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One of the big responsibilities of an executive coach is to help the client step back to a broader perspective and observe how what he's doing connects or disconnects with the results he's trying to get.  It's helping the client move, as Harvard's Ron Heifetz would say, off the dance floor and onto the balcony. I don't know for sure, but based on recent reporting, I'd have to guess that no one is providing that kind of support to Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs. As the Financial Times  thoroughly summarized this week, Goldman finds itself the subject of an unexpected shift from headquarters of the masters of the universe to object of universal scorn and anger over the $17 billion bonus pool it has set aside one year after taking billions of dollars in Federal assistance. Not content to fly under the radar screen (which wasn't really possible in the first place), Goldman CEO Blankfein recently gave a long interview to the Sunday Times of London in which he said, among other interesting things, that he's just a simple banker, "doing God's work."

Talk about pouring gasoline on a fire. If I was coaching Lloyd Blankfein, there are three basic questions I'd want to ask him to help him reframe his perspective and better align his actions with the results required in this new situation. Ideally, we would have talked through these questions about a year ago. It may too late for them to do any good now, but here they are:

What's Changed? The point of this question would be to encourage him to pull the lens back and assess what's changed in the past year and a half and how those changes have put Goldman in uncharted terrain.  Clearly, Blankfein and everyone at Goldman are at the high end of the scale in terms of IQ points.  They are smart people and could, at the drop of a hat, give a graduate level seminar about what's changed in the global financial markets. In a coaching conversation on what's changed, I'd want Blankfein to go beyond the IQ points and look at and reflect on what's changed in what the Germans call the zeitgeist (i.e. the spirit of the time). I'd also want him to look at what's changed around the impact of his words and actions. The combination of an unsettled and anxious zeitgeist with the internet's capacity to exponentially magnify the impact of one's comments can lead to explosive situations for leaders as visible as Blankfein.

What's Important in the Long Run? The FT and Sunday Times articles both make it clear that the driving principle at Goldman over the years has been to maximize the capacity to make money in the most productive way possible. The company has done that successfully over a long time by managing their risk better than any other firm. What seems to have been overlooked in the risk management process at Goldman is reputational risk. The principle of maximizing the money appears to have caused Blankfein and the leadership at Goldman to overlook the long term risk to the firm's reputation and its capacity to be profitable and productive over the long run. Going for the short term payouts may well lead to a killing the goose that lays the golden eggs situation.

You may have noticed that both of these questions are open ended questions that start with the word what.  That's a pretty standard technique of coaches. We like to use "what questions" because they open up thinking and help our clients think outside the box. Sometimes I joke that the only bad "what question" is...

What in the Hell Were You Thinking? Sure, it's a little rude, but it seems appropriate in this case. My guess is that if he thought about it, Blankfein would realize that he's been thinking within the terms of the old environment rather than the new world that he and his firm are in. As I said earlier, it may be too late for any of these three questions to do much good. Still, there may be a chance. Sooner or later, leaders screw something up. Some of those screw ups are more public than others and Blankfein has had more than his share of public ones lately. After making a big mistake, it actually can be productive to step back and ask,"What in the hell was I thinking?"  If you can identify the thought process that led to the mistake(s), you have a reasonable chance of making adjustments in your thinking that will serve you and your organization better in the future. In spite of all the bad press they've received and bad decisions they've made lately, Goldman Sachs plays an important role in the global economy. For their sake and ours, I hope Lloyd Blankfein and his leadership team take some time soon to step back and sort through some perspective checking questions.

If you happen to have 100 million Euros (about $150 million) to spare, you might be in the market for the yacht, The Why, pictured to the left. Yes, that's the stern of a boat that was featured in the House & Home section of a recent edition of the Financial Times Weekend. 

As described in the FT, The Why is a one of a kind yacht with 3,400 meters of guest space and an optimal cruising speed of only 12 knots. (You can see more pictures of The Why at http://www.why-yachts.com .)

