Good Success: Learning Good Lessons from Bad Leaders

Preface

Each of us bears some resemblance to our ancestors. Hair color, facial features, or soma type can cause us to look like them, while our special, one-of-a-kind features can set us uniquely apart.

So, too, does GOOD SUCCESS bear a resemblance to GOOD LESSONS from Bad Leaders: Discovering Courage Beyond the Chaos, published on 2014.

GOOD SUCCESS stands upon the foundation of GOOD LESSONS. But GOOD SUCCESS also stands independently because of the number of new lessons, expansion of prime ideas, and relevant commentaries upon several trends shaping one’s career and life, plus new content exclusive to this book.

By GOOD SUCCESS, I mean success that is enduring and will be as relevant in the long run as well as in the short run.

GOOD SUCCESS is not superficial but deep and always good for all who experience it, benefit from it, and share it. GOOD SUCCESS lies in opposition to BAD SUCCESS that is transitory, only good for the few, and has little extensibility or lasting impact upon one’s life, career, and contributory value.

GOOD LESSONS enable GOOD SUCCESS. You will see the connection as you read and reflect.

Isaac Newton is attributed to say he stood on the shoulders of giants. This fact remains true in our day as well, and clear-minded and mature thinkers/doers acknowledge it. They move ahead with strength based on this valuable premise.

To a degree, this book, GOOD SUCCESS, stands on the shoulders of my previous book, GOOD LESSONS. They both provide strength for you to move ahead with resolve in spite of encountering and working with/for bad leaders.

Some of the change experienced in your life and vocation is superficial, some profound, some good, and some not, depending on your point of view and personal reality. It seems no part of life or work remains static. Yet, as the rate of change has accelerated, the view of our ability and even our willingness to keep up has been influenced as well. That’s the reality. We must adapt. GOOD SUCCESS, like GOOD LESSONS, will help you do so.

Survivability has become more of an issue over time, as has relevance. Therefore, you need to ask these additional questions: "Is learning good lessons from bad leaders still possible? Are the lessons written in this book worthy of my time? Are they relevant to my life and circumstances? Will GOOD SUCCESS help me survive the bad leader I have, the one I had before, or the one I may yet encounter?"

The answer to these questions is yes. Absolutely yes!

Learning good lessons, especially from bad leaders, is always relevant to your life and career. It can be both a preventive resource to keep you from becoming a bad leader and a palliative resource to assist you in overcoming the difficulties that bad leaders cause.

The message of GOOD SUCCESS is enormously relevant. Recent research indicates that a large majority of people who leave their jobs do so because of poor supervisory leadership. People don’t leave jobs, companies, and organizations; they leave their supervisors!

Good supervisory leaders make the difference between engaged and disengaged employees who are likely to exit rather than persist. According to author Bridgett Hyacinth:

A Gallup poll of more than 1 million employed U.S. workers concluded that the No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is a bad boss or immediate supervisor. 75% of workers who voluntarily left their jobs did so because of their bosses and not the position itself. In spite of how good a job may be, people will quit if the reporting relationship is not healthy. People leave managers not companies… in the end, turnover is mostly a manager issue.¹

Job satisfaction, career trajectory, and general peace of mind are greatly affected by the quality or lack of quality of one’s workplace leadership. Who doesn’t want the positive influence of a competent, attentive workplace leader to improve one’s life? Who doesn’t want to avoid the emotional and career baggage as well as the negative influences of bad leadership?

You can learn a great deal from observing and avoiding the bad behaviors of bad leaders. Your life and career will be altered dramatically when you learn the best from a bad leader’s worst.

Observing good and bad leadership behaviors can happen at both the executive level and supervisory level. It’s important to address the effects of bad leaders who are higher or highest on the organizational chart and pay scale as well as supervisory leaders who hold positions just above non-management personnel.

GOOD LESSONS received pushback when it demonstrated that some leaders are infinitely bad, no matter how bad is defined. Yet, I reaffirm that some leaders are bad, not necessarily because someone believes they are, but because they have proven themselves to be ineffective, inconsiderate, substandard, and disregarding of factors that would otherwise enable them to be good.

