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Being on the board of large publicly held company once was nice and easy. The pay was generous, the responsibilities few, and good old-fashioned cronyism was rampant.

No longer. Like the CEOs who, technically, serve at their will, board members are increasingly being scrutinized for their performance. There’s some literature on this; nothing I’ve just said is new. Here’s what is new.

First, the regularity with which boards’ wings are being clipped. Hardly a week now goes by without one or another story about the rights and responsibilities of board members being impinged on. In recent days there was this, from a story in the Wall Street Journal:

American businesses increasingly are bowing to investors’ demands for greater boardroom clout… Proxy access, embraced by 117 U.S. companies during 2015, gives shareholders more power to oust directors and influence corporate strategy by letting them list competing board candidates on ballots for annual meetings.

And, in recent days there was this, from another story in the Wall Street Journal:

As directors face increased investor scrutiny and heavier workloads, four board seats now look like a lot. More companies are putting in place rules that limit how many other seats their directors can hold. Only 5 % of directors at S&P 500 companies held four or more board spots in 2015, down from about 27% in 2005…. Directors at public companies now spend an average of 248 hours a year for each board served, up from 191 hours in 2005.

The other thing that’s new is the degree to which Wall Street particularly and Big Business generally have become whipping boys in the 2016 presidential campaign. Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are stepping all over each other to prove they can attack faster and harder.

But there is an irony here. For in their zeal to appear “progressive,” Clinton and Sanders ignore the fact that things have changed.  To be sure, members of the corporate elite remain enormously rich. But their wealth disguises the fact that their power has been sharply reduced.

This week has been all downhill for three of the nation’s most prominent women leaders. I’m not saying it’s a harbinger. What I am pointing out is how tough still the sledding for women in positions of power and authority.

Not that men have it easy. I have said for years that all leaders in 21^st century America live in hard times. *  But, it is also true that leaders of the female persuasion bear a special burden. Their numbers remain uncomfortably small. Their visibility remains inordinately high. And the scrutiny they face remains relentless.

This week’s cases in point:

Hillary Clinton – Bad Week

Spin it as she might, the result of the Iowa caucuses cannot, should not, gladden Hillary’s heart. After prematurely declaring victory she was, but only in the early morning hours, finally, officially, declared the winner. But the margin of her victory was so miserably small that the results were, in effect, a tie. She tied Bernie Sanders instead of reveling in what just a few months ago was anticipated a coronation. At best her road to the White House will be a slog, much longer and harder a slog than she could earlier have imagined.

Marissa Mayer – Worse Week

President and CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, has been visibly struggling for years. Hailed in the beginning as fearless pioneer – not only a woman CEO, but of a tech company no less – she quickly ran into trouble for everything from her personal management style to her professional performance. This week is more of the same. Yahoo is set to reveal cost-cutting plans that include slashing 15 percent of its workforce and closing several business units. Moreover, a former Yahoo manager has just gone to court to challenge one of Mayer’s signature policies – an employee rating system that he is claiming is discriminatory and a violation of federal and California laws.

Ursula Burns – Worst Week   

Ursula Burns is the first black woman to head a Fortune 500 company – Xerox. Trouble is Xerox just announced it was splitting up. A deal that Burns made several years ago had resulted in steadily declining annual sales – it was, according to one report, a “$6.4 billion mistake.” In sails prominent activist investor Carl Icahn! He inserts himself into Xerox’s governing process and demands radical change. While word is that Burns and Icahn have had a cordial relationship, the fact is that he took over while she stood down. Xerox’s board has decided to spin off its services business, which is precisely the business that Burns had earlier acquired. However you slice and dice it, this was the week that Burns lost control of her company and was publicly humiliated in the process.

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*See Barbara Kellerman, Hard Times: Leadership in America (Stanford, 2014).

Hillary, Marissa, and Ursula – the Week from Hell

This week has been all downhill for three of the nation’s most prominent women leaders. I’m not saying it’s a harbinger. What I am pointing out is how tough still the sledding for women in positions of power and authority.

Not that men have it easy. I have said for years that all leaders in 21^st century America live in hard times. *  But, it is also true that leaders of the female persuasion bear a special burden. Their numbers remain uncomfortably small. Their visibility remains inordinately high. And the scrutiny they face remains relentless.

