Bob MacDonald on Business

Sage Advice for Superior Business Management

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The Maverick’s Creed: If It’s Not Broken, Fix It

April 28th, 2013 · Building Better Business Managers, Business Management, Personalities in the News

Real change springs from knowing what is and seeing what it should be.

On April 19, Al Neuharth died at age 89. He will mostly be remembered as the inspiration and founder of USA TODAY, but he was more than that. Al Neuharth was – for good and bad – a classic business maverick. By definition a “business maverick” is one who learned what they know in one Al Neuharthindustry and then knowingly go against what they know. Only someone with an insider’s intimate knowledge of a company or industry, an intuitive inquisitiveness to question the system and the courage to challenge it, can bring about real change. The maverick’s value is to be instinctively dissatisfied with what most see as the only way, because they have always done it that way.

It is not easy to be a business maverick. They live in a world where their ideas and actions are, at least initially, greeted by a negative reception that ranges from disregard to disdain. They are chastised and castigated as a heretical turncoat and traitor by those in their industry who believe the way things are being done is the way things should continue to be done. Those most vociferous in ostracizing and denigrating the maverick are those they have worked with or competed against. It has been reported that Ben Bradlee, the former editor of The Washington Post, once referred to Neuharth as a “mountebank.” That is a “polite” way for Bradlee to suggest that Neuharth was nothing more than a fraud, charlatan and huckster. Such aspersions are a way of life for those business mavericks who “go against their own kind.”

A Closer Look at the Man behind the Newspaper

Al Neuharth had all the traits of the typical business maverick: That is one who is often impetuous, impatient, outrageous, abrasive and vain; mixed with a dose of creativity and innovation. The typical business maverick is, in fact, stimulated by the acrimony of controversy and uses the level generated to gauge the impact of their actions. Their attitude seems to be: If others are not threatened by what they are doing, they are not doing enough. The maverick has no problem – and actually seems to relish – picking fights and poking a stick in the eyes of traditionalists who come to loathe them. (Truth is they have to be this way if real change is to come about.)


What ignites the maverick is the belief that a company or industry – one that they know intimately and care about – needs, for its own good, to change. It is the detection of this need to change and a dedication to doing what needs to be done that shields the maverick against the tumult of disparagement heaped upon them by critics who view any change as a threat. For the business maverick, the greatest reward and validation is when those within the industry who have been the most critical begin to imitate and adopt the changes as their own.

Al Neuharth met the definition of a business maverick in all ways. He was a child and product of the newspaper industry, entering it when he was 19. He started a sports newspaper in his native South Dakota which promptly became an entrepreneurial flop. Undaunted, he took a job at the established Miami Herald and diligently worked his way up and around the newspaper business making newspapering his entire life. As he reached the pinnacle of power in the industry he turned against all he had learned and all that was accepted in an effort to bring changes to the industry. Even though the newspaper business still appeared to be healthty and highly profitable.

At a time when all newspapers were local, he wanted to go national. When the industry was black and white, he wanted color. When stories were long, deep and often ponderous, he wanted short, simple and understandable. He believed that reading a newspaper should seem like a conversation, not a lecture. The result was USA TODAY. Derided as shallow, hollow and frivolous, the stalwarts of the newspaper industry mocked USA TODAY as an insignificant interloper and jeeringly referred to it as “McPaper.” (It is ironic that those who most opposed what Neuharth was doing mocked his ideas by comparing USA TODAY with another company that had changed its industry.)

Despite the attacks, resistance and a decade of losses, we know the rest of the story. Not only did USA TODAY attain the highest circulation in the usatodayindustry (The Wall Street Journal has moved slightly ahead now, but only after another business maverick assumed control.) it also became the most profitable newspaper in the industry. In fact, those who were most critical of Neuharth and his approach were soon forced to pay the highest compliment when they began to fall all over themselves trying to copy his changes. What was first considered heresy has become newspaper doctrine and it is why Al Neuharth will be remembered and celebrated: he was a changer, not the changed.

Your Call to Action

The life of a successful business maverick is exciting, challenging, exhilarating, rewarding, fun and lonely. The business world is designed to seek and welcome conventionality not unorthodoxy, but it is the maverick who is the catalyst for change when change is needed. In the end, the successful maverick does not submit to conformity, but rather forces others to comply. Think of Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, Steve Jobs, the guru of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Richard Branson of the Virgin empire and Al Neuharth of USA TODAY; they all started as mavericks and ended as legends in the business world.

