II
In my forty-eight years in the auto industry, I probably made six hundred speeches about management. Since my retirement, I’ve made many more. And I’ve always said the same thing: “Here’s what management is about: Pick good people and set the right priorities.” For the most part my audiences thought they were getting their money’s worth. But sometimes I had to shake my head in disbelief. They’re paying me for that?
The point is, there’s nothing magic about it. People and priorities. It’s that simple. This advice applies whether you’re running a company or a country. If you think about it, it holds true for every organization and institution.
If we’re going to figure out how to fix what’s wrong with America, we should start with this tried-and-true formula. Because if the people are bad and the priorities are screwed up, nothing else works. Period.
Here’s the thing I learned as a CEO. You succeed or fail based on your team. If you want to succeed, you’ve got to have a group of people that knows what they’re doing. Vince Lombardi was a friend of mine, and he used to tell me, “Teamwork is what makes the Green Bay Packers great. People who work together will win—period. And that applies to companies and governments.” But he also stressed that the raw material had to be there first. You had to start with the talent. And that brings me to our government. Don’t you think we have a right to know before we cast our vote for President who’s going to be on his team? We put all the focus on the top guy. But governing isn’t just a one-man show.
I’d like you to think about this as we enter the presidential campaign season. Doesn’t it strike you as a little bit strange that we don’t demand that a presidential candidate introduce his team before we vote? Sure, we know the vice-presidential pick, but that’s all about politics. Look at Dick Cheney. Cheney was the guy George Bush brought in to be in charge of his vice-presidential selection committee. Cheney interviewed all the candidates, studied their strengths and weaknesses, and finally presented Bush with his verdict. I can imagine him saying something like, “Well, George, I’ve spent months interviewing people, and I’ve finally come up with the very best person for the job—it’s ME.”
If we’ve learned nothing else from George Bush’s presidency, we’ve learned that it matters who is in the cabinet. It matters who the advisors are—the people who have the President’s ear. But have you noticed that when you ask a candidate to say anything whatsoever about possible appointments, you get some drivel about how it’s inappropriate or premature to name names before the election. I don’t get it. Why should it be such a secret?
WE SHOULD HAVE BOX SCORES
When I read the newspaper, I start with the front page, and then I go to the sports section. During the baseball season, for example, I look up the leaders in the American League and the leaders in the National League. The box scores make it easy to see who the top players are. It’s all laid out: hits, runs, errors, and earned run averages.
I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be great if we could do that for government? Presidential candidates could present their lineups for key posts, and we’d be able to evaluate which team had the strongest bullpen or the most home run hitters.
We could use a similar process for picking our representatives. When election time comes, we could look at our senator or congressman and say, “Well, this guy has been averaging around .220 for the last three years. Let’s see if we can find a .300 hitter.”
NAME THAT OFFICIAL
I’ve been conducting an informal survey, and I haven’t met a single person who can name more than three members of the current cabinet without cheating and looking it up. This is supposed to be our national talent pool, and we don’t even know who they are. I’ll give you a hint. There are twenty of them, including the President’s chief of staff.
But wait. What about the noncabinet members who have great influence? Shouldn’t we know those names, too? Every President has a shadow cabinet, and the current occupant is no different. So let’s look beyond the titles and look at who the candidate’s friends are. In George Bush’s administration, there is no person more influential than Karl Rove. Good old Boy Genius. When you’re talking about the people who really have the President’s ear, you have to put Rove at the top of the list, followed by Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and the woman I call “the Nanny,” Karen Hughes. Until November 2006, Donald Rumsfeld was on the list, too, but he was benched after the Republicans got creamed in the election. This is the real power circle in the administration. It is an extremely tight circle, built from common ideology and personal loyalty. When the White House adopts a bunker mentality, this is the gang that’s in the bunker.
You might think it’s a diverse group. Two women, and one of them is black! But when it comes to diversity in action, race and gender take a backseat to ideas. In that respect, Bush’s group of advisors is remarkably narrow.
CRONYISM LIVES
If the CEO of a corporation chose his department heads based on the system of paybacks we often see in government, he’d be called on the carpet. I can imagine myself at Chrysler trying to explain to the board, “Yeah, I realize that Joe has never built a car, but he helped me get a sweet mortgage rate on my home.” You may chuckle, but do you realize how much of our government is run by cronies?
When the future of our country is at stake, it’s not the time for paybacks. In fact, our Founding Fathers were so convinced that no President would ever stoop to such a thing that they didn’t even bother to prohibit it in the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton wrote that any President “would be both ashamed and afraid” to appoint cronies—or, in his words “obsequious instruments of his pleasure.” Better known as ass-kissers.
One of the most important lessons I learned in business was that if all you’re getting from your team is a single point of view—usually your point of view—you’ve got to worry. You can get your own point of view for free.
I always kept some contrarians around—people I could count on to be devil’s advocates. It kept me on my toes. For most of my career, I had a very talented car guy working for me named Harold Sperlich. Hal was an engineer and product planner, and he was also a genius. In the early 1960s, he played a big part in designing the first Ford Mustang. Hal wasn’t a quiet genius, however. He was argumentative and outspoken. For him the creative process was like hand-to-hand combat. Needless to say, Henry Ford II didn’t think Hal was properly deferential. He made me fire him a couple years before Henry fired me. Happily, Hal landed at Chrysler, and together we made things happen—first with the K-car, then with the minivan. I couldn’t afford to let my ego get in the way when it came to Hal. He was usually right.
