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The New York Times reports that in early 2009 at Google, "statisticians . . . embarked on a plan code-named Project Oxygen. The 'people analytics' teams at the company produced what might be called the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers. 'My first reaction was, that’s it?' says Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president . . .  for human resources. 'The starting point was that our best managers have teams that perform better, are retained better, are happier — they do everything better,' Mr. Bock says. 'So the biggest controllable factor that we could see was the quality of the manager, and how they sort of made things happen. The question we then asked was: What if every manager was that good? And then you start saying: Well, what makes them that good? And how do you do it?' He tells the story of one manager whose employees seemed to despise him. He was driving them too hard. They found him bossy, arrogant, political, secretive. They wanted to quit his team. 'He’s brilliant, but he did everything wrong when it came to leading a team,' Mr. Bock recalls. Because of that heavy hand, this manager was denied a promotion he wanted, and was told that his style was the reason. But Google gave him one-on-one coaching — the company has coaches on staff, rather than hiring from the outside. Six months later, team members were grudgingly acknowledging in surveys that the manager had improved." (1)

Analysis:

"What if every manager were good" sounds a lot like "What is everyone were above average?" One might reasonably ask: In what sense good?  Good people as in kind-hearted?  Good as in having mastered managerial skills?  Or good as in having a good style--meaning that it fits the particular corporate culture? The question of what makes a manager good hinges on what is meant by "good." In the case of the bossy and arrogant manager at Google, I contend that what was "bad" was not limited to or sourced in his style; rather, the problem was his personality, which transcends style. Arrogance, for example, is a basic attitude rather than a style. It is no surprise that "coaching" (a mismomer outside of sports even if a fad in business circles) did not turn the guy around. It sounds to me that the guy needed therapy or counseling. That Google would reduce a "bad" personality to leadership style and prescribe "coaching" rather than a therapist is no accident.

It is commonly taught in business schools and believed in business settings that the science of management is applicable for virtually any business in any industry. In fact, one can theoretically manage a "team" (another misnomer from sports--is business really so boring that such faddish terms need to be borrowed and used out of their context?) without having any skill or knowledge particular to the product.  The idea, in short, is that anything can be managed, and that knowledge of the particular thing is not requisite. Hence it is not surprising that managers would overstep onto psychology without having a knowledge of that field. What is actually a psychological problem is thus transmuted into managerial terms such as "style" and "coaching." Personality, in other words, is reduced to the extent to which it fits within leadership and the manager is assessed from the standpoint of leadership style (e.g., task vs. relationship). Moreover, reducing managing to behaviors, as if that which is inside the manager is a black box, is to ignore that which separates the mice from the men as managers in terms of getting along with others (i.e., "good" as interpersonal relations).  In other words, improving a manager's "style" by trying to change (manipulate?) her behavior is apt to be insufficient. It is like paddling a row boat without moving the anchor; the boat isn't going to move very far.
With this in mind, I turn now to critique the "Eight Good Behaviors" that the good people at Google recommend.