If you dream of experiencing the excitement and accomplishment of a business maverick, the good news is that it requires no unique talent or skill that you probably don’t already possess. All it takes is to start thinking like a maverick. The first sign of an embryonic maverick is relentless curiosity. The maverick is constantly asking questions and challenging the way things are done with an impatient eye to how they can be done better.

Business mavericks often exhibit other attributes as well:

  • The willingness to adopt new perspective whenever possible.
  • The openness to try new things or do old things differently.
  • The confidence to respectfully resist the opposition of others and act on new ideas to test their value.
  • The eagerness to solicit and listen to the ideas of others and learn from their input.
  • The tenacity to see your ideas through to conclusion.

Being a business maverick demands an openness and willingness to look at the world in new ways. A lot of people think of new ideas and how they want things to be, but that is not enough. To come to fruition, new ideas need to be nurtured by someone who is willing to resist conformity, go against the grain and stand up to the naysayers. As the longtime management expert Peter Drucker said, “Ideas are cheap and abundant. What is of value is the effective placement of these ideas into situations that develop into action.” And that is the job and value of the business maverick.

And the Moral of the Story …

Many have the dream to be an entrepreneur, but few express the desire to endure the nightmare of being a maverick. One is seen as a “Crown of Glory” while the other is a “Crown of Thorns.” But the truth is that both are needed. Being both an entrepreneur and a maverick might be the best of all worlds, but that is rare. There have been many successful entrepreneurs who were not mavericks and many acclaimed mavericks who were not entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur is needed to make it and the maverick is needed to fix it.

Al Neuharth tried and failed at being an entrepreneur, but he was a great maverick. Like all great business mavericks he understood intimately how the system worked, understood the way the system was working (at least the way people wanted it to work), recognized the system could work in a better way, and he fixed it. All hail the business maverick!

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Credibility Creates the Capital a Leader Needs to Invest in Change

April 22nd, 2013 · Building Better Business Managers, Business Management, Politics and Politicians Gone Awry

The power of a leader to implement change is based on doing what those who follow will accept and those who are opposed can’t resist.

There is an element of effective leadership that few recognize and even fewer understand. Yet it is an aspect of leadership that gives the leader the license to do great things. This component of leadership is an underlying, almost imperceptible, reservoir of power that some leaders are Componentable to accumulate and bank for future use. At the appropriate time, the leader can draw down this power to invest in bringing about real change. This particular power is not bestowed on a leader by title. Rather, it is accumulated over time as the leader builds credibility by exhibiting consistent beliefs, actions and philosophy that followers understand and in which they can have faith.

Absent this crucial power, leaders are left to defend the status quo or, at best, implement incremental changes within an established, business-as-usual system. Only those leaders who earn, recognize and understand this power and – equally as important – are bold enough to use it, can bring about fundamental change. And this ability to bring about real change is what  defines the success of a leader.

A Surprising Paradox about Leadership

There is a quirky irony present in this situation: In order to make effective use of the power to initiate real change, the leader is often required to take actions that are contradictory to the conduct that enables a leader to accumulate power. In other words, the leader seeking to bring about real change draws down all the good will and trust accumulated over time by acting in a certain way and then uses it as power to move in a new direction.

This may seem a bit confusing and paradoxical, but fortunately there are some real-life examples of how some leaders went about building an invisible reservoir of power that they were later able to draw upon to implement what they perceived as necessary change for the greater good.

Lessons from History


Thomas Jefferson was the patriarch of small government. For 30 years, from 1770 to 1800, Jefferson built a consistent, even passionate, record as one who opposed a strong central government. As one of the Founding Fathers he was at the forefront of the battle for individual freedom and liberty that had been suppressed by the government of Great Britain. Initially Jefferson even opposed the ratification of the constitution, because he felt that the government it created was too strong and that it could threaten individual freedom. He reluctantly agreed to ratification only after the Bill of Rights was added. As secretary of state in Washington’s cabinet, he was constantly at odds with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and other “Federalists” (sometimes including Washington) whom he felt were seeking to expand the scope and size of the federal government beyond what was reasonably needed to keep the country in union.

The election of John Adams as a Federalist to succeed Washington brought about an acrimonious end to a lifelong friendship between Jefferson and Adams. Jefferson opposed virtually every action of Adams to expand the power of the federal government and, in the process, became the head of the Republican faction in the country. There was no question in anyone’s mind as to Jefferson’s position on the size of government; he was against increasing its power. Jefferson played such a prominent role in resisting the growth of the federal government that in 1800 he was nominated and elected (barely) as the first “Republican” president. The only thing that Jefferson’s friends and adversaries agreed on was that as president he would roll back the actions of Adams, Hamilton and other Federalists who had sought to increase the scope and power of the federal government.

