Monthly Archives: March 2009

Madoff Accountant Friehling Could Be More Culpable Than Madoff

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If You Want the Swindlers, Get Their Accountants

“If you want the Mafia, get their lawyers,” explains Mitchell McDeere, formerly of Bendini, Lambert and Locke.

I think we’re missing the real villains in the Bernard Madoff affair. Madoff, in case you’ve been under a rock for the last few months, is the 70-year old investment fund head who just pled guilty to bilking investors out of $65 billion. (In reality, Madoff only bilked them out of the $17 billion they invested with him, not the $48 billion in imaginary profits.)

Without rehashing all of the details, suffice it to say that Bernard Madoff will be spending the rest of his life in prison – right where he belongs.

Let’s Not Stop at People Named Madoff

The swindled investors, understandably, want to squeeze the life out of everyone remotely related to Madoff. Besides Bernard Madoff, they want Ruth Madoff (Bernie’s wife and former employee). They want Mark and Andrew Madoff (Bernie’s sons and former employees). They want their pound of flesh from anyone whose name rhymes with Madoff. Though they’re missing the real villains.

The criminals they should be most angry with include the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the SEC employees who failed to investigate reports of the fraud… and Madoff’s accountant. (We’ll save our contempt for the SEC’s handling of this mess for a later post; today we’re focused on the accountant.)

No one seemed to care this past week when David G. Friehling, Madoff’s 49-year old accountant, turned himself in to authorities to face criminal charges for his role in helping Madoff get away with the biggest investment fraud in history.




If the allegations against Friehling are true, in many ways his activity is even more vile and despicable than Madoff’s. If the charges are true, he is the most culpable of all in my opinion. Friehling, you see, was tasked with auditing Madoff’s business dealings and certifying the results. Specifically, Friehling has been charged with falsely certifying that he had prepared Madoff’s audit statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Those statements were sent to the SEC and to Madoff’s clients.

Friehling Could Be Twice the Criminal Madoff Is

We know Madoff is a criminal; and we hate him because he violated a fiduciary duty he had to his clients. He is a disgusting human being who should feel the full force of the law against him. However, if Friehling is found guilty, he deserves more punishment than Madoff for two reasons: 1) He violated not only a fiduciary duty to Madoff’s victims, but a regulatory duty as well; and 2) We need to do whatever we can to prevent another Madoff situation in the future.

Friehling’s firm was Madoff’s accountant and sole auditor for at least 17 years. In that time, Madoff made billions, while Friehling merely made millions. The kind of greed that drove Madoff will not be easily swayed by a few perp walks and 10 years in jail. (As I mentioned, Madoff is 70 years old, so he’s probably got ten years left.) Anyone wishing to follow in Madoff’s footsteps might be willing to trade billions today for a possible, though not probable, jail sentence down the road.

If You Want the Swindlers, Get Their Accountants

We’re back to the concept introduced by Mitch McDeere… Without a CPA to certify the fraud, you cannot defraud at the level of Bernard Madoff; although the government doesn’t seem to understand this. (Much like FBI Agent Wayne Tarrance had trouble understanding the concept when McDeere first introduced it to him.)

Friehling is the only person besides Madoff to be charged in the fraud so far; though he was released after his arraignment on bail of $2.5 million. At 49 years old, he poses a much greater flight risk than Madoff… Friehling, you see, has something to lose: The rest of his adult life. He faces a maximum sentence of 105 years in prison if convicted on all counts. Not enough, I say, if the charges are true.

Friehling has been charged with securities fraud, aiding and abetting investment adviser fraud, and four counts of filing false audit reports with the SEC. And while both Madoff and Friehling deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison (if the allegations against Friehling are true), a greater example should be made of Friehling. His perp walks should be longer, his prison cell should be scarier and more bleak, and his name should become as well known as Madoff or Ponzi.

The same government that was asleep at the wheel during Madoff’s rise, should do everything in it’s power to prevent future Madoffs – and this means getting their accountants, and getting them good.