• Be a good coach. Included: provide specific feedback without being too negative and "present" solutions to problems. But isn't this just management?  I don't see much actually transferred from what coaches do in sports.
• Empower your team and don't micromanage. Freedom vs. advice. Challenge the "team" with "big" problems. Sounds like this was written by a "team" of kindergarden teachers (no offence to the latter). Empower is a faddish politically-correct term that is rarely defined adaquately. With regard to micromanaging, every micromanager I have encountered has had control issues--meaning psychological problems involving or impacting personality and interpersonal conduct (but not rooted in conduct, or style!).
• Express interest in team members' success and personal well-being. Get to know about their lives outside of work and make new team members feel welcome. Helping new people to feel welcome is laudable; it is perhaps the area where a manager can truly be most human. Success, however, is a vague term implying an ending (e.g., Did you succeed in getting the kids to sleep last night?), whereas business typically is ongoing and thus not like a race or contest.  Another unsuccessful analogy unless used for particular tasks that have a clear end-point.  With regard to getting to know things about subordinates outside of work, this can be viewed as invasive and with a hidden agenda (e.g., to manipulate better "performance"). Also, ethical problems can arise if subordinates feel pressured to discuss matters such as their religion and politics. If a manager, as a human being, is genuinely interested in other people at work, subordinates will likely sense it; otherwise, they could feel manipulated.
• Don't be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented.  Focus on the "team" setting achievement goals and priorities.  We are back to kindergarden language (e.g., sissy and be productive!) and to what is essentially management itself (which is inherently geared to producing results). A business is a results-oriented enterprise.  A focus "on what employees want the team to achieve" belies a manager's true intention to set goals for the people working under them.
• Be a good communicator and listen to the team. Two-way communication. "Hold all-hands meetings and be straightforward" in communicating . . . Encourage open dialogue and listen." All-hands? At any rate, should we really be encouraging managers to have more meetings?  Being straightforward is laudable, however, as is open dialogue. The question is perhaps whether this is even possible where managers view their subordinates as lower. In other words, can there be straightforward dialogue where there is a power relation between boss and employee?
• Help your employees with career development. Here too, the difficult matter of being able to be straightforward is relevant, given how organizational politics and a manager's own interests can relate to others' career development.
• Have a clear vision and strategy for the term even in the midst of turmoil. Involve the team in setting the vision.  Here is yet another vague analogy that has been a fad: leadership vision. How does this differ from coming up with a goal? Has anyone in the study of leadership or management successfully defined vision?  The think about faddish words use as weak analogies is that people can use them without knowing what they mean--even as they are using them! Everyone just sorta looks the other way rather than asking: well, what do you mean exactly by vision as distinct from goal-setting? Long-term goal setting?  But is that to have sight or merely to plan further out? Lastly, the use of the word turmoil, particularly when one considers how a turbulent business environment pales in comparison with the protests in the Middle East and the Japanese earthquake in 2011, seems to be excessive. Do managers have a tendency to overstate--or overdramatize--what they face on a daily basis?
• Have key technical skills so you can help advise the team. Work side by side with your subordinates when needed and understand the work they are doing. This principle, or "habit," challenges the notion that a person can learn management skills and apply them to virtually any business--knowledge of how to make the particular product being unnecessary.  I suspect this is an American view of management. The Japanese have traditionally hired managers from the factory floor precisely because they are familiar with the technical skills being used to make the particular products.  A good manager, I contend, is one who is already proficient with most of the tasks of his or her subordinates and can therefore help out when needed.  So it would appear that Google got one right.

One of the perks of corporate office is the presumption of stature and legitimacy.  In other words, the general public typically brings all sorts of assumptions along when reading about the behavior of a CEO.  I contend that the reality of the person behind the curtain is far different from what is portrayed.  That is to say, at least with respect to how CEO's typically want to be viewed in terms of corporate responsibility, I suspect that the reality in the executive suites is far different.  In fact, the reality can be downright childish.  Richard Fuld, who was the CEO at Lehman Brothers, may well have behaved like a six year old when upset. Had the general public been given a view of Fuld's antics, we would have shaken our heads not simply out of utter disbelief that such immaturity could be in such a position, but also in recognition of the gap between public and private persona.  Such a gap is dangerous in a republic wherein the electorate is to hold the government in check (and the government in turn is charged with protecting the public and the market system itself from being compromised from firms too big to fail). 

One might argue that Richard Fuld was an exception--protected at Lehman by an enervated or compromised corporate governance system. One could point as well to Mark Thain, the CEO of Merrill Lynch, who in over-extended early morning merger talks with Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America, was preoccupied with the matter of executive compensation. Merrill Lynch would have gone bankrupt at the open of business that morning, and Thain was pressuring Lewis to sign off on large bonuses for himself and his colleagues at the defunct Merrill Lynch. Even so, one could argue that Thain simply evinced a particularly selfish and greedy CEO who didn't have a good sense of priorities. What, then, if a group of Wall Street CEO's shrunk from responsibility even when the financial system itself may have hung in the balance?  It would not be a case of a rogue CEO acting narrowly in contradistinction to the example of J.P. Morgan in the panic of 1907.  Might it be that the age of corporate statemen had passed by the time of the crisis in 2008?  If so, might we be occastioned to taking mice to be men?  Such a practice would point to the need to recalibrate our standards.

