War Management Follows the Wrong Corporate Model
By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page E01
There are lots of ways to explain why the Bush administration has made a
hash of its Iraq policy. To my mind, however, this is fundamentally a story
about management failure and a corporate leadership style that the first MBA
president and his crew of former CEOs brought to Washington.
<http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/images/adTAG.gif>
Or think of it this way: The reason the world's only superpower is stuck in
the mud in Iraq is the same reason Xerox got into trouble with accounting,
why Wall Street analysts and investment bankers didn't blow the whistle on
WorldCom and Enron, and why much of the magic has gone out of Disney's Magic
Kingdom.
Such generalizations are dangerous. But over the years I've noticed that
companies that get into trouble, or lose their edge, have many of the same
characteristics at the top: an overemphasis on hierarchy and orderliness; a
penchant for secrecy and keeping decisions closely held; an instinct to
discount information or dismiss views that don't comport with the company
line; a habit of pronouncing rather than engaging intellectually with those
outside the inner circle; an unhealthy arrogance and sense of entitlement.
When something goes wrong, the all-too-typical corporate response is to
downplay its importance or bury it in bureaucratic processes. And if that
doesn't work, the next line of defense is to pin it all on a few "bad
apples" and move aggressively to "put the issue behind us," without ever
really admitting serious error.
That should sound familiar to anyone who has watched Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld and John Snow on C-SPAN, or read Paul O'Neill's account of his
ill-fated attempts to warn of the budgetary fallout from a second tax cut,
or heard what Richard Clarke told the 9/11 commission about warnings of
terrorist attacks that fell on deaf ears. It also describes to a T the
process by which the administration has dealt with Iraq, from the original
decision to go to war to the handling of the prison scandal.
Here's a little test: You are president of the United States and revelations
about abuse of Iraqi prisoners has created the biggest crisis since Sept.
11, inflaming the Arab world, undercutting support at home and undermining
our moral authority in the world. How do you spend the weekend?
If you answered "spend it at Camp David as planned, then drop in at the
Pentagon on Monday to praise the defense secretary for doing a superb job,"
you just flunked, along with George W. Bush.
War Management Follows the Wrong Corporate Model
By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page E01
There are lots of ways to explain why the Bush administration has made a
hash of its Iraq policy. To my mind, however, this is fundamentally a story
about management failure and a corporate leadership style that the first MBA
president and his crew of former CEOs brought to Washington.
Or think of it this way: The reason the world's only superpower is stuck in
the mud in Iraq is the same reason Xerox got into trouble with accounting,
why Wall Street analysts and investment bankers didn't blow the whistle on
WorldCom and Enron, and why much of the magic has gone out of Disney's Magic
Kingdom.
Such generalizations are dangerous. But over the years I've noticed that
companies that get into trouble, or lose their edge, have many of the same
characteristics at the top: an overemphasis on hierarchy and orderliness; a
penchant for secrecy and keeping decisions closely held; an instinct to
discount information or dismiss views that don't comport with the company
line; a habit of pronouncing rather than engaging intellectually with those
outside the inner circle; an unhealthy arrogance and sense of entitlement.
When something goes wrong, the all-too-typical corporate response is to
downplay its importance or bury it in bureaucratic processes. And if that
doesn't work, the next line of defense is to pin it all on a few "bad
apples" and move aggressively to "put the issue behind us," without ever
really admitting serious error.
That should sound familiar to anyone who has watched Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld and John Snow on C-SPAN, or read Paul O'Neill's account of his
ill-fated attempts to warn of the budgetary fallout from a second tax cut,
or heard what Richard Clarke told the 9/11 commission about warnings of
terrorist attacks that fell on deaf ears. It also describes to a T the
process by which the administration has dealt with Iraq, from the original
decision to go to war to the handling of the prison scandal.
Here's a little test: You are president of the United States and revelations
about abuse of Iraqi prisoners has created the biggest crisis since Sept.
11, inflaming the Arab world, undercutting support at home and undermining
our moral authority in the world. How do you spend the weekend?
If you answered "spend it at Camp David as planned, then drop in at the
Pentagon on Monday to praise the defense secretary for doing a superb job,"
you just flunked, along with George W. Bush.
Noel Tichy, a management expert at the University of Michigan, notes that
when Jack Welch faced a crisis when he was chief executive of General
Electric, he would drop everything he was doing, scramble his audit team and
descend on the problem unit. Over a weekend, he would conduct his own
detailed investigation. And on Monday morning he would show up personally at
the Pentagon or the SEC with a report on what went wrong, who would be fired
and what he was going to do to make things right.
Something like that would never occur to Bush. His view of the leader's role
is to set broad goals and vision, delegate everything else to trusted
subordinates and stay the course when things don't go exactly to plan. But
as Michael Maccoby, a Washington psychoanalyst and management consultant
explains, it is that unwillingness to get into the details and the lack of
interest in hearing divergent views that create a kind of ideological
rigidity, rendering Bush incapable of admitting mistakes or considering
changes in direction.
The Bush team likes to crow that it brought disciplined, private-sector
management to government. But as Joshua Marshall wrote last year in the
Washington Monthly, theirs turns out to be a largely discredited,
old-economy management style -- one better suited for the cartel-like oil,
drug and railroad industries they came from than the messy, fast-changing
realities facing the government of the United States. Noel Tichy, a
management expert at the University of Michigan, notes that when Jack Welch
faced a crisis when he was chief executive of General Electric, he would
drop everything he was doing, scramble his audit team and descend on the
problem unit. Over a weekend, he would conduct his own detailed
investigation. And on Monday morning he would show up personally at the
Pentagon or the SEC with a report on what went wrong, who would be fired and
what he was going to do to make things right.
Something like that would never occur to Bush. His view of the leader's role
is to set broad goals and vision, delegate everything else to trusted
subordinates and stay the course when things don't go exactly to plan. But
as Michael Maccoby, a Washington psychoanalyst and management consultant
explains, it is that unwillingness to get into the details and the lack of
interest in hearing divergent views that create a kind of ideological
rigidity, rendering Bush incapable of admitting mistakes or considering
changes in direction.
The Bush team likes to crow that it brought disciplined, private-sector
management to government. But as Joshua Marshall wrote last year in the
Washington Monthly, theirs turns out to be a largely discredited,
old-economy management style -- one better suited for the cartel-like oil,
drug and railroad industries they came from than the messy, fast-changing
realities facing the government of the United States.
_____
From: Kevin Graeme [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 5:49 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: Re: clueless
Can you summarize since it requires a subscription?
-Kevin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandy Clark"
> I read an interesting article that kind of touches on this in the
Washington
> Post Business Section today, (apparently in DC, politics is business,
> fashion, entertainment and probably sports as well as news.)
>
>
>
> Link Below.
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19084-2004May11.html
_____
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