A Lesson from retired General Stanley McChrystal on Design, Teamwork and Leadership

I came across an issue of  Fast Company Magazine back when I was traveling for business and was intrigued with some of the best business writing I had ever seen.  These guys were writing on aspects of business that Forbes and others missed.  They changed the game of what business analysis/writing was and it made things better.


The enclosed video is from their website and features retired General Stanley McChrystal who led the Joint Special Operations Command.  He laid the groundwork for all the tactics we use in Iraq/Afghanistan and was instrumental in the War on Terror.  He got sacked because of the Rolling Stone article that gave a rather unflattering view of POTUS and how McChrystal felt about the administration.


The enclosed is a great mini-leadership lesson.  I would follow General McChrystal into battle as he is the real deal.  Obama is not and the difference in who is a real leader and who is not is plain to see for anyone.  Guys like McChrystal earned everything he has because he worked hard and sacrificed.  That is why his leadership lessons are the best you can get.  The Vactioner-In-Chief, not at all.  Take a listen, it is well worth your time.

Micromanagers - The Cancer of good morale and poison to exceptional effort

In my humble opinion, there is a disease loose in the world of business that is a Cancer to good morale and exceptional efforts - That poison is " Micromangement "

Defined as " a manager who rather than giving general instructions on smaller tasks and then devoting his time to supervising larger concerns, the micromanager monitors and assesses every step of a business process and avoids delegation of decisions.

Micromanagers are usually irritated when a subordinate makes decisions without consulting them, even if the decisions are totally within the subordinate's level of authority."

I worked for a couple of these and they were able to suck the oxygen right out of any room they entered.....Enclosed is a good Leadership lesson on how to avoid being one of these curmudgeons....Don't be that guy.

THEORY & PRACTICE
Micromanagers Miss Bull's-Eye
Dealing With Every Detail Robs Subordinates of the Freedom to Solve Problems.
By CARI TUNA - WSJ.com

Two years ago, Greg Cushard was leading eight or nine meetings a week at Rubicon Oil Co., the truck-refueling company he founded and runs. He would interrupt conversations among subordinates, identify mistakes and make even mundane decisions, he says.

"I acted like a quarterback ... more than a coach," Mr. Cushard says. He had little time to think about the business. Employees "stopped making suggestions because they were afraid they'd get shot down."

Prompted by advice from his top lieutenants and executive coach, Mr. Cushard resolved to stop micromanaging. Leadership experts say micromanagers -- from small-business owners to managers in large organizations -- share an unwillingness to trust subordinates; still, many can be successful, to a point.

Former President Jimmy Carter was known to personally review requests for White House tennis courts. Martha Stewart once described herself as a "maniacal micromanager" who had to "understand every part of the business to be able to maximize those businesses." Former Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Michael Eisner ordered stronger bulbs put in reading lights in Disney hotels.

The best managers help employees learn to work independently by giving them meaningful responsibilities, organizational coach Diane Foster says. "Who wants to be in a company where you are not allowed to think?"

Michael Hakkert, vice president of corporate marketing for Blue Coat Systems Inc., says he struggled with the urge to micromanage in his first supervisory job at Cisco Systems Inc. 10 years ago. Mr. Hakkert says he would act as an intermediary between subordinates and other Cisco employees instead of letting employees own their projects.

"It was very difficult to understand when to continue to roll up my sleeves and when to actually delegate," he recalls. A leadership-development class and mentor at Cisco helped Mr. Hakkert realize that good managers facilitate the work of their subordinates, whether or not they help create the final products.

Frontline workers often are best suited to identify problems and suggest creative solutions, says Ira Bryck, director of University of Massachusetts's Family Business Center in Hadley, Mass. But when conditioned to rely on a heavy-handed manager for guidance, employees become complacent, he says.

Managers should give employees goals and leave them to work out the details, Mr. Bryck says. They should resist the temptation to take control when subordinates make minor mistakes.

Some micromanagers need a push from others to break the habit. Mr. Bryck recalls the CEO of a small software company who asked him why employees didn't follow instructions. After interviewing employees, Mr. Bryck determined they resented the boss's heavy hand. He asked the employees to rewrite the CEO's job description to help him understand where his guidance wasn't necessary.

At Rubicon, the truck-refueling company, Mr. Cushard started leaving meetings after briefly setting the tone and agenda. He soon stopped attending some altogether, appointing others to lead in his place. Rubicon, Sacramento, Calif., has about 40 employees.

"When the CEO became a member of the meeting and not the center of the meeting, so much more got accomplished," says Tim Johnson, Rubicon's head of sales.

For example, Rubicon's accountants thrived when left to decide how to tackle the department's goals, Mr. Cushard says. They trimmed the average time to collect a payment to about 23 days, from 31 days.

"They did not want me there," Mr. Cushard says. "My presence hindered thinking."

But Rubicon's operations department initially "failed miserably because I had the wrong person" running the department, he says. The operations head purchased three more refueling trucks than the company needed -- for $175,000 each -- at a time when business was slowing. The trucks sat idle for months before they could be rotated into use.

Mr. Cushard ultimately fired the manager and split the operations department into two smaller groups that are easier to manage. "You instantly find out who's good and who's not by ... putting the ball in their court," he says.

Today, Rubicon employees take turns running meetings. Leaders periodically follow up with co-workers, creating more accountability within departments, Mr. Cushard says.

