Author: Barbara

Drip, drip, drip. Strip, strip, strip.

One by one. Apparently inexorably. In increasingly large numbers, the titans of capitalism, the masters of the universe, the emperors of corporate America are being stripped of their royal robes.  Left to stand naked – embarrassed and exposed like mere mortals.

This was foretold by a few, though not by many. See my own book, The End of Leadership (2012), and Mois Naim’s The End of Power (2013). We both foresaw that leaders in the 21^st century – leaders everywhere, leaders of every stripe – were going to experience hard times because others (e.g. followers, stakeholders, constituents) were gaining on them. Now the leader’s time of trouble is here – unless he (or, rarely, she) is an autocrat, in which case he squashes like a bug those who would squash him.

Most corporate commanders are unable any longer completely to control their troops . Their titles no longer protect against assault or attack. Their positions no longer are vaulted or impermeable. They status no longer is high or mighty. And their opponents no longer are awed or cowed.  In other words, as the New York Times’s Nelson Schwartz put it, “the baronial C.E.O is in decline.”* He is being stripped of his trappings.

Several years ago, I posted a blog titled, “Top Ten List – Why the Decline of the CEO.” I gave ten reasons why corporate leaders were prey to conditions over which they had “little or no control.”

• Large activist investors.
• Small aggressive investors.
• Bossy boards.
• Split Governance.
• Long arm of the law.
• Social media.
• Aggressive public scrutiny.
• Invasive flattened hierarchy.
• Volatility, uncertainly, complexity, and ambiguity.
• Altered ideology.

Now the drumbeat is faster and louder. Now it’s obvious to anyone paying any attention that corporate leaders are like political leaders – deeply vulnerable to the temper of the times and to opponents hellbent on dethroning them. “General Electric,” writes Schwartz, “is just the latest storied name in corporate America to show its leader the door. Ford’s chief executive, Mark Fields, had been in the job for less than three years when he was fired in late May. Two weeks earlier, Mario Longhi of U.S. Steel abruptly stepped down.” Nor are newer companies, relative upstarts, immune from the trend. Two weeks ago, the brains behind Uber, Travis Kalanick, was forced to resign; several months earlier Marissa Mayer, who for years had been dangling, was finally formally severed from Yahoo.

The diminishment of leaders inevitably raises or it should, these questions. What are the implications for the leadership industry? And how should it adjust to a time when leaders are significantly less elevated than they used to be?  I will provide some responses to these questions in my next post.

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*Nelson Schwartz, “Decline of the Baronial CEO,” June 18, 2017.

Imagine a thought experiment in which the following transpired:

• A black man who is candidate for president derides his single female opponent for the nomination, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?!” (Donald Trump talking about Carli Fiorina.)
• A black man who is candidate for president charges a female actress and comedian with being “disgusting, both inside and out.” With being a “slob” who “talks like a truck driver.” (Donald Trump talking about Rose O’Donnell.)
• A black man who is candidate for president labels a former Miss Universe “Miss Piggy,” claiming she had gained a lot of weight, and “Miss Housekeeping,” presumably because she was Latina. (Donald Trump talking about Alicia Machado.)
• A black man who is candidate for president describes a female television anchor, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” (Donald Trump talking about Megyn Kelly.)
• A black man who is candidate for president boasts on tape about being a sexual predator. “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything…grab them by the pussy.” (Donald Trump talking to Billy Bush.)
• A black man who is president of the United States demeans a female television host for her “low I.Q.” and mocks her for having bled “badly from a face-lift.”

Given the fraught history of race and sex in America, it’s impossible to imagine candidate Barack Obama, or President Barack Obama, getting away with what Donald Trump has been allowed. It’s a singularly striking, and dreadfully depressing example of white privilege.

In April, I posted six separate blogs under the general heading, “Trump/Testosterone.”  This then is the seventh in the series.

It’s based on a recent article in the New York Times titled, “Men are so Hormonal.”* Without getting into the science of the findings – think orbitofrontal cortex – they amount to a caution pertaining to men who take testosterone supplements. Of course, I have no idea if Donald Trump is now taking, or ever did, testosterone supplements. But, as my recent posts on “Trump/Testosterone” made clear, the incumbent American president puts a premium on manliness that is extreme. Even to the point of making public – on the “Dr. Oz Show,” no less – his own putative testosterone level.

Suffice it here to say that the article points to recent scientific findings that show a correlation between testosterone supplements (high testosterone) and unnecessary and even foolish risk-taking. Excessive risk-taking is not good in most professions, in, say, cab driving or day trading or child caring. But it could fairly be said to be especially bad, even dangerous, in leading.

