From Jeffrey Pfeffer's comments in the Washington Post On Leadership recurring forum:
Barack Obama electrified the Democratic convention in 2004 with his speech and his oratory was a significant factor in his winning first the Democratic nomination and then the presidency. Indeed, some of his opponents accused him of being too much about words. How ironic, then, that as I look back at Obama's first year in office, what is most notable is this administration's failure to craft compelling messages frequently repeated--to control or at least significantly influence how the nation views its most pressing issues.
(...)
In speaking about the work of building organizational culture, Jack Welch talked about the need for leaders to be relentless and boring--to repeat, more often than a leader felt necessary, a message that would resonate, help people make sense of what was going on and what they needed to do, and remind them of what the overarching vision and objectives were. The importance of language is widely recognized in studies of leadership.
It is ironic that Barack Obama has yet to truly find his voice--to be able to find themes that engage in the emotions and also have the discipline to, with his cabinet secretaries and the rest of his team, pound those messages home through repetition of the facts and the use of compelling language and images. This weakness has left the Democrats on the defensive and his reform agenda very much at risk.
Couldn't have put it better. (And didn't!)
4 comments:
I am still thinking this through and I don't know if I agree with all of this. Americans have been the ones that failed because they changed and they are the ones that screw this up with their simple mindedness and need for immediate gratification and laziness in understanding if the answers are not simple. Also, most of them eat too much red meat!
Don't you be getting down my my hamburgers, now...
I suppose that the easy answer would be that 'we all failed', and insofar as none of us ever lives up to our best motives and goals, that'd be true.
One of the requirements of the job of President, though, is to help us see past those immediate desires to a better sense of ourselves and our country. Obama's done yeoman service in correcting the problems we've had. He's not nearly done, by a long shot, and in a way it seems unfair to say that he's not communicating while doing all of this.
But we respond better when we understand, and for many of us, understanding's been hard to come by. We need someone with a broader vision to speak about broad concepts -- not to pander to us, or speak above or down to us, but to communicate, to - in the overused phrase - 'help us understand'.
I think that the Democratic approach to life is, at the moment, the better one. Lots of people disagree. I can't make the case as well as he can. I think we need that.
And if along the way he delivered a whack to the whackos out there, that would be good, too.
http://www.apoliticus.com/2009/07/first-the-f-22-now-the-obama-dragon-tank-plans-are-on-hold/
Ah, Onion News. Not as reliable as Fox, but funnier...
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