This week’s cases in point:

Hillary Clinton – Bad Week

Spin them as she might, the results of the Iowa caucuses cannot, should not, gladden Hillary’s heart. After prematurely declaring victory she was, but only in the early morning hours, finally, officially, declared the winner. But the margin of her victory was so miserably small that the results were, in effect, a tie. She tied Bernie Sanders instead of reveling in what just a few months ago was anticipated a coronation. At best her road to the White House will be a slog, much longer and harder a slog than she earlier imagined.

Marissa Mayer – Worse Week

President and CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer, has been visibly struggling for years. Hailed at first as fearless pioneer – not only a woman CEO, but of a tech company no less – she quickly ran into trouble for everything from her personal management style to her professional performance. This week is more of the same. Yahoo is set to reveal cost-cutting plans that include slashing 15 percent of its workforce and closing several business units. Moreover, a former Yahoo manager has just gone to court to challenge one of Mayer’s signature policies – an employee rating system that he charges is discriminatory and a violation of federal and California laws.

Ursula Burns – Worst Week   

Ursula Burns is the first black woman to head a Fortune 500 company – Xerox. Trouble is Xerox just announced it was splitting up. A deal that Burns made several tears earlier had resulted in steadily declining annual sales – it was, according to one report, a “$6.4 billion mistake.” In sails prominent activist investor Carl Icahn. He inserts himself into Xerox’s governing process and demands radical change. While word is that Burns and Icahn have had a cordial relationship, the fact is that he took over while she stood down. Xerox is spinning off its services business, which is precisely the business that Burns earlier acquired. However you slice and dice it, Burns lost control of her company this week and was humiliated in the process.

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*See Barbara Kellerman, Hard Times: Leadership in America (Stanford, 2014).

“The Reluctant Leader.” That’s the title of an article published a few days ago in the Financial Times, about Eldar Saetre.Who, you might ask, is Eldar Saetre? He is the chief executive officer of Statoil, a Norwegian company that is the world’s eleventh largest in oil and gas.

While the article is about Saetre generally, the spotlight is on his disinclination to seek attention. Saetre is described as serious, hard-working, and tending toward the taciturn. But the most striking thing about him is his initial reluctance to become chief executive. “I have never had an aspiration to become CEO,” Saetre is quoted as saying. “I didn’t think I would be asked. It was so distant for me.”

I know that Norway is different. I know that Norway has not much in common with the United States – not history, not geography, not size, not culture, not much period. But Norway is not another planet. In fact, Norway shares with the US one Big Thing. Both countries are in the Western liberal tradition. Both countries are Western democracies, which means their ideologies of leadership and followership are more similar than different.

Still, for an American steeped in the circus of 2016 presidential campaign, Saertre is an alien, a leader unlike any with whom we are immediately familiar. Certainly a leader light years away from the craven power-seekers in both parties killing themselves for months on end in the fond hope – in most cases in the distant hope – that one day they might be president.

Given the inhuman demands of an American presidential campaign, only the impossibly wealthy (such as Trump) or the fully retired (such as Clinton and Bush) should run for the White House. The rest inevitably neglect the leadership tasks for which they are responsible right now. During last week’s blizzard Governor Chris Christie decided to leave New Hampshire to return to hard-hit New Jersey only at the last minute, when doing otherwise would have been very politically risky. One of the big raps against Senator Marco Rubio is that being on the campaign trail has turned him into no better than an absentee Senator. And, as to someone like John Kasich, well, he was elected governor of Ohio for the second time in 2014. But less than a year later he announced he was running for president. How can you govern the great state of Ohio from the great state of Iowa, or New Hampshire, or South Carolina?

One could argue that all this says more about the American political system than anything else. Fine. But it also says a hell of a lot about the candidates’ appetite for leadership, which apparently is insatiable.

No Saetre Santorum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Check out Bernie Sanders’ new campaign ad. It’s terrific – by far the best of the lot! A glorious montage of ordinary Americans, while the soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel’s iconic, “America,” plays and finally swells in the background.

At first Sanders is a bit player in his own ad, the focus being not on him but on his followers. Gradually though he emerges, in micro-shots, saying nothing but looking somehow swell, joyous and avuncular, totally himself, comfortable in his own skin.

But what stands out in those momentary glances is his hair – his gray, nearly white head of hair, the hair of an older man,  the hair of a man who can’t be bothered to pay much attention to how he looks, the hair of a man who is what he is, altogether authentic.

