Opinion: Rumsfeld suffers from 'CEO disease;' do you?

It did not hit the headlines, but Donald Rumsfeld was recently spotted in some of our southwest Missouri workplaces.

Oh, you missed his appearance. Well, read on.

The continuing saga of the hounded and heckled secretary of Defense, attacked with verbal hand grenades by seven generals, is the centerfold of this column. No, Mr. Rumsfeld was not actually here, but his story does seep into the executive offices of countless organizations.

Specifically, Mr. Rumsfeld suffers from what authors Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, in their recent book “Resonant Leadership,” call the “CEO disease.” This disease, which has always been virulent in any top-down workplace, presents with one profound symptom: All the heads in the executive board room are bobbing up and down nodding their approval for every decision and machination of the king-maker.

If you want to know if you have this disease or are encouraging its transmission, you may want to note these five characteristics of the Donald Rumsfeld story.

First, Rumsfeld is a strong, suck-the-air-out-of-the-room personality. This guy is no wilting-violet, Casper Milquetoast, Bob Cratchit secretary of Defense.

This Tony Soprano wannabe was hired by Richard Nixon to be part of the “Truth Squad” that easily crippled Hubert Humphrey on the campaign trail of tears in 1968. Adjectives like “brash, ambitious and somewhat arrogant” have dogged his political career. From what I read, if you want a junkyard dog who will charge any intruder, Rumsfeld is your man.

This is not all bad. Come on, the majority of us are looking for people in our “maybe this-maybe that” world who know what they believe and why that belief should get the job done. Decisiveness in leadership is admirable.

The downside of decisive leadership is the leader may actually believe he is also always right.

Second, the secretary of Defense can take a lung-crushing punch because someone above him has offered protection services. Rumsfeld is one of three original cabinet secretaries (including Elaine Chao and Norman Mineta) who are still standing. And, the “Decider” has decided Rumsfeld will only resign over his politically dead body.

If senior management has rock-solid support from a board of directors, the stockholders or an absentee owner, it is easy to jut out that jaw and say “I serve at the pleasure of the president” (i.e., “I will outlast all of you”).

Third, the seven generals who recently found their larynxes with respect to Mr. Rumsfeld are all retired. Criticism has cascaded from former Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Myers that these renegade generals all had an opportunity, when on active duty, to raise their reservations about the war in Iraq and how the secretary of Defense was executing the battle.

Right! Has anyone noticed that the general who suggested prior to the beginning of the war that it would take “several hundred thousand” U.S. troops to adequately defeat and then occupy Iraq … was reassigned?

This third point is crucial to understanding the CEO disease. If someone does voice opposition, he has the potential to become a casualty. Can anyone hear the word “retaliation” out there?

Fourth, Secretary Rumsfeld is an adept communicator. As someone who works at making a living by being “quick on my verbal feet,” this man is the master of the comeback. I sit in awe as I watch the evening news. At age 72, his mind has passed the intellect of his questioner by at least two paragraphs.

This quick mind and tongue can be both an asset and a liability. The asset is that you state your position and expectations with an economy of words. The liability is that people around you will respond with silence and you will be clueless about the effects of your decisions on the entire organization.

Finally, and this is my opinion, Mr. Rumsfeld is the best illustration of someone who has become insulated from divergent voices. The secretary of Defense appears to believe what he says and seems to have no interest in hearing other voices.

When people are intimidated to tell the truth as they perceive it, the organization falters and, in some instances, disaster follows.

Some people at NASA did not want to hear about what early morning ice would do to an O-ring on the space shuttle. Some people in the intelligence community did not want to hear that an unusual number of non-U.S. citizens were taking flying lessons prior to Sept. 11. And some people in the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not want to hear that dead bodies were piling up at the convention center in New Orleans.

So let’s review. The CEO disease is a popular malady, especially among strong, verbal personalities who consciously intimidate people into silence and therefore never hear the real story from those who are being led. That silence often creates an insulated monarch, who believes that all is well because he is not hearing anything to the contrary.

If your organization is not well … does anyone have the CEO disease?

Cal LeMon of Executive Enrichment Inc. solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting. He can be reached at execenrichment@aol.com.[[In-content Ad]]