On the weekend of September 13-14, 2008 before the Monday when Lehman Brothers declared bankrupcy and Bank of America agreed to purchase Merrill Lynch, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner summoned the CEO's of the major Wall Street banks (except Fuld) to the Federal Reserve building in New York City.  Paulson and Geithner told the assembled executives that they needed to figure out how to save Lehman because if that bank were to go under, the financial market itself would stand a good chance of collapsing.  He reminded the assembled CEO's that the process would entail a domino effect wherein their respective banks would fall, one by one in quick succession. Incredibly, the CEOs were in denial on whether their established institutions could indeed fall; the status quo has such staying power. Furthermore, the CEOs were slow to view the viability of the financial market itself as their responsibility, in spite of the fact that their own self-interest depended on it.  Incredibly, on the Friday night and Saturday, they tried to figure out how their firms could profit from picking over Lehman's remaining assets.  On the Saturday morning, they resorted to doing impressions of Paulson and Geithner and betting on a computer game on one of their blackberries (you might want to re-read this last sentence, as it is so incredible that men of such power and responsibility would behave like teenagers--and at a time of crisis no less!).  Finally on Sunday, Barclays offered to buy the financially viable part of Lehman and proposed a consortium funded by the other banks in the meeting to support Lehman's debt.   Even though Barclays should perhaps have agreed to join the consortium, the other banks were on the brink of agreeing to contribute at least a billion each to the consortium--essentially propping up the mistakes of one of their rivals while letting another rival (Barclays) to walk away with the "good" Lehman.  The British government ended up refusing to allow Barclays to buy even the "good" Lehman, making the CEO's look good in comparison.

I have to give the CEOs credit for agreeing to the consortium. They would have been acting as a group as J.P. Morgan had acted in 1907.  However, the antics of the modern day CEOs during the first half of the weekend evince a childish behavior that is difficult to reconcile with men making millions a year and running firms too big to fail.  The financial system hung in the balance and the CEO's of the banks too big to fail were literally behaving like teenagers until Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan exercised some statesmanship (similar to JP himself in 1907) by stepping up to the plate and asking the other bankers to contribute a billion each too.

Diamond notwithstanding, I have to conclude that what we are led to believe concerning the men and women behind the CEO label is far too convenient for them may be inaccurate, and perhaps even manufactured as though a sort of brand management. Just as candidates for elected office are sold like shinny products, we may be under an illusion with regard to business "leaders."  Andrew Sorkin, author of Too Big to Fail, which is my source here (see pp. 330ff), said on a television interview that he (and we) didn't know much about what was going on in the banks during the crisis "because they didn't want us to know" (Tavis Smiley Show, PBS, 11/9/09).  That is, it is no accident, kein zufall, that we will likely remain asleep or ignorant to the nature of the man behind the curtain.  It is in the Wizard's interest that the curtain remain closed from our view. However, thainks to glimpses, we can investigate just who the people are who run firms too big to fail. It can perhaps be said that promotional processes from middle to upper management should be re-examined from outside of the executive suite.  I suspect that the extant promotions are too often simply matters of connections, friendships and power within management, rather than of maturity.

