Avoiding the Obvious

I don't usually read Businessweek, and if Bill George is typical of the kind of author they publish with any frequency, I think that is probably a sound decision.

Barack Obama: A Leader for the 'We' Generation is a nauseated gush of emoting from George that one reads in building suspense, waiting for a punchline that never comes.

Somehow, the author pens a screed on Obama's executive leadership qualities that completely avoids discussing his one actual turn as an executive.

George trumpets the coming of the One as only a true believer can, beginning:

The sweeping victory of Barack Obama ushers in a new era of leadership that will affect every aspect of American institutions and that sounds a death knell for the top-down, power-oriented leadership prevalent in the 20th century.

A new style of "bottom-up, empowering" leadership focusing on collaboration will sweep the country. A new wave of 21st century authentic leaders will take oversee U.S. institutions of every type: business, education, health care, religion, and nonprofits. These new leaders recognize that an organization of empowered leaders at every level will outperform "command-and-control" organizations every time.

The 20th century leaders focused on money, fame, and power, earning the title of the "me" generation. Their leadership destroyed many great institutions, as evidenced by the failures of Enron, WorldCom, and dozens of companies like them. The recent fiascos on Wall Street can be traced to the failure of "me" leaders who put themselves ahead of their institutions.

Mr. George is a Harvard Business School professor of management practice and former CEO, but from his emotion-driven rhetoric, you have every reason to suspect you might have stumbled into the conspiracy-and-unicorn-laced Huffington Post by accident.

Bottom-up leadership is of course preposterous; the people at the bottom of business culture in companies both large and small are those that are either to inexperienced to have yet shown evidence of leadership, or are those who simply have no talent or "head" for it. As for a collaborative model of leadership, anyone who has participated in a PTA project or organizing a youth league team dinner knows that collaborative, decision-by-committee leadership immediately leads to paralysis and incompetence.

Or in other words, Congress.

But putting an inexperienced leader in charge is our pending Presidential reality, so perhaps George's praise of bottom-up leadership is a desperate bid for hope—but somehow, I don't think so. No, Mr. George clearly, has bought into hope as a business model. Even the MBAs at the Vatican won't go that far.

But what is most notable in George's praise of the kind of leadership Barack Obama's leadership will inspire, is his utter refusal to discuss Obama's singular, failed turn as an executive.

As I noted in the comment's of George's praise and worship piece:

Mr. George, it seems very significant omission that you failed to mention Obama's one actual executive leadership experience, the multi-million dollar failure known as the Chicago Annenburg Challenge (CAC).

The CAC was shut down after Obama and his mentor, a former domestic terrorist named Bill Ayers, helped funnel grant money to groups more interested in indoctrination than education (Ayers' Small School Workshop got more than $1 million). The Chicago school children that were supposed to be helped by more than $100 million in funds saw the bulk of it frittered away, with dismal results.

You cannot justify your grandiose claims based upon a thin record of proven failure, sir.

You own your readers an explanation, Mr. George, for providing them with unsound counsel.

Bill George doesn't want to discuss is Barack Obama's actual and proven record of failure in his only previous executive position.

Let's hope for our nation's sake that at least Obama has remained sober enough to realize that empty promises of hope and change are find for the stump, but hemlock in the boardroom.