George Bush is notorious for appointing cronies to key positions—especially if they raised money for his campaigns, or are friends of people who raised money for his campaigns. He likes to make some of the appointments during recesses when he doesn’t have to get congressional approval. That’s a blatant misuse of presidential power.
We all know about Michael Brown (“Brownie”), whom Bush appointed to be the director of FEMA. He was an old school buddy of the former FEMA director, and Bush just accepted him at face value. Before Brownie joined FEMA, he was the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association—whatever the hell that is—and he was forced out of the job. Maybe the pressure got to him.
And God knows what compelled Bush to nominate his old Texas friend and legal advisor Harriet Meirs to the Supreme Court. He never fully explained his reasons, but he did say her religious faith was a factor. Yeah, she believed Bush was God.
These are examples of cronyism at high levels. You can find them just about everywhere you look. As any businessperson knows, qualifications matter. You wouldn’t hire a dress designer to design your cars. You wouldn’t hand over the controls of your airplane to the guy who runs the bumper cars at the amusement park. This is just basic common sense. Bush’s administration is full of “Pioneers” and “Rangers”—people who raised a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand dollars respectively for his political campaigns. Sadly, in some cases, it’s their only qualification. (Maybe campaign finance reform isn’t such a bad idea, after all.)
I have firsthand experience of the favors game. Yeah, I admit it. I campaigned for George Bush in 2000, even though I’d never met him. I’d known his father and mother for thirty years, and I figured he came from pretty good stock so he should be okay. (I didn’t repeat the mistake in 2004.) After Bush was elected, I got a call from his chief of staff, Andy Card. He wanted to offer me an ambassadorship. Now, ambassadorships are a prime example of the payback system. Mostly it’s a prestige assignment, and you get to be called Mr. (or Ms.) Ambassador for the rest of your life.
Of course, some ambassadorships are more coveted than others. I told Andy Card that I might like being the ambassador to Italy. Boy, I thought, wouldn’t that be something? The son of Italian immigrants returning to his parents’ homeland as an American ambassador! I have to confess I liked the idea. Unfortunately, Italy was already taken, so I passed.
Later, I was talking to Bob Dole about it. “I would have liked to be ambassador to Italy,” I told him.
He laughed. “What would you want to do that for? Don’t you already have a house in Tuscany?” That was true. I enjoy spending a few weeks there every year during grape-crushing season.
Dole explained, “If you were ambassador, your main job would be to entertain all the Texas Republican donors coming to Italy—and it would be mostly at your own expense, because those embassy budgets aren’t that big. Wouldn’t you rather entertain people of your own choice in Tuscany?”
I guess he had a point. But the whole experience got me wondering about what would happen if we chose ambassadors for their ability to grease the wheels of international cooperation abroad, instead of their ability to grease the wheels of political fund-raising at home.
The more people see government as an insider’s game, the more cynical they get about the ability of government to achieve the common good. I read a poll recently. It said that only 5 percent of mothers wanted their kids to grow up to be President. Five percent! That’s a shocking figure. Isn’t it supposed to be the American dream—that any kid can aspire to the highest office in the land? But political life is an unpopular choice these days. I think that’s because we’ve lost the connection between politics and public service.
Over time the distaste with Washington has eroded our talent pool. So when you’re looking for competence, you’re not always getting the best people. And with the cost of running campaigns, we are in real danger of electing only the wealthy and connected. In some states, you need at least $60 million to run for the Senate, or no one takes you seriously. And they’re already predicting that the 2008 presidential election will have a billion-dollar price tag. You’ve got to ask yourself if that’s what you want. And if it’s not, vote for people who are committed to making a difference for the common good, not just for their own good.
THE NATIONAL HOT LIST
Having the right people in place will help you set the right priorities. And having the right priorities will help you choose the right people.
You can’t run a company without having a business plan, so why do you think you can run a country by the seat of your pants? For my entire career, I always kept a hot list. I updated it every week. I always believed that you should be able to write down your top priorities on a single sheet of 81?2-by-11-inch paper. If you can’t state a priority in fifty words or less, you’re in trouble.
Do we have a national hot list? Well, that’s kind of hard to say, because politicians tend to keep things pretty vague. But here’s something else I’d like to see in the next campaign. After we ask, “Who’s going to be on your team?” let’s ask the candidates to name their top three priorities.
One, two, three. No waffling. Oh, and can we have it in writing, please?
Once we have the candidates’ priorities, then we’ve got to ask, “What are the three actions you’re going to take to address each of your priorities?” Let’s have those in writing, too.
Look, this isn’t rocket science. It’s only complicated because the candidates want to make it complicated. We have to push for simplicity. And then, when we elect the candidate whose priorities we agree with, we have to make sure those priorities actually get addressed.
Accountability is a slippery business these days. How do you know what’s actually being accomplished? Well, you have to start by looking at whether the policies and priorities are working. You know, getting results.
The job of a leader is to accomplish goals that advance the common good. Anyone can take up space. Here’s the test of a leader: When he leaves office, we should be better off than when he started. It’s that simple.