The word mediocre is a good descriptor for ineffective leaders. Placed together, two Latin words define mediocre as halfway to the peak. Regarding how well they perform and how well they lead their teams and organizations, bad leaders only make it halfway to the peak.

GOOD SUCCESS again makes a distinction between judging or condemning others. This continues to make sense to those required to conduct employee evaluations and performance appraisals. This section, with its comments and recommendations, remains the same as in GOOD LESSONS.

GOOD SUCCESS reflects a greater awareness of the width of the emotional separation between leaders and those led. Despite substantial efforts to promote inclusion and diversity as a means of creating unity and goal attainment, a divide remains in the workplace and in society. This results in intransigence, the exclusion of good people with good ideas, and bad leaders hiding behind their blind spots.

I’ve noticed a broadening divide in two substantial ways. First, there is an unwillingness to seek to understand another person’s point of view on societal and workplace-related issues. Second, although full agreement may never be reached, understanding should be attempted. Good leaders seek to achieve understanding first and then agreement. Bad leaders settle for achieving less-than-optimal levels of both understanding and agreement. They often insist on others agreeing with them and their ideas first.

Moreover, bad leaders continue to be unable to close gaps to create commonality of purpose and outcomes among coworkers. I’m not apocalyptic about this, but unfortunately, there is little unity in the community. Finding agreement on important matters seems an impossibility. It is in this environment that the failures and inadequacies of bad leaders are unexposed or ignored.

When separation and disunity are the norm, how leaders and followers describe one another changes. Leaders pejoratively describe would-be followers as worker bees, laborers, grunts, deplorables, and disposables. Followers describe leaders as being disingenuous, aloof, self-serving, and intractable. This is our current and undesirable reality—not everywhere all the time, but most of the time nearly everywhere.

Learning good lessons will help close the divides. They can be gleaned from even the worst of leaders and workplaces. Short of a profound emotional and spiritual awakening, it falls to good people who have learned good lessons to bridge the gap to community, workplace harmony, and goal attainment.

If good lessons and ultimately good success are not extracted, underestimating how powerful and long-lasting the negative impact of a bad leader can be dangerous. In fact, good lessons can be learned even as bad leadership behaviors are noticed. Game-changing lessons are more likely to be learned with distance and time between the observation of ineffectiveness (with the unsettledness caused by it) and learning good lessons from it.

Additionally, the complexity, demands of the workplace, and pace of life will not slacken. That’s the not-so-great, uncomfortable news, but it’s an acknowledgment of what we already know. One is not alone in wondering how to cope. People in the U.S. and in other developed countries feel the same way.

Both leaders and non-leaders fear that their jobs and workplace responsibilities are becoming unmanageable and thus intolerable. They are not on top of their jobs; their jobs are on top of them.

As we look to the future, we don’t see less work, but more. We won’t experience fewer complications, but greater complexity. Despite the promise of technology to make our lives less difficult, it doesn’t. For example, social media tools designed to make us more connected and intimate many times make us more distant and even more distrusting.

This is our current reality and the societal cards we have been dealt. And it is for many people all too much without planned and purposeful adaptation. Applying the ideas in Good Success by Learning Good Lessons is the means to achieving planned and purposeful adaptation. Similarly, have more choices doesn’t necessarily make one’s life better or one’s job less conflicted. However, learning good lessons and achieving good success will provide evidence that you are adapting purposefully.

Regardless of the pace or direction of the world and culture, there are both true and relevant observations about what good leaders do that should be emulated and what bad leaders do that should be avoided. GOOD SUCCESS makes this point strongly and repeatedly. It helps create a level of manageability and planned adaptation to one’s life and career as the lessons are learned. This book will help you cope, not cop-out.

1. Setting the Cultural, Social, and Business Context

One of the contextual issues I’ve observed recently is the transition from generations of people who have a need to know to a generation of people who have a need to be known.

Earlier generations didn’t acculturate with social media, so the need was focused on aggregating information and experiences to know about the world. The culture that needs to be known doesn’t focus on accumulating information but on accessing it. In this culture, being known creates identity; in previous times, knowing established one’s identity. This difference plays out in the ability and willingness of leaders to lead and followers to follow. The distinction is profound and accounted for by good leaders but not so well by bad ones.