I'm taking a wild guess here, but I'm doubting that very many of my readers are in the market for a $150 million boat. (I know I'm not!  Not in this lifetime, anyway.)

So what's the point of all this in a leadership blog?  It's this excerpt from the FT quoting Pierre-Alexis Dumas, one of the designers of the 12 knot yacht:

Dumas believes that, except in the case of aircraft, "speed as an aesthetic is passé". He questions when we now have time to think. "Time like this is not a luxury, it's a necessity. If we don't think, we alienate ourselves in a dangerous way. Going slow is a natural reaction to the artificial speed of light we created."

Think for just a moment about what Dumas is saying.  "If we don't think, we alienate ourselves in a dangerous way."  Even if (especially if) you don't have the opportunity to spend your thinking time on a luxury yacht, you still need to slow down a bit and take it.

I've been doing a lot of speaking to audiences of leaders this Fall and one of the things I've been talking a lot about is how, in this world where it seems like everyone is running flat out until they crash, we can find time to slow down and think about what we're really trying to accomplish and how we need to show up to accomplish it.  I'm sharing a framework developed by David Kundtz, the author of Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going, that goes like this.

Kundtz says that in our lives, we will have the opportunity to take three different kinds of breaks.  They are:

Grinding Halts: which are rare periods of extended down time of several months or more. Examples would include a scheduled sabbatical, time between jobs or retirement.

Stopovers: which are extended breaks and "unplugged from the grid" times of a few days or more.

Still Points: which are those cues that come up throughout the day that signal us to take a short break to pause, think, reflect, relax or rest.

I've been asking people lately to identify the still points that come up throughout their day. I've heard some good examples like lunch, commuting time and the little cushion that comes from starting or stopping meetings on the quarter hour rather than the half hour. My favorite example was a fellow at a speech in London who said his still point comes when he makes his afternoon tea and considers whether or not he'd like some cucumber sandwiches with his drink.

So, my question for you today is what are your still points and how are you using them to give yourself a break to just stop and think? My observation lately is that most leaders believe they don't have any margin in their day to stop and that taking a break to pace themselves is pretty much an impossibility. When I ask them to identify their still points and then ask them in the middle of my presentation to stand up, take a few deep breaths and stretch a little bit, they realize they have more control over their think time and stress level than they thought they had.

Give your still points a try. It may not be quite the same as lounging on the sun deck of a $150 million yacht, but I'll bet it will be an improvement over your current routine nonetheless.

For the past four years, the Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership has conducted an annual public opinion poll to determine the sector leaders in which Americans have the most and least confidence and the factors behind those confidence levels. The 2009 results have just been released and there are some pretty interesting conclusions.

First, the sectors where the confidence level in leaders are up in a statistically significant way over last year are the military, the executive branch and business. Those that showed a significant decline are medical, nonprofits and charity, state government, the news media and Wall Street. Based on an index where 100 indicates a moderate amount of confidence the only three sectors that scored higher than that level were the military, medical and nonprofits and charity. Of those three, the military is the only sector to score well above 100 on the confidence index with a score of almost 120.

According to the study, there are six key factors that have the greatest impact on Americans' confidence in their leaders. These factors are:

• Trust in what the leaders say
• Competence to do the job
• Working for the greater good of society
• Share my values
• Get good results
• In touch with people's needs and concerns

Given what's happened over the past year, it's not surprising that the military and the nonprofit sector leaders were in the top three.  Likewise, when you consider the past year and look at the six most important factors, it's easy to understand why the two lowest ranked sectors were the news media (balloon boy, anyone?) and Wall Street (how about those bonuses?)

Reading between the lines of the study, I see one other factor that's not explicitly mentioned but I think comes into play. That factor is the perceived clarity and importance of the sector's purpose and mission. If you download and read the study, it's striking how much higher the leadership of the military and the nonprofit sectors are rated in all six key factors than are the leadership of other highlighted sectors. I asked myself "What do these two sectors have in common?" and clarity and importance of purpose was the answer.