 

The Ten Best Decision Making Books of All Time

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The Ten Best Business Decision Making Books Ever Written

Gaining insight into how the editors of AskTheManager.com chose the Ten Best Decision Making Books Ever can itself be a lesson in decision making. While the list of qualified books on this subject is quite long, we decided early on to exclude any and all that read like an encyclopedia, dictionary or college textbook. While many of these types of books do provide useful decision making information, we decided we wouldn’t feel right sending our readers in search of dull or boring reads.

And just as we did with our popular Ten Best Leadership Books Ever, we struggled more with where to place each of the Top Ten on our list than we did deciding which titles actually made our Top Ten. After several heated discussions and lots of backroom deal making, we decided on the following order for the terrific tomes topping our list of The Ten Best Business Decision Making Books Ever Written:

10. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions; by Dan Ariely – A mostly fun read that details why we decide what we decide and when, Predictably Irrational immediately grabs your attention through a very strong and entertaining start. While this tome won’t necessarily turn you into a top decision maker overnight, it does offer insight into some of the most common and odd choices we make. From a purely social or behavioral economics standpoint, this book is nowhere near the read of Freakonomics, though its explanation and application of these economic principles detailing why people make irrational decisions easily earns it a spot on our Top Ten.


9. How We Decide; by Jonah Lehrer – Very much like Number 10 on our list, How We Decide introduces the reader to many concepts surrounding behavioral psychology and economics, and how these affect our decision making. Also like Number 10, this tome is loaded with entertaining information that will stimulate your thoughts about how we think and make decisions in response to the complex situations we face. While slightly more enjoyable than Predictably Irrational, this book still falls a little short at helping the reader uncover clear rules for making better decisions; and although both are very, very good and deserve their mention on this list, you only need to read one (you make the decision).

8. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People; by Stephen R. Covey – Number One on our list of the Ten Best Leadership Books of All Time, Covey’s coverage of Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind, earns him the right to crack this Top Ten list, as well. While not a primer on avoiding analysis paralysis or helping teams makes better decisions, the chapters covering Habit 2 in this book do provide a great lesson for anyone who’s known for making bad decisions. The best part about this title is it also provides the reader with a clear plan of attack for making and executing better decisions.

7. Blunder: Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions; by Zachary Shore – Using examples of some of the biggest blunders in history, Shore provides an entertaining, historical and hard-hitting examination of bad decisions. Probably due to Shore’s fantastic ability to tell a story, we fear we may have been too easily swayed by style and not substance in including this title in our Top Ten. That said, Shore provides enough practical thought (and some very concise causation theories) to carry this read.

6. Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions; by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa – One of the truest books ever to its title, Smart Choices is indeed a practical guide to making better decisions. Unlike some of the novel-like reads on this list, this book clearly outlines steps readers can take when faced with both minor and major decisions in their work and personal lives – and because the authors do so without sounding like academicians, it was an easy decision to add this to our Top Ten list. 

5. Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average; by Joseph T. Hallinan – As much as a title this long may make you want to skip to the last page just see how it ends, we advise against this because you’d miss a great read. Although Why We Make Mistakes takes us in a slightly different direction than many of the books on this list, it strikes a cord with us by proving that we are flawed and that internal changes aren’t enough to repair these flaws. (If nothing else, this read provides a classic example as to why so many books published in the last two years made this list: We are just now becoming aware of how we make decisions and what we can do to improve them.)

4. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior; by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman – Probably the quickest 224 pages you’ll ever read, Brothers Brafman deliver some very compelling arguments regarding our innate irrationality. Though very similar in content to Predictably Irrational, Sway stands on its own by never bogging the reader down in too much detail (while delivering enjoyable detailed analysis throughout). Overall, Sway does an excellent job of showing us how to make better decisions by understanding the irrational forces that want to sway us otherwise.

3. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement; by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox – A business classroom classic that was originally published in 1984 as part organizational management and part production operations management; this novel was one of the very first to use fiction to illustrate a business point. While the decision making lessons delivered here are often veiled in other concepts, the fictional factory turnaround that is engineered by the book’s protagonist provides a step-by-step plan for managers in crisis to follow when faced with difficult decisions. A must read for anyone in business. (Editor’s Note: We’re often asked which book would rank at Number 11 on our list of the best leadership books ever, and The Goal is clearly the favorite for that spot.)

2. Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators; by Patrick M. Lencioni – It’s one thing to rant about what’s wrong, it’s quite another to detail how to make things right. In Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the master at team dynamics Lencioni offers specific, practical advice for overcoming the five dysfunctions he details in his earlier book. And while many will argue this is strictly a book about leadership or team dynamics, we say then you’ve never really read it. Among other things, Lencioni’s advice expertly helps teams become more effective by making better decisions. Clearly the best book for improving team decision making and effectiveness ever published; earning it our Number 2 spot.

1. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking; by Malcolm Gladwell – You either love this book or you hate it; there is no middle ground with Blink. By naming this the Best Decision Making Book Ever, we know we’ve probably lost half our readership – of course, had we not named it Number One, we would have lost the other half. (Because we read Blink, we went with our gut and named it Number One.) On a serious note, Blink is one of those “must reads” for anyone in business… end of story. Not only because it explains the power and accuracy of first impressions, but because it also provides data and examples to prove that over-thinking our problems is often the problem. Analysis paralysis and self doubt are the greatest enemies of management decision making today and Gladwell cuts to the quick better than anyone ever has (or likely ever will). Read Blink, it will be the best decision you ever made.

…

On the bubble: Tipping Point; Freakonomics; Execution; and Gut Feelings.

Never even in the consideration set: Nudge and The Paradox of Choice.

NY Times Business Hardcover Best Sellers – March 2009

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New York Times – Hardcover Business Best Sellers – March 2009

 

The March 2009 New York Times Hardcover Business Best Sellers list looks a lot like what we saw in February. Just as last month began to (finally) reveal America’s concern over the economy, March continued this trend. While the March list contains no credible financial survival guides (sorry, Dave Ramsey, we’re not a fan), the The Great Depression Ahead, by Harry Dent vaulted to Number 2, while fellow gloom-and-doomer Paul Krugman, a former Nobel winner, saw his tome fall to Number 7.

 

It didn’t seem to matter that we warned you not to buy Dent’s book last month – we even pointed out that his previous book (The Next Great Bubble Boom: How to Profit from the Greatest Boom in History: 2006-2010) predicted the Dow would hit 40,000 in 2009 – you attacked Amazon and bricks-and-mortar retailers to push his latest prognostication-filled tome higher than it deserved. (Truthfully, his stuff doesn’t deserve to be anywhere on this list.)


 

Contrast Dent’s collection of more wild guesses with Number 1 on the NY Times’ list for the fourth consecutive month, Outliers. This is one great read and deserves a look by anyone interested in the psychology of success. (Outliers could very well be the best book released in 2008.) In Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell poses the question: why do some people succeed, while those with more talent, brains and/or brawn never reach their full potential? We don’t want to give away the answer here, so like we do with the rest of Gladwell’s work, the editors of AskTheManager highly recommend you read it for yourself.

 

After Outliers, the next best read on this month’s list is probably Number 15’s The Snowball by Alice Schroeder. Schroeder delivers the most recent in a long line of Warren Buffett biographies; and although the list is long, her book easily made our list of the Ten Best Warren Buffett Books of all time.

 

The Top Five – NY Times Business Hardcover Best Sellers March 2009 (to view the entire list, follow this link):

 

This
Month

 

Last
Month

1

OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) Why some people succeed — it has to do with luck and opportunities as well as talent — from the author of “Blink” and “The Tipping Point.”

1

2

THE GREAT DEPRESSION AHEAD, by Harry S. Dent Jr. (Free Press, $27.) A financial prognosticator anticipates further market crashes and an extended downturn, but sees a way for savvy investors to prosper.

6

3

THE BIG RICH, by Bryan Burrough. (Penguin Press, $29.95.) The four wealthiest Texas oil families across several generations.

 

4

THE TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER, by Dave Ramsey (Thomas Nelson, $24.99.) Debt reduction and fiscal fitness for families, by the radio talk-show host. (†)

3

5

HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED, by Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.95.) How a green revolution can renew America, by the New York Times columnist.