Younger workers/employees have a fear of not being known. That is why they share what seems to be meaningless stuff to older workers. Also, they demonstrate concern for their safety and that of their peers by continually being in touch. Older workers see a much safer world than younger ones do.

Older supervisory workers have the fear of both not knowing and being held accountable for not knowing what they should have known. Younger workers don’t have this fear as much because when they need to know something, they google it. This should enable younger people to make decisions more quickly, but it doesn’t. They need more information before a decision can be made. By comparison, an older worker may not know that the data needed can be quickly accessed through the web.

The older worker should be able to make a quick decision based on a low volume of data mixed with their longevity and/or experience. Younger workers need a large data set from which they can construct solutions because they work as temps and at part-time jobs. Thus their information base is broad rather than deep.

In retail, could any leader have predicted the impact the advent and maturity of online purchasing would have on site-based operations? Retail shopping malls are failing right and left. Even automobiles can be purchased online and picked up at a vending machine. Who would have predicted that one doesn’t need to go to a restaurant to get a restaurant meal? A home-cooked meal can be prepared at a restaurant and delivered to your home by multiple delivery services using autonomous vehicles. How cool is this?

Consumers Rule is truer today than ever before. Who would have thought that, by owning a line of scooters and bicycles, Ford Motor Company would see itself as a transportation company rather than only a manufacturer of cars and trucks? Who would have envisioned that Sears, who at one time had the slogan Sears Has Everything now has nearly nothing?

Predicting change and leading change aren’t the same, but some good leaders accomplish both. Bad leaders are more likely to accomplish neither.

Let me mention a commonality, most often ignored, that binds all recent change together. It is data creation and data utilization.

I’ve taken a deep look at data utilization and positioned it within the context of data monetization and also within the context of automation and robotics. Data utilization, data monetization, automation, and robotics were not discussed in GOOD LESSONS.

Having more data doesn’t lessen the need for good leadership. After all, no amount of big or good data will compensate for bad leadership. Thinking so is being shortsighted and misinformed. We don’t necessarily need more leadership in a digital world; we need better leadership in a digital world—leaders who take big and good data and act with it convincingly. Actionable data not acted upon discloses bad leadership while creating a climate for uncertainty and malaise among followers.

Like it or not, we cannot avoid living in this digital world. There is no going back to a non-digital time. Going off grid or even living on the moon or Mars wouldn’t be possible without data to get us there and sustain us while there.

The enormous complexity of living in a digital world requires a degree of knowledge, wisdom, restraint, and humility not yet fully developed in most human beings or organizational leaders.

As the sophistication of creating data accelerates via humans and via automation, the way we engage data and optimize it in decision-making will require superior judgment. Thus, the human side of applied data will be judged to be done well or poorly. This, then, legitimizes the premise of the good lessons from bad leader’s value proposition.

Data utilization matters immensely. The right data stored properly where it can be accessed, retrieved, interpreted, and applied at the right time and by the right people for the right reason can be enormously beneficial. But if any of these components are engaged wrongly or by the wrong people or for the wrong reason, data can become enormously dangerous.

2. The Power of a False Message

Bad leaders tend to use data badly. It seems this should go without repeating, but that’s not true for bad leaders. Most of them do not grasp the magnitude of the power that data possesses, and they fail to use it prudently, responsibility, and confidentially. A recent example makes the case.

On January 19, 2018, a message was sent via official Hawaiian Emergency Management channels that the State of Hawaii was facing a nuclear attack. Of all the U.S. states, Hawaii knows something about sneak attacks. Everyone affected quickly realized that something had gone terribly wrong, either with the potential attack itself or with the person(s) who authorized sending the emergency message.

The first evidence indicated that the person responsible for sending the message had done so accidentally, although he said he sent the message based on what he had been told. The conflicting data was quickly discounted. But what part of the action was based on truth, and what part was based on falsehood? Afterwards, when this event was critically analyzed, it was determined that both human communication and system errors were at fault. The button pusher was thought to be incompetent and above his pay-grade to make such a decision. He was considered an unhinged person unable to rescind the error-filled official message.

