One man with courage is a majority!

It requires a man with wisdom to say this and so did Tom. Jeff.

The whole world is crying for leaders whom they can believe and who can deliver. I was startled to see this stat below. This is the performance summary of just 7 CEOs.

(Click on the image for a better view)

These 7 CEOs took $1.4 billion of compensation from their companies, while leading those companies to losses of $64 billion and inflicting 75% to 100% losses to shareholders. At least 123,000 workers, with families & children have lost or will lose their jobs.

I understand that Angelo Mozilo (CEO COuntrywide) was selling his company stock so fast during the summer before his company collapsed, that he had to skip multiple sessions at his tanning salon.

If you think this is startling then read on about the state of US debts. The National Debt of the United States is $10.6 trillion (in addition to the $53 trillion of unfunded liabilities & i was told that a trillion has 12 zeros!). This is $100,000 owed by every household in America. The annual deficit will reach $1 trillion in 2009 that is add to the debt above at a rate of: $2.7 billion per day; $114 million per hour; $1.9 million per minute; $32,000 per second.

I dont like many of the management theories for these have very limited applicability. But there was one theory which i fell in love with instantly as i read it. As in every case we interpret most of the theories in our own way and my interpretation of "Fielders theory of leadership" to be more specific it is situational leadership, assesses the favorableness of the situation and the type of the leadership style required. So the situation could be 1. Extremely Favorable,

2. Extremely unfavorable (Imagine it in the x axis) and leadership style is 1. Extremely Authoratative, 2. Extremely participative (imagine it in the Y axis).

The theory goes that under extremely unfavorable (War) and favorable situations (extreme levels of growth, close to 100% majority) demands authoritative type of leader who delegates and does not take a NO. Under normal situations the participative leader who calls for meetings, looks for signs, asks for opinion and builds a consensus is most suited.

For who wants a visual model, the graph looks like this. George W Bush was an authoritative leader who came in during normal times and created a emergency situation (primarily because of deficit in wisdom and intelligence at all levels in his government) and if Obama (as it looks like) is a participative leader, then theoretically he is not suited for the situtation. Hope he proves us wrong.

But the aspect i liked was the applicability of an authoritative leader during extremely favorable situation too though i cant think of any real life examples.

As anyone can understand we live in ordinary times with extraordinary economic challenges created by ourselves and are struggling to come out of it. Millions of livelihoods, hope and future are at stake.

The whole world is longing for a leader (not only political leaders but also at every levels) who can get them out of this and he is no where in sight. Its time that we realize that there is no point in waiting for some to arrive but rather be the change you want!.

Lets decide to arrive in which ever way we can, at the smallest levels with requisite courage, at our work, in our society, in our community but more importantly courage with a right blend of goodwill and wisdom, else we may have to blame it on ourselves for what we have not done!

Believe me, we are the majority when we have the requisite courage!

Happy reading !