I am not a huge hockey fan, though I spent many years as a hockey father watching one of my sons play. And it may be fair to say that, other than Herb Brooks and Scotty Bowman, hockey has not turned out the legendary coaches that football, baseball or even basketball has. Or, maybe it’s just that we don’t pay enough attention to this frozen sport.
Still, recent events with the Dallas Stars caught my eye. Apparently, the team’s hotheaded defenseman, Sean Avery, used a very indelicate expression to describe his former girlfriend, actress Elisha Cutbert, to the press. Since the term isn’t used much outside of frat houses and locker rooms, and Ms. Cutbert is sort of well known, Avery’s comments played widely on TV and Internet.
This caused the hockey commissioner, Gary Bettman, to suspend Avery for six games. Who knew that hockey, a sport that encourages fighting, was so concerned about its image?
What’s noteworthy from a leadership perspective is the comment of Dallas coach Dave Tippett. The Stars have been struggling since Avery arrived. According to Sports Illustrated, Avery just doesn’t fit in with the team (SI, November 24, 2008). Tippett seems to have had it with him and declared at a press conference, “From a coach's standpoint, I try to build a team that has an atmosphere where players care about each other and play with each other and play with continuity, and I find it hard to believe that Sean could come back in that dressing room and we could find that continuity again.”
You rarely hear a coach say something so critical (or insightful) out loud—mostly they stay positive or mouth clichés. Tippet is on to something big. Building a team, especially a smaller team like a hockey squad, requires people not just to collaborate, but also actually to care about each other and show it. It only takes one grumpy, selfish, or awful human being to foul that up. And, the only thing you can do is to get rid of that person; there are no other fixes. Good for Tippett to recognize it and to say it out loud. For the Stars’ sake management should cut its multi-million dollar losses before Avery completely ruins the team.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Self-Awareness
When I conduct leadership workshops or work 1:1 with executives, I stress self-awareness as the fundamental, underlying attribute of leaders. If you are self-aware, you know who you are and what you can do. You also know what you aren't that good at so you can learn the things you need to learn and avoid the things you need to avoid.
Without accurate self-awareness, you've got nothing. You don't know what you don't know, and that will kill you as a leader. I've often thought that with decent self-awareness and a good ethical foundation, you can go pretty far, as long as you're committed to continuous learning.
Which brings me to today's topic, jailed Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Not only is Blago ethically challenged, to say the least (I lived in Illinois for almost 30 years, and we wondered not only how did this guy get to be gov, but why wasn't he in jail already). But he may be the least self-aware leader anyone's seen in years, and that's going quite a ways.
Just yesterday, the day before his arrest, Blago took questions from the press while appearing at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, the factory where workers are holding a sit-in to get their severance and vacation monies. The gov was asked if he was worried about allegations that the Feds were taping his conversations. His reply, " If anyone wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead. Feel free to do it."
Lack of self-awareness and hubris edging into meglomania combined with criminal behavior for a pretty spectacular downfall. You might say that lack of self-awareness is the least of it, but to not even be aware of what you are saying on the phone is quite amazing. Long-time colleagues of Blago uniformly describe him as difficult to work with, making every policy dispute personal. According to them, he didn't even seem to know when he was making enemies. Yet this is a politician whose approval rating (prior to arrest) in very blue Illinois was even lower than George Bush's and whose budget/tax proposal once lost in the Illinois House by a vote of 107-0.
Without accurate self-awareness, you've got nothing. You don't know what you don't know, and that will kill you as a leader. I've often thought that with decent self-awareness and a good ethical foundation, you can go pretty far, as long as you're committed to continuous learning.
Which brings me to today's topic, jailed Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
Not only is Blago ethically challenged, to say the least (I lived in Illinois for almost 30 years, and we wondered not only how did this guy get to be gov, but why wasn't he in jail already). But he may be the least self-aware leader anyone's seen in years, and that's going quite a ways.
Just yesterday, the day before his arrest, Blago took questions from the press while appearing at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago, the factory where workers are holding a sit-in to get their severance and vacation monies. The gov was asked if he was worried about allegations that the Feds were taping his conversations. His reply, " If anyone wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead. Feel free to do it."
