So, I presume you’ve read my masthead.  It’s not just pretty words… I mean it.  So does everyone else associated with my firms- now, in the past, and in the future.  We will make this world a better place, one client at a time.  (We have some 40 years of track records proving that, by the way.)

You see that is the function of a leader.  It’s not the leader’s job to excel within the system- but to change the system for the better.   To render it ready for tomorrow.  To achieve the mission of the enterprise (or a country- and, boy, could we use a real leader nowadays).

A leader who just helps a company make the same profit they made last year?   Nah, that is not a leader. That’s a manager.  And, that is what so many companies have installed as their putative leaders.  Which may explain why so many businesses don’t seem all that great.

No, a schoolyard leader is not just someone who gets good grades on every exam.  Nor, is that person a leader if s/he meets the corporate objectives.  No, a leader is someone with a vision of something that is better.  Something that will transform what is into what should be.

We don’t need folks who can google the best answers.  We need folks who can ask the best questions- and then guide folks to solve those problems. We need folks who not only set goals and make them- they determine which goals make the best sense- for today AND tomorrow.

Part of the problem is that we’ve set our “merit” system the wrong way.  We reward those that please their supervisors, find the best mentor to help them get ahead.  No one ever considers that not everything that needs to be done will be popular.  But, that’s exactly what needs to be done…

We need to find ways to change our bureaucracies.  These exist not just in governments, but in corporations.  A system where we reward folks who are creative and make things happen.

And, we also lionize those that declare their conversion too late.  Where a leader of a company for 20 years stressed maximizing shareholder value (which, believe it or not, means paying dividends to stockholders or having the stock price rise) instead of growing the company, now declares that such an idea is among the dumbest that have ever been developed.  Or, having Sandy Weill declare that investment banks should never own commercial banks (or vice-versa), when he spent his entire business life demanding government change the rules to let him do just that?  Those folks are not leaders.

Our biggest companies no longer do anything but find ways to lower costs, examine economies of scale.  They are not developing the new things we will need in the future.  (You can fault Steve Jobs for many things- this was not one of them.  But, then again, his was not one of the Fortune 500 when his quest began.)

Or, our health care system, which is arranged not to provide the best health for the most people. Instead, it’s arranged to provide the most revenue for doing the least.   To make it easier for healthcare administrators to maintain their hospitals and clinics, to get the patients out of the hospital to satisfy the insurance company, even if they are not well enough and, therefore, return in a week or two.  For the insurer to buy hospitals, clinics, and physician practices, thereby maximizing their revenue- by doing exactly what did not work before: Requiring every patient to undergo the same treatment for the same symptoms, even if their maladies have different accompanying diseases or co-morbidities.

Our schools have been transformed to become test fiends. (Thank you “No child left behind”.) Like answering questions on a test (to which the students are taught) is going to make them better prepared for the future.  Because, we all know the questions that we will have to answer in the future and can use those memorized answers to solve them.  Instead of teaching our children how to learn- and love doing so- together and by themselves- so these students can find the best answers to the questions we have not even begun to postulate.

No, we need to develop real leaders.  Ones who will evaluate each situation and determine the best mode of action.  One client, one division, one project at a time.   But, with multiple clients, divisions, and projects going on all at once.

Will you join me in this quest?

This post is scheduled to appear on 11 September 2012.  The 11th anniversary of the worst attack on American Soil- since we don’t seem to count the Civil War as an attack on ourselves.  I know the effect this has had on my son- who was 10 at the time, as well as my daughters, who were grown up – one in DC and one in NY at the time. I recall the effect this has on me, as I had just left New York to celebrate my 50th, and landed at National Airport to grab my son out of school and consider how the world had just changed for him.

May we all use this day to consider what is and what is not; what we need to do to make this world better.  And, to recall those whose lives were lost- and those who put their lives at risk to save those in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon- and those who survived and are altered forever.