The Bush Dilemma I think I’ve finally articulated The Bush Dilemma that I am having as a moderate Republican with the upcoming election. Here was my dialog with Fred, an ardent but utterly rational Democrat, the other night at dinner. Matt: Kerry is clearly a much smarter person than Bush, but I tend to agree with Bush’s philosophy and positions on more issues than I do Kerry’s. Fred: If you agree with him on the top 10 issues, then you should vote for him. Matt: I agree with him on most of MY top 10 issues…but not on most of HIS top 10 issues. Fred: That’s a dilemma. I suspect many other moderate Republicans have this same dilemma. Whether they…
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Current Affairs
Political versus Corporate Leadership, Part III: The First Debate
Political versus Corporate Leadership, Part III: The First Debate Well, there you have it. Both of my first two postings on this subject — Realism vs. Idealism and Admitting Mistakes — came up in last night’s debate. At one point, in response to Kerry’s attempted criticism of him for expressing two different views on the situation in Iraq, Bush responded that he thought he could — and had to — be simultaneously a realist and an optimist. And a few minutes later, Kerry admitted a mistake and brilliantly turned the tables on Bush by saying something to the effect of “I made a mistake in how I talked about Iraq, and he made a mistake by taking us to war…
Comment on Political versus Corporate Leadership, Part II: Admitting Mistakes
Comment on Political versus Corporate Leadership, Part II: Admitting Mistakes My colleague Mike Mayor writes: So you’e only asking for politicians to be honest Matt? Is that all? 🙂 Couldn’t agree more on the CEO side. A CEO who cannot admit to failure is doomed to be surrounded by “yes men” and, therefore, must go it alone, whereas the CEO who admits to having the odd bad idea every now and then is more likely to get truthful and accuruate information from those around him/her. Which scenario would you prefer to base your next decision on? However, I look more to Hollywood for fostering the faux CEO/Board Room stereotypes, not politics. Look no further than the highest ranked show among…
Political versus Corporate Leadership, Part II: Admitting Mistakes
Political versus Corporate Leadership, Part II: Admitting Mistakes The press conference this past spring where President Bush embarrassingly refused to admit that he had ever made any big mistakes, other than to reiterate his gaffe at trading Sammy Sosa when he owned the Texas Rangers, brings up another issue in this series: is it good for leaders, both political and corporate, to admit mistakes? On the corporate side, I think the ability to admit a mistake is a must. Again, I’ll refer back to Jim Collins’ books Good to Great and Built to Last, both of which talk about humility and the ability to admit mistakes as a critical component of emotional intelligence, the cornerstone of solid leadership. And in…
9/11 Remembered in NYC
It’s the end of a long September 11 in New York City. We thought everyone would want to see the Tribeca close-up of the “twin beams” memorial that comes out from time to time to evoke the memory of the fallen towers. The beams are truly amazing, reaching up high into the sky, seemingly endless. While they are geographically incorrect from this particular view (the towers stood behind and to the left of the new construction of the new 7 World Trade Center), they do the job and from most views look in place.
Our Next July 4?
Our Next July 4? We could hear the church bells ringing this morning out our window at the 9/11 memorial ceremony as we observed a moment of silence at 8:48 a.m. to remember. What really got me, though, was when I walked past the site and heard some of the names being called out by parents of the victims, their voices alternating between bravely strong and quivering with emotion. There will always be something awful about this day every year, a wound reopened fresh over a healing scar. I hope that it will continue to serve as a unifying force in our country, an annual rallying cry against those in the world who threaten our way of life and seek…
Political versus Corporate Leadership, Part I: Realist or Idealist?
It’s election season, the GOP convention is literally in my backyard, and while this is not a political blog, I can’t help myself. As we as Americans grapple with the question of who we want to be our next leader (or at least those people who live in the 11 annointed swing states do), I have had a lot of thoughts lately about the question of what makes a good leader, and what the differences are between successful leadership in politics and successful leadership in business. James O’Toole’s article on President Bush on page 31 of the September issue of Fast Company (no link available yet) brings up a really interesting point in comparing Bush to former president Ronald Reagan….
Morning in Tribeca
We live on the 35th floor of our building in Tribeca (downtown Manhattan), facing south, about 7 blocks up from the World Trade Center site. From 1994-2001, our view was grand and corporate. For a short time in September 2001, it was horrific. Since then, it’s just been depressing. Seeing such a large gap in the skyline every morning just made us remember what — and who — used to be there. It’s not getting a lot of coverage because it’s not the Freedom Tower, but the new World Trade Center 7 building is on its way up. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the most beautiful construction site I’ve ever seen. It’s definitely morning once again in Tribeca!
Negative Role Models
Old news by now, but John Kerry has selected John Edwards as his running mate for this fall’s presidential election. What I found particularly interesting was a line buried in one of the various news reports I read on the web this morning, which said that Kerry, still stinging from the fact that he heard the bad news that he was not to be Al Gore’s running mate in 2000 from the media and not from Gore himself, had kept this decision-making process deliberately private up until the very last moment to avoid making that same mistake and to spare the feelings of those he passed over for the job. How many of us in business have learned things over…
Lessons from the Gipper
There’s been much coverage in the news of Saturday’s passing of President Ronald Reagan, but I will add a new wrinkle by trying to distill down what I know and remember of The Great Communicator’s leadership style into a few simple lessons of note for CEOs. Lesson 1: Sunny optimism motivates the people you lead, but only when it’s balanced with hard-headed realism. Reagan’s message that tomorrow can be a better day than today was powerful and timely for the American psyche, but he didn’t just assume that because he said it, it would be true. He backed up his message with (a) an understanding that the American economy itself was in the doldrums in the late ’70s, and (b)…