Lack of self-awareness and hubris edging into meglomania combined with criminal behavior for a pretty spectacular downfall. You might say that lack of self-awareness is the least of it, but to not even be aware of what you are saying on the phone is quite amazing. Long-time colleagues of Blago uniformly describe him as difficult to work with, making every policy dispute personal. According to them, he didn't even seem to know when he was making enemies. Yet this is a politician whose approval rating (prior to arrest) in very blue Illinois was even lower than George Bush's and whose budget/tax proposal once lost in the Illinois House by a vote of 107-0.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Two Blind Mice
Why would anyone want to give the Big Three automakers a bailout? After years of delaying listening to the market, building marginal cars and fighting every safety and environmental advance with huge lobbying dollars, do they really deserve our hard-earned money? I don't think so, no matter what the pols say. The only argument I can think of for offering them government loans is that we are throwing around so much anyway, to places like Citibank, what's another $34B? But that's hardly a good justification for big bucks we're unlikely to see again.
Besides, have you driven a GM car lately? I just rented Chevy's much ballyhooed Malibu on a business trip. Quite pleasant, but nothing to write home about. Not much of an engine for accelerating on the highway, but then rental cars don't often come fully loaded. But the big issue is that there at least a dozen cars in that category and price point, and the Malibu doesn't stand out at all. A me-too product is no way to save a company.
If Congress doesn't provide the buckets of money to bail them out, GM will go through bankruptcy and actually be able to redo their union and dealer contracts. This may be enough to save them going forward, if the Board and management, previously oblivious, have the brains and guts to do it. Chrysler wants to disappear anyway since it appears that Cerebrus, the PE fund that owns it, is just looking for an exit strategy. They clearly want to hang around just long enough to find a buyer and get out. They should also wonder why they hired Bob Nardelli, he of the big bucks disaster at Home Depot, to ru(i)n a car company.
But, Ford, may well come out of this alive and well without government largess. Bill Ford, who was no great shakes at running the company, had the brains and self-awareness to know it. So he brought in a topflight exec in Alan Mulally to run the company. Good for him. Because he didn't have Ford blue in his blood, Mulally was able to make the changes--big cuts; new models; large, new lines of credit--that will keep Ford going till at least 2010. By then, people will either be buying cars again or the US will start to look like Bangladesh and it won't matter. Granted, Mulally is still tonedeaf enough to fly home to Seattle on the corporate jet every weekend while chopping jobs like crazy, but you can't really blame a rational person for not wanting to live in Detroit. (Even the Lions don't want to be there.)
Bill Ford should get the credit for saving his family's company with a good hire. A talented exec can make a big difference, especially a smart outsider breaking up a fossilized culture. And that leaves Rick Wagoner, a GM lifer, and Nardelli, as cold-blooded a character as you'll ever meet, as two blind mice running around the maze and hoping to beg for more cheese.
Besides, have you driven a GM car lately? I just rented Chevy's much ballyhooed Malibu on a business trip. Quite pleasant, but nothing to write home about. Not much of an engine for accelerating on the highway, but then rental cars don't often come fully loaded. But the big issue is that there at least a dozen cars in that category and price point, and the Malibu doesn't stand out at all. A me-too product is no way to save a company.
If Congress doesn't provide the buckets of money to bail them out, GM will go through bankruptcy and actually be able to redo their union and dealer contracts. This may be enough to save them going forward, if the Board and management, previously oblivious, have the brains and guts to do it. Chrysler wants to disappear anyway since it appears that Cerebrus, the PE fund that owns it, is just looking for an exit strategy. They clearly want to hang around just long enough to find a buyer and get out. They should also wonder why they hired Bob Nardelli, he of the big bucks disaster at Home Depot, to ru(i)n a car company.
But, Ford, may well come out of this alive and well without government largess. Bill Ford, who was no great shakes at running the company, had the brains and self-awareness to know it. So he brought in a topflight exec in Alan Mulally to run the company. Good for him. Because he didn't have Ford blue in his blood, Mulally was able to make the changes--big cuts; new models; large, new lines of credit--that will keep Ford going till at least 2010. By then, people will either be buying cars again or the US will start to look like Bangladesh and it won't matter. Granted, Mulally is still tonedeaf enough to fly home to Seattle on the corporate jet every weekend while chopping jobs like crazy, but you can't really blame a rational person for not wanting to live in Detroit. (Even the Lions don't want to be there.)
Bill Ford should get the credit for saving his family's company with a good hire. A talented exec can make a big difference, especially a smart outsider breaking up a fossilized culture. And that leaves Rick Wagoner, a GM lifer, and Nardelli, as cold-blooded a character as you'll ever meet, as two blind mice running around the maze and hoping to beg for more cheese.
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