Category: Digital Article

When I try to persuade people of the importance of followership my effort is often in vain.  It’s hard to make the case that leaders without followers likely will go nowhere. Notwithstanding the logic of the argument, notwithstanding the objective evidence, in general people are still persuaded that the leader is all. We remain, in other words, leader-centric, reluctant to accept the proposition that without sufficient numbers of followers the leader is nothing.

This fundamental principle came again to mind when reading Dale Russakoff’s suburb article in the New Yorker title, “Schooled.” (See link below.) It is a carefully researched, thoroughly persuasive piece about how and why schools in Newark have remained so resistant to change, so miserably poor in their overall performance. This in spite of the fact that behind recent reform efforts has stood a sparkling cast of characters including former Newark Mayor Cory Booker, incumbent New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Facebook Mogul Mark Zuckerberg – the last of whom has put a lot of money where his mouth is.

At least one of the major problems – arguably the major problem – is that all those lustrous leaders from on high have failed to bring in, bring along, bring on board followers from below. The people were left out of the process or, at least, they themselves did not feel part of the process – so they fought and they balked. In other words, notwithstanding all that talent and all that money, the process itself was experienced as exclusionary.

Russakoff makes clear that all is not lost – some solutions may be closer than any of the warring sides is willing to acknowledge. But until the various leaders, many of whom are outsiders, engage the various followers, all of whom are insiders, in tough and open conversations even the best-intentioned efforts are likely to stay stalled. As one close observer put it, all too often education reform “comes across as colonial to people who’ve been here for decades. It’s very missionary, imposed, done to people rather than in cooperation with people.”

Bottom line is that those days are now over. However frustrating and cumbersome sometimes the process, leaders engaging followers is part of the deal – unless, of course, the system is autocratic, not democratic.

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https://www.google.com/?source=search_app#q=dale+russakoff+%22schooled%22

Will be working abroad …. blog suspended for about two weeks….

In the past, when I taught a course on woman and leadership, I would allude to Scandinavia as a model of what the U. S. might replicate.  Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland all have in places policies intended to close the gender gap, including at the top. Norway is perhaps the best known example. Several years ago it implemented a quota system that requires the boards of publicly held companies to be at least 40 % women. In addition it, like the other Scandinavian countries, provides generous daycare benefits, and also parental leave laws designed to encourage mother and father to share child care. No wonder it has been looked to as an exemplar, including by the European Union which has considered recommending its replication.

There’s just one teeny-weeny problem. As Christina Zander reported in the May 22 Wall Street Journal, policies that on paper were exemplary have failed. Put precisely, while they did succeed in getting more women close to the top, they did not succeed in getting more women to the top.  Consider once again the case of Norway. In 2013, as mandated, women composed 41 % of boards at Norway’s publicly held companies, compared with only 18% at privately held companies. However… only 5.8 % of CEOs of public companies were women, while at private companies the number was actually significantly greater, 15.1%. In Finland the situation is roughly the same. It has more women on company boards than any other country in the European Union. Yet not a single one of Finland’s 27 largest companies has a woman at the helm.

These findings raise the obvious question – why? Why, in spite of policies that can only be described as extremely enlightened, are there still so few women CEOs in Scandinavia? Several theories have been put forth, nearly all of them contextual. That is, there continues to be a blame game, the fault being ascribed to insufficiently supportive cultures and insufficiently enlightened policies, both governmental and organizational.

What continues, however, to be inadequately addressed is the question of gender difference. However politically incorrect the implication, it is at least possible that women calculate differently than do men, that their needs, wants, and wishes are, on the whole, on average, slightly different from those of their male counterparts. Women may not choose to lead because in the end they don’t want to lead or, at least, they don’t want to lead given that leadership in the 21^st century usually is all-consuming.  Many if not most tasks are amenable to flex time, part time, shared time, family time, time working from home and not in the office, not to speak of time on the road. It just so happens that leadership is not one of them.