And yet, during Jefferson’s eight years as president, not only did he validate most of the actions the Federalists had taken, but expanded the influence of the federal government in a way that would set precedents we still live with today. One example of this was the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; an action that would significantly expand the scope and power of the federal government. Jefferson was acutely aware that neither he as president or even Congress had the constitutional power to enter into such a game-changing purchase. Even though this action went against the very core of Jefferson’s beliefs and the expectations of his “base,” he also recognized that the purchase of Louisiana would enhance the security of the young country by evicting France from North America, prevent Spain from gaining a foothold and it would launch America on the road to becoming a world power; so he just did it. (Jefferson was so concerned about the unconstitutionality of this action he considered the need for a Constitutional amendment to authorize the purchase, but rejected it because it would take too much time and the opportunity would be lost.) Only Jefferson had the power to take this action.

Certainly there were Republicans who were shocked by his apparent change of heart and severely criticized Jefferson, but because he had well-established credentials as one who opposed the expansion of government power, he had the power to take action that expanded the power of government that he felt was for the ultimate good of the country. Likewise, Federalists (who hated Jefferson) were boxed in and forced to support his actions, because it would be seen disingenuous to oppose it.

Civil Rights of the 1960s

Lyndon Johnson was a son of the South. Practicing politics in Texas when racism and segregation was a way of life, Johnson might have been considered one of the last politicians to lead the fight for civil rights. Johnson was added to the Kennedy ticket, because it was the only way an lyndon-johnson-affirmative-actioneastern liberal such as Kennedy could have won election. The presence of a tried and true Southerner Johnson on the ticket enabled Kennedy to carry Texas and without that win Kennedy would have lost the election. Although Johnson was not a blatant segregationist in the mold of Alabama Governor George Wallace (“…Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”), he had done nothing to raise the fear of Southerners that he was not “one of them.” All the more surprising, then, that as president he met frequently with civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr. and took the critical lead in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Certainly the assassination of President Kennedy created emotional momentum to pass the Civil Rights law, but even so, it certainly would not have passed if a bone-deep Southerner such as Johnson had not supported it. Johnson drew down the reserve of power he had built with Southerners over decades to bring about real change. Johnson was the only leader with the power to do that.

Richard Nixon would never be accused of being a “commie-pinko-sympathizer.” Nixon built his entire career as a dogmatic anti-Communist. We won’t go into his tactics here, but it is suffice to say that people knew where Nixon stood when it came to dealing with communists and communist nations. And yet it was the strident anti-communist Nixon who opened the door to China. Can you imagine the howls of protest, conspiracy and recrimination that would have befallen any other president who – almost as a supplicant – took the trip to China to shake the hand, kiss the cheek and toast Chairman Mao? Nixon had the bona-fide credentials of an anti-communist earned over two decades that gave him the power to bring about change that set in motion the ultimate end of the Cold War. Only Nixon had the power to do that.

The Bottom Line for Effective Leadership

The point being made here is that these leaders (and there are others) who understood that power used to achieve what has always been done is a MacDonaldQuotewaste of power . . . and that the ultimate value of power is to do what has not been done. Critical to using this power to instigate change is having the courage to stand up to what has been done, when what has been done needs to be changed.

Now we come to today. There is a clear understanding that the financial structure of current entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are fatally flawed. If allowed to continue as constructed today – even with minor tinkering and ticky-tack reforms around the edges – these programs have the potential to bankrupt the country. It is also clear – to friend and foe – that President Obama has built an impeachable record – and has been elected – as a traditional liberal who favors people over corporations and the expansion of government to help those in need; even at the cost of deficit spending and increased debt. This credibility with the average person was clearly on display when Obama won re-election, despite unlimited amounts of money from the wealthy, the travails of a stagnant economy and a government budget system is disarray.

The only leader who has the reserve of power necessary to call for the fundamental changes needed to save these programs and protect the economic well-being of the country is President Obama. There may be talk of a “Grand Bargain,” but that will never come about in today’s political stalemate. What is needed is a “Grand Plan.” President Obama has the opportunity to join the pantheon of those who have proven to be great leaders by using his reserve of power to bring about real change. But to do so he must step up and offer bold plans that will fundamentally change and preserve these entitlement programs. It is an abdication of leadership, when one who has the power to implement change holds back and simply castigates others for their lack of action.

The truth is that the other leaders in Washington do not have the credibility and reservoir of power with the people who will be most affected by reforming the entitlement programs to allow them to implement the needed changes, but President Obama does. If President Obama does not recognize this power or fails to exhibit the courage of Jefferson, Johnson and Nixon to use it, then both he and the country will lose.

