Category Archives: Leadership Observations

Assorted musings about miscellaneuos observations in the world of management and leadership.

Some People Should Be Allowed To Quit – Coughlin’s Law Can Always Take Over

Posted on by
Reply

Coughlin’s Law: Bury the Dead

People leave, let’s get over it. Gone are the days when a man arrives for work in the factory two days after his high school graduation and leaves forty years later with a gold watch. The American career path hasn’t included this scenario since before Lyndon Johnson took office. Over the last 40 years, American workers and American businesses have had an arrangement: Every man for himself.

For some reason, the most senior leaders of my company just don’t understand this.

We recently had an executive announce he was moving on; he no longer felt like there was a “fit” for him in our organization. He held no ill will for the company, but recent changes just made it difficult for him to continue in his capacity. In reality, he was doing what was best for him and the company. Besides, his employment was always, by law, considered to be “at-will.”

Our senior leadership was immediately filled with a strange hatred for this “traitor.” Like Bo Schembechler uttering that “a Michigan Man will coach Michigan” when then Michigan basketball coach Bill Frieder was talking to Arizona State in 1989, and Bo swiftly fired him (assistant coach Steve Fisher took over and won the national championship that season), our senior leadership began to treat this previously invaluable executive as some sort of leper. He became persona non grata overnight.

There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys. There’s only you and me and we just disagree. – Dave Mason

The Company Owes You Nothing

It’s important to note that my company’s leadership has eliminated more than one thousand jobs over the last fifteen months amid the current recession. This doesn’t make them villains; they did this in the best interest of the shareholders. This, you see, is their duty.


The one thousand plus newly unemployed soles may not like it, but the company owed them nothing. There was no contract between the parties that guaranteed a lifetime of employment. There couldn’t be; not if we want businesses to succeed and create jobs and pay taxes. (It’s important to note that nearly every one of those who were laid off received severance packages better than that which they were due. The company did right by these employees.)

You Owe the Company Nothing

Just as your at-will employment can be terminated by the company for no cause, you have the right to walk when you want. You owe them nothing. The minute you begin to think differently, it’s time for you to consider a career change.

While on the payroll – and especially when you’re in a leadership position – you owe your company your best efforts, which include leading with integrity. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that your integrity is critical to delivering great leadership. A duplicitous heart lacks integrity, and you have to be dedicated to your company’s well-being if you expect to be taken seriously as a leader.

That said, the minute you’re ready to go, you need to go, and you need not look back. It’s just sad that the alleged mature leaders in your company will likely treat you as someone taking part in some strange industrial espionage ritual.

Why Can’t Life Imitate Art?

Bryan Brown’s Doug Coughlin said it best in 1988’s Cocktail: “Coughlin’s Law: Bury the dead. They stink up the joint.” Companies and leaders need to figure this out and get over the natural turnover that occurs in American business today. People leave, it doesn’t make them the enemy. It does, however, make you look like an ass when you overreact to it.

Stop Chasing and Start Leading – Leadership Lessons from the NHL

Posted on by
Reply

Last night the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Detroit Red Wings 2-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals to win the coveted Stanley Cup. Both teams deserved to be there, both played well throughout the season, and – as evidenced by a Game 7 in a best-of-seven-series – both teams were evenly matched.

Both teams were so evenly matched, in fact, that the same two teams had faced off last year for a shot at Lord Stanley’s Cup. In 2008, the Red Wings were victorious, defeating the young Penguins in a Game 6 triple overtime thriller. After their heartbreaking loss, one Pittsburgh player, Marian Hossa, was offered a five-year, $35 million dollar deal to remain with the team. He declined; shocking nearly everyone in the hockey world by instead choosing to sign a one-year deal with the champion Red Wings. Hossa, you see, wanted to win a championship.

The Best Laid Plans…

As we learned in the first sentence of this post, Hossa’s old team defeated Hossa’s new team for the 2009 Stanley Cup. Hossa chased the Cup and fell short. The prevailing thought is that he screwed up – that if he’d stayed in Pittsburgh he would be on the winning side. Of course, nothing happens in a vacuum, and Hossa’s departure surely led to other changes with the Penguins that may have contributed to their ultimate victory. That’s only speculation. The fact is that Hossa – so focused on winning a championship – couldn’t see the bright future ahead for the Penguins. He chased the Cup and (predictably) did not catch it.

Leaders Don’t Chase, They Lead

It’s strange that a hockey player would make such a mistake. From very early on in youth hockey, players are taught to skate to where the puck will be, not where it is. Players who skate directly after a moving puck become very tired, very quickly… and they never get the puck. “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been,” Wayne Gretzky once intelligently stated. Hossa, we learned, skated to where the Cup had been, and away from where it was going to be.


