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Showing posts with label Failed Leadership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Failed Leadership. Show all posts
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Sunday, May 01, 2011
How to handle America's critical problems
Suppose America had two sets of problems that threatened national security. Also suppose they took two different approaches to dealing with those problems.
The first approach is to bring in experts, assign them as leaders and make them personally responsible for the overall results. Then task them to select the very best personnel, reward them well for taking the job, give them the best training at government expense and provide them with all the tools required to do the job in an outstanding manner. Measure the accomplishment of the job carefully. Carefully provide social support to the employees for the work they are doing and tell them repeatedly that the job they are doing is of great importance and that the nation is proud to have the services of such employees. Then, when the job is not being done adequately change the managers because they were made responsible. The leaders are considered ultimately responsible for the results.
The second approach is to Elect whoever promises the best results if you make the radical changes in the way the job is done that they demand. Offer low pay to the workers even when there are many alternative professions that are more rewarding, less work and pay much better. Then provide as little in the way of tools as can be afforded and demand that the employees get their own training at their own expense. Then carefully measure the jobs they do and castigate them repeatedly for every failure especially when the tools they have and the raw materials they are working with are substandard. Micromanage the employees efforts. Blame the employees for the overall results even though they are working long hours and skimp on financial support while not penalizing the leaders they work for. The employees are considered ultimately responsible for the results.
Which approach do you think is more likely to get world class success?
It should be no surprise that the first approach is the way America operates its military and the second approach is the way America operates its public schools.
Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari have written an excellent OP-Ed in the New York Times which makes exactly this point with pointed information to back it up.I strongly recommend reading the OP-ED.
Both military and education functions are essential to society and both are mission driven and require a large contingent of well-trained and motivated professionals to succeed. That is, they do not fit into the money economy in any self-supporting manner. Instead both functions are required for the money economy to function well. The military quit trying to fight wars profitably after the repeated failures of mercenary armies (and the government that hired them) during the Thirty Years War. When do Americans realize that public education is as essential to the nation as military and policing and similarly cannot be operated by educational mercenaries?
The first approach is to bring in experts, assign them as leaders and make them personally responsible for the overall results. Then task them to select the very best personnel, reward them well for taking the job, give them the best training at government expense and provide them with all the tools required to do the job in an outstanding manner. Measure the accomplishment of the job carefully. Carefully provide social support to the employees for the work they are doing and tell them repeatedly that the job they are doing is of great importance and that the nation is proud to have the services of such employees. Then, when the job is not being done adequately change the managers because they were made responsible. The leaders are considered ultimately responsible for the results.
The second approach is to Elect whoever promises the best results if you make the radical changes in the way the job is done that they demand. Offer low pay to the workers even when there are many alternative professions that are more rewarding, less work and pay much better. Then provide as little in the way of tools as can be afforded and demand that the employees get their own training at their own expense. Then carefully measure the jobs they do and castigate them repeatedly for every failure especially when the tools they have and the raw materials they are working with are substandard. Micromanage the employees efforts. Blame the employees for the overall results even though they are working long hours and skimp on financial support while not penalizing the leaders they work for. The employees are considered ultimately responsible for the results.
Which approach do you think is more likely to get world class success?
It should be no surprise that the first approach is the way America operates its military and the second approach is the way America operates its public schools.
Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari have written an excellent OP-Ed in the New York Times which makes exactly this point with pointed information to back it up.I strongly recommend reading the OP-ED.
Both military and education functions are essential to society and both are mission driven and require a large contingent of well-trained and motivated professionals to succeed. That is, they do not fit into the money economy in any self-supporting manner. Instead both functions are required for the money economy to function well. The military quit trying to fight wars profitably after the repeated failures of mercenary armies (and the government that hired them) during the Thirty Years War. When do Americans realize that public education is as essential to the nation as military and policing and similarly cannot be operated by educational mercenaries?
Saturday, June 09, 2007
McKlatchy reports that the "Surge" is failing.