Moreover, it was determined that a single person was allowed to send a false message based upon data when the decision should have been made jointly with officials of higher standing and authority. The magnitude of the error was reported by many media sources. It caused alarm, anxiety, and dislocation. Furthermore, the false message direct caused one death as well as parents pushing their children down manholes for shelter.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Duck and Cover. It’s a phrase used during the Cold War days in the 1950s and 1960s to teach people what to do in case of a nuclear explosion or incoming bomb. Children in schools practiced it like a fire or tornado drill; so did people in offices and factories.

Duck and Cover is what followers might need to do when a false message is communicated via a poor decision of a misinformed or over-aggressive leader. Learning good lessons will help you see the false message for what it is, and followers will duck and cover when necessary.

The mix of conflicting data, defects in communication systems, and human errors caused the problem in Hawaii. It is too simple to say it was the sole result of an inept employee acting on bad data. It was also the result of maladroit upper management who did not provide proper employee screening and training or anticipate problems with the alarm system.

Yet, within the context of learning Good Lessons from Bad Leaders, this GOOD SUCCESS takes an in-depth look at the Automation and Robotics sector as a case study for examining innovation, data utilization, decision-making, and leadership.

I’ve already mentioned the retail domain, but there are others such as big data, artificial/augmented intelligence, entertainment, medical research, Internet of Things (IOT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT), telephony, national and residential security, and 5G connectedness among many others that deserve attention. Each of these sectors requires a degree of human engagement and interaction; each needs good leadership as well. These will be touched on but not fully explored in GOOD SUCCESS.

I have focused many of my comments within the context of automation and robotics and which leadership behaviors will quicken or slow down the development of the sector. It is the nature and quality of leadership that will determine how much or how little automation and robotics will be allowed to impact human and machine interactions. Many good lessons can be learned here.

Bad leaders often become bad not because they intend to, but because they work too hard to be liked and not hard enough to be effective. Likeability is nice but not essential to superior leadership. Most people and organizations would rather have a less likeable yet effective leader than a more likeable but less effective leader.

Many bad leaders would rather be liked than effective. Yet, planned and positive results are more likely to occur if leaders/managers like themselves and others while being both effective and highly regarded. It is, in part, the emotional intelligence of leaders that enables their likeability and effectiveness. GOOD SUCCESS provides additional insights regarding likeability.

In 2014, the U.S. and most of the world was in an economic malaise. U.S. unemployment rate ranged from a low of 5.6% to a high of 6.6%, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Five years later, though, economic circumstances have changed for the better. Real wages have increased; more people are working. Full employment sets up a series of economic realities that only marginally affects what bad leaders do and don’t do.

Bad leaders tend to be bad regardless of general economic conditions. In really good economic conditions, bad leaders should get better, but they ordinarily don’t. With full employment, what happens? Those experiencing a bad leader/supervisor have more flexibility to go elsewhere, and they do.

Furthermore, bad leadership remains more a constant than a variable regardless of economic reality. With a greater demand for talent, people who report to bad leaders are more inclined to seek other employment opportunities rather than continuing to endure intolerably bad leadership. You’d think that bad leaders would get the message and improve, but they don’t as this economist’s article states:

Essentially, the idea of full employment is that so few workers are available that companies need to begin raising wages to attract help. Economists technically define full employment as any time a country has a jobless rate equal or below what is known as the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment, Estimates of the measure are based on the historical relationship between the unemployment rate and changes in the pace of inflation. If the unemployment rate is below this number, the economy is at full employment, businesses cannot easily find workers, and inflation and wages typically rise. If not, then there are too many workers in need of a job, and inflation remains low.²

The fact that favorable economic conditions have arrived does not invalidate the Good Lessons Affirmation. Learning good lessons remains relevant because bad leaders are still prevalent.

Embedded in the new Automation and Robotics sector are the issues of Data Utilization (DU), Data Monetization (DM), and Emotional Intelligence (EI), each of which will be examined in this book. These three topics reside at the core of current economic success and future economic development.

Furthermore, interesting patterns can be gleaned from the Automation and Robotics sector and extended to other enterprise sectors in which you might be currently employed, might desire to be employed, or into which an entrepreneurial endeavor might be launched.

