social justice efforts. Major teams seize the moment, as in Georgia’s recent senate election, when a women’s basketball team actively campaigned against a sitting Republican Senator, who happened also to be owner of their team. And even Major League Baseball, the oldest of the major sports leagues in the United States, and arguably the most hidebound, took the somewhat surprising step of moving the annual All-Star Game out of Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new voting law, the sole purpose of which, its critics maintain, is to suppress the Black vote.                     
• Corporate America the same. It prefers, strongly prefers, to stay away from any issue that is, or could become remotely controversial. After all, the point of business is business, turning a profit, so why alienate anyone who currently is a customer or could become a customer? But, recently, many of the nation’s top CEOs felt they had no choice. Pushed to take a political position by two of the nation’s top black executives, Merck’s Kenneth Frazier and American Express’s former CEO, Kenneth Chenault, some 72 other black executives agreed to sign a letter that was published as a full-page ad in the New York Times. It urged corporations to use whatever their resources to oppose any state laws, proposed or enacted, designed to restrict voting rights for Black people. Not long after, just a week ago, in fact, 100 corporate executives held a conference call to discuss stopping donations and investments to fight controversial voting bills. Ironically, or maybe not, this was hard on the heels of Senate Minority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, darkly warning business leaders that they had no business sticking their nose into politics. “Firms “should stay out of politics” he admonished, echoing other Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, who had already urged a boycott of companies such as Coca-Cola and Delta whose CEOs had the temerity publicly to oppose the aforementioned Georgia law. Yale University Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who was one of the organizers of the earlier mentioned call, reported later that those who participated were “obviously rejecting” McConnell’s warning that they should stay out of politics. Instead, Sonnenfeld held that their presence on the call was an indication of itself that they were concerned “about voting restrictions not being in the public interest.”           ,
• No question that in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and other subsequence incidents of obvious police brutality, the levels of social and political activism increased not only at home but abroad. This is not to say that so far at least the massive, and extended protests have been obviously productive. To the contrary: while there have been some changes, most have been at the margins, with major shifts both in the law and the culture yet to come. Still, there is no dismissing as inconsequential the fact that even by last summer some 15 to 26 million people had participated in related demonstrations, making the protests in the wake of Floyd’s death the largest in United States history. As I write, the American people are on tenterhooks, waiting nervously for the outcome of the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the police office charged with being directly responsible for Floyd’s death. The tenterhooks are precisely because it is widely believed that if Chauvin is acquitted, or even if he is found guilty on a lesser charge, there will be widespread unrest, if not even blood in the streets. Americans are living in a society that is widely “woke,” with passions running high on both sides – some seeing the push for equity, diversity, and inclusion as being still too little too late, other seeing it as political correctness run amuck.
• Though the story is much, much smaller than the protests spearheaded by, and emblematic of, Black Lives Matter, one could argue that it is just as indicative of a time in which (in liberal democracies) the powerless are increasingly emboldened to take on the powerful. The example in this case is what has happened in recent weeks at Goldman Sachs. Goldman is, of course, the legendary multinational investment bank and financial services firm. It is a company in which young people are desperate to get a toehold, because getting in the door can guarantee a lifetime of enormous success, especially but not exclusively financial success. So young professionals are usually thrilled to get even entry level positions at Goldman, which is why, historically, they have been willing to work inordinately hard for inordinately long hours to get ahead. Now though, to the astonishment of their superiors, some of them are balking. For the first time ever, senior executives are being pressured by their underlings to amend Goldman’s brutal workplace demands, including the 95-hour workweeks. Slide decks detailing what is now being called workplace abuse have been widely circulated, forcing the company in some way to respond. A human resource officer assured employees that the bank had been thinking for some time about how to provide its employees with a better work-life balance. And Goldman’s CEO David Solomon tried, at least, to split the difference. On the one hand he asked staff to “continue to go the extra mile for our client, even when we feel we’re reaching our limit.” But on the other hand, he did go so far as to say that he wanted a workplace “where people can share their concerns freely.”
• Finally, there is this: a story out of Paris which is nothing if not a sign of the times. The Palais de la Porte Doree was opened in 1931. According to the New York Times, it was designed to “extol” France’s “colonizing mission” – containing in its confines everything from bas-reliefs of laborers in faraway lands to frescoes of imperial magnificence. Now though the institution is led by a man whose family members were among the colonized peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. His name is Pap Ndiaye: he is an historian and academic of Senegalese and French descent who is described as a “quiet revolutionary.” His task as he sees it is entirely in keeping with the temper of the times – and indeed with this point of this essay. For he wants to move his institution from the periphery of French culture to the center. He wants to bring issues ranging from imperialism to colonialism, from racism to immigration, out of the shadows and into the light. He wants the Palais de la Porte Doree to change from a place that was seen as being “somewhat cursed, and in search of an identity,” to proclaim itself, declare itself, loudly and clearly so that all of France, all the world, can hear.   

