I have a beat-up, red folder labeled “Blog Ideas” that has articles dating back to 2003. It’s one of those folders that always gets bigger and always has crap falling out of it. I was going through it recently and realized that the contents cluster around themes: Good leadership; Technology; Consumers. Stuff like that. Turns out, I collect - and keep - stories about good leaders like some people collect coins. In each case, I think it’s the rarity of the find that makes it so delicious. Good leaders, as you may have heard, are hard to find. At least, that’s what that cigar-chomping octogenarian Lee Iacocca says:
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. (Read more.)
That’s the same frustration I had when I started NGC; I felt that our bosses and leaders were clueless about how to motivate the first generation of folks to come of age in a knowledge economy. New workers often had (and have) more technical know-how than their seniority-based, digital-immigrant bosses. It was a big shift.
Still is.
To poke fun at how clueless our bosses are, I ran a contest in 1998, 1999, and 2000 (seems like it sort of drifted off after that), It was called the Management Hall of Shame, and it featured stories from real folks who’d been screwed, pooped on, or otherwise mistreated by their (sometimes) well-intentioned and (mostly) clueless commanding officers. It was Dilbert come-to-life.
What are your stories? When did you find yourself on the short end of a decision made by a “clueless bozo” or when did you (as a manager or leader) totally misfire?
We can’t always get it right. But in sharing, we can learn to do better.
Share your story in the reader comments…