Leaders don’t always know where the puck is going to be, but they do recognize that chasing things (especially shiny objects like the Stanley Cup) is fruitless and akin to a dog chasing its own tail. Leaders understand the goal and weigh decisions against it. Those activities that take them closer to the goal are good; those that don’t are bad. Leaders also understand their team’s capabilities, strengths and weaknesses; and they are able to project where their team will be at this time next year.

To See the Future, You Have to Look

With arguably the sport’s two greatest talents (Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin) and a young stud goalie (Marc-Andre Fleury) already on the roster, one would think Hossa would have seen Pittsburgh’s bright future and stayed. During the six games as a Penguin in the 2008 Stanley Cup finals, Hossa scored 3 goals and had 4 assists. In his seven games as a Red Wing in this year’s finals, he scored no goals and had just 3 assists. Pundits speculate that the pressure of his decision got to him. Understanding what makes leaders and non-leaders tick, we believe he performed poorly because of his desperation to win a championship; the same desperation that led him to chase instead of lead. The kind of desperation common in poor leaders.

Why We Don’t Have Leaders in the Public Sector

Posted on by
Reply

Leadership Lessons from the Public Sector

There are reasons some people are lifelong public servants and others work in the real world. Whether it’s the military, public education, a state legislature or a municipal government: a job void of profit responsibility is generally void of any true accountability. Without accountability, leadership can become unnecessary and the skill set (if it ever existed) will atrophy.

As we wrote in a recent post about school administrators, the people in these roles “are generally not great leaders… 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.”

Examples of this abound and we never have to look very far to reinforce this belief. Occasionally, some move by one of these leadership amateurs so shocks our conscience that we feel compelled to comment… much like a recent decision by management at an Atlanta-area county office that actually made us cringe.

Layoffs Happen

Last Friday in DeKalb County (GA), workers in the planning and development office were told there were significant layoffs coming and that they would have to wait until Monday to learn their fate.




Nothing strange here, right? Layoffs are happening all over America in the private sector, so it seems natural that these would eventually reach those working in a cash-strapped county office. The differences, however, between this layoff and those that are occurring in the real world are the communication skills and compassion shown by DeKalb County’s managers.

The 100+ employees in this office were told to return any county equipment and pack up their belongings and leave… without being notified if they were included in the layoff or not. You see, their managers wanted everyone out first, and then they would tell the lucky few (19 to be exact) to return with their things and resume their duties.

WTF?

(Excuse the texting in the middle of a post, but WTF? does not mean Wednesday, Thursday, Friday; and its use is appropriate in this case.)

While leaders in the private sector are often (rightfully) accused of being less compassionate than their public sector counterparts, employee relations as practiced by DeKalb County went the way of the three-martini lunch in the real world. Thankfully, the fear of lawsuits or bad public relations helps to keep this behavior out of the for-profit companies. When it happens in the public sector, we have little recourse but to strongly denounce it.

Okay, We Denounced It

We didn’t raise this example to simply call attention to the lousy leadership provided by government entities in the Atlanta area. Rather, we believed this instance was simply another glaring illustration of how the lack of a profit motive coupled with a promotional system based on tenure (instead of ability or merit) leads to poor leadership, morale and employee effectiveness. (If you’ve ever had to get your driver license renewed, you know exactly what we mean.)

Leaders need accountability, goals and responsibilities – complete with consequences – in order to grow and deliver value to their organizations. Where we fail to provide these to our middle managers, you can argue we end up operating like a government agency.

What About the 100 People Carrying Boxes Filled with Desk Chachki?

DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis stepped in and said he was dissatisfied with how the process was being managed and ordered a delay of the layoffs. (We’re not sure why a county needs a CEO, but we’re glad someone with authority in the county has a little common sense.) The delay, however, will be a short one. Plans are in the works to save more jobs, but DeKalb’s planning and development office will deservedly lose more than half its current workforce… they’ll just do it with a little more dignity.

Lazy Kids and the End of Entrepreneurship in America

Posted on by
5

The Future of Entrepreneurship in America

I noticed something strange while sitting on my front porch today: A professional landscaping crew of seven had descended on my cul-de-sac to industriously cut the lawns and trim the bushes at my home and the homes of my neighbors on either side.

While this same event happens twice each week during this time of year, it finally struck me as odd today when I realized that there were children of lawn-mowing-age living under our very roofs. In fact, of the eight kids occupying our three homes, five of them are old enough to mow lawns. (While I began mowing neighborhood lawns for cash at 9, I am only counting those kids 11 and above as being of lawn-mowing-age.)