Mark Goulston, a Los Angeles-based management consultant, likes that approach. "It gives everyone the opportunity ... to feel what it's like to try to keep people on track," he says.

Mr. Cushard now attends three or four meetings a week; subordinates send updates from the rest. In his newfound spare time, Mr. Cushard launched a second company, a fuel clearinghouse that tracks oil prices.

As owners, "we think we know best, but we don't, not all of the time," he says. "I realized that it's not all about me."

Write to Cari Tuna at cari.tuna@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal

Companies pile up cash but reamin hesitant to add jobs...

Really?? Wow - shocka......The fact that companies KNOW they can use the unemployment numbers as a tool to make those who have jobs to work harder, ask for less and take whatever is given to them....this is not a good trend and is NOT in their best interest long-term as the pendulum will swing in the other direction eventually.

Companies need to " Do the right thing " - Cash reserves are good but employees will remember how they were treated when things change....].

And the present Administration is NOT helping things by making it harder for them to provide benefits with O-Care and other regulations. It is a perfect storm and the ones caught in the middle of it is the US workers.....delightful.

Companies pile up cash but remain hesitant to add jobs
By Jia Lynn YangWashington Post Staff WriterThursday, July 15, 2010;

Corporate America is hoarding a massive pile of cash. It just doesn't want to spend it hiring anyone.

Nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash, roughly one-quarter more than at the beginning of the recession. And as several major firms report impressive earnings this week, the money continues to flow into firms' coffers.

Yet all the good news from big business hasn't translated into much promise for jobless Americans, leading many to wonder: If corporations are sitting on so much money, why aren't they hiring more workers?

The answer to that question has become a political flash point between the White House and big business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which held a jobs summit Wednesday and accused the Obama administration of dumping onerous regulations on businesses. That has created an environment of "uncertainty," which is causing firms to hold back on hiring as the unemployment rate has hovered near 10 percent, the Chamber said.

The White House countered that companies are wary of hiring not because of new regulations but because they're still waiting for consumer demand to return. The administration also claimed credit for 3.5 million jobs created by the stimulus bill from last fall.

The acrimony over jobs comes at a particularly tense moment in the relationship between business groups and the White House. With the midterm elections looming and polls showing Americans expressing a lack of confidence in President Obama's handling of the economy, White House officials are eager to demonstrate that their policies are helping, not hurting, the prospects for job growth and are making an extra effort to reach out to industry leaders.'

For the Chamber's jobs event, the White House says it asked for a speaking slot for senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who acts as a liaison to the business community, but the Chamber turned down the request. Chamber officials said Jarrett's office called Tuesday afternoon, the day before the conference, and demanded a speaking slot immediately after remarks from Chamber chief executive Tom Donohue.

"There are going to be areas where we differ, but we do have different roles," Jarrett said in an interview. "Our job is to both protect the American people and foster a climate where companies invest and create jobs. Their role is to produce profits for their shareholders."

White House officials also choreographed a competing set of images for Obama on Wednesday, having him meet separately with famed investor Warren Buffett and, later, with Bill Clinton as well as the chief executives of Bank of America and Honeywell. Obama aides said the business meetings were a coincidence and not intended to serve as a counter to the Chamber event. They said the meeting with Buffett had been in the works for a long time. (Buffett is a director with The Washington Post Co.)

The question of how to encourage companies to hire has challenged policymakers.
A survey last month of more than 1,000 chief financial officers by Duke University and CFO magazine showed that nearly 60 percent of these executives don't expect to bring their employment back to pre-recession levels until 2012, or later -- even though they're projecting a 12 percent rise in earnings and a 9 percent boost in capital spending over the next year.

When asked why companies are holding back so much, many economists cite broader uncertainty that goes well beyond anything happening in Washington. Firms aren't sure whether the economy can sustain a strong recovery. And as long as consumer spending remains low, there's not much incentive for companies to ramp up.

The trend of companies holding more cash is not new. Between 1980 and 2006, the average cash-to-assets ratio for U.S. industrial firms more than doubled, according to research by finance professors.

One explanation, said finance professor René Stulz at Ohio State University, is that as competition has become more global, it's become harder for individual companies to survive, and so they hold on to more cash to be safe. He added that companies have also increased their cash holdings in the wake of the financial crisis, in particular since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, as the banking system became more fragile and credit became scarce.

Tech companies in particular tend to build large cash reserves. Intel, which reported on Tuesday its biggest quarterly profit in a decade, brought aboard 400 new employees worldwide in the last quarter, though it would not identify in which countries the hirings took place. Intel spokeswoman Lisa Malloy added that the firm expects to spend slightly more money, from $4.5 billion last year to $5.2 billion this year, investing in capital projects around the world.

And yet the firm has $1.7 billion more in its cash pile compared with a year ago. Intel said it is enjoying strong demand for its chips, so low demand doesn't help explain the firm's mountain of cash.

Some analysts said it may be hard to create policy that compels companies to use some of their cash to hire workers. "CEOs don't like taking risks. They kind of move in packs," said Zachary Karabell, president of River Twice Research.

"There's not a whole lot that you could do to entice companies to hire," he added. "You could cut taxes on them, but they're not going to hire just because they have the extra cash, because they already have the extra cash."

Staff writer Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.