Lee Iacocca on leadership

[SpeedRacer 1]

Excerpt: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney 04/11/07


Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's
happening? Where the hell is our outrage?


We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos
steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate
gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less
build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and
nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the
course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic.


I'll give you a soundbite: Throw the bums out! You might think I'm getting
senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to
speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the
United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our
phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record
deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't
need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys
in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and
nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead
of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and
yours traveled across the ocean for--I've had enough. How about you? I'll
go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged.
This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. My friends tell me to calm
down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the
young people." I'd love to, as soon as I can pry them away from their
iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up
because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say
I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it,
and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in
those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust
politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These
guys work for us.


Who Are These Guys, Anyway? Why are we in this mess? How did we
end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them, or at least
some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to
suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or
demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free
speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.
And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal
Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the
reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a
people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall
together.Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and
make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of
Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and
Truman?


There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted
us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?The Test
of a Leader. I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I
understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine
points, not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I
call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated.
Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We
should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this
crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something
before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the
leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's
up to us to choose wisely.


A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people
outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously,
because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about
never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I
hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never
reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to
decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or
newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the
latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym,
with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.If a leader
never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If
he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The
inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you
already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election,
George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls.
Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have
listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong
track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then
you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how
to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.


A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try
something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides
himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of
control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a
disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden
recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into
Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the
President, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the
problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe
recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all
would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you
don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying
hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was
flabbergasted. He told Bush,"Mr. President, your instincts aren't good
enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we
all know now, it wasn't. Leadership is all about managing change, whether
you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get
creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard
Business School.


A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at
the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and
telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how
to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to
convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know
if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a
while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's
painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of
communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was
at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the
casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.


A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the
difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right
thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character,
give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about
his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world
stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the
grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of
thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths. For what? To build our oil
reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have
him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in
Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A
man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.


A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even
goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't
courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to
talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in
the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a
commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk. If you're a
politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will
cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience
has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall
meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The
questions were all softballs.


To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION, a fire in your
belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something
done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time
record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President, four hundred and
counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the
business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of
his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his
hand-stocked lake. It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session
only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record
set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress.
Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had
nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote
itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.


A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being
flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the
ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's
my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with
at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future
of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those
frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over
that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who
received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit.
When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going
to go right through the roof.


A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it?
You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got
to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags
about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well,
let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest
deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a
half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for
starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we
face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.


You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this
Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the
car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre,
Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East
Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a
huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee,
the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability
to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a
dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have
common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know,
Mr. they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-
mission-accomplished Bush. Former President Bill Clinton once said,
"I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the
reality-based world, and I like it here." I think our current President should
visit the real world once in a while.


The Biggest C is Crisis Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is
forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the
desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've
never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your
world comes tumbling down. On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong
leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide
us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a
pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting
there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on
tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route
back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked
people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White
House. He basically went into hiding for the day, and he told Vice
President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our
TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we
were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days
to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero. That was
George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do
when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq, a road his
own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't
listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on
being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of
you, I don't know what will. A Hell of a Mess.


So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no
plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest
deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to
Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care
costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy
policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The
middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for
leadership. But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all
the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are
the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I
may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.


Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than
making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've
spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know
how to do is react to things that have already happened. Name me one
leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to
spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding
accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after
the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't
happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a
plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.


Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we
can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed
that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese
car companies? How did this happen, and more important, what are we going
to do about it?


Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying
down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care
problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are
eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry. I have news for the
gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing
and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness
is being replaced with mediocrity.


What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call
them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a
change? Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom
here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I
believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living
through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our
worst crises, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy
assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of
recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this:
You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody
else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a
better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge
I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me,
believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So
let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had
enough.

Speed Racer
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