And the Moral of the Story …

There is a good lesson to learn here for anyone who seeks to be an effective leader in government or business. As a leader it is critical to be consistent, clear and credible in establishing a deep-seated belief in the minds of your followers that you are committed to their ultimate welfare. When a leader is successful in this effort, they begin to build a unique force of power that can be drawn down at critical and opportune times to bring about real change.

Doing what has been done or expected to be done is not leading, it is herding. True leadership is about the ability to motivate followers to accept what they never thought they would accept and to do what they never thought they would do. This can only happen when the leader has – over time – built up a reservoir of trust from the followers that allows them to believe that no matter what action is taken, no matter how contradictory it may seem, it is being taken with their ultimate best interests in mind. This is the only way for a leader to accumulate the capital needed to implement real change.

 

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Guns are as Natural to the American Way of Life as Violence

April 15th, 2013 · Business Management, Politics and Politicians Gone Awry

To preserve all that’s great about America, gun ownership must be protected—maybe even expanded.

There are those who believe that America is moving toward a crisis tipping-point and that the outcome will determine if the country can continue its “exceptionalism” as the dominant economic, military and political leader in the world. There is dread spreading among thinking people that if the country continues on its current trajectory it will, as has every dominant power of the past 5,000 years, recede and slip into the backwaters of failed empires.

Tagged as the primary culprits for the diminishing American power are a paralyzed government, continued deficit spending, an out of control national debt, anti-Christian corroding social mores and godless, socialist-leaning leaders who are unwilling to stand up for what America stands for.

America has always stood strong for the three “Gs”: God, guns and greed. Paramount to this philosophy is individual freedom and particularly the individual’s explicit right to protect themselves against the threats of enemies foreign and domestic. Inherent in the right to individual protection is the freedom to own and if need be, use a gun.

The Founding Fathers believed that the right to “bear arms” was so sacrosanct they made it even more essential than the right of free speech Bear_Armsand the right to vote. Soon after the constitution was ratified, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act that put strict controls on free speech and mandated stiff prison stays for those who violated the law. While the right to vote was embedded within the constitution, it was limited to “free white male property owners.” (It should be noted that women were not allowed to vote, but they could own a gun.) Except for making it illegal to sell or provide guns to “native savages” or those of color who happened to be slaves, every single American had an inalienable right to own any number and type of gun they wanted. With this as a guiding philosophy and the effective use of guns, Americans conquered a continent and came to dominate the world.

But now the right of Americans to own and use guns is under a shameful direct frontal assault by the sacrilegious efforts of demagogues who seek to usurp this sacred right granted by our forefathers and inspired by divine deity. In and of itself that is bad enough, but what makes it even worse is that this attack is being led by our very own elected American leaders. The Founding Fathers would regard this type of activity as little more than traitorous treachery designed to weaken the very fiber of America. It is likely not a coincidence that the effort to take guns out of the hands of Americans coincides with the decline of American vibrancy and power at home and in the world.

These rapists of rights may deny that they seek to prohibit or control individual gun ownership, but their actions belie their words. For example, there is an emotional movement afoot to ban the sale of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. Falsely portraying assault weapons as nothing more than excessively efficient “killing tools,” these effete snobs of intellectualism strive to ban what is essentially a God-given implement of self-defense. At the same time, they ignore the fact that last year only 358 people were killed by assault weapons equipped with high capacity magazines, while 32,885 people were killed in or by automobiles. The fact that we don’t hear these same nattering nabobs calling for a ban on the sale and ownership of cars should tell you something about their distorted belief in the preservation of the American way; and that the politicians among them are more influenced by the car lobby, than the freedom-loving gun lobbyists.


The first step in this insidious effort to deny Americans the right to own guns comes in the innocuous, seemingly benign form of a “background check.” These haters of American rights tell us they don’t want to ban guns, but to just compile a little background information on those who own them. Don’t be fooled. You need little imagination to know exactly where that will lead to and how the information could be used. As shocking as it might seem, there has even been talk of putting forward a “foreground check” before a person could buy a gun. Under this scheme those who seek to purchase a gun would not only have to disclose to the government their past associations and activities, but also agree to be analyzed by a licensed psychologist (no doubt a bleeding-heart liberal) to determine what the individual might do in the future, if they did own a gun. If this passes, it will surely be an end to America as we know it.

These efforts must be stopped dead in their tracks if individual freedom in America is to be preserved. Fortunately for all freedom loving Americans, WikiLeaks has obtained and released a copy of the background check form the government wants to use to determine a person’s qualification to own a gun. This form is called “The American Freedom to Own and Keep Guns Information Repository.”