 A report recently released by the U. S. National Intelligence Council described several global trends that directly relate to “the end of leadership.” They include first, large segments of global populations becoming wary of institutions and governments; and second, large segments of global populations becoming more empowered and more demanding.

 For anyone with any interest in leadership and followership, the signs then are clear. In systems that are authoritarian and certainly totalitarian focusing more on the leader than on the follower might, arguably, make sense. But in systems that can broadly be described as liberal democracies, fixating on leaders at the expense of followers makes no sense whatsoever. For in these cases at least the follower is where the action is.                            

Germany’s long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel has been riding high for many years. Widely admired for her political skills, and deeply appreciated for her beneficent temperament, she has been Europe’s paramount leader for well over a decade. Especially given Brexit, and France’s one-time boy wonder, President Emmanuel Macron’s failure to live up to his original promise, Merkel was the only one among Europe’s leaders whose reputation remained untarnished. This is not to say that she was perfect. She was faulted for some of her politics and policies. But, given the difficulties of leading in 21^st century liberal democracies, she led exceptionally well.  On every level – political, professional, and personal – she stood out among her peers.

Her winning streak continued throughout 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Merkel was heralded – by me, among others – for her strong performance during the worst of the COVID crisis. In striking contrast to the United States and Great Britain, Germany did well, capitalizing on its prototypical efficiency, and its excellent health care system, to keep the rate of infections, and the number of deaths, relatively low. Moreover, Germans felt fortunate to have at the helm Merkel, who had the unusual attribute of having trained as a scientist before she entered politics.

But when the vaccines came the game changed. Arguably for the first time in her political career, Merkel made a series of serious missteps and so was caught flatfooted. By hitching Germany’s fortunes to those of the European Union, by letting Brussels take the lead rather than controlling vaccine acquisition and distribution from Berlin, she sacrificed German efficiency for the sake of European unity – and it has cost her dearly. Germany, like France, Italy, and other members of the EU are now far behind the United States and, ironically, also Great Britain, in getting their populations that much touted shot in the arm. Ironically, Merkel proved a good leader last year and, so far anyway, a poor manager this one.

Months ago, Merkel announced that after sixteen years in office she will leave the German chancellery this fall. Her recent missteps will not, then, impede her political future. But if Germany’s vaccine rollout continues compromised, it could impede her political legacy. Germans have already been harsh in their judgement. The Financial Times quoted one politician from the port city of Rostock, who summarized the nation’s frustration, “We are the laughingstock of the world. Germany was supposed to be world champion at organizing things and look at us.”  

As I write, only about 11 percent of Germans have received one dose of a vaccine, in contrast to, for example, 45 percent of people in the United Kingdom. A big difference – which has already shown up in public opinion polls. In February, 43% of Germans reported being dissatisfied with their government; one month later this number climbed to 55%.

The reasons for the disillusions are more than just mismanagement of the vaccine rollout. They include issues of corruption and unfairness, of inconsistencies and related reversals. One week everything allowed to be open; the next week everything, every shop, every restaurant, everyplace else, required to be closed. True to her character, Merkel has taken personal responsibility for many of the mistakes. She has apologized more than once not in her own political interest, but to spare her party being blamed for what she prefers to consider the errors of her ways.

There is an additional problem, which is that the pandemic uncovered some of Germany’s longstanding inefficiencies. In a speech to parliament last week, Merkel admitted that the pandemic had exposed “grave weaknesses” in the federal bureaucracy, above all a lack of adequate progress on digitalization. “As a federal system,” she said, “we must get better and faster. We know that and are working on it.”