2

 

Salespeople Need More Leadership, Not More Technology

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Too Much Technology…

When working to help an underperforming business unit (in my real job) grow their revenues, I always discover instances where the unit has purchased some widget, gadget or other magic bullet designed to help them sell more.

Although well-meaning, the manager who made this purchase generally believed against all his or her own better judgment and experience that this solution would enjoy high adoption and utilization, and would deliver the desired results with little or no work required. Given a warm welcome by the sales team, this manager was certain that the worm would soon turn, and that the good times were just around the corner.

… Not Enough Reality

Usually between six hours and six months of the initial purchase, the manager believes they were taken. The widget does not perform as demonstrated. Their team is not selling any more (and maybe selling less) as a result of adding this technology and expense. What gives?

The truth is that while there are certainly technologies that have made a salesman’s job easier; sales still requires people to do work. Products that still involve salesmanship – cars, real estate, personal services, home repair – also require that those gifted with salesmanship work to leverage technology to their advantage.

Generally, these overbought and underutilized tools are CRM-related. CRM, it seems, is the greatest underutilized business technology “in use” today. In fact, we once discovered that one of our business units was paying for eight different, yet overlapping, CRM tools… and none of them was helping drive any incremental business.

CRM Does Not Mean What You Think

Twenty years ago, great salesmen used 3X5 cards and small plastic boxes as their CRM tools. They organized their prospects and were tenacious at follow up. They used these boxes and their day-timers to remind them to send letters and birthday cards, and to remember the names of a customer’s wife and children. Today, we expect technology to take the place of this tenacity – we expect that technology can replace people and process.

While a great CRM tool might help an organized person stay organized, it offers nothing for the disorganized. Likewise, CRM falls well short of getting lazy salespeople to care, or the sales laggards to do something (anything!). More often than not, bad salespeople spend an inordinate amount of time trying to game the system. (If they just used this time for good, rather than evil, they’d be superstars.)

Because of this, CRM tools are the biggest rip-off in business today. Too many business owners and business leaders have spent too much to equip their teams with expensive tools to manage customer databases, only to have the great procrastinators (salespeople) destroy real progress by failing to complete even very simple steps. I am convinced that you could take away any underperforming business unit’s CRM tools and provide that same sales team with index cards and pens, with the end result being better sales numbers than are realized today.

While the acronym CRM (which stands for Customer Relationship Management) is meant to describe the means a company or salesperson uses to manage their customer relationships, the onslaught of underutilized tools led us to coin the memorable (if not a bit hokey) phrase “Crutches Require Muscle” so those purchasing new CRM software would understand that assembly is required and magic bullets are not included.


As sales leaders, our goal has to be to make certain that everyone and anyone on the sales side understands that you cannot successfully manage customer relationships without work – hard, sometimes tedious work.

Crutches Require Muscle: Two Real Life Examples

Next week, my family will have an invisible fence installed in our home. We own a couple of small dogs, and these little buggers have figured out how to burrow under our traditional fence. After coming home too many times to notes on our door that read “Your dogs got out again. We have them at our house,” we’ve decided to spend a few bucks on shock collars and electric barriers to keep our pets (and neighbors) safe.

Because this is the first time we’ve ever had to purchase something like this, we sent price quote requests (via email) to seven local invisible fence companies who operated websites. These seven are using technology (the Internet, email and CRM) to their advantage, we figured, so we expected quick and complete responses.

Long story short, we received three automatic responses (43%) to our inquiries and only one of the original seven (14%) bothered to personally follow up with a price. We heard nothing from four companies (57%). This is pathetic, of course, because these seven companies are spending thousands each year on technology designed to capture more business, yet only one of the seven bothered to add people and process to the mix in an attempt to gain our business. The other six likely believe that their websites and CRM tools are magic bullets designed to deliver millions into their bank accounts with little or no work.

Can you guess which of the seven companies is installing our invisible fence next week?

Sylvan Learning Centers Need to Learn Something Themselves

CRM real life example number two: On a recent Thursday afternoon, one of our sons (we have three) brought home a mid-term “D” in English. We were shocked, scared and mortified for two reasons: 1) none of our sons has ever delivered anything below a B+; and 2) the boy speaks English, doesn’t he?