Charles Wilson, who in the mid twentieth century was CEO of General Motors, has been relentlessly misquoted. In 1953, when he testified before a Senate Committee as President Dwight Eisenhower’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, he reputedly said, “What’s good for GM is good for America.” But what he really said was this: “For years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.” Very different. And very apt because for so many years what Charlie Wilson thought to be true was true. For so many years when America did well so did General Motors, and yes, vice versa.

Which leads me to wonder, does it also happen that when America stumbles so does General Motors – and vice versa?

What’s happening now at General Motors is mind-boggling. The number of vehicles recalled in recent months – the total for the year is 13.5 million – is so huge as to be abstract, not fully comprehensible. Similarly, the fact  that GM has been brought so low, is being so dreadfully debased, says something not only about this particular car corporation but about America more generally.

I don’t want to go all out here – this is not about America’s irreversible decline and inevitable fall. But it is not trivial. It is not trivial that a company thought so important to American fortunes that in 2009 it received from the U. S. government a $49.5 billion bailout, has engaged in practices so dangerously deceptive that it will almost certainly be prosecuted for criminal wrongdoing. One could argue that what’s happening now is good – all those recalls testify to a company that’s finally getting its act together, acting in the public interest as opposed to its own. But…give me a break! That’s not the point! The point is that GM has failed the test of trust.

There is no way in hell that Mary Barra, who of course became GM’s CEO only earlier this year, can escape being tarnished by the truth of what happened. Among other reasons she spent most of her professional life not at IBM – but at GM. Too bad… yet another woman leader destined to bite the dust, though if there’s an alternative I can’t think of it. If Barra is spared it will not be because of merit but because of gender.

Poor us. We the American people have no choice but to watch all this play out. For years we will have before us the spectacle of a once iconic company deservedly dragged through the mud. And for years we will have before us the spectacle of a once iconic country relentlessly reminded both of what was – and of what is.

Here is the issue.

An organization is found to have done wrong. Should anything or anyone be punished? If yes, should the organization be punished? Or should those who lead the organization be punished? Or should both be punished?

Here is an example.

Banking giant Credit Suisse has just plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing.   It plead guilty to enabling thousands of Americans who did business with the bank to hide their wealth. OK, now what? The bank will in fact be penalized: it will have to pay a penalty of $2.6 billion.  Moreover its reputation will at least briefly be tarnished. But  it is unlikely otherwise much  to suffer, certainly over the long term. More to the point, the bank, the organization, is an abstraction. What does it even mean to say that a bank, an organization, has been punished, penalized?

Meantime the man who has lead Credit Suisse since 2007, Brady Dougan, goes unpunished. He is not penalized. To be sure, it’s likely he’s suffered some. It’s likely he has felt some shame, some embarrassment, some humiliation. But that’s it. Not only is he not legally penalized, he is not organizationally penalized. He remains in the wake of this outrage, this conviction of wrongdoing, the chief executive officer of  Credit Suisse.

Let me be clear about this: unless and until people are clearly and publicly punished – legally and otherwise – we can count on the wrongdoing to continue. For whatever the nature of the legal infraction you can be sure about one thing: it was committed not by institutions but by individuals.

Ever wondered why educational leaders – along with leaders in other domains – have suffered the slings and arrow of declining reputations?

Ever wondered why educational leaders are no longer the models of rectitude they were until only rather recently?

Ever wondered why the smell of money seems to permeate every corner of 21st century America – including higher education?

If yes… read this!

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For a couple of years now I’ve been blogging intermittently under the above heading – “Putin Patrol Continued.” Like Mitt Romney – this is one of the few things we think in common! – I have long believed that under Putin Russia remains not only alien to Western values, but downright dangerous. Hence I have taken some satisfaction in monitoring him and his various oppressions and repressions, and was not in the least surprised when a couple of months ago he started making trouble, real trouble, abroad, in Ukraine.