Something somewhat sad, perhaps, about Europe’s most experienced crisis manager acknowledging that on her long watch progress in an area of paramount importance had lagged. But, also, something uplifting about watching the leader of one of the world’s great democracies assuming responsibility for what went wrong.

So far the Chancellor’s stature remains largely intact. But she is on thin ice or, at least, ice a lot thinner now than six months ago. Which raises these questions: Is Merkel now less sure-footed than she was? Are Merkel’s political instincts now less sharp than they were? Did Merkel stay in her leadership post too long?

I wish Angela Merkel well – she is a remarkable woman who generally has been an exemplary leader. I just hope that her political acumen and acuity do not diminish, for whatever reason, in the home stretch.  

Do ex leaders, former leaders, have any responsibility at all to their ex followers, their former followers? The answer to this question might be said to depend on the circumstance. So, let me be specific. For the purposes of this piece, I am confining the discussion to presidents of the United States. Do they, after they leave office, have any obligation at all to the American people?

Constitutionally and even politically, of course they do not. In fact, some former presidents – both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush come to mind – have made it a point to be devoutly apolitical once they ended their presidential tenure. Further, unless one is an absolutist, many variables might dictate the answer to my original question of whether American presidents owe the American people anything once they exit the White House.

Here’s an important one: age. Some presidents end their tenures when they are relatively old. Donald Trump, for example, who was 74. Other presidents do so when they are relatively young, such as Barack Obama, who, when he left, January 2017, was relatively young. He was 55, middle-aged, with years, decades left, assuming he remained healthy, of a presumably productive life.      

Obviously, Barack Obama and his wife, former First Lady Michelle Obama, are entitled to do whatever they please. He has more than paid his dues, having served the country with every fiber of his being during eight years in the White House. Still, his near complete withdrawal from the American political firmament is a disappointment.

It was a disappointment during the 2020 presidential campaign, when his involvement was little and late. And it is a disappointment now, when his involvement in the Voting Rights Bill – H.R. 1 – is, so far certainly, tantamount to nonexistent.  Michelle Obama has, at least, lent her name to a group that has taken a stand. This week it sent an open letter to Americans urging them to support the voting rights bill. But Barack Obama? Crickets.

Since he left the White House Obama has made an enormous amount of money through book sales (especially his recent memoir, A Promised Land), speaking engagements, and a highly lucrative deal (along with his wife) with Netflix. He is now worth some $70 and counting. No begrudging him. It’s the American way – we are, after all, capitalists, and proud of it.  

Still, Obama’s silence on H.R. 1 has been deafening. Democrats across the board have said over, and over again, every which way, that this bill is of historic importance and is therefore their priority. (It has already cleared the House; it remains to be passed by the Senate.) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has repeatedly said that failure to pass it “is not an option.” And President Biden has declared it a “landmark piece of legislation that is urgently needed to protect the right to vote, the integrity of our elections, and to repair and strengthen our democracy.”

So, back to the question: does Obama the former leader owe his former followers anything? Anything on, for example, “this landmark piece of legislation.” Technically obviously no. Morally maybe yes.    

White House watchers have been waiting for President Biden to give Vice President Harris her own portfolio. To bestow on her a particular policy area for which she would assume complete, direct, responsibility.

Well, he just did. He put her in charge of efforts to slow what is widely perceived the rush, the crush, of migrants along America’s southern border. Her task is twofold, along “two tracks” as one senior administration official put it. First, the immediate task: to stem the current flow of migrants into the U.S.; second, the long-term task, to develop, and implement a strategy to address the root causes of the migrant surge.  Hence the question: did Harris get pushed to a place where no woman should ever want to be?

“Glass cliff” is a term that was coined decades ago as women were starting in somewhat larger numbers to assume leadership roles. It refers to situations in which they ascend to positions of authority – but only those, or at least especially those, in which the risk of failure is clearly high. Women in such positions – women on the glass cliff – are, then, being set up.  Because they are given a task that is perilously close to being no-win, they are saddled with situations in which their prospects for effective leadership have been reduced rather than enhanced.  

Biden has a full plate. Nevertheless, it can safely be said that no single item or issue on his plate is more politically fraught than immigration, especially along the U.S. border with Mexico. It has bedeviled even the well-intentioned for years, with no solution in sight, certainly not an easy one that, in this harsh political climate, comes remotely close to being cost-free.