On a cold and rainy weeknight in the early spring of 2010, I treated myself to a light movie (Valentine’s Day) at a small movie theatre. Only a handful of moviegoers were there that night.  Before the film, I discussed movies generally with the manager, who had been playing cards on his office computer.  He had just one employee working.  She was acting as cashier, concessions clerk, and film projectionist.  The image of the manager playing solitare on his computer while the employee covered these functions reminded me of something that has bothered me about American management more generally.  This in turn prompted me to come upon an insight regarding managing and presiding (which in turn prompted me to write this post).
It struck me that the manager of the small theatre was essentially presiding.  That is to say, he was literally “sitting before.”  He misunderstood management as “being there” in case there are any problems that would compromise the theatre’s viability.  But with just one employee doing conventional tasks, the likelihood of such a manager being called into action for any “macro” problems was pretty remote.  I would argue that he was confusing presiding (something a president does) with managing.  To manage is to be actively engaged in the operations of an organization; it is not to “sit before.”  In other words, being the manager is not a free pass out of taking part in operations.  For example, the theatre manager could have manned the concession stand (or ticket counter) even if the other employee was not busy. The manager - employee distinction has been overdrawn in American business.  In effect, management has been replaced by presiding.

What makes the “management by presiding” oversight particularly interesting is that the reverse has been the case among presidents of large companies (and the US), who essentially manage.  The president of Microsoft, for example, does not function as a figure head.  Rather, he has a managerial function.  I submit that virtually every large American business is misusing the title “president” (and vice-president).  Essentially, what they mean by “president” is just another upper-level manager (with the emphasis on upper-level).  I think it could be argued that very large businesses could use real presidents, whose role it is to act as the figure-head—actively intervening only when intestine arguing within or a major incident compromising the continued viability of the company occur.  An ongoing management role would undercut such a president’s credibility (and power) in stepping in when there really is a major problem.  We see such undercutting in the modern US Presidents, whose ongoing partisanship has compromised the respect they would need in intervening in a major crisis facing the US.  The overwhelming majority of US Presidents have spent their “presiding capital” in putting out bush fires…hence they have too little water left for the rare but potentially devestating major forest fire.

Therefore,  in the US, we have small managers acting like presidents, and harried presidents acting like managers.  I suggest that the “management vs. leadership” fad that so mesmerized American business schools in the 1980s finally be replaced by “managing vs. presiding” because we need to clarify these two roles.  A potentially interesting question involves where to place “leadership” in this new dichotomy.
We should resist the temptation to apply “leader” to both managing and presiding.  Leadership too often in presiding undercuts that role (as one can lead the way to a bush fire), and leadership applied to management at a low organizational level can backfire as presumptuous and pretentious. Leadership applies to presiding only when a president 1) stands for the entire organization or polity in mapping out a general direction that the management/government can follow or 2) actively intervenes in a crisis that theatens the entire organization or polity.  Leadership applies to managing only when operational tasks or legislation are informed by a change in principles or ideal.  Just as managing should not be switched with presiding, leadership should not be applied willy nilly just because it sounds good.

Without realizing it, I was essentially following such a fad when I wrote my dissertation on leadership (and ethics) after swimming through a decade of the “leadership vs. management” fad. I have since dove deep into ethical and political theory to touch a more solid intellectual foundation.  From this vantage-point, I have looked back up at the water’s surface to see the frogs still playing on the surface—jumping from lilly pad to lilly pad as if the green patches were foundations.  For a while, I published articles in the Journal of Business Ethics, only to have a reviewer (and a section editor—a lawyer actually) so obviously not understand the philosophy applied yet still, in a presumptuous manner, procede nonetheless to pass judgment on that which they did not understand.  You can’t fight ignorance, especially when it is puffed up with itself and in a position of power. Would it kill a business ethicist to admit to not understanding Nietzsche, for example?  A while back, I received an email from a business ethics “scholar” boasting of having taught a college course on the philosopher after having read one or two of his books.  Incroyable!  Nietzsche would call such pretentious weakness utterly emetic. The literature on “corporate citizenship”—another fad following on the heels of corporate social responsibility in business ethics—is no better. Here “scholars” who have not studied political theory (beyond a few books) presume to spout their ideology qua scholarship.  I mention all this by way of uncovering the squalid state of the “academic” field that ran with “management vs. leadership” in the 1980s (and into the 1990s).  I would argue now that ethical principles (i.e., business ethics) are not the primary vantage-point from which to study “management vs. leadership.”  One would do better to consult organization theory and the leadership literature in political science.  I would like to think that twenty-first scholarship would put an end the ideological fads masquerading as scholarship and the related dilettantes that true scholars excessively tolerated during the last half of the twentieth century. However, the continued dearth of solid academic scholarship in business ethics and the continued wandering of its herd animals onto extrinsic pastures suggests that we will have to wait a while longer for the decadence of the twentieth century to finally die out.  There are of course exceptions to the rule.  Dr. William C. Frederick, for example, who was one of my professors when I was in graduate school, did some diving of his own. He transcended the superficial fad of corporate social responsibility by swimming down to the more solid rock of Ecology in order to apply principles of that science to human organization.  I am proud to think of Bill as one of my teachers.  We both began our dives in the early 1990s—perhaps we were both tacitly rendering a “verdict by direction” on the extant field of business ethics that had become preoccupied with corporate social responsibility (as if it constituted an ethical principle).  As scholars, both Bill and I wanted something more substantive intellectually.  As human beings, we don’t often know completely why we make changes of direction; we tend not to dive deep enough to question what we are doing and what changes we plan to make.  Yet from hindsight the reasons can be plain as day.