“Confidence can spur a person to action, to take risks,” the article concludes. “But we should all be more aware of when confidence tips into overconfidence, and testosterone supplements could encourage that. Ironically, these supplements might make someone feel bold enough to lead but probably reduce his ability to lead well.”

Anyone come to mind?

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* https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/sunday/men-testosterone-hormones.html?_r=0

I left off blogging on May 17^th with a post titled, “Ivanka Trump – and Julie Nixon Eisenhower.” I wrote that Richard Nixon and Donald Trump shared troublesome peculiarities, and that they also each had a daughter who was their “single source of emotional sustenance.” In Nixon’s case his younger daughter, Julie; in Trump’s his older daughter, Ivanka. I went on to predict that if the present scandal, Russiagate, “reached the epic proportions of Watergate,” Ivanka would, as did Julie, play the indispensable role of her father’s defender-in-chief.

This prediction has come to pass. While Trump’s wife, Melania, finally left New York to move into the White House, she remains largely silent. Ivanka, in contrast, is vocal in defense of her father. Just yesterday she graded his presidential performance as an, “A, of course.” She went on: “I think he’s doing an amazing job. I think he’s doing an unbelievable job…. His political instincts are phenomenal, he did something that no one could have imaged he’d be able to accomplish.”

Hyperbole reminiscent of no one so much as her father, but that’s not the point. The point is that so far as we can tell Donald Trump can rely on Ivanka Trump staunchly to defend him, presumably in private, evidently in public.

What was not, however, so apparent in mid-May as it is at the end of June is that Ivanka totes an albatross that Julie did not. Julie’s husband, Dwight David Eisenhower II, is the scion and namesake of the impeccable and widely revered president and five-star general, Dwight David (“Ike”) Eisenhower. Regrettably, Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, can boast no such lineage. Not even remotely. Kushner is the scion of Charles Kushner, a successful real estate developer who, however, was convicted in 2005 of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. Eisenhower senior served two terms in the White House, Kushner senior served fourteen months in a federal prison.

Nor is Jared anything remotely resembling a paragon of virtue. He is ensnared in the scandals bedeviling Trump’s presidency – and he has his own legal troubles as well. His business dealings are being scrutinized by none other than special counsel Robert Mueller – which explains why Kushner has lawyered up. Just this week he added to his legal team fabled white-collar defense attorney, Abbe Lowell.

Where does this leave Ivanka? Poor little rich girl – lucky she has two hands. She’ll need both to juggle the competing demands of her crazily verbose father – and her curiously mute husband.

My blog site. It went down – only now to be now resurrected.

I, on the other hand, did not go down. I was a lady in waiting.

So, here I am, ready, willing, and eager to pick up where I left off!

Increasingly Russiagate is being compared to Watergate. Just yesterday none other than Republican Senator John McCain told a group, “We’ve seen this movie before.” The White House under siege is “reaching Watergate size and scale.”

At this point, there is little expectation that Russiagate and everything that it includes and implies will go away. In fact, at this point, there is growing consensus that the president’s political (and legal) problems are likely to get worse, not better.

Assuming the present scandal does reach the epic proportions of Watergate, comparisons will inevitably be made between the two men at the center, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. On a personal level are important similarities: 1) tendency to oddity; 2) tendency to paranoia; 3) tendency to friendlessness; and 4) tendency to personal as well as political isolation. Among other things, both men were remarkably detached from their immediate families, including their wives.

But, both men also had a single source of emotional sustenance: daughters to whom they were closer than to anyone else on the planet. Daughters who stood by them when nearly no one else did. What I am saying is that should Russiagate continue to get worse, Ivanka Trump is likely to play the same critical role as did Julie Nixon Eisenhower.

The Nixons had two daughters. But Julie, younger than her sister Tricia, was always someone special in the Nixon family. From an early age, she was a star: pretty, clever, and lively, and when she married the only grandson of five star General and, later, President Dwight David Eisenhower, she married into one of America’s most highly esteemed political families.

When Watergate hit, it was Julie who from beginning to end stood steadfastly, privately and publicly, by her father. She was his ballast – by far his most important source of support. In my book, All the President’s Kin, I wrote: “Before too long she was the chief spokesperson for the entire Nixon family on the hot topic of Watergate. She was capable of putting in as many as six appearance in different parts of the country in one week. And she had guts…. [Throughout a series of difficult interviews] she maintained her composure and insisted on her father’s innocence.” In his memoirs, Nixon wrote that he did not want his younger daughter to take the brunt of Watergate, but that “she could not bear the fact that there did not seem to be anyone else who would speak out for me. Whenever I suggested that she not become so involved, she always replied, ‘But Daddy, we have to fight.’”

