Leading Questions

"Homelessness is an attitude, not a lifestyle."

Becky Blanton became my friend through her generosity of spirit. At one time she was homeless and depressed, and now she is a globally recognized writer. Listen to her story and then I'll tell another one.

Homelessness is many things and most of them tragic. Becky learned that it was an attitude and not who she was as a person. She inspired many people at TED this summer and this video will inspire millions more.

Over twenty five years ago, my life was impacted by a man who was homeless. His name is Berkeley Tulloch.

Berkeley came up to me one afternoon as I was approaching my car.  On the rear window of my car was a UNC-Chapel Hill decal. He said, "I went there." I turned and found a dirty, smelly, alcoholic homeless man. My first thought, "Yeah, sure."

As it turned out, he did go to Chapel Hill. He was a Ph.D. student in philosophy when his wife and young son were killed in an auto accident. Berkeley was devastated by the loss.  As he told me, he drank through every thing he owned.

At the time I was a young associate pastor in a large Presbyterian church in Atlanta. My responsibilities were for the church's ministries in the city, which included our ministry to homeless people. Berkeley and I became friends. We talked frequently about his homelessness and the loss of his family. He clearly was searching for a way to change his existence. In the vernacular of Becky, though living without a home, Berkley was clearly trying to rid himself of the attitude of homelessness.

Over the course of a year, he took steps forward and backward. There were times I'd sit in a dirty downtown hotel room until he fell asleep in a drunken stupor. And there was the time he came to faith, was baptized and joined our church during a Wednesday Noon service that we held for business people in our neighborhood.

One day Berkeley told me that he wanted to go home. He was ready to be sober. He want to go to Raleigh to Dorothea Dix Hospital and check himself into an alcohol rehab program. I bought him a bus ticket and put him on the bus wondering if I'd ever hear or see him again.

A year later, I had a call from Berkeley. He spent three months at Dix hospital and was now in Sanford living with his brother Bill. He told me that Bill was moving and the he was going to go to Durham and live on the streets so he could help people like himself. He said that it was hard to live under a roof. The call ended. It was the fall of 1985. That was the last I heard from him.

In January of this year, I received an email from John Tulloch, Berkley's youngest brother. Over the next several months, we exchanged phone calls and email.

John described the Berkley he knew growing up.

Berk was in the 10Th grade when I was born, so my memories of him are few.  I distinctly remember hearing his voice resonate throughout our home as a mix somewhere between Perry Como and Frankie Valli.  He was the most charismatic and intelligent person I would ever know.  Just a few years ago, I learned about a painting  of Aberdeen High School he did and that it was almost thrown out (the school was demolished in the early 70's and they did not know it was a real place).  Someone recognized and retrieved it, gave it a good cleaning and it is in the museum in Aberdeen.

Berk was away most of his life, and really out of touch with us for most of the 70's.

Berkeley had not gone to Durham but to Charlotte where he eventually worked for the Salvation Army as a truck driver. John wrote me,

Berkeley died in Charlotte on March 13, 1988 at Memorial Hospital in Charlotte.  He was watching a football game (he loved football!) and ended up having a heart attack.  He survived the heart attack but succumbed to "internal bleeding" the next day. 

Becky's message of hope is echoed in Berkley's story. I find it repeated in people who have experienced trauma and tragedy in their lives. To be homeless in mind is to find yourself alienated and isolated from people and places that matter. There is hope if you want to be different, and want it enough.

Additional thoughts about homelessness.

This an edit version of comments that I made another site where Becky's video was posted.

Becky's message that homelessness is an attitude is a profound one. It requires some reflection on our part. It means that for some people they are homeless inside their homes. It may mean that they are alienated from their families, from society in general and their behaviors are socially annoying and personally destructive. We've probably all known people like this.

My point is simply that we need to follow Becky's lead and see these people not from the standpoint of their physical presence, but rather as human beings in need, just like us. As I've heard many times from people after an encounter with a homeless person, "Oh, but for the grace of God, go I."

To be homeless is a very complex experience. It is the total lost of personal structure that alienates us from the social structures that support most people. As a seminarian thirty years ago in Boston, I took a course on urban ministry. Our first three days were spent on the streets of Boston with 50 cents in our pockets, learning in a small way what it meant to be homeless. Quickly, I learned to scavage for food from discarded meals at an outdoor market. I sold blood. I slept shoulder to shoulder with other homeless men on the floor of a shelter. I stood by the magazine rack in an all night grocery store falling asleep on my feet. I loitered in the Boston Pubic Library. I rode the "T" to pass the time. And my most physical memory of the experience was how much my feet hurt.

