Leadership
I submitted the below letter to my local newspaper's "Letter to the Editor" section.
During our President’s recent news conference he stated that those elected to Congress and Senate in 2010 were elected by the people who didn’t understand the facts and those elected shouldn’t’ listen to the people. In other words, the people are stupid. The president then continued stating that resolution of our problems was best handled by “professional politicians”. Yeah, they sure have been doing an excellent job. How arrogant, the people are stupid! When did our system of governing change?
Letter to Editor:
I saved a Dilbert cartoon published 12/18/07
Dilbert, speaking at a school Career Day, describes a career in Engineering: “My job involves explaining things to idiots. Then the idiots make decisions based on misinterpreting what I said. Then it is my job to try and fix the massive problems caused by bad decisions. Eventually, rumors overwhelm facts, and I give up. In the final phase I assign blame to an unpopular coworker.”
I once was an Engineering Manager for a company that designed and manufactured nuclear equipment for the Naval Nuclear Program. My counterpart in The Bureau of Ships (DC) was a Political Science grad! Developing “work arounds” to overcome government incompetence was a daily chore.
I was also privileged to work for a real leader. He was the “go to manager” who resolved difficult problems. He once assembled a team and resolved a problem deemed unresolveable by “idiots”. The team diagnosed the problem in a week and proposed a solution. The “idiots: took credit and said it would take nine months to complete the fix. The team designed a fix, had parts made to test the fix, had the fix certified, then had new parts manufactured and installed in nine weeks.
The team had a sign made for the team leader to commemorate his leadership. The sign, hung in the leader’s office, said:
DO SOMETHING:
LEAD,
FOLLOW OR
GET OUT OF THE WAY.
The “idiots” took full credit for solving the problem and down played the action of the leader and his team.
I’ll let the readers decide how the above relates to DC.
Here’s a clue: There are leaders and “leaders”. Leaders are doers; “leaders” are talkers.
