Daily Archives: Nov. 19, 2005

You can’t delegate accountability

Saturday12:05 a.m.

Peter Drucker, the management guru who died last week, wrote in 1987’s “Management Lessons of Irangate” about the danger of presidents and chief executives who rely too heavily on delegation at the expense of accountability:
“A chief executive officer must delegate, otherwise he’ll end up like Gulliver in Lilliput, ineffectual and ensnared in details, as were Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. But delegation requires greater accountability and tighter control. Delegation requires clear assignment of a specific task, clear definition of the expected results and a deadline. Above all it requires that the subordinate to whom a task is delegated keep the boss fully informed.”
I think this is a serious drawback of President Bush’s management style that is coming back to bite him — he relies heavily on delegating tasks but offers little follow-up or accountability for failure. Are the objectives in Iraq, for instance, too vague and open-ended?
How good of a manager do you think Bush is?
Posted by Randy Scholfield

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (10)

The lighter side of global warming

Saturday12:03 a.m.

Global warming is no joke. But that didn’t stop Larry David — co-creator of “Seinfeld” and creator and star of the HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm” — from doing a comedy special on the subject, which will air at 7 p.m. Sunday on TBS.
“People have used humor since the beginning of time to cope with tragedy. There are always angles in every subject to find the comedy in it, and in ‘Earth to America’ all the contributors succeeded at that,” David told Salon.
And speaking of humor and global warming, David Letterman did a “Top Ten Signs There’s Global Warming” list Thursday, read by Tom Hanks. No. 10: “I just bought oceanfront property in Topeka, Kan.”
Posted by Melissa Cooley

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (26)

‘Able Danger’ needs able investigation

Saturday12:01 a.m.

Enough major failures happened while Louis Freeh was director of the FBI that his interest in the “Able Danger” controversy sounds a bit like blame-shifting. Still, I agree with him that more investigation of the secret Pentagon program is needed. Here’s part of what he wrote in a commentary for The Wall Street Journal:
“The Able Danger intelligence, if confirmed, is undoubtedly the most relevant fact of the entire post-9/11 inquiry. Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of (hijacker Mohamed) Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks and arrest terrorists. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it ‘was not historically significant.’ This astounding conclusion — in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings — raises serious challenges to the commission’s credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (5)