Sanders’ two main opponents on the other hand – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – treat their hair. They dye their hair. They blow their hair. They spend time on their hair and they spend money on their hair. Not that there’s anything wrong that. But for Americans sick and tired of political artifice – sick and tired of leaders who present themselves as other than what they really are – Bernie Sanders’ hair is a sweet spot.

Since the beginning of the year two Big Things have happened. First, the presidential campaign has moved into high gear, the fixation with who’s ahead and who’s behind having transitioned into an obsession. Second, the markets have tanked, oil prices plunging and stocks in a nearly equally vertiginous decline.

Both stories have been widely reported, the first ad nauseam, the second with a ring of panicky consistency. But, they have not been reported in tandem. They are reported on separately, as if the first is unrelated to the second.

But, of course, the opposite is true. The two stories – the one about the election and the other about money and markets – are inextricably linked. Money and markets are key components of context, which inevitably means that they influence the outcomes of presidential elections.

The strength of the dollar; the trajectory of equities; the rates of interest; the price of oil as well as other commodities; the rates of unemployment and underemployment; the levels of productivity; the economies of other countries, especially China – all these will be electoral determinants. They’re less sexy a subject of study than the men and women standing center stage. But the Dow Jones Industrial Average will have as much of an impact on who wins the White House in November as the candidates themselves.

 

The presidential campaign of Jeb Bush has not been helped by his logo – especially not by that ridiculous exclamation mark, which is completely out of keeping. Jeb is not, decidedly not, an exclamation mark sort of guy.

I can say this now with a modest measure of authority. For not only have I watched him on the campaign trail, I saw him live and in the flesh yesterday, speak at the Council of Foreign Relations. It was weird. He was not weird, but the experience of watching and listening to him up close and personal was.

In almost every respect, he was everything I thought Jeb Bush would be – only more so. He really was tall and handsome. His really did have a deep, resonant voice. He really did have no more than an embryonic sense of humor. He really was more serious and socially awkward than his older brother, 43^rd president of the United States. His really did have a slight problem with the English language.  And, as advertised, he really was strong on substance. Jeb is known as a policy wonk and he did not disappoint.

But here’s what was weird. The part about substance. Jeb was not only substantive, he was very substantive, highly substantive. His familiarity with both domestic and foreign policy was impressive. He spewed facts and figures without missing a beat. He knew whatever there was to know about public policy. And he demonstrated a feel for governance that was powerful and persuasive. It’s easy to see why the early money was on Jeb Bush. It’s easy to see why for so many months he was the establishment favorite.

What’s striking then about this presidential campaign is not only the rise of men like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, but the fall of men like Jeb Bush. Of course they are inseparable, two sides of the same coin. But our focus is on stars in the political firmament, not so much on stars that have fallen from favor. So what was weird about seeing Jeb in the flesh was the palpable response, including my own. Regret that we live in a time in which a candidate like Jeb can’t get no satisfaction or traction. Which, of course, says much more about us than it does about him.

 

 

OK, OK, OK. I know, I know, I know. I’ve been beating this same drum now for at least three years, publicly since the publication of The End of Leadership (2012).

Here to repeat is the point: to obsess about leadership to the exclusion of followership is to turn a blind eye to the 21^st century.

Try these on for size, all ripped from the headlines in the last 24 hours.

• From the Wall Street Journal: “Investors Gain More Clout over Boards.” What’s the story about? It’s about how large investors have been stunningly successful forcing companies to change their bylaws to give shareholders more power to oust directors and shape corporate strategy. In 2014 about 1% of companies had adopted proxy access. Just one year later the number had skyrocketed to 21%. In other words, power in corporate America is being distributed far more widely than previously.
• From the New York Times: “The Age of Protest.” What’s the column about? It’s about how public protests have become as constant as ubiquitous – people are protesting everything everywhere. Tom Friedman writes that various forces are joining, accelerating to create “an engine of disruption that is stressing strong countries and middle classes and blowing up weak ones, while super-empowering individuals and transforming the nature of work, leadership and government all at once.”
• From any American media at any hour yet another story about how Donald Trump has torpedoed Republican politics by his charismatic appeal to ordinary American voters. What’s the story about? It’s about resistance to the Republican establishment. It’s about how every time Trump appears in person we vote with our feet wildly to cheer him on. We, we the people, we followers, have driven the Trump phenomenon. Last night he appeared in Pensacola, Florida in the city’s largest stadium. It seats 10,000 and was packed to the rafters with bodies, many of whom had waited long hours to erupt in cheering and clapping every time the man opened his mouth.
• From any American media at any hour yet another story about how Bernie Sanders has torpedoed Democratic politics by his anti-authority appeal to ordinary American voters. What’s the story about? It’s about resistance to the Democratic establishment. It’s about how a large swath of plain people refused to be cowed by the mainstream narrative, which anointed Hillary Clinton Democratic presidential candidate before the 2016 campaign even got going. It’s about how resistance won out over obedience, at least to the point of leveling the playing field. Here’s how resistance played out in the last 24 to 48 hours. As Clinton’s attacks on Sanders escalated sharply, the public responded by escalating sharply donations to the Sanders campaign.

