Q&A: THE DAYS OF TOP DOWN LEADERSHIP ARE NUMBERED!

Q&A THE DAYS OF TOP DOWN LEADERSHIP ARE NUMBERED

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 12, 2008

QUESTION:

This piece shows incredible insight. Can we get a measuring stick as your thesis plays out?

RESPONSE:

I don't think there is any definitive way to measure this, but perhaps some indicators might be if:

(1) We could get our 800,000 lawyers to start practicing law and defending the U. S. Constitution, and worrying less about billing hours. Perhaps then they could force Bush and Chaney, and other duplicitous operators, to realize they are not a law unto themselves.

(2) We could somehow get the 550 elected men and women in Congress to start passing laws, and upholding others that protect American workers and consumers instead of falling in line with the demands of the 1500 lobbyists of the Fortune 500 companies that control them, none of whom are elected.

(3) We could get our major universities to quit falling in line with defense contractors, and worry more about developing minds and less about endowments.

(4) We could exact a penalty for American companies who send American manufacturing jobs and operations, and other businesses to totalitarian countries at the expense of tens of thousands of American jobs.

(5) We could get metropolitan areas of high crime to form citizen committees to monitor neighborhood activity, day and night, to discourage looting and violence, and encourage peace and harmony.

(6) We could get parents, teachers, caretakers and caregivers, as well as neighborhood volunteers, to coach, counsel and encourage kids to stay in school.

(7) We could get workers in corporations at every level to demand ethical practices, fair and consistent treatment of all workers, and proper sharing of the wealth of operations, tolerating nothing less.

(8) We could get elected officials to punish companies who exploit their workers and customers. I am thinking of price fixers, hoarders of products to push up the price, or other forms of malfeasance. These crimes should exact the full letter of the law. It is not that the laws are not on the books; it is that they are not enforced fawning to special interests.

(9) We would demand that people running for office knock off the flattery, telling us what we want to hear, and start discussing real issues, real sacrifices, and the real pain of change. I mean all pressing issues, not just those that resonate with the rhetoric. Pissing contests in campaign politics have become like soap operas, and all the candidates are guilty. Sadly, it reinforces my theory of leaderless leadership.

(10) We would demand the first to be fired be those in the executive suite that created the crisis, which is always generated from the top, and the last to be let go the ones with the least power and the most to lose. We sometimes forget that corporate executives are, after all, employees. They should be measured by the same draconian standards that they impose on their workers. A good indicator of bottom-up change would be the day the golden parachute becomes a museum piece.

(11) We refused to buy products from companies, here or abroad, that exploit their workers or are guilty of inhumane, or discriminatory practices. Few of these companies ever come to our general attention, operating surreptitiously under the radar. This is often with the full knowledge of those who are meant to protect us from them.

* * * * * *

If there had been a draft, the bottom-up outcry now would have been at least double what it was in the 1970s with the Viet Nam War. Young people, then, burnt their draft cards, protested on college campuses, stormed college administrative buildings of faculties in bed with defense contractors, or fled to Canada. This bottom-up action stopped the war.

Since we don't have a draft, political operatives have gotten arrogant. Recently, vice president Dick Chaney was interviewed and told that 80 percent of the American people were fed up with the war in Iraq. His answer? "So?"

In other words, the American people don't count. "We, at the top, know best." This corporate mantra has now been played out.

Our society is an inverted pyramid, which has allowed our country to spin like a top. Those on top are now on the bottom, at the precarious point of the spin. Up until now, they have been insulated from and impervious to the will of the people above.

We know what happens when the top stops spinning. It goes all over the place, out of control. Sound familiar?

The subprime fiasco is only an indicator of what happens when sweetheart deals are created, and greed and chicanery operate without license or control, or bottom-up response.

The other day the Tampa Tribune had mug shots of six CEOs that ripped off their companies, spent lavishly on weddings, gifts, dwelling places, and vehicles, while giving themselves stock options and unconscionable bonuses. My wonder is what were their direct reports doing while these shenanigans were going on. This, too, should be an expression of bottom-up response.

Ralph Nader, who has been attempting for more than forty years to stimulate bottom-up citizen response, sees a gap between knowledge and action. You will remember he is the man who wrote the book, "Unsafe at Any Speed" (1965).

General Motors became extremely paranoid with this young lawyer for what he wrote about GM's Covair. Sales plummeted. Nader demonstrated in the book how unstable the vehicle was, and how easily it could flip over "at any speed."

GM in 1965 was still the giant of American industry, and a law unto itself. It felt no ethical qualms about launching a full court attack on Nader's character by hiring an army of private detectives to find some dirt on him.

Senior management, as incredible as it now seems, felt if it could find Nader guilty of some compromising behavior, GM would be exonerated. Apparently, it never occurred to this management corps to look into the credibility of his charges.

Nader was found not only clean, but impeccably clean, while GM was found to be groveling in paranoia. Incidentally, this, which happened more than forty years ago, marked the beginning of the descent of GM into chaos and bankruptcy.

We need more Ralph Naders, who, like you, are dedicated to social justice. He feels there is a gap between knowledge and action, and uses a Chinese proverb to capture his meaning: "To know is to use, to know and not use, is not to know."

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