wallydownundy

CEOs of General Motors and Ford Motor Company drive to Washington DC today, cap in hand, asking for billions of taxpayers dollars. (After their embarrassing trip last month in private jets, this time Wagoner and Mullaly will be in hybrid vehicle convoys driving 15 hours each way.)

As part of their rescue plans both CEOs offer to forgo salaries and will be paid $1 each for their work.

Back in 2001 Ford announced a five year revitalisation plan. William Clay Ford took over as CEO from Jac Nasser and boldly agreed to forego salary. He took $1 per year long with options - vowing to do well as a rebound in stock would reward him amply.

Flash forward seven years and today’s CEO is proposing the same pay package. Only now the equity prices for General Motors and Ford have cratered.

CEO compensation is a hot topic - and shareholders will gladly reward pay for performance. Yet taking no pay and not performing isn’t a solution either. Slashing pay to a symbolic $1 is a public relations stunt - it grabs headlines but has no merit.

Instead I propose Wagoner and Mullaly quadruple their present salaries and challenge themselves to achieving greater results. If not then they can take their walking papers - and their money- and fly a private jet elsewhere.

In “Cabaret” Liza Minelli plays down-on-her-luck Sally. Plucky, determined, forthright and ultimately a loser sent packing all alone.

It’s hard not to imagine Sarah Palin humming “Maybe This Time” on her flight back to Alaska. The night of the long knives is underway. Something’s flowing and it sure ain’t praise:

• Alaskan “hillbillies” is how a McCain staffer described her family.
• Palin shopped the hardest - expected to buy a few outfits it morphed into “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast”.
• Fox News reporter David Cameron says Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent - she thought it was a country. (Fair enough because Australia is a country - and a continent.)
• She arrived in Phoenix with a concession speech in hand - and was surprised McCain didn’t expect her to speak on the night.

What do you do when you’re cornered and it’s coming at you from all angles?

Palin has strengths including mass public appeal. She needs to return to Alaska and govern, then appoint herself as Stevens’ replacement (Senator indicted for felonies but not sentenced yet may narrowly win his Senate re-election; once a convicted felon he cannot serve and Alaska’s governor Palin gets to name his replacement). She need to forge her reputation in the Senate and help rebuild the Republican Party.

Today’s insults and barbs do not merit responses. It’s time to lie low and re-emerge stronger, cleaner and smarter.

Then perhaps she and her fellow Republicans can sing another “Cabaret” classic - “Tomorrow belongs to me.”

Today the news is book-ended by character failures.

Belinda Neal is on the front page for her tirade ten days back at a Central Coast restaurant (”Do you know who the f**k I am?”). She is accused of using her Ministerial position to threaten bar staff, and even yelled she’d have the liquor license of the pub repealed. Apparently staff wanted her to move to another table so they could finish the daily swap from restaurant to dance club.

The back page eulogises the shortest Olympic career in history. Swimmer Nick Darcy had his appeal yesterday, and his bid to be restored to the Olympic team was quashed. He’d brought the sport into disrepute when he assaulted Nick Cowley, another swimmer, six hours after being appointed to the Olympic team. Among other injuries Cowley’s “orbital socket collapsed.” Alcohol was a factor.

In our rush to appoint an illness to every daily grievance, a recent health reporter talked about a new epidemic – Irritable Male Syndrome (IMS). Seems us modern men – when not busying ourselves with metro-sexual face creams and visits to the tailor – are too harried to properly express ourselves. We take on all the troubles of the world (mortgage, career, child raising, relationships) and don’t have the communications skills or the support networks to vent our frustrations. So we continue like boiling submarines until one issue tips us over into IMS (rhymes with PMS). Then we act out in a volcano of pent-up emotion.

Phew! That felt good.

But then you wake up on the back bench of Parliament facing a day of questioning over your outburst. Or you are stalked through airports flying from swim practise to Court of Appeal. And all that “feel good” is gone and you have another tonne of frustration and angst to bottle up.

When learning to be an Executive Coach, I gained one stunningly simple insight. Between stimulus and response, man (and woman) can add thought. If we remove thought between stimulus and response then we’re primal – no better than animals. We scream at bar staff and we elbow fellow swimmers in the “orbital socket.” But if we think – and consider our options – we’re more likely to swap “reactions” for “considered actions.”

I know yesterday Belinda and Nick were re-living their separate and damning evenings. And after the fact they were no doubt inserting many, many thoughts into that moment between stimulus and response.

Leadership is covered extensively in news publications and this week two contrasting examples are highlighted in “The Economist”.

The first is a positive case study of Disney, showing how creativity and profitability have flourished under CEO Bob Iger. Iger opts to release the reigns and allows creative leaders the freedom to develop new ideas. He’s axed “junk” production (straight to DVD sequels) and is building franchises around new concepts (”High School Musical”) that attract new audience segments (”tweens”).

The second is a negative review of the performance of General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. Finance unit GE Capital missed performance results leaving the CEO in the embarassing state of missing financial forecasts - that he’d committed to a few weeks earlier.

On Saturday The Sydney Morning Herald had an excellent column by Ross Gittins on the common mistakes of CEOs when managing staff. I heartily recommend the article and especially liked the advice on information sharing. Gittins says the more the better. Companies that keep information from staff create resentment and a sense of distrust.

I’ve witnessed it recently, when a company was undertaking a massive and complex project. The leadership team felt it best to keep all information from staff yet occasional slips led to information “haves and have nots”. Those not entrusted to the information felt excluded. Their trust in leadership was not reciprocated - if they can’t trust me, why should I trust them?

Leadership is the hardest task for any CEO, and recent articles point out good lessons of leadership. Trust, delegation, empowerment, sharing - all words we’ve heard before. But it’s great seeing the lessons supported by success (Disney’s Iger and creative empowerment) and failure (GE’s Immelt on missed promises).

Read the Gittins article - it’s required reading for any leader.