McKlatchy News presents an analysis of the last, final and most significant effort to "win" the Iraq War. To no one's surprise, the same old problems that were there before the "Surge" remain.
With honest reporting going on by McKlatchy reporters, is that any surprise that the DoD and Bob Gates don't want them around in this, the final collapse of the failed and unnecessary war in Iraq? Their motivation is clear. The real question is what the rest of the Press Corps is suppressing in order to get those free plane trips? Are they getting anything else for not doing their jobs? Because whatever their price has been, the U.S. Press Corps has sold out and done so way too cheaply.
But why should that matter to TV, the New York Times and the Washington Post? They still have Paris Hilton to report on, don't they? I'm sure Katie Couric is pleased at the exchange. Of course the real journalists who originally had souls and have had to give them up may feel the loss a bit more than the CBS blond bimbo does.
We need to all applaud the American military people who, in spite of the failed political and careerist leadership both inside the military and from the American politicians go forward day in and day out to risk their lives (and often lose them) to do the useless jobs they have been assigned to do. But more than applaud, the Veteran's Administration needs to be properly funded and restructured so that it gives back a little for the sacrifices so many have made in this stupid Republican War.
Oh, wait. that would require leadership in the military and in the White House, wouldn't it? I guess sacking Don Rumsfeld and Peter Pace is a start, but it is damned sure too little and too late.
- Violence is on the rise,
- Iraqi troops aren't showing up to secure neighborhoods,
- U.S. troops are having to revisit neighborhoods they'd already cleared, and
- Iraq's politicians haven't met any of their benchmarks.
The current surge, which President Bush announced on Jan. 10, was to be different. U.S. forces in Baghdad were to increase by at least 17,000, bringing the total U.S. force in Baghdad to more than 30,000. The troops were to work alongside 30,000 Iraqi army and national police forces and 21,000 policemen to secure neighborhoods. U.S. forces would be stationed in neighborhoods in newly built mini-bases and patrol with their Iraqi counterparts.McKlatchy Newspapers also points out [elsewhere] that the Secretary of Defense will not let the McKlatchy reporters on the Press plane with the rest of the Press Corps.
That hasn't happened as rapidly as U.S. commanders had hoped. In an assessment completed at the end of May, one U.S. division found that U.S. and Iraqi forces control only 146 of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods. [Snip]
Last October, ... Casey [Then U.S. military ground commander in Iraq] said then that the Iraqi forces were improving and that the plan was having a "dampening effect" on sectarian violence, in spite of statistics that suggested otherwise.
"We are about 75 percent of the way through a three-step process in building those forces," Casey said of the Iraqi army. "Their leaders are feeling more responsible for the security of Iraq, and they want to take the reins, and I think we need to do that."
Four days later, the U.S. announced the end of its security plan, conceding that violence had reached unprecedented levels.
With honest reporting going on by McKlatchy reporters, is that any surprise that the DoD and Bob Gates don't want them around in this, the final collapse of the failed and unnecessary war in Iraq? Their motivation is clear. The real question is what the rest of the Press Corps is suppressing in order to get those free plane trips? Are they getting anything else for not doing their jobs? Because whatever their price has been, the U.S. Press Corps has sold out and done so way too cheaply.
But why should that matter to TV, the New York Times and the Washington Post? They still have Paris Hilton to report on, don't they? I'm sure Katie Couric is pleased at the exchange. Of course the real journalists who originally had souls and have had to give them up may feel the loss a bit more than the CBS blond bimbo does.
We need to all applaud the American military people who, in spite of the failed political and careerist leadership both inside the military and from the American politicians go forward day in and day out to risk their lives (and often lose them) to do the useless jobs they have been assigned to do. But more than applaud, the Veteran's Administration needs to be properly funded and restructured so that it gives back a little for the sacrifices so many have made in this stupid Republican War.
Oh, wait. that would require leadership in the military and in the White House, wouldn't it? I guess sacking Don Rumsfeld and Peter Pace is a start, but it is damned sure too little and too late.
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