Independent Thinking » Washington Post

4 Leadership Lessons from the Penn State Scandal

Daria Steigman — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:04:01 +0000

It’s impossible to ignore what happened at Penn State. Which is ironic since Penn State officials, impossibly, chose to ignore what was happening.

This was a massive failure on many levels.

Here are four leadership lessons:

1. Leadership is about making tough decisions. The president of the university didn’t. Joe Paterno didn’t. But the Board of Trustees did, taking quick action once the scandal broke to start to clean house and appoint a special committee to investigate how things went so wrong.

2. Dissent should be encouraged. I don’t know this, but it certainly appears that no one involved with the Penn State football program made a move without consulting Paterno first. Because otherwise I can’t for the life of me understand why a 28-year-old’s first thought after witnessing an assault wouldn’t be to call 9-1-1. You can’t be a good leader if you don’t let people act independently–and disagree with you.

3. Bubbles are bad for business. Tracee Hamilton wrote a terrific column for the Washington Post in which she said in part:

If [Paterno] really loved Penn State as much as he professed, he’d have fallen on his own sword a lot sooner, rather than letting the situation on campus reach a boiling point while trying to engineer his own retirement… If he wanted to save his school and his program and even his friend from the firestorm engulfing them all now, all he had to do was pick up the phone and dial 9-1-1. Three digits.

Paterno was the definition of a ”big man on campus.” The problem with bubbles is that you only talk to friends (see #2) and see what you want to see. And you think you can control everything.

4. The letter of the law is not enough. You can’t lead by technicality. The argument that (indicted and/or fired) Penn State officials have tried to make is that they did what they were legally obligated to do. That might save Joe Paterno from criminal liability, but it certainly doesn’t save him from moral accountability.

What leadership lessons learned would you add?

Photo by Russell James Smith (Flickr).

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It’s Not Enough to Have a Business Model

Daria Steigman — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:13:29 +0000

The Washington Post just announced that it is getting back into the business of reporting on business. So far, so good. After all, this is the paper that eliminated its standalone business section last year, prompting me to relinquish my print subscription.

But then I looked at the model:

The new business coverage will take the form of a weekly print publication
You have to be a current Washington Post subscriber to subscribe
It’s going to cost somewhere around $50 per year (well, maybe non-Post-subscribers will be able to subscribe, but pay more)

Does anyone else think something is wrong with this model?

It’s not enough to have a business model, it needs to be a good model. Here are three problems I see with this one:

Competition (including the Washington Business Journal)
Timeliness (seriously, in a 24/7 news cycle, a newspaper company is proposing a new weekly?)
Cost (if you’re an existing Washington Post subscriber, don’t you think the paper should already be providing business coverage?)

What’s your take?

Photo by Eddie Welker (Flickr).

Fresh Voices, Outside Perspective (aka: What Every Business Can Use)

Daria Steigman — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:26:17 +0000

It’s never a good idea to get too caught up in our great ideas, inventions, and innovations. Ask Tropicana, the most recent brand to get wrapped up in its righteousness without stopping to take the pulse of its community.

Businesses need fresh voices and outside perspectives. And not just from outside, but from the inside out. Including the membership of their boards.

As I talked about here, there are some really good reasons why solopreneurs and small business owners should consider serving on boards. But there’s also a reason why corporate boards should be looking at entrepreneurs and small business people. We’ve typically done it all, from strategic direction to sales to marketing to finance and so on.

I’ve always wanted to serve on a corporate board. But how to get noticed? I haven’t cracked that code yet, but here’s a great post on the Washington Post Leadership Blog that talks about financial fluency and other skills you need to bring to the table.

Any suggestions?

Is Investigative Journalism Dead?

Daria Steigman — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:04:13 +0000

I’m a huge fan of newspapers, and I love the physical act of reading the newspaper. And yet I cancelled my subscription to The Washington Post today.

Newspapers are in a vicious cycle: they are losing readership (and subscribers), so they’re cutting back. In recent weeks The Washington Post has eliminated its book review section; scaled back delivery of the weekly TV Guide; effectively gutted the Sunday Outlook Section; announced plans to end its stand-alone business section; and announced plans to cut back its style section. Then, yesterday, they announced another round of buyouts.

The end result: I’ve been paying for less and less. The business section was really the last straw for me. It’s gone at week’s end, and so am I.

But where does the slow death of newspapers leave investigative journalism? From Watergate to conditions at Walter Reed, The Washington Post has played an important oversight role. Other major newspapers have similarly tracked down and exposed stories of national importance.

Please don’t tell me Fox News or MSNBC will do this. Television is primarily an aggregator of the news. And network news budgets are being cut too, so it is unlikely that the networks will step up and fill the investigative journalism void.

Will investigative journalism die with the newspapers? And what does that mean for our democracy? I’d love to have you weigh in on this topic.

Safety Is a Core Business Function

Daria Steigman — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:03:24 +0000

See my letter to the editor in today’s Washington Post in response to a former pilot’s defense of the airline industry and absurd proposition that safety is “an aspect of airline customer service.” Is this really the airline industry’s PR strategy?