On the surface Biden has given Harris a chance to shine. She will be, heaven knows, in the national spotlight. And Biden has made clear that “When [Harris] speaks, she speaks for me.”

Still, the position in which the president has put his vice president is perilous. She will be a target. Slings and arrows will be shot at her every day from every direction. She will go against a tide that is not descending but ascending. And, so long as she holds her present portfolio, she will be at the precipice of a glass cliff from which she will have to fight not to fall.  

This spring marks the tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring. As the name, “Arab Spring,” implies, for many in the Middle East it was a time of a future reimagined – a time of rebirth when throngs in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria thought their governments could and maybe would transition from repressive autocracies to liberal democracies.    

The niceties of its name notwithstanding, in fact the Arab Spring was a series of attempted revolutions: demonstrations and protests by followers in countries throughout the Middle East for the express purpose of overthrowing their leaders. Though initially these pro-democracy movements were peaceful, their intention, however benign in Western eyes, was unmistakable. It was to overthrow the old order and install a new one.

Syria’s president, the ophthalmologist-dictator Bashar al-Assad, had the benefit of being toward the end of the line. When a group of teenagers scrawled on a school wall, “Your turn has come, doctor,” he knew that to save his own neck he’d better put an immediate end to their juvenile but potentially dangerous insurgency. He saw what had happened in nearby Egypt, where an early (February 2011) casualty of the Arab Spring was Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak had been, until he was forced to resign, president of Egypt for fully thirty years. So, given Mubarak’s dramatic fall, Assad did what he felt he had to: arrest the graffiti culprits and torture them for insurrection. He was deliberately intending not only to set an example but to presage the future.       

This triggered the start of the Syrian Revolution – the bloodiest outcome by far of all the countries in which there was such a thing as an Arab Spring. The numbers speak for themselves. Since 2011 some 600,000 Syrians have died, largely at the hands of Assad’s forces and their allies. And nearly one quarter of Syria’s population, some 5.6 million people, have been displaced, most fleeing the country for their safety.    

President Assad, meantime, remains, all these years later, perched on his perch. How it happened that the followers failed while the leader prevailed is complicated. Suffice to say here that there is blame enough to go around, from the United Nations to the United States, a range of players unable to get their act together to preclude so much mayhem, to prevent so much murder.

With one notable though fragile exception – Tunisia – the Arab Spring has failed abysmally to live up to its early promise. But even among the ruins Syria stands out, in part because its ruler then, at the start of the Arab Spring, remains its ruler now. As Professor of Islamic History at Oxford, Christian Sahner, put it, “The bitter truth is that, for all intents and purposes, Mr. Assad has won the war, and the Syrian revolution has failed. He has won by devastating his country and butchering his own people, but he has won all the same.”

Nature has something to do with it. Some people seem born with the ability to focus, to organize, to think logically and sequentially and keep their eye on the prize. Other people less so. Other people are in this aspect less adroit. Some seem even early in their lives – in school – to have greater difficulty than others staying on task for the purpose of getting the work done. This does not of itself, clearly, make them less smart. But just as clearly their inability, or is it in some their reluctance, to set a goal and then swiftly and efficaciously plan to reach that goal makes them less competent.

What then is a leader, or a would-be leader, to do? There are no courses in competence, no programs designed to teach competence per se. It is not even clear that competence can be taught. If some of us are just born less competent than others – as some of us are just born less musical or mathematical than others – perhaps trying to teach competence is a fool’s errand.

On this are two things to be said. First, if competence is not a leader’s strong suit, best he or she acknowledge it and compensate. Compensate by bringing on board talent in competence. People who are good at setting a goal, and even better at knowing how goals can be reached. In fact, even competent leaders are well advised to surround themselves with competent followers, competence being a skill, or a trait, or a characteristic of considerable consequence.

Second, if competence is not a leader’s strong suit, best he or she acknowledge it and compensate. In this instance compensate by 1) acquiring competence- consciousness; 2) acquiring contextual-consciousness; and 3) acquiring experiential-consciousness.  

