Why do we get such poor leaders?

Have you ever noticed how many of our leaders – presidents, CEOs, generals and admirals, prime ministers, and kings – are unsuitable to their position? Of course the Peter Principle plays a part – many were talented in lower level positions, but have simply been promoted to their level of incompetence.

But there is another factor in play here – it often takes a different skill set to win the position than to function effectively in it. A CEO may reach his/her position by being expert in brutal office politics, but that is not the skill set needed to be an effective CEO. A general or admiral may get promoted to the rank by never taking risks and therefore having no blots on his/her record. But an effective military leader has to be able to take calculated risks. Presidents and prime ministers get where they are by being good at partisan politics, but the job requires a broader perspective than that.

One advance the world could use is a better way of promoting people to top jobs – one that improves the odds that they can really do the job once they get it.

Recommended – Why We Fight

I highly recommend the documentary “Why We Fight”, a film by Eugene Jarecki which won the 2005 Sundance Grand Jury Award. President Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation warned us about the military-industrial complex, and this movie explores that theme in a pretty well-balanced manner. As one who has worked in the military-industrial complex, I know all too well how tightly the Pentagon, the defense contractors and Congress work together to advance their own parochial interests at the expense of the rest of the American public. This film ought to make you thoughtful, and very uneasy.

The Marines

Many years ago I attended a performance of the Black Watch in a large Washington stadium. Their playing was stirring, and the vast audience was duly appreciative. At one point midway through the show the pipers began to play the Marine Hymn, and to my amazement, scattered all thorough that vast audience men rose and stood at attention, old men and young men, veterans of World War II and Korea and Vietnam and current marines, in uniform and out. I was deeply moved at the bond all those men had, across time and generations, to an organization like the Marines.

There is something special about the Marine ethic. I recall some years ago reading a business book about how to run a business along Marine principles, written of course by an active duty Marine. Two things impressed me about that book – the emphasis on mission focus and the emphasis on taking care of one’s people.

During the second Gulf War I happened to be working on a project with lots of retired Marines, and they shared with me the informal “lessons learned” emails that were being circulating in the Marine community from colleagues in the field in Iraq. Once again, the overall emphasis was on taking care of their people, getting them enough sleep, getting their mail to them, cobbling together makeshift armor for their inadequately-protected vehicles, boosting their morale.

American politicians could learn a lot from the Marines, if only they would.

Is Islam a peaceful religion?

We in the modern Western world have been trying our liberal best to believe that Islam is really a peaceful religion, and that the recent actions of terrorists are really not driven by the religion of Islam. We have been trying to be multicultural and politically correct and sensitive to the religious feelings of others. But you know, it just doesn’t wash.

As the old saying goes, “actions speak louder than words”. Despite the protests from some scholars and liberals that Islam is really a peaceful religion, the world, and especially the Middle East, is awash daily in bloodletting in the name of Islam. If they aren’t killing the infidels (us), they are busy pitting Shia against Sunni and killing each other over who was the rightful successor to the prophet centuries ago.

The terrorists themselves tell us in no uncertain terms that they are acting from their beliefs in Islam. They tell us this repeatedly and unambiguously and proudly in their internet sites, manifestos, videos, public speeches and prayers, fatwas, and grisly videos of beheadings and suicide bombers making their last proud declarations before going off to kill as many unbelievers as possible. It would hard to be more explicit than that.

Then Islam’s holy scripture, the Qur'an says such things as “Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kill them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.” (2:191-2) and “Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them.” (4:89). It would hard to be more explicit than that.

And then there are the local Islamic madrassas (schools) throughout places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia where the young are drilled daily in hatred of the infidel (us), and their Islamic duty to give their lives to our extermination. And the mosques throughout the world (even, apparently, in London) where mullas weekly preach hatred of the West and advocate violence. It would hard to be more explicit than that.

Certainly many Muslims, indeed the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, don’t follow these precepts, and are content to live in peace with non-Muslims. But in fact the terrorists have sound theological support from the Qur'an itself, as well as from the Sharia law that has been built up over the centuries, for most of their actions. And although most Muslims don’t participate in terrorists actions themselves, it is clear from the street celebrations following terrorist killings, the writings of many Muslim clerics, and the generous contributions to terrorist organizations that a great many of them approve of and support such actions by others, privately if not in public. If such acts really are against the principles of Islam, one would expect much more outcry against them from Muslims worldwide. In fact one of the most disturbing aspects of all this is the resounding silence from most of the Muslim world in the face of these terrorist actions.

Try as we might to hide our heads in the sand and be politically correct and pretend that Islam as a theology is a peaceful religion, it really isn’t. It never has been, as any competent historian of the Middle East knows. For Islam, the world is divided into dar al-Islam, the house of peace (nations ruled by Islam) and dar al-Harb, the house of war (everyone else). It is the duty of any good Muslim to defend dar al-Islam and to convert to Islam, by force if necessary, dar al-Harb. Moreover, for devout Muslims it is an intolerable affront to Allah that any land that has ever in the past been part of dar al-Islam should now be in dar al-Harb, and that affront calls for the devout to win that land back, by whatever means possible.

It is true that Christianity, like most major religions, also has a bloody and intolerant past -- in some periods of history far more intolerant that Islam -- and even some unpleasant aspects in the present. But Christian scripture and religious dogma does not require the devout to kill unbelievers (you can be nasty to them, but you are not required to kill them). Islamic scripture and dogma do enjoin the devout Muslim to kill unbelievers, even if that injunction is ignored by the majority of Muslims.

