Blind Leadership

Insulation at the Top: A Problem of Blindly Decisive Leadership or Will the last person out please turn off the lights.
Originally published on September 29, 2005.

I have been mulling this over for days and it came together for me when I realized that the problems I saw in the last school district I worked for are similar to the problems I see in the current Bush administration. When the person on the top keeps himself insulated from the advice and concern of the people on the front lines, all hell can break loose and he will be the last person to know. By that time, the people who know the most, who are most capable of fixing the problems, will be long gone.

When the new superintendent in the district gathered the employees to introduce himself, he made one point perfectly clear. He was a military man and he believed in the chain of command. The thing he disliked the most was an “end run.” After asking around amongst the males in the building, I discovered that he meant by-passing your boss to talk to the bosses boss. A football analogy in a female rich environment should have tipped me off to the problems to come.

Now I am from the school of “Do what you think is right, ask forgiveness later, if necessary.” I was hired to do a job. I have the training and the experience necessary to do it well. Let me do my job and trust me to know what I am doing. If you have a question about what I am doing, ask me. I was now working in an “Ask permission now, not forgiveness later” environment.

OK, I can give that a try. I dutifully wrote up action plans. I met with my “stake holders” and got consensus. I collected data. I worked with my team to assess the data and make a plan. I submitted my plan. My boss submitted it to his boss.

And there it sat.

Deadlines arrived and went.

Crises occurred and I was called on to jump in and solve them.
But still my plan to prevent problems sat on the Assistant Superintendent's desk.

I asked about it and was told that it is on the A.S.’s desk.

And here is where it gets crazy. My boss tells me that his boss (The A.S.) doesn’t want me to implement the plan. Forget the research, forget the data, forget that it is fully funded at no cost to the district, she just doesn’t think we should. “Well what does the superintendent think?” I ask.

“He hasn’t seen it.” was the reply.

As you can imagine things started to fall apart, not just in my department, but all over the place. The Social Workers were calling all over the district and rallying the teacher’s union because the A.S. changed the assignments for the coming year in clear violation of the union contract. Parents started filing for Due Process hearings, a legal proceeding over a child’s rights because the A.S. didn’t move on some things were legally mandated. Principals were frantically trying to cope with class consolidations and then splits midyear, disrupting the student’s education, straining the teachers, and annoying the parents. These are just a few of the problems that the layman can comprehend. There were multitudes of problems too technical to go into.

The superintendent had no idea about any of this. The staff all over the district had been micromanaged to death by someone with no understanding of the complexity of each individual’s role in the whole.
What is a person to do? Well, the best people left for greener pastures like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Those left behind were forced to pick up the slack.

I had many conversations with a curriculum coordinator who had a lifetime of experience in his role. He was one year away from retirement and was really struggling with the decision to stay or go. When I told him I had to leave for the sake of my health, he decided to leave administration to go back to the classroom for his final year.

Now, how does this relate to the Bush administration?
I see many people who are well trained and experienced in their respective fields, finding that their work is meaningless if it doesn’t fit into the president’s view of the world. These same people are not content to maintain the status quo. They leave, and in doing so, leave the organization weaker and less capable than before.

For example, Richard Clarke the chief of counter terrorism in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations had been predicting a major al Qaeda attack on the United States with such intensity that it is hard to comprehend that it was allowed to happen. The intelligence personnel who knew that there was no evidence of WMD’s but could only watch helplessly as our president destroyed the credibility of our intelligence agency, like Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker (May 12, 2003) quotes a former intelligence official, “One of the reasons I left was my sense that they were using the intelligence from the C.I.A. and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn't like the intelligence they were getting, and so they brought in people to write the stuff.” The military veterans of Vietnam who understood the the difficulties and complexities of regime change, like Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, who told Congress that it would take hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to adequately secure postwar Iraq. Then we had the resignation of four Cabinet officials, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Education Secretary Rod Paige, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, and most famously, Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

This looks familiar. Why did these people leave in droves?
Rand Beers resigned as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Combating Terrorism in March 2003 "I came to the conclusion that rather than being part of the problem, which I was within the administration, I wanted to be part of the solution." Paul O'Neill, who wrote in his memoir about his unsuccessful fight to get the president to take the ever increasing deficit seriously. There's Christie Todd Whitman, who appears in O'Neill's memoir recalling her own unsuccessful struggles to get the White House to acknowledge the scientific data on environmental problems. All are now gone.

Now look at the country. What do we have? A mess.

We have the possibly preventable loss of the World Trade Towers, thousands of lives, and our sense of security. We are embroiled in a no win situation in Iraq which has cost us peace and our standing in the world. We have lost our prosperity and burdened our children with an uncountable debt. We have lost a great American city and our reputation for egalitarianism. And president Bush is the last to see it.

By keeping himself insulated from reality, surrounding himself with those who agree with him, and staying away from the front lines of life, Bush has allowed the country to deteriorate. And the worst part is he has alienated those who are best able to bring the country back.

When I was struggling to maintain quality programs in the school district, I was furious with the rank and file who watched the slow rot happening all around and would not stand behind those who were fighting to prevent it.

For five years now I have raged at the obvious mismanagement of this great country’s power, our military sons and daughters, our reputation, and our natural resources. I have watched the rich grow richer while more people find themselves poorer. I watched my basic freedoms swept away in the name of preserving freedom. And I have watched others stand up and speak truth to no avail.

I find that I again feel the need to leave, only this time it is not a job that is disappointing me, it is my country. I miss America. I am looking for a new country to believe in. Any ideas?

Related Read:

Clueless at the Top: While the Rest of Us Turn Elsewhere for Life, Liberty, and Happiness
by Charlotte Childress

Added April 25, 2009:
It was a long and frustrating three years since I wrote this. Thank you USA for helping me elect Barack Obama.