1. Competence-consciousness = understanding and appreciating the importance of competence.  
2. Contextual-consciousness = understanding and appreciating the importance of context(s).
3. Experiential-consciousness = understanding and appreciating the important of experience.

This last is of particular importance. I earlier mentioned music and math as areas of expertise in which some of us likely are born more gifted than others. For example, I know about myself that I could practice the piano eight hours a day and never be an especially good pianist. But if I did practice piano eight hours a day, I would be a better pianist than if I practiced only one hour a day. Practice is tantamount to experience. Practice, experience, are contributors to competence.

By the time President Joe Biden reached the White House he had decades of experience in Washington, decades of practice at politics. No wonder he is a competent president. Conversely, when Donald Trump reached the White House, he had not a single day of experience in Washington, or a single day of practice at politics. No wonder among his deficits as president was complete incompetence.          

Competence can be defined as the ability to do something successfully and, additionally, efficiently. To do something successfully suggests being able to accomplish the task at hand. To do something efficiently suggests being able to accomplish the task at hand with a minimum of fuss and bother, and a maximum of certitude and speed.

To be competent is to know what you are doing. To be competent is about setting a goal, but equally it is about knowing how to reach it. To be competent is to start something and finish it in good time.

President Joe Biden has been in office for less than two months. As I wrote in my previous post, during this brief time the Biden administration has been able to accomplish two astonishing feats: first, producing and distributing the COVID-19 vaccine faster than anyone dared hope just a few weeks ago; second, passing a 1.9 trillion-dollar relief bill that the president is expected to sign this week. (The House has yet to pass the now somewhat revised Senate bill, but passage is near certain.) Two very high bars put in place – two very two very high bars cleared swiftly and efficaciously.

Does this mean that President Joe Biden is a genius? Does this mean that President Joe Biden is a heroic leader, or an inspiring leader, or a charismatic leader? No – none of the above. What it does mean is that Biden is obviously, demonstrably, a competent leader.

This is not to suggest that on every issue or every public policy he will display a similarly high level of competence. What it does suggest is that he is a leader who has the capacity to set a goal – an important goal at that – and the further capacity to ascertain how to reach it. This means that he is a leader capable of grasping how to get from point A to point B and, additionally, grasping who should navigate the route.  In sum, to be competent is to be able to 1) set a consequential goal; and 2) decide how that goal can best and fastest be reached.  

Note that the word “competence” is like the word “leadership.” It is, or it should be, value free. To say that someone is good at setting a goal and then reaching it is to say nothing whatsoever about the quality of that goal – about whether it is good or bad, worthy, or unworthy. To take an extreme example, during the years 1933-1939 Adolf Hitler was a highly competent leader. He set Nazi Germany several wide-reaching and far-ranging goals, and he was able in remarkably short order to reach them. Ergo, competence does not equal, is not tantamount to, virtuousness.  

Still, in general, competence in a leader is an asset in a leader. So long as it is paired with a modicum of intelligence and integrity, decency, and empathy, we can safely assume that leaders who are competent will do far better by their followers than leaders who are not.  

This might seem obvious. But the inconvenient truth is that competence remains rather dowdy an attribute. Even now, post President Donald Trump, we Americans should have learned our lesson. But it is not yet clear that we did.     

Former President Donald Trump gets credit for Operation Warp Speed – the U.S. government program kickstarted in May 2020 to develop, manufacture, and distribute COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Remarkably, vaccines were developed by the time Trump left office. But America’s chief executive was so fixated on losing the November election that on this single, but also singular success he never took the credit he deserved.

In every other way Trump’s leadership and management of the pandemic was miserably poor. During his administration the United States, with just over 4 % of the world’s total population, had well over 20 % of the world’s total cases of COVID. And a month after Trump left office the U.S. reached the half million mark – more than 500,000 Americans dead of COVID.

Now, in the brief time since President Joe Biden took office, the situation has been reversed. From being one of the world’s poorest performers, the U.S. has transformed into one of the world’s best. Specifically, when ranked according to how many people have been vaccinated against COVID-19, the United States is doing very well. This is by no means a done deal – the U.S. still has a long way to go before it can claim the pandemic is history.

Still, here some comparisons.