The practice of managers presiding and presiders managing demonstrates the innane tyranny of the status quo wherein doing simply follows doing.  That is: too many people not thinking about what they are doing (or not doing). Too many small-time American managers are like cows, chewing their cud while “lower” herd animals do the heavy lifting.  In true, such managers are herd animals themselves. There is no reason why someone who has a manager title can’t lift too…it comes down to laziness and presumptuousness utilizing “presiding” as a subterfuge.  Furthermore, there is no reason why people in authentic presider offices need to run around like rabbits in order to impose (or reproduce) themselves on others.

Despite several days of overwhelming popular grass-roots protest in Egypt, on January 30, 2011, the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, stopped short of urging the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to resign.  According to The New York Times, she spoke of "a process that must include a government dialogue with the protesters and “free, fair, and credible” elections, scheduled for September." In the face of overwhelming protests going on in Egypt, the top U.S. diplomat was urging a dialogue through September. It is as though she viewed the current Egyptian president as legitimate in democratic terms, yet she also said: “We have been very clear that we want to see a transition to democracy. . . . And we want to see the kind of steps taken to bring that about. We want to see an orderly transition.”  If a transition to democracy means that the Egyption officials have not hitherto been legitimately elected democratically, then why was Clinton so timid? On February 1, 2011, The New York Times reported that President Obama had sent a message to President Mubarak through Frank Wisner that the Egyptian president not run for reelection in September. According to officials, it "was not a blunt demand for Mr. Mubarak to step aside now, but firm counsel that he should make way for a reform process that would culminate in free and fair elections in September to elect a new Egyptian leader." According to The New York Times, Obama was continuing his balancing act by "resisting calls for Mr. Mubarak to step down, even [while calling] "for an 'orderly transition' to a more politically open Egypt." As a result, it was still  not clear whether the Obama administration favored Mubarak turning over the reins to a transitional government. On February 5th, just days after suggesting that it wanted immediate change, the Obama administration said it would support an “orderly transition” managed by Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman. The New York Times reported that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "said that Mr. Mubarak’s immediate resignation might complicate, rather than clear, Egypt’s path to democracy, given the requirements of Egypt’s Constitution." Not coincidentally, Israeli officials, who have long viewed Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Suleiman as stabilizing influences in a dangerous region, "have made clear to the administration that they support evolution rather than revolution in Egypt." Accordingly, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden urged Vice President Suleiman on February 8th to take specific steps toward democracy. The technocratic turn presupposed the evolution rather than revolution approach, as per the interests of Israel and contrary to that of the Egyptian protesters.

