Author: Barbara

My most recent book – Hard Times: Leadership in America – was published in October by Stanford University Press. The book explores the impact of context on leadership and followership.

Beginning February 3, I started posting, in the order in which they appear, excerpts.

Excerpt from Chapter 1 – History 

“So far as leadership and followership are concerned, the United States of America is singular. First, because of its revolutionary inception it has always been characterized by a political culture that is anti-authority, that ensures and even encourages conflict between, and also among, leaders and led. Second, because of its revolutionary inception it has always been characterized by a political culture that makes it difficult for anyone at any level to lead – up to and including the chief executive. Third, because of its revolutionary inception it has always been characterized by a national character that is independent and idiosyncratic, by men and women who as soon follow their own path as anyone else’s. Fourth, because of its revolutionary inception it has always been characterized by an ideology that, however, idealized, advantages the have-nots at the expense of the haves. And, finally, because of its revolutionary inception it has always been characterized by a set of documents – by laws, if you will – that codify, sanctify, the fulfillments of followers as well as of leaders.”

My most recent book – Hard Times: Leadership in America – was published in October by Stanford University Press. Beginning February 3, I will be posting excerpts. The book has 26 short chapters, including the Prologue and Epilogue. Selections from each will be posted in this space, in the order in which they appear.  

When this project is complete regular readers will have a sense of context. They will understand why leadership is not about single individuals. Rather it is about a system in which leaders, followers, and contexts each play equally important parts. While this particular book is about leadership in America, the components of context are fungible. They apply to leadership in the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates, as they do to leadership in the United States.

Excerpt from the Prologue:

Hard Times: Leadership in America “is not a ‘how-to’ book – a book about how to be a leader. Instead it is a how-to-think-like-a-leader workbook that provides a clear, cogent corrective to the thousands of other instructions already available. Hard Times is a checklist of what you need to know about context if you want to lead in the United States of America in the second decade of the twenty-first century. It is not a handy-dandy manual on what to do and how to do it, for the specifics of the situation determine the particulars. What it does do is make meaning of leadership in America in a wholly new and different way. What it does do is provide every American leader with a framework for seeing the setting within which work gets done….

A few words about the title of the book: Hard Times. It signifies my bias, my strong bias. Leadership in America has always been difficult to exercise. But, for reasons that will become clear, leadership in America is more difficult to exercise now than it has ever been before.”

This is a piece that was waiting to be written. But until now I’ve been reluctant. I’ve been reluctant to believe that the past has so powerful a pull. I’ve been reluctant to believe that China like Russia would regress. I’ve been reluctant to believe that leadership can so quickly and completely turn bad. Until now.

Now though the evidence is conclusive. Now though we know that China’s President Xi Jinping is a dictator. He is not an imperial president. He is not a strongman. He is a dictator.

What is the evidence? What does a 21^st century dictator look like? What does a 21^st century dictator do to keep total control?

• He precludes unfettered access to the internet.
• He precludes unfettered access even to virtual private networks.
• He decimates the opposition, if necessary by prosecuting, punishing, and putting away those who publicly disagree with him.
• He turns his enemies into public enemies. (China’s ostensible recent anti-corruption drive has led to the arrest or punishment of more than a quarter of a million communist party members, including roughly 50 of ministerial rank or higher.)
• He shrinks the number of decision makers.
• He consolidate his personal political power.
• He controls security – domestic security, national security, cybersecurity, and military security.
• He controls the media.
• He controls members of the military, gets them publicly to swear their allegiance, makes them responsible directly to him.
• He controls public policy including domestic policy, foreign policy, and economic policy.
• He control the police, and the secret police, and the judiciary.
• He centralizes both political ideology and moral authority – in this case in a revived Communist Party.
• He cultivates his image.
• He controls his image.
• He brooks no dissent – by any individual or any institution.