• Israel, by this measure the world’s best performing country, though a very small one, has (as of today) already vaccinated 55.8 % of its total population.
• The U.S. has vaccinated only 17. 5 % of its total population. However, compare this number with Germany’s. In 2020 Germany managed the pandemic remarkably well. But, to date, only 5.9 % of Germans have been vaccinated. In France, the numbers are even worse. Only 5.6 % of French people have received even a single shot in the arm.

What accounts for this remarkable American turnaround? Setting aside the astonishing fact that the Biden administration is about to sign into law the largest fiscal relief bill in American history, how has it happened that the president and his team have done so well on vaccine production, and distribution in so short a time in office?  One word – competence.

Competence is the most underrated word in the leadership lexicon. Why? Two reasons. First because it is pedestrian – competence sounds tedious. Who among us wants a competent leader when we can have a heroic leader? Or an inspiring leader? Or a charismatic leader? Second, because competence sounds more in the realm of management than leadership.

I have written before about problems resulting from our constant confusing the words “leadership” and “management.” Underplaying the importance of competence is one of them. No use having a leader who is heroic or inspiring or charismatic if he or she is not, also, competent.

Leaders do not themselves have to be competent. But if they are not, they must know what they don’t know to assemble a competent team. A team that is both willing and able to carry out the leader’s promise, realize the leader’s plan, implement the leader’s policy. Absent these, please spare me the grand ambitions, the soaring rhetoric, and the false prophesy of the American dream.         

I refer not to leaders who are old figuratively, or metaphorically. But to leaders who are old literally. To people in high places who are close to or over 75 years of age, or even over 80. There are fewer old leaders in business than in government – certainly in the United States – for which there are some obvious reasons. But there are many old leaders in governments around the world, including in the United States.

Far be it from me to say that old people in high places invariably present a problem. I am not exactly a spring chicken myself. Nor do I suggest that leaders over 75 are, by definition, ill equipped physically, psychologically, or cognitively to do the heavy lifting required of leaders, especially those in powerful posts. What I argue instead is that if too many old leaders preclude too few young leaders from replacing them, we have a problem. They range from having too many leaders who are old, tired, and rigid to having too few who are young, energetic, and adaptive. From having too many leaders who are largely ignorant of some of the ways of the world, especially as they pertain to the new technologies, to having too few leaders who are deeply informed about the ways of the world, especially as they pertain to the new technologies.

A 34-year-old woman, Arora Akanksha, who came effectively out of nowhere – she has worked at the United Nations for just four years – has declared herself a candidate to be the UN’s next secretary general. If she proceeds as expected she will be challenging Antonio Guterres, who is 71 years old. I do not especially advocate her candidacy. But is it time for the United Nations to get entirely new leadership? To be pulled kicking and screaming into the 21^st century? To address what this fresh-faced challenger to the existing order charges is an organization that is wasteful and adrift, patronizing, and paternalistic? Whatever her deficits, and whatever Guterres’s assets, none can question the United Nations is a grievous disappointment, light years from achieving its original high-minded ideals.  Is it possible that an unending series of old or oldish male leaders are at fault for its being so miserably stuck? It is.

The problem to which I refer has long been in evidence in Japan, said to be ruled, effectively since time immemorial, by an “old men’s club.” Is this now starting, finally, to change? Maybe, at least at the margins. Recently an online petition started by women mushroomed into what the New York Times described as a “vociferous social media campaign.” It ended dislodging 83-year-old Olympic leader, Yoshiro Mori, and, additionally, precluding him from picking another octogenarian, another man, as his successor. Mori was, of course, a symbol of a society that forever has had its most powerful and prestigious posts held by men, many if not most old, now in their 70s, 80s, and even into their 90s.

President Joe Biden is 78 years of age. Former president Trump is 74 years of age. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell is 79 years of age. Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi will soon be 81 years of age. And when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last year, she was still serving on the Supreme Court, at age 87.  

Time in the United States – indeed everywhere, at least in the so-called developed world – to consider term limits? Even age limits? The year of COVID-19 has been a blip – in 2020 the life expectancy of Americans slightly declined. But in the main we have been living longer and are likely to continue living even longer still. In 2021 the life expectancy for American men is over 76 years of age, and for American women over 81. Given this means many more of us will be living into our eighties and nineties, the implications for leaders are clear. We should set limits on leaders leading too long and maybe even too late.