The homeless don't need our pity. They need understanding and a structure that provides safety and security so that relationships can be formed. Giving money to panhandlers doesn't do it. They actually can do a pretty good business if they are disciplined about it. Establishing shelters where their mental and physical health can be addressed is an important part of creating the structures that make it possible for homeless people, like my friend Berkeley, to change.

I'm really grateful to Becky for her willingness to tell her story. You did a beautiful job. I hope it has a wide impact upon people across the world. It has certainly touched me by taking me back in time.

"We are the average ...

of the five people we spend most of our time with."

My friend, Meridith Elliot Powell shared this with a group of us yesterday.

"I'm thinking with whom do I spend most of my time?"

I mentioned this at a social network site, and another friend, Becky Blanton responded,

The five person average is interesting. I'll have to think about that...and then flip it...and make it the five people I WANT to spend the most time with to be who I want to be. So often we are who we are by default, not by design.

Yeah, that's true too.

Then I thought, "I wonder who would put me on their list?"

After some reflection, I decided if I'm going to be the average of five people I choose to spend time with, then I'm going to at least pick people who enjoy a good meal, like to travel and enjoy good conversation.

Sustaining engagement

Dan Pink posted this video under the theme of "motivation through engagement."

There are many clever people who know how to use technology to engage people with ideas. This is not the challenge. It is a totally different thing to sustain that engagement for a real change in behavior.

One of Dan's commenters wrote,

I love the concept, but I’d like to see this same study done on those same stairs a year from now. I suspect that those numbers will drop significantly once the novelty wears off — and it becomes more annoying than interesting.

Still, the concept is powerful and intriguing and I can see a lot of relevance to other industries and problems. (Stephen Palmer)

Engagement requires leadership. By this, I mean, that someone needs to constantly be looking for ways to engage people in the idea. It doesn't have to be much, but it has to happen.

How can engagement with the stairs be sustained?

Right now, the stairs are a curiosity. They need to become a social gathering point for group creativity. So, engagement could mean a video contest of a group of people who write and perform a song on the stairs and post to YouTube as a contest. I suspect that groups from all over Europe would come to this subway station to perform and video their song. 

Whatever the endeavor, leaders have to keep the idea of the initiative before people all the time. If it is a online discussion at a social networking site, the person who is in the leadership role needs to respond to people. Do so and interaction and conversation is sustained.

Engagement with ideas is an social thing that is facilitated by technology, not the other way around. If you want to motivate through engagement, you have to stay involved. It is the way to sustain and grow an idea's spread.

"If we live in a state of constant fear, can we remain human?"

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle has just been published in English. Solzhenitsyn scholar and biographer Edward Ericson in his review describe the central message of the novel.

When faced with the moral dilemma of what to do about the stunning secret that has fallen into his possession, Volodin asks himself, "If we live in a state of constant fear, can we remain human?" He exchanges the potentially self-indulgent principle that "we are given only one life" for the consequential principle that "we are given only one conscience." His action establishes the ideal of "humanity," and thus sets the bar by which all the novel's characters are judged.

The United States and the former Soviet Union are worlds apart. Yet the people who inhabit both worlds are human beings who live each day within a similar moral universe. We each live with various levels of fear in conflict with a conscience that begs us to live with honesty and integrity.

The question of what does it mean to be human is an important one for our time. For many writers like Solzhenitsyn, the answer lies in how we live under fear, tyranny and oppression. It is something that most of us in the West have never experienced.

Over past few months, the subject of fear in the workplace has come up in conversation has come up often. Workplace fear has more to do with not knowing what the future holds, instead of an oppressive state imposing rule over a person's conscience.

It is the moral dilemma of living as a free being under Soviet oppression that informs Solzhenitsyn's writings. Solzhenitsyn, best known as the author of One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago, spent eight years as a political prisoner which transformed his understanding morality and human dignity.  It was this moral perspective that brought him criticism from the Western critics. His Nobel Prize lecture, his 1978 Harvard commencement address - A World Split Apart, and Warning to the West are good sources of Solzhenitsyn's perspective.

In the First Circle is a restored edition of a self-censored version he changed to get past Soviet censors published as The First Circle. If this historical moment intrigues you at all, I highly recommend his memoir of dealing with the Soviet government entitled The Oak and The Calf. 

Ericson writes of Volodin's character.

No character is more radically altered from one version of the novel to the other than Volodin. In the shortened book, he is a jaded young member of the privileged Soviet elite. In the full version, he is a young functionary whose moral evolution leads him to commit treason against the regime of which he is a part. Readers are left to ponder, along with him, the ethics of betraying the worst sort of regime—a variation on the age-old theme of the legitimacy of tyrannicide.

While we don't have political prisons here in the United States, the fear of speaking counter to what is the current political fashion is nonetheless real. The challenge for each of us is to know the values that form our conscience, and live by them. The integrity and confidence that comes from doing so is the right kind of counterweight for our lives.

An excerpt from chapter one is available here.

Transition Points and Space

This week's Weekly Leader column - Living in Transition Space - looks at a different way of understanding change.
Instead of thinking of change as simply disruptive, we should look at it as a transition process. Our natural tendency will be to focus on the transition point. However, we typically living in the transition space between those junctures of change.

I'm convinced that the frequency of these transition points are going to increase. As a result, we need to develop new ways of approach our work as organizational leaders. This is what the column addresses this week.

The Real Secret to Success

Attitude has a lot to do with whether we succeed or not. Read Twitter posts on a regular basis, and one of the patterns you'll notice is unbridled optimism in a formula for success. Too often this optimism denies reality and leads us to a kind of self-deception that is destructive of the very success we desire.

Bright-Sided:How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich and We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism by John Derbyshire approached the topic of optimism from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Megan Cox Gurdon in her review in the Wall Street Journal quotes them.

"We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world," warns Ms. Ehrenreich. "Things are bad and getting worse, any fool can see that," warns Mr. Derbyshire.

Though naturally an optimistic person, I do find the modern phenomenon of positive thinking highly problematic. Sort of a "mind over matter" for modern people. It is often used as bulwark against the realities of life. For many of us, we are a pain-avoiding, death-denying culture that runs from conflict into the arms of an uncritical belief in positive. While it may appear that the opposite of being positive is being negative or pessimistic, I believe it is a more complicated.

Especially provoking to Ms. Ehrenreich is the pervasiveness of the notion that a woman can improve her chances of survival by maintaining a perky outlook. The scientific basis for this belief is thin at best, yet, as she writes, it's a powerful "ideological force" that goes well beyond medicine and "encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame only ourselves for our fate."

Her curiosity (and disgust) aroused, Ms. Ehrenreich delves into the long history of positive thinking in America, which might be summarized thus: dour 18th-century Calvinism begat floaty 19th-century New Thought, which begat 20th-century New Ageism, Norman Vincent Peale and today's mega-church "prosperity gospel."

As Ms. Ehrenreich disapprovingly explains, positive thinking has saturated not just American religion but also corporate life and popular culture, and it is rapidly soaking into modern psychology. The problem for her is that people who are insistently reciting inspirational phrases won't hear the siren's wail in time to save themselves. Ms. Ehrenreich cranks her indignation up highest when aiming at the bankers, economists, bureaucrats and business honchos whose near-hallucinatory positive thinking, she believes, has pushed us all to the brink of economic collapse.

For me the dividing line is not between optimism and pessimism, but between entitlement and responsibility. 

I find optimism a shell covering for a belief in our own entitlement to health, wealth, happiness and a life free of hardship. It explains to me the long century long shift from an Emersonian self-reliance to the point that we have become wards of a benign, beneficient state.

I don't believe optimism in itself is bad. Rather, it is the popular contemporary form that denies reality. My conversation guide the Four Questions That Every Leader Must Ask is built around a more realistic perspective of our life and work situations. The third question focuses optimistically on the opportunities that we have now. These opportunities require us to take action. There is no entitlement here. All there is an opportunity and a choice whether to pursue it or not.

The fourth question focuses on the problems that we personally have created. Intentionally, I am not looking at the challenges that our various contexts provide us. For example, we can see the recession as a problem that entitles us to feel sorry for ourselves and receive a government bailout. Instead, we need to look at what situations we have control over, and address them effectively.

The problematic issue of optimism that Ehrenreich and Derbyshire address is really a modern phenomenon. It was social philosopher Thomas Hobbes, 350 years ago, who wrote that "the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." This is no longer a view widely supported by the average person. Prosperity, even in the midst of a global recession, is rapidly expanding throughout the world. In places where poverty and disease had been the normal experience of people for centuries, middle class wealth is beginning to emerge.

While I would not suggest we go back to the days of Hobbes, I would suggest that a more realistic approach to life accomplish precisely what the optimists and positivity-gurus promise. And this realism is not quite the pessimism of Ehrenreich and Derbyshire. Instead, it is closer to the thinking of the ancient Stoics.

Greek slave and Stoic teacher Epictetus wrote, "Difficulties show men what they are. In case of any difficulty remember that God has pitted you against a rough antagonist that you may be a conqueror, and this cannot be without toil."  Roman emperor,

Marcus Aurelius wrote, "You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last."

When the hardships in life are faced with reason and determination, we gain a richer appreciation of success and happiness. It is this perspective that guided Admiral James Stockdale (whom I've written about here) as the highest ranking officer imprisoned at the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. In his discussion with Jim Collins, when asked who didn't make it out, and his response was the optimists. This was so because they believed that if they just were optimistic that it would counter reality. Optimism only serves us when we use it to generate a determined will and persistence to work through hardships to achieve success.

A positive outlook serves only when we embrace reality and commit ourselves to overcome the obstacles that stand in our way of success. This is not an entitlement mindset that comes from believing that we deserve success because of our positive attitude.

There is no replacement for hard work, realistic self-criticism, a passionate vision worked out with commitment and perseverance and a recognition that much of our success is a product of other people's contributions and the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time.

Is Small Business at a Crossroads

In my browsing this morning, I came across this article from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta - Prospects for a small business-fueled employment recovery.  Here is a quote from a speech given by William Dudley of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 

"For small business borrowers, there are three problems. First, the fundamentals of their businesses have often deteriorated because of the length and severity of the recession—making many less creditworthy. Second, some sources of funding for small businesses—credit card borrowing and home equity loans—have dried up as banks have responded to rising credit losses in these areas by tightening credit standards. Third, small businesses have few alternative sources of funds. They are too small to borrow in the capital markets and the Small Business Administration programs are not large enough to accommodate more than a small fraction of the demand from this sector."

Whether you work in a small business or patronize one, it is an important article to reflect upon. Look at this chart that I've posted from the article and especially the results from 2007-2008.

Job losses from late 2007 through 2008 were 43% from businesses with less that 50 employees.

Let me pose a question. What if 43% of the stimulus money went to these small businesses. What do you think would have happened? Do you think those dollars would be sitting in a bank? I don't think so either. They would have been spent, and real stimulus and real economic strength would have been built.

Having spent the last fourteen years working with small businesses as an organizational consultant, my perspective is different than Washington's. I take a micro, localized view of the economy. Global businesses are not really global, but a collection of local economic operations. There maybe a global headquarters, but it nothing but a building with offices. The real economic engine of those companies is local. The global nature of them makes them efficient. But they are still localized operations where people go to work, pick up their pay check, deposit it in the bank and pay their mortgage, bills, insurance and buy food and other necessities for their families.

We live in a networked age. A local jewelry maker in Indonesia can sell her product line to customers in the US or Europe. She can because of the internet and the global reach of package companies like UPS and FedEx. Here a smart business person on one side of the world can have a successful company selling to people in a nation where 43% of the job losses in one 15 month period were from businesses virtually the same size as her's. What does this tell you about the business climate in the US today?

Linked is a New York Times article - Are Medium-Size Businesses the Job Creators? - that suggests that we should change the way we look at business size. Look at this chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that was included in the article.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (Numbers do not total 100 percent due to rounding.) Job Creation by Firms of Different Sizes, 1992-2008

What should those of us who are small business owners and serve small businesses take away from these two articles?

1. Scale matters. The most productive small companies in regard to job creation are those between 50 and 500 employees. If you are starting a business today. You should consider as a part of your business planning process what it would take to reach that threshold of 50 employees. In a number of client situations, the idea came to me that many of their problems would be solved by being just a little bit larger. Then the scale of costs would be more favorable for them.

What if you don't want to grow that large? What are you alternatives?

2. Collaboration leverages size for small businesses. Becoming a collaborative partner with other business provides a way to be big while remaining small. The skills and perspective required to be a good collaborator are not the same as being good at running a small business. 

What if you feel like you've reached a crossroads, a transition point, in both your business and professional life?

3. Impact determines what business you are in rather than the activities that you do.  To be successful today requires a change of mind about what business you are in. If you are in the business of providing the same products and doing the same services over and over again for customers, then you may find yourself irrelevant and out of business. However, if you understand the impact you want to create, then you can change your business and/or employment status to put yourself in the best possible position to achieve that impact. If this means that you close your small business and go to work for a medium size one, then that is what you do. In so doing we become a mission-driven workforce, rather than a job activity driven one.

My main concern is the lack of recognition by Washington of the situation of small business. This isn't a Democrat/Republican, or Bush/Obama issue. It is a national issue that is impacting people, families and communities across our nation. 

What if these are not my issues? What can I do to make a difference?

4. Support local small business groups in your local community. In most communities there is an economic development agency. Check with them and offer support to helping attract and support new business. Check and see if there is a local chapter of SCORE where you live. Offer to teach a class on some aspect of being a small business. Check and see if there is a micro-enterprise organization in your community. Each of these organizations provide help and support to small business. Get involved and you'll be strengthening your community.

Is small business at a crossroads? Based on these job numbers, I'd say yes. Support your local small business while we learn to make the changes that are necessary to survive in a very tough climate for business.

The Israeli Example

In the fall of 1981, I saw George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty, debate Lester Thurow, author of the Zero-Sum Society. Their discussion was about whether supply-side economics popularized during the Reagan years or Keynesian economics popularized during the Roosevelt years and now again in the Bush/Obama years were the route to economic growth and the alleviation of poverty. I left that evening convinced that Gilder was right and Thurow wrong; convinced that economics is not just about numbers but also about our philosophies about human nature and society. Nothing in the intervening 28 years has changed my mind.

Reading Gilder's essay - Silicon Israel - on the Israeli capitalist resurgence takes me back three decades. As a young guy in his twenties during the 1970s, I remember race, Vietnam and Watergate being the defining issues of my college years. I remember the lack of opportunity as high inflation made it difficult to find jobs. I remember the Carter years as lacking opportunity, of hope and a reason to believe that better years are ahead. Our time, now, reminds me of those days.

Some Context

Recently, I reflected on this with a friend in his mid-twenties. He started a business at the age of 18. He is in the process of selling it to another company, and is preparing the next chapter in his life. I have other friends in their twenties and thirties who have their own businesses. When I was their age I didn't know anyone in my peer group who had their own business. They were either still in school, worked for the family business or gone to work in a corporation. What changed this?

I attribute it to Ronald Reagan. His optimism and the embracing of supply-side economics raised the small business entrepreneur to a status equal to the large corporations. Then in the mid-80s, Peter Drucker published his influential Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the personal computer revolution began to take root, and the world changed. Large corporations like Microsoft, Intel, IBM and General Electric created products and services that elevated the ability of a small business owner to create a successful, sustainable business. Add to this the rise of venture capitalism, and an economic revolution took place that made the Clinton years the mirror opposite of the Nixon/Carter years.

Was there "irrational exuberance" and the creation economic bubbles that eventually burst? Yes, of course. But just as in the 1950s when the economy grew dramatically in large part because of the impact the G.I. bill that made it possible for World War II veterans to get a college education that previously many could not afford. So, took the 1990s were a time where to be an entrepreneur meant a world of opportunity at your doorstep.

Today, we have returned to the questions of the late 1970s. The debate between Gilder and Thurow still raises the questions that we must answer. What kind of society do we want. What is the nature of freedom, and the role of government in our lives?

Reflections

In reflecting on Gilder's article and the years since I heard him, here are some of my conclusions.

1. Our current financial crisis is not a failure of capitalism, but of the corrupting influence of politics into business. Where capitalism has been allowed to be practiced without government intrusion, it has been highly successful in transforming lives and communities for the good.

2. Government has a role in business, but a minimal one of creating trust, not insuring the financial survival on individual businesses. The actions of both the Bush and Obama administrations display a certain lack of faith in the system, a lack of clarity about the boundaries between business and government and is producing a delaying effect on recovery. People don't see economic recovery as represented by government action. What they see as recovery is new shops opening. New buildings going up. There family and friends getting new jobs. These are not developments that can be lead from Washington, but more from the state and the local level.  Specific micro-loans make a difference in creating the conditions for wealth to be created.  It is virtually impossible for this to be done at the macro-level of the nation.  