To stand a chance of being effective, leaders must generate confidence in the people that depend on them.  How do you think you stack up on each of the six key factors? How are you doing on clearly defining and communicating why what your organization does matters? If you were going to pick one factor in which you could improve, what would it be? What are three things you could do in the next year to move the needle in a positive direction?

President Obama appointed Rajiv Shah to head the US Agency for International Development. The appointment comes after a 10 month vacancy at the top of the Agency and a 40 percent reduction in its full time staff over the past 20 years. Since the effective deployment of foreign aid is a critical component of the United States' diplomatic and security strategies, it's important that Shah get off to a fast and successful start in his job.

In spite of his relatively young age of 36, Shah has a background that seems perfectly suited to the role.  He'll be moving to USAID from the US Department of Agriculture where he has played a number of roles including overseeing USDA's participation in the global food security initiative. Prior to USDA, Shah worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as the director of agricultural development and manager of the Foundation's $1.5 billion vaccine fund. Shah has an MD from Penn, a masters in health economics from Wharton, an undergraduate degree from Michigan and spent time at the London School of Economics.   It's pretty hard to argue with those credentials.

Still, Shah is stepping into one of the tougher challenges a leader can face which is leading the turnaround of a highly visible and critical organization. Especially in a political environment, it's important to get off to a fast and successful start in this situation. What you do in the first weeks and months on the job largely determines the path for success or failure over the longer run. With that in mind, here a are a few tips for Dr. Shah or any leader getting started on a turnaround:

Identify the key players:  Use the access that comes with your new role to sound out experts inside and outside the organization on who the key players are in areas like internal leadership, funding, boundary setting, partnering and priority setting.  Get on the calendars of those key players quickly to set up a...

Listening tour:  Meet with the key players to get their points of view on some common questions.  By asking a set of common questions of the key players you can sift through their responses more easily to determine where the opportunities and pressure points are. Some good questions to ask would include:

• What are the top three most critical priorities right now?
• What would success look like in 180 days, 1 year, 3 years?
• What does this organization do right that we should keep doing?
• What's the most important thing we should start doing?
• What is it critical that we stop doing?

Introduce yourself quickly and widely: Use all the communications channels available - retail and wholesale - to introduce yourself quickly to the organization and its stakeholders.  Use those early introductions to talk about what your early impressions are of what the organization needs to do and to set the tone of how you want to work within the organization.

Set some early goals that lead to quick wins:  While you probably won't have the three year picture fully formed in your first days on the job, you should have a general sense of the direction you're trying to set.  Communicate that general direction broadly and repeatedly so people understand the priorities.  Find some opportunities for quick win demonstration projects that can be celebrated and highlighted as examples of the new way of doing business.

Recruit a strong core team: The demands on your time as a leader in this situation will be overwhelming.  You can't do everything on your own. You'll need a strong team of talented people who get the vision and have the experience to act on it.  In the early days, your core team will likely be a mix of people you bring with you who know your style and people you recruit from within who have the talent but have just been waiting for a leader who can leverage their talent. You may not be able to find everyone you need immediately inside the organization. If you've identified a critical need that you can't fill quickly, consider hiring a contractor or consultant who do the job over the short term.

So, that's a starting point list for Dr. Shah or any other leader charged with leading a turnaround. It's certainly not comprehensive. Based on your experience or observation what would you add to the list?

First, let me apologize for implanting Subway's Five (five dollar), Five Dollar Foot Long ear worm in your head for the rest of the day. I hope that you'll agree with me that it was worth it to learn five lessons about winning support for change from the top leaders in your organization.

The lessons were inspired by a story in the current issue of Business Week on Miami Subway franchise owner Stuart Frankel. He owns a couple of Subways close to Jackson Memorial Hospital and five years ago was tinkering with ways to boost his sales on Saturdays and Sundays. From that, the original five dollar foot long was born. Since then, the sandwich has generated $3.8 billion in sales for Subway and put the company on pace to surpass McDonald's in worldwide store locations.