I know, I know. There are, arguably, reasons for his having done so, in particular the eastward expansion of NATO in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But still. Not good to redraw the map of Europe if and when you decide you want to do so.

I’ve refrained from blogging about Putin recently because he was well covered in the American press. Once Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine, Americans suddenly realized that they had a problem on their hands – potentially a significant one. In fact, Europeans as well as Americans were good and worried that Putin would decide not only to grab Crimea but to march his troops into Eastern Ukraine. For several weeks, as we all know, Putin was front page news.

But, almost as suddenly he has, for the moment at least, vanished from the front pages. He is relegated now to the back burner as his rhetoric tones down and he orders his troops, for the second time, to withdraw from the Ukrainian border.

So what happened? How to explain this shift in Putin’s disposition, at least for now? President Barack Obama might argue that it’s the sanctions that worked, however mild and meager. Chancellor Angela Merkel might argue that it’s her behind-the-scenes diplomacy that did it, however careful and cautious. And still others, experts included, say that Putin’s simply satisfied for now, Crimea in his hip pocket.

I, though, would venture another explanation, an explanation that lies not in what leaders do and decide but rather in what followers do and decide. In this case the turning point seems to have been when Putin was at first excited by the demonstrable support he was receiving from Eastern Ukrainians, and then unsettled by his obvious inability to control them. At one point he came right out and announced that he was against a referendum on secession from Ukraine, only to be entirely ignored. Eastern Ukrainians, some number of them, went ahead and held a referendum anyway.

It’s one thing, in other words, for an authoritarian leader to flex his muscles. It’s quite another, however, for an authoritarian leader to discover that however muscular his reach, it has exceeded his grasp.

A couple of years ago I thought that in the 21^st century some corporations would be obliged to change some of their ways primarily because of shareholder activism. Now I’m not so sure. Now there is growing evidence that while in some cases shareholder activists have an impact – they are, for instance, big on the issue of executive pay – there is scant evidence that they shape corporate policies.

The same cannot be said about ordinary people who increasingly employ social media to mount collective campaigns against corporate policies of which they strongly disapprove. By and large these policies pertain to issues whose time has in some indefinable, but indisputable way come.

Two significant cases in point, just in the last week.

First, Stanford University, bowing to pressure from students around the country intent on getting their institutions to stop investing in the most egregious of fossil fuels, agreed to stop putting any of its multi-billion dollar endowment into coal mining companies. In response to recommendations from a panel consisting of students, faculty, staff, and alumni, Stanford’s board of trustees agreed that investments in alternatives to coal would be less harmful to the environment. As Stanford’s President John Hennessy put it: “The University’s review has concluded that coal is one of the most carbon-intensive methods of energy generation and that other sources can be readily substituted for it.”

What’s new here of course is not the conclusion. We have known for some time that coal is “one of the most carbon-intensive methods of energy generation.” But what we did not have before is an organized movement, led by students, protesting against universities that continue to invest in coal mining companies.

Second is the case of Portland, Oregon, which a few days ago announced that it had begun to divest itself of its holdings in Walmart. Why? Because as one city official put it, “We as a city talk a lot about our progressive values. We care about working people, we care about the environment, we care about human health – and money talks. We don’t want our money to be saying things that are at cross purposes with values we profess every day.”

Again, Walmart did not just yesterday develop a reputation for treating its workers with minimal care and concern. And it did not just yesterday begin to pay its workers less than a living wage. But what has happened in the last year is that the issue of income inequity – the issue of a growing gap between them that has too much and them that has too little – has become more resonant.

None of this is to say that we have reached a tipping point, either on the environment or inequity. Rather it is to point out that there are some signs of change – and that the way change is being created is less real than virtual.

Thomas Friedman, best-selling author and foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, has discovered “the Square People.”* The square people protest literally, as in, say, Cairo’s Tahrir Square or Kiev’s Maidan. Or they protest virtually, they connect on the internet, using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (or their domestic equivalents) to challenge authority and promote change.

Friedman is making a big deal out of the square people because he considers them a powerful new force, worldwide, consisting mostly of young people “seeking either reform or social change.” He has seen them he writes, literally, in the squares of Tunis, Cairo, Istanbul, New Delhi, Damascus, Tripoli, Beirut, Sana, Tehran, Moscow, Rio, Tel Aviv and Kiev; and he has seen them virtually in Saudi Arabia, China, and Vietnam.

Friedman is careful to point out that the square people do not all want the same thing. In Egypt some square people are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and in Ukraine some square people are right-wing nationalists. But what they do want in in common are leaders who are responsive, and who are clean not corrupt.

Two years ago, in The End of Leadership, I wrote about precisely this phenomenon. I did not mean to imply the end of leadership literally. What I did mean to suggest is that for various reasons, especially changing cultures and technologies, the dynamic between leaders and followers was changing, irrevocably, with leaders getting weaker and followers, “square people,” getting stronger.

This is in many ways a good thing – a change to be celebrated. But it is also in some ways a bad thing. When we look abroad we can see that the empowerment of ordinary people does not, or at least it does not necessarily, lead to stability and security, or even to decency and democracy. And, when we look at home we can see that for the persistent refusal to follow, to collaborate and compromise in ways that are meaningful, substantive, there is a high price to pay.

So this change is not so much a paean to participation as it is a commentary on democracy. As I wrote in The End of Leadership, the old social contract, between leaders and followers, has frayed. Why? Because the assumptions on which the contract is based have changed. First, “the old justifications for having power, authority, and influence are no longer so persuasive.” Second, “people in the present think themselves more important and more entitled than did people in the past.”

Just this week were clashes between leaders and followers in, among other places, Turkey, Vietnam, Nigeria, and Ukraine. Every one of them testified to the relative power of the 21^st century follower.  And every one of them testified to the relative powerlessness of the 21st century leader.  Even Vladimir Putin – who just a few days ago struck fear into our hearts – has taken a step back. The reasons for his retreat relate to this blog – and will be further explored in my next blog.

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*http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/14/opinion/friedman-the-square-people-part-1.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

The abrupt firing of Jill Abramson from her position as executive editor of the New York Times is noteworthy for several reasons – among them how stereotypical the scenario. From what we now know, Abramson was fired by publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. on grounds with which any student of women and leadership is familiar:

• She was long known for being “difficult.”
• Women as well as men found her brusque, bossy.
• Her leadership style was not only assertive and directive, it was the antitheses of communal. Comfy, cozy she was not.
• She was alone at the top, without a reliable network of powerful supporters.
• She was alone at the top, her peers and superiors all were men.
• When she discovered her paycheck was smaller than that of her predecessor, and perhaps even than one of her deputies, she demanded – her lawyer alongside – immediate and remedial equity.

The news of Abramson’s dismissal is not yet 24 hours old and it has already become a cause. Women in particular are climbing the ramparts, crying foul, calling Abramson a victim of gender stereotyping, even of out and out male oppression.

All of this may well be true. Whatever the facts that remain to come out, it’s unlikely the basics of the story will change.  But it would be a disservice to Jill Abramson if she were to go out in a blaze of feminist outrage. For the important point about her tenure at the top of our most important newspaper by far, is how excellent it was. Abramson was a superlative leader. Under her extraordinarily talented direction, the New York Times was as good as it ever was. It was not only the nation’s paper of record, it was the nation’s investigative reporter. The Times dared to go where others did not because Abramson was willing to invest time, talent and, yes, money in stories that she believed had to be told.

Abramson will not go gently into the good night. Not only has she become in an instant a feminist icon, she herself is not likely to stay silent or still. But for those of us worried about the precarious state of American journalism, her disappearance from the masthead of the Times is less about rage than it is about grief.