We had better wake up soon to the fact that we in the Western world face, not a rag-tag little group of criminal extremists from the religious fringes, but a large and dedicated and increasingly competent group of warriors, numbering by now in the tens or hundreds of thousands if not more, profoundly driven by their Islamic creed. They are not going to be defeated by military might; this is going to be a battle of ideas, not tanks. It’s hard to know how to face this threat effectively, but we certainly won’t ever figure it out if we persist in pretending that the fundamental nature of the religion of Islam isn’t a major component.

People who never make mistakes

Have you ever noticed that class of people who never make mistakes. Whatever goes wrong (and lots always goes wrong for them) is always someone else’s fault, never their own. Never, never, never do you hear from their lips the words “Oops, I made a mistake”.

It took me years to realize what was going on here. These are people whose self- confidence and self-image are so poor that they simply can’t face admitting to a mistake. They will change history in their own minds to avoid facing the consequences of their own mistakes.

Since humans learn from their mistakes, it follows that people who can’t admit to their mistakes can’t learn from them either, which is why such people usually make so many bad decisions in their lives, and so often make the same bad decisions over and over again.

Whenever I meet someone who is always blaming others I know I am meeting someone with a poor self-image. Whenever I hear someone frankly admit to a mistake I know I am dealing with someone pretty healthy.

The unknown unknowns

Nassim Taleb has written a new book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. (See the description in my book list on the sidebar). His main point is that most of the highly trained and highly paid experts in government and industry and academia and the media who produce endless learned projections about future stock and commodity prices, oil prices, sales volumes, interest rate movements, government spending, projects costs and the like simply don’t know what they are doing. And in fact, a little simple research supports this observation. Look at the past projections in fields like these and the success rate is not much different from that of an untrained person simply predicting a continuation of whatever the current trend happens to be.

The experts will defend their analyses by pointing out that when they were wrong (which is more often than not) it was because unusual circumstances intervened – wars, unanticipated scientific breakthroughs, natural disasters, unusual weather, terrorist actions, the collapse of a government or an empire, an unexpected shift in fashions, labor unrest, or any of an endless litany of other “unusual”, “one-off” events that were extremely unlikely, and therefore not factored into their predictions.

Taleb’s point is that although each these events may be highly improbable and unlikely in themselves, for future projections over any significant period (say more than a few weeks) it is nevertheless highly likely that one or more highly improbable and unpredictable events will occur during the periods being projected, and that these improbable events will tend to have massive consequences, rendering the projection worthless.

Despite the impressive mathematical models and learned theories that the practitioners believe in, and use to impress the gullible public and clients and justify their high status and salaries, most of these projections are worthless for spans of more than a few weeks or perhaps a few months, because they have no way to factor in the (inevitable) unexpected and unanticipated.

The lesson here is to know what one does not know. Donald Rumsfeld took a lot of ridicule from the Plain English Campaign and many journalists for his statement many months ago that it was the “unknown unknowns” that were the biggest problem. But he was right (for once), and those who ridiculed him were just exposing their own ignorance. There are, in fact, “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”, as he correctly stated.

In fact, we each know a good bit less than we think we know, and we would be wise to always remember that. Weather forecasters know that they can’t predict accurately for more than a few days (actually significantly fewer days than most weather channels and newspapers report); they know what they don’t know. Would that other public pundits could learn the same humility.

What’s wrong with public education?

Historically public education in the United States has had a positive effect. Most of our population is reasonably literate, and most have at least a basic understanding of simple math, a rough idea of recent history, and some sense of the sciences. This is certainly an improvement from 100-150 years ago, and is largely due to universal free public education.

Having said that, it is pretty clear that our current public school system isn’t up to the task of preparing the next generation for today’s complex and technological world. In America we currently spend about $7000 per student per year, or about a third of a trillion dollars per year on public education, far more than any other nation. Even in terms of per capita spending, only Norway exceeds the United States. Yet in a recent United Nations ranking we are only about twelfth in the world in terms of education. One can quibble about what is the correct measurement, but even without measurements it is clear from the remedial work colleges need to do these days with incoming freshman that our public schools aren’t performing as they should.

I have one grandchild already being home schooled, and another that will be home schooled starting next year. The reason in both cases is the same – the public schools just aren’t good enough (and there are no adequate private schools nearby). Too much time each day is wasted in crowd control. Too much time is wasted in federally mandated testing to measure the school, not help the individual student. Too much time is wasted waiting for “mainstreamed” special needs students to catch up with the class. Too much of the evening is wasted on mindless fill-in-the-blanks homework. Too much time is wasted cramming canned facts rather than really learning. Too much time is wasted on textbooks designed for the lowest common denominator. It’s no wonder so many of our children grow to hate school, and hate learning!

The granddaughter who started home schooling last year is already at least a year ahead of her former classmates in most of her subjects, has far more time left over for other things she loves, like Irish step dancing, reading, violin and piano, and still has more time for simple childhood play than she used to. And she still loves learning. I suspect most children in public school could advance about as fast if the cookie-cutter mass production educational system didn’t hold them back so much.

Of course changing the public school system will be difficult. There are too many vested interests: unions, school boards, the state and Federal educational bureaucracy, and textbook publishers. Nevertheless, as I argued in a post months ago, our very survival as a nation, even as a civilization, depends on the quality of the education we give the next generation. Fixing this situation ought to be a high priority for all of us. Since it clearly isn’t, I expect more and more of the better-educated and better-off people to opt out of the system in the coming years and either home school or send their children to private schools. That will only make the problem worse, of course.