So, you'd think it would have been easy for Frankel to win everyone over to such a great idea, right?  Not so fast, my friends. Even though he was raking in the dough (bad pun intended), Frankel had to work hard to convince the top brass at Subway that the five dollar foot long was the way to go. In reading between the lines of the Business Week article, I've come up with five (what else?) lessons for anyone who is trying to convince senior leadership to take a good idea and run with it. 

Here they are:

1. Run some small experiments off the radar screen: Remember, the five dollar foot long idea started in two little stores as a way to boost sales on the weekend. Frankel, the store owner, was trying things out with no particular intention of going huge. What problem are you trying to solve that could use a fresh approach?  What small experiments could you try to see what else might work?
2. Collect compelling data:  As the Business Week story reports, Frankel was surprised that the five dollar promotion turned out to be more than a simple loss leader to get customers in the stores.  Even though his food costs rose as a percentage of sales, his overall volume increased and employee productivity rose because the stores were busier.  He made money on every five dollar sandwich.  Those numbers were the beginning of a story that he started sharing with others in the company.  What data could you gather to begin to prove your case for change?
3. Recruit some early champions:  When you've got a good idea, it's important to share it with some well placed allies who can champion the idea and spread it.  In Frankel's case, he brought in a development agent who oversees 225 stores in South Florida and another franchisee who owns 50 stores in the area to take a look at what he was doing.  Both of those guys ran their own small experiments.  When they almost ran out of bread in their stores, they knew they were on to something.  Who are the champions that you need to recruit to try their own experiments with your big idea?
4. Show them, don't just tell them:  In spite of the big success Frankel and others were having, the top brass at Subway just couldn't get their minds around the five dollar foot long idea when they heard about it.  The Subway franchise marketing board initially rejected the idea of investing in a five dollar marketing campaign.  So Frankel and his allies kept bringing store owners and marketing officers to Florida to see the lines of customers stretching out the door and down the sidewalk.  Word spread among other store owners and the five dollar foot long promotion started showing up in markets around the country.  When it comes to your own idea, what can you do to visually demonstrate its effectiveness to more and more influencers?
5. Stick(y) with it:  Four years after Frankel first ran his five dollar deal, Subway put marketing dollars into the promotion and that jingle that you can't get out of your head. There are two lessons about stickiness here.  The first is to get an idea across, you have to be committed to it and stick with it.  Not everyone is going to immediately get it and erupt in cheers and huzzahs.  The second is if you can come up with a sticky, memorable way to describe the idea, it's much more likely to go viral. (Type "five dollar foot long" into the search box on You Tube to see what I mean.)

So, two questions for you in conclusion.  Question #1:  What else has worked for you in convincing senior leadership to pick up on a good idea?  Question #2:  What are you having for lunch today? (You're singing that song in your head right now aren't you?)

The morning after election day 2009 was probably not a particularly fun one in the White House. As noted in a first rate summary by John F. Harris and Jonathan Martin in Politico, the outcomes of the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races and even the New York City's mayor race didn't really go the President's way. As an historical analysis by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post points out, it's important to not over interpret the results,  but one thing about the 2009 election results does seem clear. Voters who identify themselves as independents are looking for  leaders who seem to address the issues that are most important to them. 

As an example, since I live in Virginia, I had a pretty direct line of sight into the governor's race here.  The winner, Bob McDonnell, ran a very effective straight down the middle campaign centered on jobs, transportation, taxes and government spending. His opponent, Creigh Deeds, seemed to never get any traction on explaining exactly what his priorities would be if he was governor. (See Dan Balz's post election analysis in the Washington Post for more on this.)