Help Wanted: Lawn Mowing Tweens and Teens

It’s not like we never offered to let our children mow our lawns for cash. I have offered, begged, cajoled and even pleaded with both of my sons of lawn-mowing-age to let me keep the cash in the family. My oldest mowed twice last year, though once he had earned enough cash to acquire whatever video game he simply had to have at the moment, he lost interest. (We “allowed” him to lose interest because he seemed unwilling or unable to edge or trim; a feature we enjoy with our current professional landscapers.) Likewise, my neighbors have used every tactic known to mankind to see their kids on the business end of a lawnmower, all with no luck.

Something has changed over the past few decades. While I’d prefer not to sound like my father or grandfather and lament about how “this generation blah, blah, blah;” it’s important to mention that my current neighbors and I literally fought with kids in our respective neighborhoods to mow the lawns, trim the bushes or shovel the snow of childless homeowners back in the 1970’s and 80’s.

What does all of this mean?

The End of Entrepreneurship in America

American fathers and mothers of school-aged children should sit down when they read this: Your kids are destined to lead a life of indentured servitude. They don’t share the American Dream that made Gates a billionaire and Obama a President. They want everything handed to them, and that simply will not happen in the real world.

I wish the news was better, but it seems they are lazy and they are ungrateful and they’ve lost the Great American Spirit and innate entrepreneurship that built such lasting companies as Lehman Brothers, WorldCom and Enron.

The good news is that they can always get jobs as landscapers.

Proper Filenames are Critical to Proper Business Etiquette

Posted on by
Reply

 

Sometimes You Have to be a Prick to Those Outside of Your Company

 

I just received the March 2009 purchase report from one of our company’s 50+ vendors who provide such recaps. This particular vendor chose to name the file MyCompanyMarch.xls. By “MyCompanyMarch,” I mean he put the name of my company and the month in the filename… and nothing else. I could scream. What in the world was he thinking? Clearly, he was not.

 

Imagine if all of the vendors we dealt with used the same filename nomenclature as this self-centered simpleton. If that were the case, I’d have more than fifty files on my laptop all named MyCompanyMarch.xls. Now imagine if we’d been doing business with these fifty-odd companies for a number of years; I could potentially have hundreds of files all named MyCompanyMarch.xls. Suppose I needed to find the March 2006 recap from Vendor Z; could I easily locate this file? Of course it would be cumbersome, because this vendor wasn’t thinking of the audience when he named his file, just himself.

 

Yeah, But the Vendor Can Find the File

 

When this vendor peruses through his files, he’ll easily spot the one he sent me this week. The data will be at his fingertips and he can look like a hero to anyone who asks him to retrieve it. He named the file for himself, not me. Of course, if he plans to keep his job longer than 12 months he should add the year to his filenames. Though I doubt he’ll still be employed next April. On the off chance he is, I wonder if his March 2010 recap to me will be named MyCompanyMarch2010.xls. Probably not; it’s likely that someone this unthinking will never bother to change the way they do something as meaningless as naming files.

 

(Of course, naming files is not meaningless. I just wrote that to see if you were paying attention.)


 

Using Proper Filenames is Critical to Maintaining a Free Society

 

Filenames on your computer, whether they are monthly recaps for your customers or your resume for a prospective employer, should reflect not only what you want to know about the file, but more importantly, what the intended audience wants to know about the file. Here are some examples of bad filenames (all of which I have received) and better alternatives:

 

  • Bad filename: MyResume.doc. Good filename: Smith.John.Resume.doc.
  • Bad filename: CustomerNameMonth.xls. Good filename: VendorName.CustomerName.Description.MMYYYY.xls (for example: AcmeWidgets.WidgetRetailer.OrderHistory.032009.xls).
  • Bad filename: CustomerNameProposal.ppt. Good filename VendorName.CustomerName.Proposal.MMYYY.ppt.

 

Is There a Leadership Lesson Here?

 

Not everything on AskTheManager.com comes with a leadership lesson. Sometimes, we just like to rant. Though it’s a little bit of stretch, we do think there is something leaders can learn from this.

 

Jimmy Dugan was a good leader. Despite his alcoholism and apathy, he was able to get the most out of his team. And although his team lost the AAPGL Championship (of course he was missing his best player, Dottie Hinson), his leadership helped turn a bunch of girls into accomplished ballplayers… not an easy task, even in a fictional world.

 

The next time you’re faced with a vendor, an applicant or a prospective vendor-partner who provides you with a file that includes an inconsiderate or idiotic filename, you need to take a deep breath and a page out of Jimmy Dugan’s book. I suggest using Jimmy’s words of wisdom that he provided to right fielder Evelyn Gardner: “Start using your head. That’s the lump that’s three feet above your ass.”

 

Sometimes you have to be a prick.

Salespeople Need More Leadership, Not More Technology

Posted on by
3

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.

 

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

Posted on by
1

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.

