Back in the day when I had an honest job, I worked for a dot com consultancy in London.
Our largest project, by far, was for one of the largest retail chain in the UK. We were, of course, fighting the clock to get this huge new site launched for them. It was getting close to Christmas, and the infrastructure melted down. I don't remember the details (I wasn't actually on the project at the time), but the infrastructure team was working around the clock trying to get it going again.
And where was the team leader, the architect responsible for the infrastructure? Oh, up north, hanging out, smoozing with the client. He didn't want to come down. The trains weren't very safe, you know. It was the holidays. Anyway, the team could handle it.
Now, let us talk about what "leadership" is. The claim was made that the architect really couldn't do much to fix the problem, and that was perhaps true (which, of course, is an interesting observation all in itself). But this person also had pretenses of being a leader of men, a manager, and that is a different job that requires different behavior than just poking at boxes with blinking lights.
In particular, leadership requires leading, and leading requires a presence. It didn't matter if he could have personally participated in fixing the problem. Show up. Make tea. Demonstrate to the team that you care for them, that they are not alone, that they will pull through this and you have faith in them. That's what a leader does.
Now, let's talk about what a leader doesn't do.
We move on to the Secretary of State of the United States, Condi Rice. What has she being doing during the greatest disaster in this country since 9/11?
Now, the Bush Administration excuse machine is in high gear, and I'm sure we'll be treated to a litany of them. "The Secretary of State doesn't handle domestic matters." "Everything was under control." "She had important business at the UN."
Which might all be true, and which is all completely, utterly unimportant and irrelevant.
No, New Orleans did not require Condi Rice to show up to fly a helicopter. There are people to do that. What a situation like this does require is a leader to show up, and show that she cares. That she'll do everything in her power to help. That she's out calling embassies, getting allies to make promises.
That she cares. That the team is not alone. The team, in this case, being the population of a major American city that has just been devastated.
That's what leaders do. It doesn't matter if she was the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Education or the Secretary of the Office of No Relevance to a Crisis whatsoever. The Secretary of State, the most senior position of the cabinet, is part of the leadership of this country, and when there is a crisis, leaders lead.
They don't shop.
posted 10:54