In our momentary horror, we were convinced that the best thing for this likely slacker was for him to get professional help (clearly his teachers, and especially his parents, were doing a poor job). We immediately sought an afterschool tutoring program that could release this young man from the dark side and make him our son once again.

A quick Google search yielded a sponsored link to Sylvan Learning Centers – hey, I’ve heard of them – so I submitted an online request to have my local Sylvan office contact me with pricing and other information. I was clearly desperate in my initial plea. Not surprisingly, the CRM tool used by Sylvan immediately fired off an automatic response that gave me confidence: My boy will read again, I cried. Here is the reassuring auto-response I received:

Thank you for your spending time with Sylvan’s website today. Whether your child needs to improve a report card, get ahead in math, end homework struggles or prepare for college, Sylvan can help.

Please keep this e-mail for your records; below is the contact information for your local Sylvan Learning Center:

Your local Sylvan is located at: (followed by the local center’s various contact info)

Visit your local Sylvan’s website often; you’ll find information about news and events, hours of operation and if they offer live, online tutoring from the comfort of home. You may want to even bookmark it!

Thank you again for visiting Sylvan’s website. We look forward to serving your family in the near future.

Your friends at Sylvan Learning®.

Awkward first sentence aside, I was convinced that my son was not going to have to ride the short bus after all.

Sylvan is on the Case

I heard nothing from my local Sylvan center the next day (Friday), though I was not concerned. Surely, they are so busy turning around the lives of so many children that they’re just a little behind in checking their emails.

At exactly 1:29 AM Saturday morning I received the following email (names and locations changed to protect the guilty):

I’m John Doe, Center Director from your Anytown center. Thank you for contacting us regarding your child’s learning needs. Your recent inquiry has been marked for our immediate attention, and one of my staff members will be contacting you shortly. If you have a preferred method for contacting you, please reply to this email with your preferred contact information. We look forward to talking with you soon.

Wishing you and your student success,

John Doe

Center Director

I was starting to get concerned, because they certainly must think we are all a family of morons if they believe they can fool us into thinking someone is sitting at our local Sylvan center sending out emails just after the bars close.

Although I responded to this email with very specific needs, no one on Mr. Doe’s staff ever bothered to respond, though I did receive the following automatic email on the following Monday afternoon:

I hope one of my staff members from Anytown Sylvan center was able to resolve your questions or concerns. Please reply to this email if you still have outstanding items you would like to discuss, and we will contact you as soon as possible. Thank you for your interest in Sylvan.

Wishing you and your student success,

John Doe

Center Director

I responded to this email immediately, and have yet to hear anything from them. It’s now been over a month.

As frustrating as this process was, it forced me to help my son with his English, and he is now back to a solid B – not great, but also not summer school material.

How to Guarantee Utilization

How much revenue could Sylvan have realized from my family over the next 10 years? If they were successful in helping this son with his English grades, would we not use them to help our other sons improve something? In my estimation, this local Sylvan center lost a minimum of $10,000. If you multiply that by the hundreds of other potential customers with similar experiences you begin to get into some real money.

The issues in these two real life examples are not caused by bad CRM tools, rather these instances point to a sales leadership void within these organizations. Without leadership, these organizations have too much technology. Case in point: if none of these businesses attempted to employ CRM tools, I would have been forced to call them, and chances are they might have answered the phone.

What can a leader do to guarantee utilization of tools designed to help an organization close more sales and drive more revenue? Accountability.

It’s a cliché, but your team will truly respect what you inspect. (By the way, we generally hate sayings like this, because people assume they’re true simply because they rhyme. “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” could have just as easily been “if you killed your ex-wife, you’re gonna do life.”) Inspecting the daily inputs and outputs of your salespeople, and then holding them accountable for employing the designated processes for prospecting and managing customer relationships, can change everything virtually overnight.

The truth is that most salespeople are lazy. They expend more energy avoiding work than they would have to use if they just completed tasks as designed.

Salespeople need more leadership, not more technology.

 

The Great Necession: Leading in Tough Economic Times

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It’s not a Recession, It’s a Necession

Anyone bothering to pay attention to what’s happening with consumer spending in the current recession can note one trend: that is, even those consumers who are likely to be unaffected by the economic downturn are helping fuel the recession because they’ve gone into wallet lockdown. They’ve declared that we are in the Great Necession of 2009.

