After the final episode of The West Wing aired, my brother in Texas called me asking, “Are you crying?” “Yes.” “Me, too,” he added. We had both enjoyed the TV show about an imaginary President of the United States of America fighting for righteous causes. It says a lot about our nation that the next TV series about a President — Scandal — showcased an administration characterized by deceit and trickery. My heroes have always been the men and women who shaped our nation from its birth. They are the courageous individuals, who, despite the odds, helped turn the nation’s arc in the right direction. John Lewis, Lincoln, Dr. King, and the Suffragettes are just a few. Heroes are leaders in my book – recognizing what needs to be done and stepping into the fray to get it done. Some lead from behind,…
Facts, false facts, or both?
As the clock turns from 11:59:59 PM to 12:00:00 AM, we pass from one date to another. Two sides of midnight, as I like to say. The two times have different spaces on a calendar, but they are almost precisely the same time. I’ve been thinking a lot about two sides of the same thing as I listen to the debate around impeachment and share notes with my friend Jonathan Barry, a brilliant Republican. He regularly has a different reaction than my own to an op-ed column about impeachment. “Uneducated,” “hypnotized by Fox News,” “ignorant,” and other words Democrats use to dismiss Republicans cannot be used with Jonathan (or many other Republican friends and colleagues). Both the GOP and the Democrats have said in public, “The facts speak for themselves.” Yet both sides have reached very different conclusions. How do our political…
Leadership is a responsibility, not a right to do wrong.
Men. If you are paid multiple millions of dollars a year, you should be able to control your dick. Period. This blog is not a morality tale, at least with regards to personal sexual or marital morality. Instead, it is a tale about a CEO who was indifferent to the potential risks that his sexual and emotional behavior posed to others. I am writing to express anger at leaders who think they are above the law, be it the real law or a workplace code-of-conduct. Former McDonald’s CEO Stephen Easterbrook left his role after the company’s Board of Directors learned of Easterbrook’s consensual relationship with a staff member. In exchange for leaving, he is getting six months of severance and favorable treatment on options. Easterbrook is divorced. We do not know the marital status or reporting relationship of the staff member. Those facts…
Six best practices for shaping organizational culture
With the New Year approaching, it’s time to rethink your organization’s culture and not just its goals. Here are best practices for leveraging your culture to create business success. Winnow your list of values Across the street from my house sits a welcoming red-tile-roofed Catholic grade school campus with bright white adobe walls. The children wear navy blue uniforms, and the well-kept Catholic Church at its center has the charm only decades can bestow. School leaders recently placed banners naming the school’s values on the wire-fenced wall enclosing the playground: Sharing Stewardship Respect Service Gratitude Empathy Cooperation Celebration Building peace The school has too many values! What is the essence of the culture the school is trying to create? I understand the fine-tuning the administrators sought to articulate – empathy is different than gratitude – but what is at the school’s core? What…