Don’t Be a Destructor
Kara Swisher is sans her favorite professor this month. Therefore she is inviting guest co-hosts.
This week she was joined by George Conway. George Conway is an interesting fellow. During the Trump reelection, I could find myself in a number of the viewpoints of his Lincoln Project. Yet, I realize George Conway is very much a conservative.
In this Pivot episode, George Conway summarizes Trump perfectly:
“I think he can ruin somebody.” … “His power is the power of destruction. He doesn’t create anything, he destroys. That’s the nature of how he exerts power in the Republican power, is the threat of destruction.”
That summarizes what a leader should and should not be. It is all too easy to destroy. Leading, whether in the office or in public service, requires you to take a risk to build something. Not everything will work. Not everything will be successful. But all the things are about building a better product, better society, better community. If you define your job as destructor-in-chief, you are not a leader.
Michael Lewis captured it best in his book “The Fifth Risk”. Early into the Trump administration, NPR’s headline A Portrait Of A Government Led By The Uninterested got it wrong. This wasn’t an uninterested bunch. This was a bunch which showed up with sledge hammers, ready to destroy willy nilly.
Take for example, the story about NOAA. NOAA and the National Weather Service are serious folks, 11,000 in all, supported by a fleet of satellites and buoys. The agency focuses on gathering lots of scientific climate data. The agency operates in obscurity — in fact, it’s forbidden by law from promoting itself or the accuracy of its forecasts.
Because it provided data demonstrating that climate change was real, it had to be destroyed. Climate data had to be removed from government websites.
Trump appointed AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers. AccuWeather takes the free government data and resells it to companies. To the uninterested and uneducated, the AccuWeather CEO seems like a good choice. Why do we need to employ 11,000 when we have a private company who can provide the weather data. Yet, without the serious scientists of NOAA, AccuWeather would not exist.
The impact of destroying NOAA is much bigger than an iPhone app predicting the weather. The US and the world aviation industry depends on NOAA. The shipping industry depends on NOAA. Farmers depend on NOAA.
Don’t be a destructor. Be like Bob the Builder!