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Management and Change
Reading the comments Bush made at his press conference with Tony Blair yesterday reminds me of how hard it is for a management team that is responsible for a failed strategy to acknowledge the failure and come up with a new one.
In the private sector, there's a board whose job it is to force the management to face reality and make changes. And if the management can't change, it's the board's job to make a change in leadership.
In the public sector, that is the voter's job. Which I thought they did particularly well in November. And the leader of the Iraq Study Group, Jim Baker, is the perfect board chair who can help walk management back off the cliff.
But for some reason, our president isn't listening to his board right now.
December 8, 2006 Politics , Venture Capital and Technology | Comments (13)
Comments
Great analogy Fred. I may be Canadian and lean to the left, but James Baker has the experience and cred to be taken seriously in the world.
However, based on the noises that the Cheney...errr, Bush White House is making, they aren't going to change anytime soon.
And the Republicans white knight, John McCain, wants to send more of the already overextended US forces into the region.
Lost in the wilderness is only the beginning.
Posted by: Stephen Pierzchala | Dec 8, 2006 8:33:47 AM
I think for Democrats and Republicans, what is particularly troubling about the Bush admin is its refusal to heed the warnings and advice of ANYONE outside their circle.
Every CEO or president has thier own management style, and can usually be placed in some sort of category. I struggle to come up with what category Bush is in, but it not one I hope to see again.
Posted by: Paul | Dec 8, 2006 8:55:48 AM
Interestingly, like methods used in the Fed of pre-warning of actions, then taking actions, maybe the Iraq Study Group is pre-announcing the impending change in US government action with hopes that big talk prior to big action requires less big action.
The Fed uses PR to sway the markets, maybe the White House is taking a page from that book, and if so, a very smart way to make a strategy shift. Even in companies with boards, the best communication of a strategy shift is when all players know it is coming prior to the board meeting.
Posted by: CoryS | Dec 8, 2006 9:48:49 AM
Listening is not something these guys have ever done, why would they start now? What they are doing is, yet again, searching for somebody to tell them what they want to hear.
Posted by: jackson | Dec 8, 2006 11:03:55 AM
....and McCain is right, if we actually WANT to win (whatever that actually means) we do need to deploy about a half million troops - where will they come from? God only knows - a draft is not an option, politically or otherwise.
If Bill was still in charge, he'd have the rest of the free world with us, fighting the enemy in Afghanistan, and Iraq would still be what it was, an oppressive, but stable regime.
Posted by: jackson | Dec 8, 2006 11:06:57 AM
Very good analogy.
What bothers me so much is that it has taken so long for so many Americans to wake up and smell the coffee!
Wasn't it common knowledge that George W. Bush had a record of being either unsuccessful, or at best lackluster in his business endeavors prior to running for President? I think it was. What on earth would make people think he would do any better if we entrust him with the most important leadership position in the U.S.?
Was it not apparent to everyone that this man, when caught off guard by reporters and lacked a well written script, would make some of the most idiotic and often illogical comments, leaving the listener confused and giving the distinct impression that he was "not too bright"?
Did not everyone see the interview (it was played over and over on network and cable news) where G.W.B. was unable to name more than two or three of the heads of state of some of the most important and influential European nations?
These are but a few of the more notable indications early on, before the 2000 elections, that George W. Bush would not make a good president. There were many more. Too many to list here, yet we elected him twice!
The only difference is that in the corporate world there are the mechanisms available to remove poor leadership long before extensive damage is done, and this is done by the board, not by a consensus of the employees who can be so easily mislead by management.
I agree that Baker is the perfect choice to lead the advisory board, however, he may need the power of a trustee in order to get anything done.
Posted by: Stephen L. McKay | Dec 8, 2006 11:45:11 AM
Bush makes the mistake of equating "leadership" with "independence". I've done that before many times, and Fred is right...it's damn difficult to realize as it's happening.
Stephen--yes, we all saw all of that. We also saw who he was running against. You'll know when we've finally had more than a "better of two evils" choice when we see another Reagan-like majority of voters give someone a mandate....instead of the "pluralities" and razor thin margins of the Bush/Clinton/Bush elections.
