Is it safe to assume that a successful CEO is uniquely prepared to be president? No more than it is safe to assume a successful president is uniquely prepared to be CEO. This, at least, is what I tell students in my leadership class. The response aims to make them think hard about the common traits successful leaders across professions share ? and to think harder about the very different challenges they face.
For his part, Mitt Romney has staked his presidential ambitions on the answer to the first question being yes ? an unequivocal, resounding yes. He is not alone in his opinion. For many people, success in business suggests a special fitness for presidential leadership. They have a point, insofar as accomplished CEOs typically possess an aptitude for rigorous analysis, strategic thinking, and organizational efficiency. These are indispensable skills for any chief executive, but they are also more relevant to solving problems than defining them.
Continue ReadingThroughout the primaries, Romney has presented himself as master problem solver, a characterization that rings true with the people who knew him best at Harvard Business School, where he graduated in the top 5% of his class. In a recent New York Times story, Kim B. Clark, a former dean of the business school described his old friend as someone who possessed the ?natural instincts to be a problem solver? and ?thrived on facts and data.?
Romney?s enduring achievement in public life is a testament both to the power and principal limit of such instincts. When he became governor of Massachusetts, Romney looked for a public policy problem to solve commensurate with his considerable political ambition. And what better problem than health care (or the lack thereof)? Romney went to work crafting a bill to ensure universal coverage for the people of Massachusetts. For those who could not afford insurance, assistance was provided them. For those who could, a state-run insurance broker was established to help them. And for those who refused, penalties were imposed.
When he signed it into law, the Massachusetts health care bill must have seemed to Romney like the kind of historic achievement that showcased his talents as a public policy problem solver. As the chief executive of a major state, he had organized a diverse team of academics, business leaders, and government officials and spearheaded a problem-solving process that looked for the best ideas irrespective of ideological imprimatur.
But what happens when people can?t agree on the problem or, for that matter, the ideological parameters in which it ought to be resolved? Such disagreements are central to politics ? Does life begin at conception? Is health care a right? Should we end the Fed? But they are more foreign to business. As Milton Friedman famously argued, the moral imperative and raison d??tre of private enterprise are one. ?[T]here is one and only one social responsibility of business,? Friedman said, ?to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.?
Insofar as CEOs have embraced Friedman?s contention, they have relieved themselves of the kind of the moral and ideological debates that dominate Capitol Hill. How do you legally make as much money as possible for your shareholders? is the fundamental problem of business, and solving that problem is the chief responsibility of a CEO.
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