Leadership Lessons from Corporate America’s Amateur Lobbyists

Posted on by
2

Leadership and the Bully Pulpit

Michael Jackson (no, not that Michael Jackson) loves the bully pulpit. AutoNation’s Michael Jackson, we’ll call him the “non-gloved-one,” is everywhere these days. Officially, he serves as the CEO of the largest automotive dealer group in the US. Unofficially, he serves as the primary spokesperson for all curmudgeons who are good with a hammer (so they think everything is a nail).

MJ seems like a great guy – the non-gloved-one is well-spoken in an everyman sort of way – he exudes both a confidence and an “awe shucks” humility that seem genuine. Great traits for leaders.

Character (on the surface) does not appear to be his problem – Jackson, you see, is quite the character. Our issues with Mr. Jackson stem from his inability to wean himself off his love of the camera and microphone; and his incredibly narrow sense of how to fix what’s wrong with the economy.

It’s Not All about the Cars, Stupid

Certainly, it’s as prudent for this Michael Jackson to advocate for the auto industry as it is for that other Michael Jackson to advocate for unsupervised slumber parties at Neverland Ranch. We get it – your shareholders benefit if the auto dealers benefit – that’s your job.




To this end, Mr. Jackson is advocating (in a big, big way) for Congress to dramatically raise the gasoline tax at a time when Americans need every penny in their collective pocket. An increase in the gasoline tax? Are you serious?

Let’s put aside whether or not a gasoline tax increase will help his industry (though we think its benefit would be dubious, at best). Raising taxes in a recession would be disastrous for the economy, driving consumers to spend less and hurting the overall economic health of all retailers (including the health of car dealers) even more.

One could argue that part of the woes his industry faces today were directly caused by the very $4 per gallon gasoline he so desperately wishes would return. Jackson’s argument – that his dealers (and manufacturers) will sell more electric and hybrid vehicles with a huge increase in the gasoline tax – is probably a sound assumption… for the short term.

Leadership is more than a Great PowerPoint Presentation

Like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Jackson appears to be crisscrossing the country looking for converts. We are not moved.

We cannot buy-in to his assertions that increasing taxes, especially gasoline taxes, is a good idea for what ails car dealers today. Automotive retailers, unfortunately, are selling vehicles today that are built better and last longer than their predecessors. This is really no different that a few years ago, of course. In 2006, when America’s car dealers sold over 16 million new units, consumers felt good about their present and future situations. They were willing to spend $30,000 on a new car even though their current vehicle was running just fine.

Buying a car in 2006 was a discretionary event; ripe with impulses and emotions. Buying a car in 2009 is a necessity event; driven by the need to get from point A to point B. Increasing the tax on gasoline (or raising any tax for that matter) makes any major purchase a necessity event. We will only buy a new car when it becomes necessary for us to do so; and if we purchased one of the 60 million new cars sold in the last four years, we probably don’t need another just yet.

This is why Jackson is advocating a hike in the gas tax. He believes that we’ll be forced to get rid of that 2006 Hummer once and for all. Okay Mike, once we trade in the gas guzzler for a Honda Civic Hybrid out of necessity, then what?

America’s car dealers, especially AutoNation, need Americans to make discretionary purchases to thrive and survive. Discretionary purchases cannot happen without discretionary income. Increasing taxes decreases discretionary spending; decreasing taxes increases discretionary spending. Sorry to break it to you Mike, but it really is that simple.

America Needs Higher Gas Taxes

From national security and environmental perspectives, we would love nothing more than for America to be 100% energy independent. OPEC, and especially the countries that make up OPEC, concern us. America cannot, over the long term, be dependent on “third worlders” for the growth of our economy.

Once our economy stabilizes, it may make sense to raise gasoline taxes. The revenues generated from these taxes could be used to make necessary infrastructure improvements; and the higher price of fuel, as Jackson notes, will drive consumers to purchase more energy-efficient vehicles. It will also drive them to drive less. All good for the environment.

In a recent podcast available on AutomotiveNews.com, Jackson even jokes that he could eventually become a Democrat with his drive for higher taxes. Really? Hey Mike, we’re sorry to inform you that advocating higher taxes probably makes you the Chairman of the Democratic Party today. Interestingly, in this particular podcast Jackson has moved off of his stance of advocating for the immediate tax increases, and has a newly stated goal of increasing these taxes in 2011 or 2012.

Hmm, then why shout from the rooftops for these increases in 2008 and 2009? Wouldn’t Jackson’s shareholders be better served if he lobbied for something that would actually spur economic growth? Perhaps something like a tax decrease?

As much as we like him, we have to tell this Michael Jackson to stick to moon walking and leave the economic decision making to someone (anyone) more qualified. Great leaders know when to use the bully pulpit and when to avoid it. They also understand that just because someone is giving you a microphone, doesn’t mean you should speak.