3. The lessons from the Reagan years are simple. Low taxes increase tax revenues through a growing economy. Higher government costs suppress economic growth because it removes capital from the system. This especially true in the relation between federal and state governments to local governments.

For example, the federal stimulus package is being used where I live to repair roads. Maybe the roads needed repair, maybe they didn't. The point is that this is a temporary stimulus. Once the roads are paved. It is back to where things were. The stimulus isn't building new roads to create new centers of economic life.

4. Small, entrepreneurial businesses are the life-blood of any healthy economy. It isn't because there are more of them. It is because these are the people who are taking risks to meet new market needs.  New ideas get tested in small businesses because the risks are lower. Governments discourage the creation of small businesses through higher taxes and intrusive regulations. 

The course we are on is a return to the 1970s, and not the future that Gilder outlines in his article on Israel. Real hope and change came to that nation. Read all of Gilder's article. It is an instructive study for how a nation can change. It should give us all hope that the same can happen here again as it once did.

Seth Godin's Wizardry Explained ... by Seth

I'm an avid reader of Seth Godin's books and blog. He is wise and insightful, and worth your time. Here's a video of Seth talking about his approach to the publication of his books. It is very much like peaking behind the curtain to see the Wizard of Oz.
Watch the video. It is a little over a half hour. Well worth your time. I'll comment afterward.

This really isn't about books. It is about the spread of ideas. This means this talk is for all of us who have never published a book. If you have an idea, share it. If you like someone else's idea, share it. If someone's idea has changed your life, tell that story.

Remember the book is the souvenir, not the product. The idea is the product and conversation the vehicle for sharing it. The book is just a marker to remind you of the idea's importance.

The Importance of Executive Experience

Donald Sensing writes an interesting and insightful post on President Obama as Chief Executive. He uses Mae West and the Peter Principle as his reference points for describing the President's performance in office.

We have here a Mae West presidency, which I illustrate with two quotes of the platinum blondeshell:

1. It's better to be looked over than overlooked.

2. There's no such thing as bad publicity.

And,

... the trip illustrates perfectly why the president is a premier example of the Peter Principle.

"The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter. ...

The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails.

I'm not totally convinced about the first assessment. Though after the last two weeks with the UN, the G-20 and the Olympics, I'm more open to the notion. 

I am very much convinced that the Peter Principle has come home to roost in the President. His lack of executive experience has been telling all along. The true believers won't buy this critique, but anyone who has had to run a business sees the tell-tale signs of inexperience.

Here are three examples of poor executive performance by the President.

1. Managing the budget. Many executives ascend to the highest office in their companies and take on the attitude that the budget is now their personal slush fund. Not only the rise in indebtedness, but the assumption that all our economic problems are solved by throwing money at them, is evidence of an inexperienced executive.

2. Growing the ranks of middle management. President Obama's use of executive czars is no different than adding more layers of management to a company's staffing chart. Obviously he doesn't know or understand what lean management means. In effect, the czars serve as unaccountable surrogates for the President. This weakens the chief executive officer's position making him more removed from the day-to-day happenings in the organization.

3. Leading by making hard decisions. This is one part of Sensing's post that I found most insightful as he writes about the relationship between Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower.

After John F. Kennedy was elected, President Dwight D. Eisenhower spent many hours with him. One of the key lessons was this: "All the decisions you will make," said Eisenhower, "will be hard decisions." Dwight went on to explain that the easy things will be tended to by cabinet secretaries and others of the administration with executive authority. But the tough ones will always be kicked to higher levels to be decided. At every level, the decisions become more and more difficult until, at last, the presidential inbox is filled with nothing but the most difficult items. 

Executive inexperience shows when the executive tries to do too much, tries to be too influential in too many areas, tries to push too many agendas, and consequently fails to maintain command of the big picture. This becomes a picture of a leader without focus or discipline.

From the Iowa caucuses through to today, my impression of Barack Obama is of a talented rhetorician, but not an executive. Unfortunately, making eloquent speeches is really a secondary task of the presidency. It can enhance or detract from the executive responsibilities, but being president is not the same as being the chief spokesperson for the American people.

President Obama will succeed or fail based on his executive abilities, not his politics or his rhetorical skills. He has much to learn, and little time to do so. 

HT: Instapundit