Posted by: Andy | Dec 8, 2006 2:48:58 PM
Do you people believe that WWF wrestling is real too? "Jim Baker the perfect board chair"...blah blah. This is crap theater. So root root root for the Democraps and then cheer Jim Baker who was the key henchman for the finishing touches on the coup de tat that gave you this fucking administration just 6 years ago. Fred, your blog kicks ass but for a smart guy with a nuanced mind you turn into a naive idealist when you post about politics. Stick to opining on VC topics and while you are often on the money with management insights please don't use the insanity that is our federal government for a pithy quip about the courage to admit an error in judgement. Ughhh...that golly gosh gee tone about Baker/Bush/Bush et al is just too much to not flame you for. I guess now I know who they rolled out the gray hair brigade to impact and it's broader than I would have imagined.
As if they are getting surprised by each others choreographed moves with respect to this group and it's pedestrian little prop of a report. Do you think these people just met? All this self congratulatory "we worked together" bull shit. The whole tone of this nonsense is twisted: "Oh that rascally Bush made a mess and now he's in trouble and "the greatest generation" will step in with their Cold War swagger and teach that boy a lesson". Hey shitbags did you know there are hundreds of thousands dead and the only achievment for this shocking death toll is a more volatile violent divided Iraq and a more volatile violent Middle East region? If you truly believe that just because Bush looks the town fool every night on the news that these consequences were never thought of and deemed acceptable in pursuit of broader goals your brain has been turned to mush from reading Tom Friedman and other NYT apologists who while wearing the guise of the left have normalized this total imperial march disguised as witch hunt for bogeymen ohh right...terrorists. Or worse yet, and far more statistically likely, your brain has been turned to mush by the slow colonization of it by television "news" where you all download the parameters of your discussion of things which by 2006 the average 3 year old could follow. Gimme a break. Ask a fuckin Iraqi trying to feed a family and get by without gettin' shot what he thinks of these fossils rolling out this whole circus. "ahh yes. The perfect guy. Just what we needed. Just the thing."
Since we're all so fond of blogs, let's head to Baghdad for some thinking out loud from there. I don't like the air in here today...it's suddenly a little stuffy.
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_riverbendblog_archive.html
No one will get this far, but here's areal glimpse of your old-patriot-come-out-of retirement to help the nation and some o fhis cronies:
"... As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, 'Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
While Democrat Henry Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee during the period, stood as the lone voice from the wilderness in raising alarms about Bush's obvious corruption, the rest of the Congress sheepishly ignored all the signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales' voice reportedly fell silent after his empty car was machine-gunned in a Washington suburb in what passed for a drive-by shooting.
The CJR continues: "Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by free-lancer Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue... "That American troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert decision to arm Iraq,' Waas wrote, "is the most serious consequence of a U.S. foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American public..."
The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National Security Decision Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering closer ties with Baghdad and paving the way for $1 billion in new aid. The Times' series, co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, "buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece - that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to Iraq."
Baker's CJR report also noted, "On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal reported [BNL official Christopher] Drogoul's assertion that the director general of Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military Production had told him, 'We are all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S. government works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraqi government.' Three weeks later, the Journal reported that [Henry] Gonzales 'produced a phone-book-sized packet of documents' showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms... The documents mentioned one... which designed parts for Iraq's howitzers and was financed through BNL..."
In the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just miles from where several of the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one final note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home" author William Thomas writes, " Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19 containers of Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the American Type Culture Collection company, located near Fort Detrick, MD, the site of the Army's high security germ warfare labs."
The Carlyle Group, the Bushes and bin Laden
The warnings about the Carlyle Group, the nation's 11th largest defense contractor, and the Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The Carlyle Group is a closely held corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Little is known of what it actually does except that it buys and sells defense contractors. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from the World Wide Web making further investigation through that channel impossible. Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State; and Richard Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party operative.
On March 3, 2001, just weeks after George W Bush's inauguration, the conservative Washington lobbying group Judicial Watch issued a press release. It said:
"(Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an "ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.
"The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors.
"This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.
"Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton."
Judicial Watch noted that "even the Clinton Administration called on the Rodham brothers to stop their business dealings in [The former Soviet Republic of] Georgia because those dealings started to destabilize that country."