Automated systems and robots do not completely run themselves; they must be engaged with, by, and for humans. Both automated systems and humans can operate in either superior or suboptimal ways. Just as automated systems require humans, humans require oversight and supervision.

What is it that humans can perform best, and what can automation and robots do best? One way of answering these questions is to examine the enormous energy, human, and financial capital being spent in the creation and optimization of autonomous vehicles, predominately automobiles and trucks. These questions are answered in this book.

Why examine the Automation and Robotics sector for consideration regarding good and bad leadership? The reason is quite simple. It is a mistake to assume that the more automation and robotics are deployed, the less human intervention and leadership are required. As an example, autopilot systems on aircraft require more training of pilots, not less.

Automation has made planes safer and more efficient, but the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets lead some to wonder if there is a dangerous flip side. Though advanced autopilots and computers are an integral part of any modern jetliner, many pilots worry that the systems detract from developing and maintaining their own abilities. We’ve been talking about this in the industry for years. Pilots are losing their basic flying skills, and there’s an overreliance on automation, said Les Westbrooks, an associate professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.³

The A/R sector is not immune to poor leadership and enormous wastes of personnel, equipment, capital, information, and time (PECITs). A/Rs are beginning to dominate as they become the center point of contemporary business and industry, yet good team and individual supervision is still required, regardless of the level of automation.

There are not only moral/ethical questions to address but leadership and management questions as well. For example, How much automation and robotics are good for humans? How will A/Rs impact human relations? How much should humanity allow automation and robotics to dominate? Who will be dominant; who will be subservient?

In light of these questions and the new A/R milieu, the issue of good and bad leadership remains pertinent. It is superior leadership that will make the A/R sector work to benefit humanity. The substandard leaders in this sector will cause dysfunction and be detrimental to humanity.

When A/Rs are operating optimally, they create abundant value by doing the dull, dirty, dangerous, and dehumanizing operations humans should not or do not want to do.

3. Data Gone Big and Good Data Gone Bad

The use of the term big data, and the reality of big data has expanded dramatically in the last several years. According to the Gartner Group, the term big data is defined as "high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety information assets that … that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation."⁴

Moreover, Oracle.com states that Big Data is a generic descriptor for . . .

Data that contains greater variety arriving in increasing volumes and with ever-higher velocity. And larger, more complex data sets, especially from new data sources. These data sets are so voluminous that traditional data processing software just can’t manage them. But these massive volumes of data can be used to address business problems you wouldn’t have been able to tackle before.⁵

Your data can be as big, clean, reliable, current, accessible, and as good as it possibly can be. But when it’s badly interpreted, it is not likely to produce the desired ends it could have and should have produced. Good data badly interpreted and applied yields bad outcomes. Certainly, big data can be created and utilized by itself for itself. But a poor leader’s inaccurately interpreting and applying data can negatively affect the utilization of good data, and thus it can go bad.

Consider this example. Your home thermostat can be set or reset locally or remotely, depending on how warm or cold you want it to be. You can program it yourself or let it program and run itself based upon the parameters you give it. If the thermostat is badly made and operates poorly, it will give you a false reading and provide heat when you want cold or cold when you want heat.

Similarly, if a leader continually and badly interprets reliable data, then it is sublimated to the bad leader’s idiosyncrasies and decisions. Data in its raw form isn’t ordinarily bad or good; it just is. Yet, data may become bad as a result of a leader’s nuancing, misinterpretation, and utilization causing it to be bad.

The hit TV show The Big Bang Theory proved the point of ignoring the data, interpreting the data badly, and driving people crazy. Often when Penny was giving Sheldon a ride (because he couldn’t drive himself), he would refer to the red light that was continually illuminated on the dashboard of Penny’s car. She always ignored the warning light, and her willingness to ignore the warning light drove Sheldon crazy. The dialogue was hilarious. They saw the same warning light, but they interpreted its warning differently. The scene was even more exasperating to both Sheldon and Penny because Penny ignored the warning due to her unwillingness to fix it. Sheldon was exasperated because he didn’t know what the warning light meant nor had the ability to fix it.