It’s not clear that Ivanka is as emotionally close to her father as was Julie to hers. But, given the isolation of the incumbent president, and given her own political poise, it’s likely that Ivanka will follow where Julie led.

The newspaper industry was said to be dead and buried – a victim of technology. But, since the election of Donald Trump as president, two “huge” things have happened.

First, the industry itself has been revived. The numbers are striking. A recent study found that more than 169 million U. S. adults now read newspapers every month, in print, online or mobile. That’s nearly 70% of the population. Moreover, newspapers such as the New York Times have made stunning strides in increasing their circulation. The Times added 276,000 net digital-only subscriptions in the final three months of 2016. We can assume that since Trump took up residence in the White House, these numbers have escalated still further.

This is not to say that newspapers are out of the financial woods. Digital success is not yet offsetting a severe slump in print advertising, which historically has been the biggest source of industry revenue. Moreover, Donald Trump is not the only reason that people are returning to reading the papers. Public distaste for ubiquitous ads is another contributor. Still, the public’s appetite for “fake news” is demonstrably higher than it’s been in years.

This sharply increased interest in news is mirrored, not incidentally, on cable channels. During the first three months of 2017 Fox News had its highest rated quarter ever. During this same period, CNN had its most-watched quarter since 2003. And MSNBC registered its largest total audience ever, becoming in the early months of 2017 the fastest growing of the cable networks.

But the second thing that has happened to revive the newspaper industry is much, much more important. It is that the press – in particular, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and now also the Wall Street Journal – has been nearly single-handedly responsible for digging up and daring to disclose the truths of this administration. Journalists such as Robert Costa of the Post, and Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush of the Times, are just three examples of a small army of reporters who, with the obvious support of their superiors, have changed the narrative of American politics.

The press is not, constitutionally, one of the pillars of American government. But, when the history of this period is written, if the Republic is to be saved, it will be the press that will be credited with saving it.

I do not usually post blogs other than my own. But, “Serving in the Trump Administration,” written by my friend and colleague Deborah Rhode, Professor at Stanford Law School, is so on point, and so strongly argued, it merits an exception to my general rule.

Rhode writes in part: “Yet the only way ethically responsible lawyers can ethically serve in this administration is if they are prepared to resign when resistance is ineffective and the moral stakes are substantial.”

For her compelling piece in full, click on the link below.

https://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/serving-in-the-trump-administration

People are scratching their heads. Pundits are at a loss. The most politically savvy among us are reduced to admitting that they cannot say for sure why Donald Trump remained joined to the deeply suspect Mike Flynn until the president was, in effect, forced by the Washington Post to cut him loose.

The multiplicity of motivations for Trump’s behavior vis-a-vis his former National Security Adviser is as confusing as confounding. But the bottom line is this. It was bad leadership.

Bad leadership is, curiously, deceptively simple to define. Leadership is bad when it is ineffective. Leadership is bad when it is unethical. And leadership is bad when it is, simultaneously, ineffective and unethical.

So here’s where we are now. We do not know for sure why Trump’s leadership with regard Flynn was bad. Was the president being mindlessly ineffective? Was he being deliberately unethical? Or was he somehow being both? What we do know for sure is that good leadership it was not. Which is why Flynn at least – there may be others – will continue to haunt the White House so long as Trump is in residence.

How long has it been since France was fashionable? On the cutting edge? Let’s just say it’s been long – a long, long time.

Today though, in a single stroke, France is once again at the forefront. At the forefront of Europe – and of liberal democracy. With the electric election of boy wonder Emmanuel Macron as their President, and with the decisive defeat of his opponent, right-wing, anti-Europe, pro-Russia Marine Le Pen, the French have stood strong against the nationalism and populism that recently threatened the West generally, and Europe particularly.

For all his youth – he is not yet 40 – Macron is a Renaissance man. A pianist of the first rank, highly literate, brilliant in economics and finance, a self-made man of considerable wealth, he is as bold as he is brilliant. To signal his break with the past, a year ago Macron ditched the prevailing party system. He simply started his own political party – En Marche; Forward in English – and proceeded to use it as a platform from which to launch his campaign for president.

Of course, this story of stunning electoral success is not only about the leader, but the followers. In this case French voters, who, unlike their British counterparts, chose in no uncertain terms to gamble on a favored European future rather than to retreat to an imagined, isolated, past.

Of course, France faces formidable challenges, and for all his abundant gifts, Macron is no magician. Still, he is, the overwhelming majority of French voters fortunately, felicitously, decided, the man for this season.