Since the WTC attacks the Wall Street Journal has reported (Sept. 28, 2001) that, "George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm." The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice in the last three years - 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families, which some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration.
The Nation, on March 27, 2000 - in a story co-authored by David Corn and Paul Lashmar - wrote, "In January former President George Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major paid a social call on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah..." This story confirms at least one meeting between the elder Bush and Saudi leaders, including the bin Ladens. That the bin Ladens attended this meeting was confirmed in a subsequent September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story. The January 2000 meeting with the bin Ladens was also later confirmed by Bush (the elder's) Chief of Staff Jean Becker, only after the WSJ presented her with a thank you note sent by Bush to the bin Ladens after that meeting.
James Baker visited the bin Ladens in 1998 and 1999 with Carlyle CEO Frank Carlucci.
Posted by: michael | Dec 8, 2006 7:14:43 PM
Andy,
I appreciate what you are saying, although we happen to be on opposite ends of what is the lesser of two evils, at least we go to the ballot box well educated and informed.
Michael, you go to the soap box, and frankly, you may make a few good points, but they are totally lost when you lose it and write a manifesto on someone else’s blog (I thought my comment was long)!
Posted by: Stephen L. McKay | Dec 8, 2006 10:39:21 PM
Hey Michael,
Was the movie Conspiracy Theory about you?
Posted by: Don | Dec 8, 2006 11:11:45 PM
Fred-
Good post. I think Michael's post fully illustrates the current problem with the Bush administration.
The problem is that both get so wrapped up in their own ideology of what's right and what's wrong that they become too emotionally involved and, like O'Reilly and Hannity, start foaming at the mouth the second when the slightest opposing view is suggested.
What's needed now is a debated, thought-driven, fact-based strategy. The Iraq Study Group is made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, but happens to be chaired by a Republican, Jim Baker and a Democrat, Lee Hamilton. This does not mean Jim Baker made the decisions for the group--they were all agreed on unanimously.
Usually, taking a step back and making level-headed decision (and implementing them) based on consensus and reality leads to better outcomes. Time and again, this is what most firms do with success, and it should also be what the President does.
Unfortunately,Bush has indicated he's going to cherry pick the report based on his own convictions. I think that time has already passed--it's time to take off the rose-colored glasses and do what all companies would do-- deal with the situation at hand. Why? The results don't match the stated goal--in fact, they are so far from the goal, we are doing what Bush 43 opposed while running for President: nation building.
We must come to reality. We must develop a goal, a time frame, and an exit strategy. It's what an established corporation would do. It should be what the government does as well.
Posted by: Steve | Dec 9, 2006 2:26:13 AM
Dear Fred suck ups, idealist left wingers, and clueless repubs,
What is this, the Peter Jennings trains? You can't win a war from the desk of anyone in DC! It is NOT a good analogy between anything government and anything business. The core of business is not to win, but to make profit and be successful. You do not in business do anything possible that you may do to win a war. Your competitor may be trying put you out of business, but not kill you (Walmart probably being the exception).
Remember Vietnam? Let the generals win the war, that's what they are trained to do. Save the reports for after the fact. What a complete waste of time and money.
What's Dubbya supposed to tell a general - ummm errrr Tommy you need to come back because errr ahhh coz the talking heads know more than you...err...ummm...hey good job though!
Michael do you have heat in the little shack you are living in while writing your manifesto? You are cuckoo for cocoa puffs.
Posted by: Dino | Dec 9, 2006 7:34:24 AM
(found this comment in drafts folder, and decided I'd rather post than delete.)
Andy: Sorry to offend your sound byte sensibilities. I don’t come here to worship Fred and be meek. Besides, Fred doesn’t pay us, we pay Fred (or rather the charity of his choosing). So write as long as you are moved to, as will I until I am asked to take my keyboard elsewhere.
