True Leadership

The American Scholar prints a speech by William Deresiewicz to plebes at West Point in 2009 (h/t Ritholtz):

That’s really the great mystery about bureaucracies. Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things—the leaders—are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all. Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they’re done. Just keeping the routine going.
I tell you this to forewarn you, because I promise you that you will meet these people and you will find yourself in environments where what is rewarded above all is conformity. I tell you so you can decide to be a different kind of leader. And I tell you for one other reason. As I thought about these things and put all these pieces together—the kind of students I had, the kind of leadership they were being trained for, the kind of leaders I saw in my own institution—I realized that this is a national problem. We have a crisis of leadership in this country, in every institution. Not just in government. Look at what happened to American corporations in recent decades, as all the old dinosaurs like General Motors or TWA or U.S. Steel fell apart. Look at what happened to Wall Street in just the last couple of years.

Finally—and I know I’m on sensitive ground here—look at what happened during the first four years of the Iraq War. We were stuck. It wasn’t the fault of the enlisted ranks or the noncoms or the junior officers. It was the fault of the senior leadership, whether military or civilian or both. We weren’t just not winning, we weren’t even changing direction.
We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of exper­tise. What we don’t have are leaders.
What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.

The whole speech is worth reading.  The description of the achievers in society really hits home today.  The big ideological fight is over whether people who have achieved should have to share resources with those who haven't been as successful climbing the ladder.  But not many people are asking, "achieved what?." or, "why?"  When I read profiles of the CEOs of various extremely large businesses, I typically realize that I was never meant to follow that same career path.  80 or 100 hour work weeks, travel all around the world, relocating your family 6 or 8 times, all to be the head bean-counter or boss man.  I don't understand what drives those folks.  I like solving problems, but they don't have to be large scale problems.  It can be something minor, like learning how to fix a home appliance I've never worked on before.  Don't get me wrong, I'd like to solve giant problems, but, for the sake of my sanity, I'm not bulling ahead in the big business world.  Anyway, the ability to conform, and to follow the conventional wisdom, might move one up the ladder, but it doesn't make what's getting done worth doing.  Is the ability to see that profits can be increased by moving production to China really an ability which should be greatly rewarded?

One of the things that struck me about the excerpt above is that it pretty effectively describes the problems we have in our political system.  The electorate is nearly evenly split between left-leaning and right-leaning people, but we are segregated.  Outside of the major metropolitan areas, there aren't many left-leaning folks, while inside the big cities, there aren't many right-leaning folks.  Both areas have tremendous problems, and tremendous blind spots.  In order for anyone to move up the ladder and get elected, they have to tow the party line, for better or worse.  In reality, folks on the left need to assent to some of the points made on the right, and vice versa.  But if somebody is to stand up and say what needs said, they won't get elected.  Conformity is killing us.