Were it not for my status as a United Airlines Premiere Flyer that allowed me to bypass a seemingly endless security line, I would have missed my 6:18 AM flight from San Diego to Atlanta. Airport security lines with one hour and longer waits are apparently very typical at peak travel times in San Diego as they are in many other large airports. These lines are government waste. Any manufacturing leader, indeed anyone trained in thinking about processes, could improve the efficiency of the US airline security system. A thoughtful reinvention could easily maintain safety while lowering federal employee cost as well as the traveler’s indirect costs – lost productivity from feeling sleepy all day from having to get in line at 4:45 AM for a 6:18 AM flight, not to mention the waiting time itself. Step one en route to a better…
The Case for Reforming the Campaign Finance-Payback Business Model
A crisis reveals a leader’s values and measures his trustworthiness. Effective leaders remember this truth as they work to create followers, not just from their close-in base (e.g., the executives you brought into the company or, in the case of politics, your base) but also the mass middle. The mass middle enhances and moves the leader’s proposed solutions forward without the kind of push back that stops needed change efforts dead in their tracks. People only follow leaders they trust. It’s why leaders must be honest about a crisis. Manufactured crises take leaders nowhere, fast. In meeting with his Lincoln car dealership owners, Ford CEO Alan Mulally announced that the Lincoln brand was dying and half of their dealerships must close. The dealers believed and cheered him. Why? Prior to the summit meeting, Mulally had sold valuable Ford assets and enacted radical R&D…