While one could argue that in a free market no job is ever really safe, 92% of Americans who want a job, have a job. Moreover, most of those same 92% are likely to have little disruption to their income streams over the foreseeable future.

So why does the housing market continue to tank and why are new car sales sitting at their lowest levels in decades? People have been scared into a Necession.

Forget for a moment that the credit markets have tightened; there aren’t any tire-kickers on dealer lots or looky-loos at the Sunday open houses to apply for credit. Why? Because no one in their right mind is going to buy a new car or house until they need to buy one.

How do you know we’re in a Necession?

Traditional large discretionary purchases (like cars, boats, vacation homes) are based on emotion and impulse, not on necessity. Cars, for example, are built to last for a decade or more, yet many Americans habitually traded in their cars every 18 to 36 months. This is what fueled more than 16 million new car purchases a year as recently as 2006. (Read our related post on the auto industry here.) We’re now at half that amount; and because of the Great Necession of 2009, we predict the auto industry won’t see the 16 million mark again before 2020. People just don’t need to buy a new car, regardless of the availability of credit, and now they know that.

The economic realities of today have taught those of us who’ve lost jobs and those of us with good jobs that we need to live within our means. One colleague recently told me he will never again have a monthly financial commitment (he called it his “monthly nut”) greater than he can cover working for minimum wage. I believe him. His spending paradigm has been forever shifted from one of excess to one of “necess.” He is a New Era Necessionist, helping fuel the Great Necession.

How to Lead in a Necession




The unfortunate reality of being in a Necession is that even when the credit markets relax and the layoffs subside, retail spending will not return for a very long time. Consumer confidence may return, but consumer spending – that is, spending like drunken sailors on shore leave – will not. The generation that lives through the Great Necession will be much like the one that lived through the Great Depression: they will change their habits forever for fear of a return to bad times.

The only remedy for leaders is to instill confidence. You must reek of confidence when dealing with your acquaintances, your employees and your customers. (It certainly doesn’t help when the media seeks a negative slant to every story – but great leaders know to control what they can control, and to limit the influence of that which they cannot.)

People are simply not productive when they fear their jobs are in jeopardy. Lacking confidence, otherwise sane managers can literally become paranoid – rendering them ineffective. The rumor mill – fueled by negative thoughts and doomsday predictions from the rank and file – runs rampant. Job dissatisfaction from an uncertain future begets customer dissatisfaction; while customer dissatisfaction begets even lower sales, leading to a further erosion of employee confidence.

It’s our job as leaders to keep all of this from happening. So let’s agree on few easy paradigm shifts:

  1. The times are challenging, but our future looks great. Believe this and live this, then use this as a standard reply to anyone (especially employees and customers) enquiring about your business.
  2. The best part about a recession is the thinning of the herd. You need to believe this and live this, as well. Feel free to speak to your employees in these terms and let them know you appreciate their hard work, because it is their hard work that will help them and everyone else at your company keep their jobs.
  3. We cannot wish our way back to prosperity. Too often we see managers looking for magic pills to solve a crisis. The truth is that anything worthwhile takes hard work – otherwise, everyone could do it. You need to gain a solid commitment to best practices from everyone in order to save your company.
  4. Sales cures all ills. While it was this very saying that partially got us into this mess (we didn’t realize we had bad leaders, because times were good and revenues were growing), returning our teams to a “selling culture” is one of the quickest ways to right any ship. Unfortunately, many businesses have focused too heavily on cost-cutting and not enough on the fundamentals of selling. Get your teams back to basics: focus on selling activities, not results, so that when the market turns, your team will get more than their share.

 

Leadership Development Blogwatch – March 2009

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Best of the Leadership Development Blogs

Whenever we’re unsure about whether we’re including too much leadership development and not enough general business fun and digression on AskTheManager.com, we develop the latest Leadership Development Blogwatch and realize that the blogosphere is so filled with junk science, juvenile opinions and professional hucksters that we should almost be forced to include more about how to develop the next generation of leaders and less of the fluff.