We’re not in the land of the leader any longer.  We’re in a land in which the leader is one among others.

OK, so I was wrong. I thought she was toast. But, contrary to expectations, my own and those of many others, she has succeeded. She has succeed very well, thank you, and under difficult circumstances.

In the immediate wake of Mary Barra’s appointment as Chief Executive Officer of General Motors, the car company faced the gravest safety crisis in its long and storied history.* It’s why Barra was thought on a so-called glass cliff – a woman appointed Chief Executive Officer precisely because the company was in trouble, vulnerable not only to a downturn but even a crisis of confidence.

For all I know she was. For all I know Barra did get to the top of the greasy pole because her chances of failure were especially high. But, she proved us numberless naysayers wrong! General Motors announced on Monday that in addition to being Chief Executive Officer, Mary Barra would henceforth serve as Chairwoman of the Board.

Not half bad for a former plant manager. Not half bad for a past crisis manager. Not half bad for a woman seemingly teetering on cliff made of glass. How Barra succeeded against high odds will be the subject of countless case studies, most of which will focus on her in particular. I would argue though that the explanation for her duration has less to do with her and more to do with the context, which was conducive to car-buying; and more also to do with others, especially GM’s customers who were prepared to keep buying in spite of the company’s stained reputation.

Still Mary Barra’s mettle was tested and it turned out she is the real deal. She is a leader.

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*Millions of small GM cars were sold with defective ignition switches. While precisely who was culpable remains uncertain, what is certain is that 124 deaths have been tied to the defect. Ultimately the company agreed to create a compensation fund, which awarded some $600 million in damages to some 400 people.

 

 

 

• Failure of the Year – Leaders and Followers Adrift

It was a political miracle. Subsequent to centuries of contention and conflict, and out of the ashes of the Second World War, was forged the European Union. 19 countries came to use a common currency; nine others signed on as members. But, in 2015, for the first time since its inception, the union was seriously threatened with disunion. Nearly undone by a series of crises – the Greek debt showdown; Russian aggression in Ukraine; the infusion of a million refugees; terrorism and the threat of it in some of Europe’s greatest cities; and a surge in right wing nationalism –  Europe struggled to cling to a semblance of unity. This is not to prognosticate the EU’s final fracture. Rather it is to point out that in 2015 the EU was seriously weakened, its member states unable in common to take on their common enemies.

• Success of the Year – Leader and Followers Align

Everyone sees it as an embarrassment, as dysfunctional. The “it” is the U.S. Congress – once an august body highly esteemed by the American people, now a national joke, an institution that for decades has been in decline and disrepute. Until Paul Ryan – until Paul Ryan became Speaker of the House in October. For weeks Ryan postured, insisting that he had no interest in the Speakership, did not want a thankless task that would take him away from his young family. In spite of his feigning disinterest – or, better, because of it – Ryan’s first two months in office have been studded with successes. Yes, successes! The most obvious among them a bipartisan budget deal that his predecessor, John Boehner, was unable to push through. It’s true that Ryan is on a honeymoon that soon will be over. Still, for 2015 he gets an “A” in Political Prowess. In scoring a personal victory he scored one also for Congress – which desperately needs a leader to restore its wretched reputation.

