Dump the CEO/President rhetoric

It’s time to raise a finger of warning regarding the prolific use of the "CEO President" analogy in the current primary rhetoric. The role of President of the United States may have some things in common with the role of CEO of a large corporation but then again the office of President has things in common with many different roles. The USA is not a corporation and the President is not the CEO.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with making comparisons between different roles in society to learn from similarities as well as the differences. The problem is that we often take these kinds of analogies much too far. Listening to the political rhetoric around the presidential primaries I get the uneasy feeling that many people, including some presidential candidates, actually think running the country is the same as running a company. Again, although there are clearly some similarities, the differences are so significant and so many that we should be wary of even using this analogy.

Corporations are generally not democracies. CEOs, even the best ones, are accustomed to having orders executed. As long as the CEO enjoys the support of the board he/she expects action. Good CEOs may tolerate a great deal of open hearted and even heated discussion until a decision is made but after the decision is made the CEO expects loyalty to the decision and action towards executing the decision. Opposition and competition for a corporation are by definition confined to the competition, i.e. to other companies providing similar goods and services not people within the organization.

The President of the USA does not have the consolidated power of a CEO and cannot expect to have his/her orders followed after a decision is made. The decision making process is long and complicated and usually involves so much bargaining with opposition that the final result hardly resembles the original idea. When some sort of decision is finally pushed through Congress it is still free for any and all opposition to work actively against the decision. What CEO would tolerate that kind of behavior within their own organization?

Shareholders, employees, customers and suppliers are distinctly different roles and for the most part completely different people. In government there are no investors who expect a certain return on investment. The closest role to a citizen that can be found in a corporation would be that of customer. The concept of customer may be useful in terms of government providing various services to citizens which the citizens pay for through taxes. But again, there is not a direct correlation between the recipient of the service and the payer for the service. Typically real customers have a choice but in most areas government has a monopoly on the services provided. Certainly citizens have choice in terms of voicing opinions and electing politicians to make wanted changes but this is a long slow process.

If we insist on using corporate language to describe government the best we could do is to call government a kind of "Shared Service" organization. We as taxpayers decide that certain services would be better if we share. We pool resources in order to provide those services to us. In developed democracies like the USA most political debate is focused on "how much" service should be provided not on what services. There is no real debate about wether we should provide education, healthcare, a legal system, military or welfare. The debate is more focused on how far reaching these services should be and how they should be financed.

There are employees and clearly much of the leadership skills required for leading a large company will be useful in leading these employees but corporations do not have a monopoly on good leadership. Good leaders may have honed their skills in NGOs, military, medicine, education or any number of other places.

There are opportunities to learn from corporations about efficiency in processes and good customer service but then again corporations may well have opportunities to learn from other areas in society as well.

Our founding fathers intentionally created a system of checks and balances to guarantee that too much power didn’t end up in the hands of one person or one group. CEOs are dictators. Companies are dictatorships. We have seen examples of leaders of some countries trying to implement a CEO-like leadership (ie Italy, Hungary, etc) and the end results are devastating to the democratic process.

Democracy is a terrible system. The only thing worse than people trying to lead themselves is letting somebody else do it!

I am sitting in the shade under one of the apple trees in my garden reading one of Sweden’s daily newspapers. The world championship in football is now over so the papers can’t seem to find much to write about, except of course the upcoming parliamentary elections this fall. Fortunately for the general public there has popped up a juicy sex scandal with one of the ministers who has been forced to jump ship right before the election. Otherwise I think this election and its total lack of issues would be the biggest sleeping pill of the decade.

The TV debate between the leaders of the two main parties was comical. Debate in this case is probably not the right expression since they agree on all the key issues. The height of their “debate” was about who came up with an idea first before the other party stole it. It was sad and funny seeing them try to say the same thing in different ways so that the viewers would think that they actually had different points of view and that the other party would lead the country to a catastrophe. When all was said and done not even the expert commentators could explain how the parties differed significantly on the issues. ( I have always been amazed that “expert commentators” can spend an hour telling you what a politician just said in 30 minutes.)

In the end the Swedish people will have to go to the polls and decide who will lead the country for the next mandate period based on who they think can best execute the plans that all the parties agree upon not who has the best ideas. Maybe that isn’t so bad but I can’t help worrying that with everyone in such agreement we might be missing something. Leading a country in times like these requires diversity of thought and real debate. Many of the challenges facing not only Sweden but the world are so complicated that they should tax the facilities of our brightest and best.

Where is the opposition when politicians agree on all the important issues? Who is representing alternative thoughts and ideas? What professional politician wants to represent marginalized ideas and issues that go against the mainstream?

Politicians want power and power comes from winning elections. From the very beginning of the great experiment known as democracy, politicians have understood that they must be closely aligned with the sentiments of the majority of the people if they want to stay in power. Hordes of PR agencies and research organizations using modern methods for measuring public opinion keep politicians and political parties on track. Politicians are continuously updated on what can be said and done that will appeal to as many as possible? This inevitably leads to a harmonization of the parties towards the center of the mainstream of public thought. Any party that ventures too far from the mainstream will be punished at the polls! In the end, democracy is a terrible system. The only thing worse than people trying to lead themselves is letting somebody else do it!

Does god choose sides when his children fight?

Truth is often not black or white, but shades of gray. Not because there aren't real truths but because life, politics, love and business can be very complicated. It is so easy, and so dangerous, to decide what to do on an issue or a problem and then look for facts to substantiate our points of view. This behavior seems to come naturally to us and might very well have been an asset when we were cavemen. If you heard a strange noise you might have been safer to assume that it is a hungry tiger than to open-mindedly collect and analyze the facts. Unfortunately, these primitive behaviors make it harder for us to live in a complex society.

Should we have gone to Afghanistan? Hard question.

Should we leave Afghanistan now that we are there? Another hard question.

Should we have gone into Iraq? Not as hard a question but still difficult?

Should we pull out now that we are there regardless if the reason we went was justifiable or not? Very hard question!

Many of us decide who we will listen to, (our political party, our religion or a business gurus) based on a combination of intellectual and emotional affinity as well as some variation of “peer pressure”. Then it is and easy step to assume that what my party and its leaders do is more “right” than what the others do. We then subconsciously look for confirmation for our beliefs.

-SAP is a great system but does anyone really think that all the companies that have installed SAP really needed SAP? Or is it the a function of “Social Proof” as Cialdini described it. Everyone else is getting SAP maybe we should too!

-Was everything Bush did wrong and everything Obama does is right, or vice versa depending on your political preference?

-Are Christians always right and Muslims always wrong or vice versa depending on your religious preference?

-Does god choose sides when his children fight?

Once again I long for the death of ideologies. Ideologies dictate for us not only how we should think but what we should think. Values are good to have but often get confused with ideological dictates and doctrines. When we find ourselves feeling right and wondering why so many other people could be so wrong it could be a warning that we have fallen prey to or ideologies. In order to really understand your own position on an issue whether it be political, religous or business we must strive to truly understand different and even opposing points of view. It is first when we understand why someone else thinks and acts so completely differently that we can begin to understand ourselves.