Briefly, it seemed that China might be headed in a different direction. Activists dared to take to the streets to protest, and on China’s once lively internet were alternative political voices. But in the less than two years since he took office, President Xi has clamped down. He has taken to ruling with an iron fist. There is no gainsaying this. It is what it is. So I have had to adjust to the idea that China has regressed to autocracy rather than progressed toward democracy. And so will American policy makers have to adjust to the idea that dealing with Xi is dealing with a leader who smacks more of China’s poisonous past than its promised future.

One of the casualties of information overload is information fatigue. We know so much about so much – so much information competes for our attention – that we turn off and tune out.

So it has been with Ukraine. Though some of us have been beating this drum for months, most of us have been too distracted to pay the deteriorating situation in East Europe much mind. People die every day along the border between Ukraine and Russia. But they do so unspectacularly. They are killed anonymously, away from the cameras. They are not beheaded by ISIS, or assassinated by terrorists in the streets of Paris.

Still, it’s slowly becoming more widely appreciated that what’s happening in Ukraine is a big deal. The conflict between Moscow and Kiev is not a minor skirmish between minor players, nor has it proven amenable to settlement or diminishment. To the contrary. In recent weeks the violence in eastern Ukraine has been ratcheted up by the Russians, leaving the West to figure out what exactly Putin has in mind and what exactly to do about it. High time. For so far, precisely because we have been numb to the news out of Ukraine, the US and the European Union have responded only meekly and mildly. While sanctions have been imposed on the aggressor, on Russia, up to now the West has declined to provide Ukraine either with the military hardware it needs, or with the economic package it requires to become what the US and Europe want it to become: a stable and prosperous state, sympathetic to the West.

It’s been interesting to watch Thomas Friedman on this issue. Friedman is, of course, a longtime columnist for the New York Times, arguably the most prominent American journalist specializing in foreign affairs. For all his vaulted reputation, however, it’s taken him a while to claim in his column that the conflict in Ukraine is a crisis.

To Friedman’s credit, in his piece posted January 28 (link below), he admits that he’s been late to the table.  And he acknowledges that Russia has been an “awful” aggressor, disguising its heinous behaviors “by a web of lies that would have made Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels blush.” In fact, Friedman now goes so far as to argue that “Putin’s use of Russian troops wearing uniforms without insignia to invade Ukraine and to covertly buttress Ukrainian rebels bought and paid for by Moscow… is the ugliest geopolitical mugging happening in the world today.”

Amazing what happens when attention finally is paid. Amazing what happens the wheat finally is separated from the chaff.

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In 2006 I wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review titled, “When Should a Leader Apologize – and When Not?” The question of when it is wise publicly to apologize for a mistake or transgression came to mind again this week when, lo and behold, emerged from the woodwork a whole new army of apologizers.

Who might they be? What sin did they commit? What error did they make that was so egregious they deserve their humiliations and flagellations – most of them self-imposed? Weathermen! Weatherwomen! Meteorologists who predicted heavy snows in Philadelphia and New York when there were none – or, at least, not so much.

The facts are these: 1) some of the weather predictions were wrong; 2) some government officials made decisions based on erroneous predictions; and 3) some of these decisions were costly. Other of the facts are these: 1) some of the weather predictions were right; 2) some government officials made decisions based on correct predictions; and 3) some of these decisions saved lives. Of course the overriding fact is that predicting the weather – especially when it comes to precisely predicting just before and even during a blizzard the amount of snowfall in any given area – is a famously inexact science, with a large cone of uncertainty.

To be sure, this cone of uncertainty was never adequately conveyed by most meteorologists. Nearly without exception they seemed certain that this week’s storm would be of historic proportions, from Philadelphia to Bangor. But this flair for the dramatic, this brief show of hubris, does not merit their incessant self-abasement. It does not merit seasoned forecasters like Al Roker and Bill Karins going on about how abysmally wrong they were, and it certainly does not merit relative newcomers to the forecasting business such as Gary Szatkowski repeatedly tweeting messages such as “My deepest apologies to many key decision makers and so many members of the general public.”

Even since I wrote my 2006 article the pressure publicly to apologize for whatever the error has become greater. People who are visible – leaders, celebrities, experts – tend to feel obliged to apologize even when an expression of regret is unlikely in any way to be helpful, to anyone. So let me here reiterate some of the questions I raised earlier – questions that should be answered before deciding whether or not to issue a public apology.

