The Corporation Administration

GWB and his administration often relied on his business credentials to establish his credibility when he came into the political scene first as governor and later as president. Many viewed this as a good thing. His performance since then has cast doubt not on the corporate tactics in leadership positions, but rather on his own incompetence as a leader.

I believe it is perfectly logical that he could have been a very effective leader in the corporate world. The problem may not be his incompetence, his failure as a leader may actually be more demonstrative of the complete ineffectiveness of corporate leadership tactics.

When I use the term, corporate leadership tactics, I mean a tactic of leadership that demands extensive, and maybe even complete, control over the organization. Essentially, we are talking about a totalitarian or authoritarian form of leadership, one in which there are very few meaningful checks on a leader's authority. That is equivalent to the powers of a CEO of a publicly traded corporation. Now, I don't want excessively generalize. Certainly, the board of directors could remove a CEO, certainly the shareholders could sue the CEO on behalf of the corporation. These things happen, but they seldom happen enough to create any meaningful participation for those who are affected by a corporation's actions (community members, consumers, employees, vendors, subcontractors).

It is likely that we have all done time working for a corporation. I have worked in a few and they were authoritarian from the highest to the lowest level. Your boss's will is the law and dissent is rarely tolerated. Every now and then one will have the chance to work for a manager who is effective and facilitates the professional development of his or her staff, but that is never as likely to happen as the opposite possibility. As a result, everyone in the organization suffers, and as a result, the organization suffers.

Therefore, it is quite surprising that anyone should have expected anything but the current situation in Washington D.C. GWB runs his government like a corporation and therefore, we should expect corporate results. Again, most of us have experienced the inefficient, cutthroat, inhumane environment of the corporate entity. That is a world where the PR departments constantly attempt to ignore reality, the CEO makes speeches to crowds of roaring shareholders, and where profits supersede any other consideration. Indeed, GWB is our corporate president, and we have been appropriately rewarded under his leadership.