Lucky for us (and you) there are a few great leadership writers on the Web who crank out some terrific advice. This time around, we found a few gems including great articles from the likes of Paul MacDonald and Dan McCarthy (among others), and a couple of worthy posts from our friends at Catch Your Limit Consulting:

Reverse Mentoring

Catch Your Limit Consulting is a strategic management and marketing firm headquartered in Tallahassee, Florida with an office in Richmond, Virginia. …

Striking the right chord  

When I was in high school, (and now, whenever I have the time to enjoy it), my life was music. On any given day, I’d spend at least 3 hours playing my …




Leaders on Leadership: Your Experience + The Leadership Talk …
Collaboration: An Important Leadership Development… Building Trust in the Workplace: A Valuable Topic … Modern Managers Need Leadership Skills · The Listening Leadership Talk · Home-Based Business Leadership Skills …

Great Leadership: Where Have All the Leaders Gone? Open Your Eyes …
In my work, having been responsible for leadership development at three different companies, I see and hear about them every day. It’s a common practice for leaders to take “360 degree” assessments, where they collect feedback from …

Leadership Development Blog » Liars and Outliers – By Envisia Learning
HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER. Title: Outliers. Competency: self-development, coaching talent (especially those entering the workforce), performance evaluation, career management …

Intentional Leadership: Chesley Sullenberger: A True Leader
Strategies for Leadership Development in Lean Time… Setting Personal Goals · My (Crazy or Arrogant?) Views on Organizational Cu… Strategic Silence · National Day of Listening · What do Great Leaders Do? …

Traits of a Bad Boss : Industrial Market Trends
The result of hiring unprepared managers or promoting employees to managerial positions without providing proper guidance: “Effective leadership development can ultimately make or break a company’s performance,” …

Succession: Are You Ready? Tackles Toughest Management Challenge
Marshall Goldsmith’s blog from Amazon.com. Goldsmith has been heralded as one of 50 great thinkers and leaders who have influenced the field of management over the past 80 years, while Business Week listed him as one of the most influential practitioners in the history of leadership development. …

Survival Leadership: The Effects of Layoffs on Surviving Employees
Survival Leadership. Leadership Development from a Top Executive Coach. Also, visit www.SteveGladis.com. Leading in a Downturn Economy. Leading in a Downturn Economy Survival Leadership.

Breaking Barriers: “Manage Like There Will Be A Tomorrow”
Dr. Jesse Sostrin is a sought after consultant and speaker working at the intersection of personal and professional development. He is the founder and president of Sostrin Consulting, an organization and leadership development firm …

Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog @ LeadershipNow: Lincoln’s Lessons …
Books · Change · Communication · Creativity & Innovation · Education · Ethics · Five Lessons · Followership · General Business · Government · Human Resources · Interviews · Leaders · Leadership · Leadership Development …

Successful Managers Handbook Develop Yourself Coach Others
D. Bradford Neary Director, Executive & Leadership Development Medtronic, Inc. “No manager’s toolkit should be without it…indispensable.” — Greg Schaefer Manager, Curriculum Development Learning & Development Rockwell Collins …

 

A Snow Decision is No Decision When the Decision Comes Too Late

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Leadership Lessons from Snow Days in Georgia

(My apologies as I get a little local here, but this stuff really ticks me off.)

It snowed in Georgia yesterday; this is news. Some towns, like Athens, received as much as six inches of snow. Gwinnett County, Georgia (north of Atlanta) got a little more than an inch. To anyone living in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia or Buffalo this wouldn’t be considered anything more than a dusting. To Georgia, this is a major event. This is big news.

As my kids played in an inch-and-a-half of the white stuff yesterday, they continued to ask if school was going to be canceled on Monday. This was 6:30 PM Sunday – and over an hour had passed since the last flake fell in our yard – of course the schools would be open. The roads were clear and the great melting had already begun. Certainly there would be school on Monday.

When we sat down to dinner at 7:30 the kids scanned the local television channels; searching for signs that the Gwinnett County Public Schools would be shuttered in the face of this massive storm.