First, what function would such an apology serve? Second, who would benefit from a public apology? Third, why exactly would such an apology matter? Fourth, what is likely to happen if you apologize publicly? And finally, what is likely to happen if you do not apologize publicly?

Making a public apology is like printing money. If you print too much of it – if you apologize too much or too often – inflation will set in. The coin of the realm will be diminished and devalued.

Charlie, a member of my immediate family, is a 21 year old student at a college in Boston. He is relentlessly nice and upstanding, known to every family member for his decency and disposition.

Which made his response to my question about deflate-gate – about the under-inflation of footballs used by the Patriots in Sunday’s victory over the Colts – the more surprising. To my query about who was responsible for the scandal, he replied, “I think it’s the most boring story and I couldn’t care less.”

What?! Are twenty-somethings so inured to cheating in professional sports – so jaded about corruption in America – that nothing has the power any longer to shock them? If Charlie is any indication, the answer is yes.

I didn’t ask Charlie to comment on the news that the feds had just charged New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver with abusing his office by taking millions in payoffs. Just as well. For though Silver is being accused of using his position over a period of many years to “obtain millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks,” the likelihood that Charlie would be exercised by the revelation is nil.

Pats quarterback Tom Brady is strong and large and handsome. Silver appears weak and small and, well, not so handsome. They are, to put it politely, radically different physically. But otherwise they are not radically different.  Both are clever and gifted and have been stunningly successful. But… both seem intent on winning at all costs. Both seem as attracted to power as fairness. And both seem emblematic of an America in which greed for money and power are pervasive.

I suppose this accounts for Charlie’s response. But the fact that deflate-gate bores him, and that he couldn’t care less that one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of American football is suspected by many of cheating, is a downer. It’s a melancholy commentary on the temper of the times.

It’s one thing for a president of the United States of America to use his annual State of the Union address to accentuate the positive. It’s quite another for him to eliminate the negative.

President Barack Obama was right last night to take a victory lap on the economy. He had sufficient facts and figures to support his claim that the “state of the union is strong.” But he was not right to be less than fully forthcoming about the state of the world within which this union is situated. In the realm of foreign affairs he dissembled to a degree that was a discredit.

First, he gave America’s foreign policy short shrift, as if what happened outside the US was of minor importance. Second, more critically, his comments – especially on Putin and terrorism – were misleading and misinforming.

It is correct to say that Russia is more “isolated” now than it was one year ago. But it would have been important to add that the reason for this is the success of Putin’s foreign policy, at least from the vantage point of Russia. In the last year Russia seized Crimea, and there is no sign that anyone anywhere is prepared to seize it back. And, in the last year Russia made mischief in Ukraine, which, as I write, shows no sign whatsoever of abating. By sowing the seeds of conflict in Eastern Ukraine, Russia is accomplishing one of its most important foreign policy objectives: to prevent Ukraine from becoming a strong and independent state allied with the West.

On terrorism generally, and on ISIL specifically, the president was even more disingenuous. For him to claim that “In Iraq and Syria, American leadership – including our military power – is stopping ISIL’s advance” is contrary to all the evidence. Maybe the president knows something that the American people do not. But so far as I can tell it is Gideon Rachman, writing in the Financial Times, who is correct – and Obama who is not.  On January 20^th Rachman wrote that, “there are two specific ways in which the threat from militant Islamism has worsened over the past five years. First, jihadi groups are operating in more parts of the world. Second, the frequency of attacks and number of deaths are increasing.” In short, “the ‘war on terror’ is going backwards.”

Presidents cannot be blamed for using the State of the Union address to tout their presidencies and policies. But their feet should be held to the fire if they use the occasion to shade the truth.