• Political Leader of the Year – Bernie Sanders

Who knew? A Jewish Democratic Socialist from Brooklyn threatening Hillary Clinton?!  He is not in the end likely to upend her. Nevertheless, of all the improbable political successes of 2015, none was more improbable than the sturdy, steady, ascent of Senator Sanders. Our fixation has been on Donald Trump. But while Trump and the media climbed into bed together, Sanders mounted a stunningly successful challenge to the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Sanders is either leading or within the margin of error in the first primary state, New Hampshire. And, more remarkable, has been his fund-raising effort which during 2015 surpassed all expectations. By the end of last year his campaign had tapped more than 2.5   million individual donors – a number that, stunningly, surpasses any in any previous presidential election. But the numbers do not fully capture how remarkable his presence on the national stage. The idea that a nearly unheard of Vermont Senator, a self-proclaimed life-long socialist who makes no bones about his progressive political agenda, could possibly give Secretary Clinton a run for her money was laughable just six months ago. But, while the media refuses to give Bernie Sanders the time of day, so obsessed is it with Trump,  Sanders seizes the day nevertheless.

• Corporate Leader of the Year – Jeff  Bezos

He stays out of the limelight. Far less of a public persona that others of his ilk such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, Bezos has chosen for decades to remain behind the scenes, letting Amazon, his behemoth of a company, speak for itself. But 2015 was something of a turning point. While some analysts consider Amazon’s stock price frothy – in the last 12 months its market value more than doubled – the company’s performance in 2015 has been so obviously remarkable it’s impossible not to credit Bezos with wizardry. But that’s not my point. My point is that 2015 was a remarkably successful year for Bezos in at least two other ways as well. First, under his ownership (Bezos bought the paper in 2013) the venerated but failing Washington Post seems to have turned a corner. It has mounted a serious challenge to the New York Times online, and it is far outstripping its own previous online performance. Second Bezos is not content to rule on earth – he appears intent on ruling in space as well. In November, his privately funded aerospace company, Blue Origin, successfully launched its new space vehicle, the New Shepard. The New Shepard reached its planned altitude, and then executed an historic landing at its West Texas launch site. Stay tuned. Bezos’s almost inhuman ambition is not earth-bound.

• Followers of the Year – Syrian Refugees

Everyone wanted to stop them in their tracks, get them to turn around and go home. But they refused. They refused to do what where they were told. Huge numbers of refugees from the Middle East, especially from Syria, chose to defy the odds and the authorities. They traveled first by sea and then by land to Europe, to where they saw themselves as being safe from harm or, at least, safe in comparison to the ravaged land from which they fled. By the end of 2015 their numbers had topped one million. One million people without any power, authority, or influence capitalizing on the changing times in order to change their lives. Let’s be clear here – the fact that the context is different now from what it was is critical to understanding how such a thing was possible. How it was possible for so many non-Europeans in so short a time to lay claim to living in Europe. First was the changing culture, especially in Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel concluded that in light of Germany’s 20^th century history it was not morally defensible or politically possible in the 21st to prevent asylum seekers from receiving refuge in Germany. Second was the technology. However dispossessed the refugees, they did, or enough of them did, possess smart phones. Smart phones enabled those on foot to track their trails, to trace from where they were, say someplace in Greece, to where they wanted to go, say someplace in Sweden. Technologies helped refugees in other ways as well: they documented their desolation and despair; they facilitated their connection and communication; and they recorded for the world to see the sights and sounds of aggression on the one side, and compassion on the other.

• Slogan of the Year – “Black Lives Matter”

Every now and then the English language changes, it adapts. For example, it adds to the lexicon a word or a phrase to incorporate or accommodate a new thing, or a new fashion, or a new idea.  “Selfie” is one such recent word. So is “manspreading.” So is “crowdfunding.” Most of what is new in the English language are words like these, meant to name or describe something either new (“selfie”) or old (“manspreading”), but something in any case that is simple to see and easy to identify. But when old words are strung together in new ways they can, on occasion, take on entirely different, more complex meanings. And so it is with the politically powerful new slogan “Black Lives Matter” – which became in 2015 part of our national discourse, integral to America’s lingo. On the one hand is nothing new about the idea that black lives matter. Of course they matter, just like white lives matter, just like all lives matter. But on the other hand is everything new about the idea that black lives matter. In 2015 “Black Lives Matter” became a nationally known slogan with a life of its own. In 2015 “Black Lives Matter” became emblematic of the endemic tension between people in positions of authority and at least some who are not. In 2015 “Black Lives Matter” became symbolic of a racial divide that persists into the 21^st century. In 2015 “Black Lives Matter” came to represent a class divide worse in the early 21^st century than it was in the late 20^th. And in 2015 “Black Lives Matter” became a social movement that will remain resonant long after 2016 has passed.