Don: Very original. You know what happens too often when an otherwise literate intelligent person is confronted with his sound byte knowledge of the big scary world around him by some uncomfortable assertions? He dismisses it with this powerful term ‘conspiracy theory’ and shuts down his intellect. It is very very different from taking in information and disagreeing with it mind you. It is basically smugly using two words to proclaim sufficient knowledge to dismiss something challenging, uncomfortable or otherwise suggestive of agendas other than those bought and sold in “the mainstream media”. I bet you’re not really the curious type huh? Our host here is a curious guy who loves information. Anyway, if it feeds your need to turn me into a sound byte, I did see a few black helicopters over the Hudson the other day and thought of the film (which I saw once 10 odd years ago). Three Days of the Condor is a little more my speed. To my knowledge Redford has no issues with Jews either.
Steve: What a sober rational constructive comment. Just plain wrong by about 180 degrees. I don’t even think you agree as your own conclusion about Bush and what might or might not actually happen based on the report gives away your own cynicism. Mostly you’re wrong though because the emotion/polarization you warn of is not a bad thing, but exactly what we need in this great big fat land of apathy. I don’t get nasty like that too often. I realize I was rude and on the attack and surely offended some folks. But as I thought about it Friday night after doing it, and then I reread it, I certainly wasn’t going to apologize. I’m scared and I’m pissed off and I think those of us with the good fortune to be on top of the heap (which means a long way from the poverty line with a full fridge) in this crazy world ought to expect a hell of a lot more from our leaders (public AND private). My response was factual about how transparent this maneuver is (despite the parading around of this bipartisan road show). I shared some good information, and telling a few guys making lazy comments (or posts) to fuckin wake up isn’t such a horrible thing in a pluralistic blogosphere. Is it? Fred can always zap me if he so chooses.
Dino: Yes, I have heat….for now. I’m cuckoo all right, but your World Leader Pretend solution is let the generals sort it out? Oh. Which ones exactly, the ones that got fired for insubordination, or the ones who’ve retired and tried to mount an offensive against the administration? Or do you mean the one who actually conducted a successful campaign in Iraq who published an indictment of the march towards Iraq during the buildup in ’03 in the pages of the Washington Post?
Right, I’m nuts and you sleep well at night. It’s funny you make the shack and manifesto comments. Years ago I heard of this Unabomber guy and I started to read his manifesto in the newspaper. I couldn’t finish it because he was making lots of sense and my brain couldn’t agree with him and learn of his crimes at the same time. I’ve still never read it, but I think he understood a lot of things and was branded a nut to discourage entertaining his philosophies. My “manifesto” above would take a reasonably literate person approximately 3 or 4 minutes to read. Hardly epic unless you just can’t handle anything but an endless stream of disconnected sound bytes from some talking head Ken or Barbie on TV. I said the guys an insider. I said the whole report is a media event and very little more. I stated there are broader strategic goals in Iraq than the toppling of Saddam or setting up a bulwark of democratic stability in the region official crap. Then I shared a bit of a resume that illustrated at the very least some large scale potential conflicts of interest for Mr. Baker and detailed his scandalous role in the Bush I admin helping to build up Saddam’s military capability. While sharing the above I kicked you guys in the nuts and called you faggot to get your attention.
Most of you know the study group is bullshit, you just haven’t taken the extra step of talking out loud back at the nonsense when it starts to bug you or you smell a rat. That’s what I did. After a few days of C-Span and the parade of study group cheerleaders and actors in the “news”, I got filled to the brim with it all, and my tipping point was an offhanded post citing Baker and the commission as part of banal organizational problem solving and a proactive thing. I found it outrageous that smart people would be that clueless. Seriously, I’m sure you’re all busy, but remaining ignorant but distrustful is far more civic and historically minded than grabbing the surface nonsense (basically ignorance too but with a highlight reel to allege knowledge sharing) and parroting it so you don’t have to admit your ignorance. Christ their paying to make it all confusing so they can get away with it, who the hell has the time or the resources to sift through all of that with a thirst fro real non-fiction?
What do you want to hear? The study group’s great, Baker’s an honest patriot, Iraq will be fine and America is a force for good around the world. Go out and make more money and trust your leaders to steer the good ship America? No can do. I will say that I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t often see signs of intelligent life here, so in my charming way I’m complimenting you. You’re welcome. I stand by it cuss words and all.
Posted by: plaiche | Sep 6, 2007 11:45:05 AM
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