This comedic scene is similar to two coworkers, a leader and a follower, who both see the same red-light data but respond to it differently out of ignorance or unwillingness. In this example, the dash warning light or the data that the dash light provided was not bad; the interpretation of what the light meant was bad. Both the driver and the rider had neither the skillset nor willingness to do anything about it.

This is exactly what happens when leaders cannot see the data. Alternatively, seeing the data doesn’t mean seeing the possible danger disclosed. Or the danger is ignored or avoided because the leaders have neither the interest nor the skillset to fix the data warning. This drives followers crazy.

I’ve concluded that good lessons come from good leaders who are comfortable in uncomfortable circumstances and situations. Good leaders don’t slack off from direct confrontation with the opposition when necessary. They know when it is necessary and when it is not. This takes wisdom and humility, both of which will be discussed as examples of good leadership throughout this book.

Introduction

The moment hung in the air and time passed slowly after Denny’s name was announced. But when the diploma passed into his trembling hands, thunderous cheers and applause erupted from the audience. Denny gripped the diploma, paused, turned awkwardly to face the audience, smiled, and then triumphantly raised the diploma like it was an Olympic gold medal. The crowd cheered even louder. He didn’t rush the moment . . . he couldn’t. He then forced his body across the platform while still holding his diploma aloft and the crowd cheered!

I have been a participant or an attendee in a large number of graduation and commencement ceremonies. Pomp and Circumstance is permanently on my mental play list. I’ve heard and seen the families and friends shout and cheer as their graduate was announced, but I have not experienced anything that compares to the props Denny received. I’ve heard cheers for star athletes, those most likely to succeed, for the summa cum lauds, valedictorians, and the disabled as you might expect. But there was nothing like the energy expended acknowledging Denny.

Denny suffered from muscular dystrophy, which made it an enormous struggle to stand and walk, but he did that day. His classmates had seen him face challenges much greater than theirs. He had overcome. With this achievement, he was experiencing great personal joy and public recognition.

The elation I felt for Denny is what I want you, the reader, to feel as you persist, overcome, and learn Good Lessons from Bad Leaders. I want you to be able to pump your fists and say that the bad leaders didn’t, or are not, getting the best of you.

You may not face physical challenges like Denny’s, but you are highly likely to face the private pain and the emotional, financial, vocational challenges of dealing with bad leaders. Good Lessons from Bad Leaders will help you seize benefits out of detriments.

You already know that bad leaders are certain to cause uncertainty. They drive organizational dysfunction. They incarnate indecision. They deplete personal energy and team resolve. They exhaust resources and hope. But, through this book you will gain the knowledge and the good lessons to overcome the damage, shape your awareness, and build new courage to navigate beyond the chaos.

You may have already written off any chance of benefitting from the chaos bad leaders create. Perhaps you didn’t think it was possible. If so, Good Lesson from Bad Leaders will help you draw a valuable inheritance from the F.E.A.R. (failures, experiences, anxieties, roadblocks) you’ve seen bad leaders produce.

The purpose of this book is to help you learn and then integrate the good lessons you glean from bad leaders.

You can’t always take yourself out of the chaos, but you can take the chaos out of you.

This book will help you do so. This book will also help you learn good lessons as a means at looking at employment and life from a glass that is full rather than a glass that is half empty or half full.

Bad leaders can take you off your path, but learning good lessons from them can put you back on your path. Bad leaders may take you off your game, but learning good lessons through the chaos they create will put you back on your game.

Throughout the course of your life and career, you are not likely to escape the influence of some bad leaders, so you might as well turn the tables and benefit as much as you can from them. You may have experienced this type of leader already. If not, I guarantee that you will.

Good lessons and the courage that springs from them can be learned from leaders who frustrate their coworkers, whose attitudes and actions harm shareholders and stakeholders, and who devalue the standing and influence of the organizations they are paid to advance. They don’t produce positive results; rather, they think their actions are exemplary and their leadership laudable.

This book will help you emulate the positive in good leadership while being alert, discerning, and able to avoid the failures of bad leaders.

Good Lesson from Bad Leaders speaks to the hurt, anger, and discouragement you are likely to feel when beset by a bad leader. It offers alternatives and highly