After dinner, they were surfing the Web for any indication that they could stay up late tonight and sleep in tomorrow. No such luck: the Gwinnet County Schools had announced that they were going to brave the elements and open their doors in the morning. By 9:00 PM the situation remained unchanged. School was on and they were bound for bed. Sure, forecasters expected temperatures to drop below freezing overnight, but school was a go, and these kids were going.

Great Leaders are known for being Great Decision Makers

I hate to break it to you, but the people running our public schools (the district administrators) are generally not great leaders. More often than not they are former educators with so many college degrees that their email signatures take four lines. That’s the problem with administrators: most of them have spent their entire lives in the education system and not a minute in the real world. They’ve never had to live by a P&L or make real personnel decisions. They spend our tax dollars like Monopoly money, and they do all of this with no real accountability.




If they were truly great leaders, they wouldn’t be educators. As noble as the teaching profession is meant to be, our education system is filled with people too afraid to face the business world; too afraid to chase dreams; too afraid to take even minimal risk. A teaching degree is the safest college degree one can achieve. A degree in education is one of the few degree programs (like medicine and law) with a guaranteed title waiting for you on the other end. “In four years, I’ll be a teacher.” “In six years, I’ll be a lawyer.” “In eight years, I’ll be a doctor.”

Deciding to become an educator, like deciding to become a doctor or a lawyer, is safe. Unlike doctors and lawyers, teachers never really put much on the line after college. They move into a union job with no real chance of ever being fired; regardless of their level of incompetence. And, if they’re really incompetent, they can aspire for management.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, become administrators.

Great Leaders consider all the Stakeholders

Okay, back to the Great Georgia Blizzard of 2009 as the local news stations are just dying to call it. When we went to bed last night, there was no chance school was to be canceled. We made our plans for today based on this knowledge and drifted off to sleep.

5:30 AM comes fast sometimes, and this morning was no different. Rushing around the house as usual, I woke my oldest son and told him to start getting ready. (His bus arrives just after six.)

After showering and shaving (though not in that order), I turned on the TV for background noise as I got dressed. While the local anchors were marveling over the white stuff as if it was an alien sighting, I heard something that shocked me.

“We repeat: Fulton County, DeKalb County and Gwinnett County Schools are closed today…” they exclaimed.

While I knew my kids would be thrilled, I wondered how this would affect families with two working parents. The businesses in and around Gwinnett County, you see, are open today. Had the bureaucrats of the Gwinnett County School District made this decision while it was still snowing more than twelve hours ago, parents could have made plans to take care of their homebound children. Now many of them will be stuck with tough a decision: do they miss work, or do they leave their kids home alone?

Great Leadership is about Looking Ahead

While we can debate all day about whether or not school should have been canceled in the wake of a storm that “dumped” a miniscule amount of snow, the real issue lies in the fact that J. Alvin Wilbanks, the Gwinnett County Schools superintendent, and his team waited to announce the school closings until well after every student and parent in the district had gone to bed. We single out Wilbanks, a lifelong educator and student who does not have any school-age children, because he is in charge. He actually holds the title of CEO for the Gwinnett County Public Schools, so like all CEOs; the buck should stop with him.

The argument from the school bureaucrats is that the roads became icy overnight; forcing the school closures in the name of safety. Noble reason, indeed; and one with which we probably agree, if not for the timing.

For us, this begs the question: In all the years Wilbanks was in school, teaching school, and administering schools, did he never learn that temperatures generally drop overnight? Was it a shock to Wilbanks’ staff to learn that water freezes when the thermometer drops below 32 degrees Fahrenheit? Did no one consider that the melting snow at 6:30 PM Sunday would turn to ice by 5:30 AM Monday? Didn’t anyone bother to check the Weather Channel?

The drop from 34 degrees last evening to 25 this morning was no surprise; it was accurately predicted. Had Wilbanks or his team bothered to look ahead and consider all of the data, the working parents of Gwinnett County would have had plenty of time to make proper arrangements for their children.

As unsafe as it might have been to run the buses this morning, it is equally unsafe to have hundreds of kids home alone today. Let’s hope for everyone’s sake that unlike the Great Georgia Blizzard of 2009, nothing newsworthy happens to the children fending for themselves in big empty houses.