The ambiguity in the Obama administration's "policy" on Egypt bespeaks an underlying lack of clarity in regarding principle as distinct from diplomatic expediency. At the time, the protestors in Egypt saw through the American strategic moves as such and continued to demand Mubarak's immediate resignation; the half-way, or "balanced," measures of convenience were regarded as wan from the standpoint of the protestors' acting on principle. I contend that both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama put short-term tactical advantage above leadership. It should have been obvious that the breakdown of Egptian law and order and the accompanied strikes went beyond a need for "dialogue" and an evolution toward democracy. It was as though a soldier hemorrhaging on the battlefield were being told to relax and be orderly rather than that a tourniquet would be immediately applied.  It is sad, indeed, how bad things would need to get on the ground before the Obama administration would admit that a new government from the top was urgently necessary. In my view, the loss of law and order itself meant that the government had lost its right to govern. The U.S. administration lost this window by letting things "evolve."

If "real change" means anything, it surely involves departing from business as usual in order to lead by principle. Principled leadership entails taking risks. Indeed, tacticians are so cautious in part in order to obviate such risk. That is to say, principled leadership involves the risk that being guided by one's principles can involve short-run costs. As regards Egypt, standing up for the Egyptian protesters by saying that President Mubarak should step down immediately (and that no further U.S. aid would go to Egypt otherwise) would risk that president's displeasure should he retain power. Also, representative democracy unguided by Mubarak and his supporting offiicals could have brought to power parties such as the Muslim Brothershood that were not in the U.S. interest.  However, such is democracy; the victors of another country's elections are not necessarily going to favor U.S. interests. A principled leader would not be so selfish and manipulatory as to hold back from exercising principled leadership simply because he or she might suffer drawbacks. Ironically, the drawbacks might be less than expected, for a principled leader has such credibility from being authentic and principled that any resulting resentment is apt to be tempored by respect.



In general terms, the American problem lies in prioritizing self-interested calculation over principled leadership.  The American society has embraced the bureaucratic age such that leadership is exterpated and replaced with incremental strategic management--even in the Oval Office. Sadly,  being "professional" had replaced being "principled," such that the highest officials in the U.S. Government privileged the expertise of immediate tactical advantage over the principles that were innately felt by the Egyptian protesters (and presumably by ordinary Americans as well).  The American "leaders" had forgotten that in trying to have it both ways, they would be apt to end up stagnate, confused, and not well respected.  Were the officials bold in putting principle above immediate tactical advantage, I submit that the tenor of the U.S. government would better reflect the values of the American people. In the context of the Egyptian protests, as in that of the preceding Iranian protests, People the world over were crying out--yearning--for principled leadership rather than professional bureaucrats in the U.S. Government. It is in human nature to value and respect leaders who have the courage of conviction to say, "This might piss off some powerful people whom I could otherwise use, but this is what we as Americans believe in." Simply stated, the belief is that a government is no longer legitmate if it loses the consent of a significant number of citizen, especially if they are willing to put everything on the line to "just say no."  Incrementalist bureaurats look quite wan and feckless in comparison. Such officials have forgotten that management is not leadership; tactic is not principle. I suspect that the attempt by business schools to "managize" leadership into managerial strategy lies behind the "tactic as leadership" error. In other words, too many managers want to be known as leaders without actually leading. They treat leadership itself as a commodity that they can appropriate without actually being leaders. There is indeed an expertise in principled leadership, and I suspect an instinct for it, which the typical manager (and government official) does not have. I contend that principled leadership is more valuable than technical expertise in the upper echelons of organizations. 

The irony of the Egyptian protests and the muted or ambiguous incrementalist reactions of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, the American "dream team" of 2008, was that there was a disjucture between the U.S. Government and the American people. In other words, I suspect that the typical American preferred the stance of the protesters to that of our own "leaders." Perhaps one day an incrementalist and short-term oriented U.S. administration might find itself surrounded by protesting Americans. Will the government's answer be "evolution"? Citing the "need for dialogue" amid the country at a standstill would be laughable even if bureaucratic technocrats would still take their response to be "prudent" and thus appropriate. "Prudent" and "incremental" were not the words that came to my mind in watching the popular protests in Egypt in 2011. It was far easier to agree with the foreign protesters than with my own government.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/world/middleeast/31diplo.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/world/middleeast/02transition.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/world/middleeast/09diplomacy.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper