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OK, so maybe they’re not “leaders.” Maybe they’re managers. The point is we’re letting people in positions of authority get away with murder.

OK, so maybe it’s not “murder.” Maybe it’s negligent homicide. The point is no one – no single person – is being held to account for the GM switch defect that has been linked to 124 deaths.

It’s a familiar complaint, familiar from the period subsequent to the financial crisis, when some institutions were finally held to account, but nearly no individuals. However when the wrongdoing – in this case a cover-up of a potentially lethal car part – results in injuries and deaths, to fail to put the blame directly where it lays, to fail to hold responsible the parties who specifically are guilty, is not only infuriating, it’s outrageous. It seems a flagrant abdication of justice.

The usually tough U.S. attorney for Manhattan, Preet Bharrara, defended the outcome of the case, saying his office had “to think long and hard about the appropriate resolution.” However even he admitted that listening to the families who had lost loved ones were “among his most searing moments” as a legal professional. More to the point, the judge who approved the settlement made clear that if there was “any doubt to the criminality of the conduct that doubt [was] put to rest.”

Still, for whatever legal, economic, or systemic reasons, it is the company that will pay the penalty for the wrongdoing. It is not anyone who was at GM, or who still is at GM, several of whom knew for more than a decade about problems with the ignition switch.

It’s this sort of thing that drives some of us nuts. It’s this sort of thing that breaches whatever the remaining trust between those in charge and those who are not. It’s this sort of thing that drove Maggie Beskau, whose daughter was killed in a 2006 car crash in Wisconsin, to exclaim when the settlement was announced, “I don’t understand how they can basically buy their way out of it. They knew what they were doing and they kept doing it.”

 

 

 

I’ve been beating this drum for some time. But every now and then the evidence of followers controlling the action – ordinary people leading the charge – is so compelling that attention must be paid.

Three recent cases in point.

First, in one of the biggest shake-ups in British politics in years, far leftist Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party. In keeping with the surge in support for left of center movements in other European countries such as Greece and Spain, Corbyn defied expectations and upended the establishment. How did he do it? By changing the rules (who could vote and who not). By enlisting grassroots activists. By making heavy use of social-media. By inflaming the widespread anger at economic austerity and social inequality. And by lashing all these to the young and restless.

Second, tens of thousands of Middle Eastern migrants, especially from Syria, have literally forced themselves into, onto, Europe. In the old days such masses of outsiders would’ve simply have been shot or thrown into prison for so flagrantly violating existing borders, for so flagrantly defying orders, and for so flagrantly ignoring the rule of law. Now, though, the authorities are constrained by what they can do. The culture has changed and the technology has changed. And so while even the Germans, not to speak of others such as the Hungarians and Croatians, are finally trying to figure out how to slow or even stop the human tide, generally they have felt constrained from using all but the most limited means of force. This is Europe early in the 21^st century – not Europe in the mid-20^th.

Third is what happened in Guatemala, where what took place was either a revolution or a political upheaval – depending on how you look at it. In response to mass protests – incited by outrage at a corruption scandal – the president was forced to resign and the longstanding system of cronyism is under attack. Again, people had the capacity to protest because the culture had changed – the powerless could conceive of rising up against the powerful – and the technology had changed. A Facebook page, Justice Now, is being used as clearinghouse for conversations and instigator of political actions. As one prominent businessman put it, social media is “the new actor in the country’s political life.” Under any circumstance would this be remarkable. But in Guatemala the more so, because Guatemalans have historically been much more politically resigned than politically engaged.

Americans should not then be surprised either by the likes of Donald Trump, or for that matter Bernie Sanders. While it’s not clear how any of this will ultimately turn out, what is clear is that the US is not the only place on the planet where people are fed up.

There was an upheaval in Britain on Saturday, when Jeremy Corbyn, long a leftist outsider, moved to the inside. But something else happened in Britain last week, less surprising, in fact entirely predictable, but remarkable nonetheless. Queen Elizabeth II overtook her great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria, to become the United Kingdom’s longest reigning monarch ever.

It is not, though, the Queen’s longevity that makes her so impressive. It is that she has managed over so long a period of time, and in a context that has been in many ways hostile, to remain so admired a figure. With the Queen still in place, the royal family enjoys record popularity. In 2012 some 69% of respondents said that Britain would be worse off without a monarchy. But, the degree to which she is key to this high level of support becomes apparent as soon as the name of her son, Prince Charles, is mentioned. Only 39% of Brits say they want the crown to be passed on to him – this in a royal system in which the principle of heredity still prevails.

The strong support for the monarchy is, then, tied to the Queen herself. Which raises this question: to what should we attribute her staying power? She is not, in conventional parlance, either a leader or a manager. She is certainly not a power wielder, nor is she even an authority figure, given that the monarchy is so much less acceptable without her on the throne. She is not even a symbol any longer, for only the elderly remember the empire, or venerate the pomp that marks the royal household. The Queen is instead sui generis: a singular woman in a singular circumstance to whom none of the ordinary labels may be said to apply.

She looks perfectly the part, and she plays perfectly the part. Above all she speaks perfectly the part – that is, she famously says nothing. Not literally nothing, but substantively nothing. She has given over her long years on the throne some speeches, but they are strictly ceremonial, formal in nature. Never once has she given a press interview as we Americans would understand it. And never once has she tendered her personal opinion on anything that matters to anyone. She has been content to keep quiet, which in this case goes a long way toward explaining why her supporters are so many, and her detractors so few.

 

 

During the last three months everyone who is anyone has been stumped by Trump. The riddle is how he does it. How does he remain immune to attack given the outrageous nature of what he sometimes says?

Trump’s time on the national stage has been punctuated by remarks ranging from politically incorrect to wildly offensive. But nothing he has said has stopped him, or even slowed his rise in national polls. Why? What is it about Donald Trump that lets him get away with political murder?

A description of his most recent assault – on Carly Fiorina – provides a clue. The content of what he said was wildly offensive. “Look at that face,” Trump insisted. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” But the tone in which he said it was inoffensive. Instead of looking and sounding like an abusive alpha male, he looked more like a kid who had deliberately decided to misbehave. According to the account in USA Today, just as Trump insulted Fiorina his “expression soured in schoolboy disgust.” Notice the word “schoolboy” – again Trump came across as more naughty than contemptible.

Imagine Richard Nixon – dark, glowering, even menacing – saying what Trump said. Unthinkable! But Trump is not Nixon: his face is different, his body is different, his voice is different, his speech is different, his gestures are different, and his hair is different. There is, in other words, something about Trump physically that disarms his admirers and undercuts his opponents.

• His face is ruddy, puffy, more round than hard.
• His body is doughy, soft, aging at the edges.
• His voice is high not low, more friendly than edgy.
• His speech sounds like a kid’s – words like “amazing” and “great” and shameless pronouncements of self-importance.
• His gestures are silly, almost dopey, not exactly Gary Cooper at High Noon.
• And his hair of course is ridiculous, the object of our collective derision, orange in color, thin in texture, and blown in a fashion more evocative of a woman who is vain than of a man who would be president.

On Wednesday night during the next debate take a look and listen hard. Then tell me if you don’t see what I see: a man who can say things that others could never because of how he sounds and what he looks like.

The following essay was co-authored by Deborah L. Rhode. She is Ernest McFarland Professor of Law at Stanford University and the author of, among other books, What Women Want.

The number of American women at or near the top of the greasy pole has remained stubbornly low. Of course the figure is higher than it was, say, twenty years ago. But the so-called pipeline has proved a pipe dream – the rate of change remaining sluggish at best. A single example: to equalize men and women’s representation in the U.S. Congress would take more than a hundred years!

In part a response to the problem of women’s advancement, recent surveys of younger, millennial women indicate a new trend. They are more likely than their predecessors to plan to interrupt their careers for family reasons. This change suggests two strong, apparently contradictory dynamics relating to women and leadership.

On the one hand has been considerable progress for women in middle and upper management. Many employers have instituted workplace policies specifically intended to help women climb the managerial ladder. They include flextime; part time; job-sharing; telecommuting; mentoring; sponsoring; coaching; networking; expanded parental leave; and a range of other cultural and contextual supports.

On the other hand young women appear to have concluded that in spite of signs of progress, their situation remains untenable. In their struggle to achieve a measure of work-life balance they – women ages 18 to 30 – plan to play a different game. They intend to adapt to what is, rather than to fight a system that they see as rigged. They consciously are deviating from the Gen X and Boomer women who preceded them, who either struggled to do it all, or who in countless cases dropped out of the paid work force altogether. Instead the millennials are being strategic, deciding that they might need, perhaps prefer, to sequence stages of their lives in order to be both professionally successful and personally satisfied. Of course, whether this intention will enable women of this generation to ascend in growing numbers to positions of leadership remains to be seen. For now all we know is that a high number regard what preceded them as unsatisfactory, which is why they’re choosing to chart a new course.

This raises the following questions. Why is it that women’s expectations have declined, or at least changed, much more than men’s? (Only 66% of women say they expect their careers to be the equivalent of their spouses. In 2012 only 42% of female students graduating from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania said they planned on having a child.) Why is it women much more than men who are always having to adapt to what they perceive to be the reality? Why is it women who are much less likely than men to be in positions of leadership, not only now but also for the indefinite future?

These questions have often been asked and then answered in ways that are socially acceptable and politically correct. But they have not been answered fully or even entirely honestly – which is one of the reasons why the situation has stayed static.

As it stands now, there are three standard explanations for why we are where we were. The first is women themselves. They are too passive, too circumspect. If they aspire to lead they must be proactive, they have to lean in. The second is the nature of the workplace. It is too rigid, inhospitable to the demands of a family or the wish to lead a balanced life. The third is the so-called male leadership model – the 24/7 leadership model. It is too all-consuming, impossible for women who must, or perhaps prefer, to accommodate the other demands on their time.

These explanations are not incorrect. But they are insufficient. They do not take into account the most simple, yet most powerful, of all explicators: nature. It is women not men who carry children from conception to birth. And it is women not men who breast feed. We find it hard to believe that these gender-based differences – physiological and psychological – have no bearing whatsoever on the perennial problem of getting more women to exercise leadership.

This brings us to how to address these gender-based differences, which obviously are innate. Part of the answer is to make temporarily opting out of the paid labor force less costly. In the Center for Work Life Policy’s survey of some 2400 high achieving professionals, 89 percent wanted at some point to resume their careers, but 25 percent of those who wished to return were unable to do so, and only 40 percent found full-time professional jobs. It’s why Netflix’s recently announced policy of allowing new parents – father as well as mother – unlimited time off during their baby’s first year is so welcome.

Still, we are under no illusions. Getting new parents to take extended periods of time away from the workplace is not easy. Men even more than women worry that a prolonged absence, no matter how valid the reason, will impede their careers. But putting such policies in place is a necessary step. Equally necessary or maybe more is finally saying loud and finally saying clear that carrying a child for nine months – not to speak of probably breast feeding it – just might have implications for whatever is subsequent.*

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*In 2013, 77 percent of new American mothers breast fed their children.

Note: Due to other commitments, I will not be posting any new blogs for about two weeks.

 

So far she’s been nearly invisible and entirely inaudible. But one of these days Melania Trump will emerge from behind her gilded curtain and then, well, just you wait! You think the press and the people have gone gaga over Trump now… once his wife is part of the picture the celebrity factor will be multiplied many times over.

Melania Trump is no bimbo found in the bulrushes. Before she married Trump – she is his third wife – she was a highly successful model. She has since become a businesswoman, and is involved in several charitable endeavors. But let’s get real: the insatiable interest in her will be not for her substance, but for her style. She is drop dead gorgeous and dresses to kill.

Melania would hardly be the first wife of a presidential candidate, or of a president, known not for what she says or does, but for how she looks. Most recently in our history was Jackie, Jacqueline Kennedy, a formidable political asset I decades ago dubbed a “Decoration.”

The first book I ever wrote – it was published in 1980 – was titled All the President’s Kin.  It made what at the time was an original argument: that for various reasons close members of president’s families – their parents, siblings, spouses and offspring – were becoming politically consequential.  I grouped the presidents’ kin into several different types, one of which was “Decoration” – one of whom was Jackie.

Decorations were defined as follows

Decorations make the president [or candidate] more attractive. They enhance the man, make him and his administration more glamourous – or at least more appealing. They add nothing to the substance of the presidency but a great deal to the style. They lend an intangible aura of pleasure to the grit of day-to-day politics; their presence alone lends grace. At their best Decorations are in fact quite removed from politics. In what would appear, but only at first glance, to be a paradox, it is this distance that allows their charm to exert its political impact.

Let me be clear. Typing Melania Trump a Decoration does not mean typing her a lightweight – any more than typing Jacqueline Kennedy a Decoration meant typing her a lightweight. All I am claiming is that physical beauty can be a political asset of considerable consequence.

 

 

 

 

Hillary Clinton is being blamed for e mail evasion – and maybe more.

Her top aides are being blamed for e mail evasion – and maybe more.

Her lower level staff is being blamed for e mail evasion – and maybe more.

Her lawyer is being blamed for e mail evasion – and maybe more.

The State Department is being blamed for e mail evasion – and maybe more.

John Kerry is being blamed for e mail evasion – and maybe more.

But, where does the buck stop? To take the obvious examples: if the former secretary of state is guilty of something, and if the present secretary of state is guilty of something, and if state department officials are guilty of something, well, then, how does the incumbent president remain long out of the loop? Is he not the chief executive as well as commander in chief ? Is he not responsible for what happens on his watch? Should he remain immune from inclusion?

The diminished status of chief executive officers is everywhere in evidence. But every now and then one of the most prominent of American CEOs is so openly demeaned that even I am struck.

Such was the case several days ago when an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal (link below) that chronicled in painful detail the decline (and likely someday fall) of Coca-Cola’s CEO, Muhtar Kent. The publication of such a piece is itself humiliating, revealing for all the world to see Kent’s perceived weaknesses. It is also debilitating, no doubt enfeebling Kent still further, if only  because his leadership has been so visibly thrown into question.

The essence of the piece – in five easy pieces:

• Coke’s board has been urging Kent “to appoint a No. 2 for some time.” Translation: Coke’s board has been urging Kent for some time to share his power and authority.
• Recent discussions between Kent and Coke’s board had “gotten intense and focused.” Translation: Coke’s board was becoming increasingly impatient with Kent’s procrastinating, and increasingly insistent that he agree to the appointment of a second in command.
• Kent has been a “detail-oriented executive who is sometimes reluctant to give up the reins to other executives.” Translation: The board concluded first that Kent hoards his decision making authority; and second that he lacks the leadership skills to reverse the company’s declining fortunes.
• Coke’s appointment of James Quincy, who was given the titles of both president and chief operating officer, is intended to “compliment Muhtar’s skills and qualities.” Translation: The board expects Quincy to pick up what Kent has let drop.
• The lead independent director, Sam Nunn, said of Coke’s board that it remains “fully confident” in Kent’s leadership. Translation: Coke’s board is already looking around for Kent’s successor, with Quincy a top candidate.

Coca-Cola has suffered slings and arrows in recent years, which have little to do with Kent and lots to do with context. The growing evidence that soda is bad for our health is a hill that all soda-sellers will find difficult to climb. I am not claiming that Muhtar Kent is Clark Kent. I am only pointing out that whatever his leadership deficits, he has been a victim of bad timing.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/coca-cola-names-james-quincey-president-and-chief-operating-officer-1439468736

If being a leader means no more than, though no less than, getting others to follow, Donald Trump is the real thing! The degree to which he has twisted the usual campaign template to suit his unusual carnival temperament is stupefying.

He’s not what’s remarkable. What remarkable is us. What’s remarkable is the degree to which we’ve been willing to bend to the whiff of his will, oblige his every whispered whim, and follow his lead no matter how dopey the destination.

The media has been willing, nay eager to carry his water, unable, nay unwilling, to turn its prying eyes away from its political prize. We in turn are the consumed consumers, waddling in line behind The Donald who leads us to we know not where.

 

 

 

So far nothing has worked. Corporate leaders, chief executive officers, have continued to receive outsized pay checks in spite of the fact that their followers, the rest of us, have become increasingly resentful and restless.  In 2013 median CEO pay among S&P 500 companies was $10.5 million – a figure that since the late 1970’s has climbed over 700 percent.

We’ve been bitching and moaning about income inequity for years, certainly since the financial crisis. But nothing has stopped the tier at the top from continuing to receive compensation that by most reasonable reckonings is outsized. Fifty years ago CEOs were paid on average 20 times more than their employees; by 2013 this figure had vaulted to 300 times more.

Now, after considerable delay and opposition by corporations, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has voted in a new regulation that might, just might, have an effect on the gulf in income. Beginning in 2017 the new law will mandate that most public companies reveal the ratio of the chief executive’s pay to that of their average employee.

To the degree that this law will have any effect it all, it is likely to be on boards and on activist shareholders, not on ordinary shareholders or on the American people. But, while having the additional information will not start a revolution, here is what it could do. It could be embarrassing. It could embarrass or even shame at least some chief executive officers to have us know – precisely – how much more they earn than do those in their employ.

Confucius wrote about shaming as a means of reining in not leaders, but followers. But the point remains the same: shaming as a way of controlling excesses.

Confucius in Analects:

Lead the people with administrative injunctions and put them in their place with penal law, and they will avoid punishments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence and put them in their place through roles and ritual practices, and in addition to developing a sense of shame, they will order themselves harmoniously.