|
Excerpt
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
By Lee Iacocca with
Catherine Whitney
I
Had
Enough?
Am I the only guy in this country who's
fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We
should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless
bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got
corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean
up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead
of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when
the politicians say, "Stay the course."
Stay the
course? You've got to be kidding. This is
America , not the
damned Titanic.
I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I'm getting senile, that
I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to
speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President
of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the
Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of
lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax
cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most
famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in
handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is
burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is
waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the
promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the
ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?
I'll go a step further. You can't call
yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a
fight I'm ready and willing to have.
My friends tell me to calm down. They
say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the
young people." I'd love to—as soon as I can pry them away from
their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm
going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people
will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight
shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but
at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young
folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust
politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up.
These guys work for us.
Who Are These Guys,
Anyway?
Why are we in this mess? How did we end
up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them—or at
least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree
to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking
questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of
people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a
dictatorship, not a democracy.
And don't tell me it's all the fault of
right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an
intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're
in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common
principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.
Where are the voices of leaders who can
inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to
the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the
courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time
in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up
and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?
The Test of a
Leader
I've never been Commander in Chief, but
I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at
the top. I've figured out nine points—not ten (I don't want
people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine
Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear,
obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should
look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or
not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe
we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then
let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the
candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us
to choose wisely.
So, here's my C list:
A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen
to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle.
He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big,
complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a
newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing
this right? He's the President of the United States and he never
reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to
me to decide whether we should have a government without
newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not
hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As
long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped
through the sound system, he's ready to go.
If a leader never steps outside his
comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he
doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's
right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means
either you think you already know it all, or you just don't
care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of
saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all
say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened,
because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong
track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but
even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he
was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he
was right.
A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb,
be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box.
George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world
around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should
accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic
fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a
conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops
marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his
concerns to the President—the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni,
the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields.
"The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He
told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that
all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you
be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then
reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My
instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He
told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough."
Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we
all know now, it wasn't.
Leadership is all about managing
change—whether you're leading a company or leading a country.
Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was
absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.
A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not
talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites.
I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody
in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight
anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to
convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I
don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to
drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with
telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has
been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush
is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the
wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is
well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped
listening to him.
A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means
knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the
guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you
want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has
a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has
shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage
because he has the power, but he shows little
regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops
(not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi
citizens) to their deaths—for what? To build our oil reserves?
To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have
him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations
behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of
the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a
single soldier to die for a failed policy.
A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about
balls. (That even
goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk
isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut
family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your
gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean
posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at
the negotiating table and talk .
If you're a politician, courage means
taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes.
Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has
been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town
hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most
devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.
To be a leader you've got to have
CONVICTION—a fire
in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really
want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the
belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation
days taken by a U.S. President—four hundred and counting. He'd
rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the
business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high
point of his presidency so far was catching a
seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.
It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress
was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven
days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry
Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most
people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had
nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to
vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.
A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking
about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people
want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a
leader because they trust him. That's my
definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang
out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global
summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he
doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the
kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with
world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who
received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a
G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I
thought she was going to go right through the roof.
A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems
obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More
important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people
who know what they're doing. Bush brags
about being our first MBA President. Does that make him
competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President,
we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on
life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar
price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A
leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we
face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.
You can't be a leader if you don't have
COMMON SENSE. I
call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just
starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as
Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a
guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional
manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge
smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember,
Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is
your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know
a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never
make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a
lot of sound bites. You know— Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished
Bush.
Former President Bill Clinton once said,
"I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood
trying to get into the reality-based world—and I like it here."
I think our current President should
visit the real world once in a while.
The Biggest C is
Crisis
Leaders are made, not born. Leadership
is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your
feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids
off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's
another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.
On September 11, 2001, we needed a
strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed
a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George
Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida
when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for
twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on
tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the
quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the
air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided
it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went
into hiding for the day—and he told Vice President Dick Cheney
to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our
TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us
that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It
took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the
right photo op at Ground Zero.
That was George Bush's moment of truth,
and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his
composure? He led us down the road to Iraq—a road his own father
had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush
didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides
himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't
scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.
A Hell of a
Mess
So here's where we stand. We're immersed
in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for
leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the
country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our
once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care
costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a
coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders
are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which
way. These are times that cry out for leadership.
But when you look around, you've got to
ask: "Where have all the
leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative
communicators? Where are the people of character, courage,
conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for
alliteration, but I think you get the point.
Name me a leader who has a better idea
for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in
airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of
dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to
do is react to things that have already happened.
Name me one leader who emerged from the
crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a
single day
evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding
accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial
hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers
crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy.
Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're
going to do the next time.
Name me an industry leader who is
thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive
edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could
ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car
companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we
going to do about it?
Name me a government leader who can
articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the
energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence
is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at
our country and milking the middle class dry.
I have news for the gang in Congress. We
didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain
silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness
is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid
of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give
me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?
Had
Enough?
Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of
gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking
out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime
I've had the privilege of living through some of America's
greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst
crises—the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the
Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis,
and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've
learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing
on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action.
Whether it's building a better car or building a better future
for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the
challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for
people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but
it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and
go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.
Excerpted from
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?. Copyright © 2007 by Lee Iacocca.
All rights reserved.
|