As usual, the bloviating about the 2016 presidential election has begun way early.  And, as usual, the bloviating is focused on who will be a candidate for the nation’s highest office. In other words, as usual, the bloviating is leader-centric. Already we are fixating on a few individuals specifically – Clinton, Biden, Warren, Bush, Romney, Christie, Cruz, Kasich, Huckabee, Paul, Perry, Walker – rather than on the situation more generally.

But a good argument can be made for the proposition that the outcome of the next presidential election will be determined not by a small number of leaders, or, for that matter, by a larger number of followers.  Rather the outcome is more likely to be determined by the context within which by then we’re embedded.

Here is an example of context as key. If between now and November 2016 the United States is at peace, and if the homeland has remained free from attack, the Democrats will benefit. Barack Obama and his putative successor will be able to claim that for eight years the Democrats have kept Americans free from harm.

If, on the other hand, the U.S. proves vulnerable to terrorism, Obama’s earlier claim that extremism has been defeated will prove tragically hollow. It will prove, or appear to prove, that the Democrats did not take the terrorist threat sufficiently seriously. Further, given their willingness to be more militantly aggressive abroad, and more militantly defensive at home, the Republicans will profit. The Republicans will profit politically to the degree that the U. S. seems weak militarily.

Our proclivity remains the same – to fixate on leaders. But the smarter approach is the systemic approach. For leadership is a system with not just one part – but three. To get the present and project the future is to look long and hard at leaders. It is also to look long and hard at followers, at others. And it is to look long and hard at the context within which leaders and followers necessarily are situated.

When I was a graduate student at Yale I received a master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies. So, though I did not ultimately concentrate (my doctoral work) on what then was the Soviet bloc, I stayed with the subject. I continued to follow it closely, making it a point to be up on the latest Kremlinology.

Imagine my surprise, then, when virtually overnight, virtually without warning by even the most esteemed Soviet experts, the Soviet Union collapsed and communism in East Europe along with it.  I was stunned at the time. And I remain stunned still that a series of events so momentous should have been so completely unforeseen.

In recent months have been two changes of cataclysmic importance, both of which fall into the same category. Both were wholly unanticipated, predicted by nearly no one.

The first is the rise of ISIS – ISIS, which scarcely anyone had even heard of as little as a year ago. The second is the drop in oil prices, which has been nothing short of vertiginous. But who knew six months ago? Who told us then what we know now: that the price of oil, which had been stable for over five years, would drop suddenly and precipitously, by over half in half a year?

Nobody – nobody told us. Why? Because nobody knows nothing.

It’s easy enough to understand why the attention of the Western world has been fixed in recent days on France. It’s less easy to understand why the attention of the world has not been similarly trained on Nigeria. Americans and others were stirred last year by the kidnapping and subsequent disappearance of nearly 200 girls from a Nigerian school. But since then our gaze has turned elsewhere, closer to home, as our anxieties about terrorism in America and Europe have overshadowed those about terrorism in Africa.

While we were watching the streets of Paris, a ten year old girl killed herself and some 19 others by detonating explosives (strapped to her body) in a busy Nigerian market. Moreover on the same Wednesday that the Kouachi brothers murdered some of the staff of Charlie Hebdo, the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram massacred an estimated 2000 in Baga, a city in Northern Nigeria.

This is not a game of numbers. Is killing 2000 people ten times worse than killing 200? A thousand times worse than killing 2? The point is that there is no obvious distinction between terrorism in France and terrorism elsewhere, including in Nigeria. In fairness, with France one has the sense that President Francois Hollande will attack terrorism with all the forces that his strong state can marshal. Nigeria, in contrast, is a weak state, with no evidence that President Goodluck Jonathan has the will, the skill, and the resources effectively to address the relentlessly growing terrorist threat.

But I wonder why the distinction, why the divide in American minds between terrorism in Europe and terrorism in Africa. From where I sit they are of a piece, the one as much of a threat to security in the 21^st century as the other. The fact that Abuja, Nigeria seems so much further from Washington than does Paris, France, does not mean that what’s been happening in the former is any less of a threat than what’s been happening in the later. I would argue, in fact, that in this super-small, hyper-connected world terrorism anywhere is terrorism everywhere.