To help you understand and make your own decision as to how deviously stealthy this first step in denying Americans their basic right to own and use guns, listed below is a partial list of some of the (up to now secret) questions and information proposed to be asked and gathered.

Select your favorite television show:

  • Doomsday Preppers
  • American Sniper
  • American Guns
  • Sons of Guns
  • Moonshiners
  • Jesse Ventura: Conspiracy Theory
  • Sara Palin’s Alaska

If you read, what is your favorite magazine or newspaper?:

  • Guns and Ammo
  • The New York Times
  • Shotgun News
  • Time
  • Rifle Shooter
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • Shooting Times

Answer the following as truthfully as you can:

  • Do you tend to watch The Military Channel more frequently than CNN?
  • Do you believe your best look is camouflage?
  • What is the year, make and model of your pick-up truck?
  • Have you given your pick-up truck a name? Like “Big Dick,” “Rolling Rage,” or “Balls of Fire”
  • Is your rear window gun-rack designed for two or four rifles?
  • Does the term “turbocharged hemi” refer to your truck or a painful ailment you have suffered?
  • Do you often meet people you know deserve to die?
  • Are most people out to get you?
  • Do you feel you can never have enough ammo for your gun?
  • Do you think gun safes are for sissies?
  • Do you own any shirts that have collars, buttons or sleeves?
  • Do you consider a “double-wide” to be upscale housing?

These are just a few of the seemingly inoffensive questions asked on this background check form, (If you want to see the entire form go to www.wikileaks.org/guncontrol), but you can see how the compilation of this information in the hands of the government could be dangerous.

Fortunately, there are still some brave souls in America who are willing to stand up and fight for the preservation of the basic American right to own and use a gun (in self-defense). One of these unsung heroes is none other than the National Rifle Association leader, Mr. Wayne LaPierre. LaPierreSure, he looks like one of those slimy, prissy, pretty-boy lobbyists and his name sounds like he is some dad-gum foreigner, but he speaks for all Americans when he says, “The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Sustaining and spreading the philosophy that America needs more, not less guns, is the best way to combat and defeat the intent of many to eliminate the basic right of all Americans to own guns. The truth is that it is impossible to keep bad people from having guns, so the answer is to make it a requirement that everyone must own and carry a gun. After all, the police can’t be everywhere, but people armed with guns can.

It’s simple logic: If some lunatic was thinking about going into a theater to shoot people, they would hesitate if they knew that everyone in the theater had guns. How many would see schools as an easy target if they knew that all teachers and student hall-monitors were fully armed? And there are other advantages. Road-rage would decline precipitously if the aggressive driver knew that the other driver was also packing heat. Even the term “going postal” at work would become moot if all managers openly carried a loaded side-arm on their hip.

To reduce the risk of innocent victims being injured as the result of a dispute between two individuals, the legality of personal duels should be reinstated. What many do not realize is that at the time of the adoption of the constitution, the “personal duel” was the accepted way to settle a dispute between two individuals. In reality the idea of a duel to the death reduced violence, because one knew that the other person was armed (and might be a better shot) and this encouraged them to work out their differences. The same thing could happen now if duels became legal again. (Plus, usually the only ones injured in a duel were the combatants.)

Above all, those who understand and love the greatness of America should not shirk from the responsibility to stand up for basic individual rights and liberty – especially the right to own a gun. Instead of passively accepting the actions of those who seek to eviscerate these rights, they should stand up and demand greater rights. Nothing would do that more than to require that everyone exercise their right to own a gun.

And the Moral of the Story …

America has marched from colony to super power and guns have been instrumental tools every step of the way. Americans took up arms to gain independence; then demanded and received the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Chastened by the power of British troops to control and confiscate arms in order to subjugate Americans to the will of the English government, the Founding Fathers were determined that never again would any government have such power. This end was accomplished by codifying in the most fundamental document of the country – the constitution – the right of every American to own a gun.

Sure, there is some fallout from this approach, but a mentality of violence, the settling of disputes at the point of a gun, random killings of innocents and even a few mass shootings is a small price to pay for protecting an American’s right to buy, own and use a gun. There are those who say that “times have changed” and the right to buy and own a gun is “outdated.” That’s really a code for saying that liberty is outdated. The important question to ask is: If we let them violate the constitutional right to own a gun, then what right will be next?

Those who care about America and its future should ignore all the random violence caused by guns and the fact that more Americans are killed by guns owned by individuals than any other country in the world. Stand fast! Protect the right of all of us to buy, own and use guns. It is, after all, the American way.

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