In connecting the dots on the different races, I find myself looking for some common denominator lessons we can learn about effective leadership communications.  After all, that's what a campaign is ultimately about.  In reviewing this week's results, I've come up with four questions that I think leaders need to address either implicitly or explicitly if they hope to win over their followers. These strike me as important questions for any leader - not just political candidates - to address when they're attempting to mobilize people in a challenging situation. Here are the questions:

Who are you?   - As I wrote earlier this week, followers make up stories about leaders.  One of the first jobs of a leader is to define the terms of the story by answering the question, "Who is this guy or gal?"  In Virginia, Bob McDonnell put a lot of time and effort into providing his own answer to that question - a moderate, reasonable guy concerned about the economy and transportation. Creigh Deeds on the other hand spent most of his time and attention trying to define Bob McDonnell and very little time defining himself for the voters. The result was a 18% defeat for Deeds. As a leader, you have to have a story about yourself that connects with people.

So what? - Closely related to the "Who is this guy?" question is the "So what?" question. The leaders who are most successful in mobilizing followers are tuned into the "So what?" question and address that in their messaging.  In a low turnout election, the winners did a better job of answering, "So what?"  For McDonnell in Virginia, it was transportation and jobs. For Christie in New Jersey, it was property taxes and a long term culture of corruption. Simple, focused messages that address a real "So what?" usually win the day.

Do you respect me? - One of the biggest surprises of election day was that New York mayor Mike Bloomberg won by a very thin margin after spending $100 million of his own money against a relatively unknown and underfunded candidate. (Politico has the story.) You could argue that his narrow victory was a message that the voters didn't feel respected by Bloomberg after he had term limits overturned and acted as if he was entitled to the office. People don't want to feel taken for granted. They want to feel respected.   Likewise, the reaction to Jon Corzine's television ads implying that Chris Christie was too fat to be governor probably left a lot of people besides Chris Christie feeling disrespected. 

How does the drama help me? - I'm exposing my mega political junkie mode here, but the outcome of the 23rd congressional district election in New York was pretty interesting to me.  As reported in Politico, this is the one where the nominee of the Republican party was deemed by Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and others to not be conservative enough to bear the mantle. She was forced out and threw her support to the Democrat in the race who eventually won over the conservative third party candidate who assumed full GOP support when the original nominee dropped out. Got all that?  Anyway, I can't help but wonder if the voters in the 23rd, were sending a message that they don't have a lot of time for and interest in the drama.  I think the message for leaders generally might be to focus on the things that really matter to people.   When all the drama is stripped away, you still have to have a good answer to "So what?"

The next time you're feeling challenged about how to reach a goal, think of the sailors from the USS Carl Vinson. As reported in the Washington Post,  30 sailors from the Vinson set a goal to make last Sunday's Marine Corps Marathon their first 26.2 mile race.  More and more people are running marathons these days, but not very many have their training space limited to the confines of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. The sailors from the Vinson were inspired by the example set by their former commanding officer, Walter Carter, a recently promoted rear admiral who shared his enthusiasm for running with his crew.  Carter has left the Vinson for his next assignment but came back to DC to run the race with his men. Through his own commitment to fitness and his and camaraderie with his team, Rear Admiral Carter is the embodiment of what a positive leadership footprint looks like.

I'm honored to report that I got a first hand account of how the race turned out for the sailors from the Carl Vinson when I was one of the opening speakers last Sunday for the Navy's annual Flag Officer and Executive Training Symposium at a federal training center in the suburbs of DC.  (This is a week long annual event for the newly promoted admirals and their civilian colleagues in the federal Senior Executive Service. )

The speaker that followed me on Sunday was the head of the Navy's Fitness program. She was there to brief the participants and their spouses on the range of support available to help these leaders stay fit in their very demanding roles. As she wrapped up her remarks, she read from the Post story and asked if Rear Admiral Carter was in the room. He was indeed and reported that all 30 of his sailors had successfully completed the race and that he had finished it in 3 hours and 36 minutes himself.  Bear in mind that this briefing came about six hours following the marathon.  Let it be noted that the admiral did not have the bearing or tone of someone who had just run 26.2 miles in under four hours.  He pretty much looked fresh as a daisy!

There were a number of  things I took away from the Sunday session that I think are worth offering as food for thought for leaders. Let me share three of them here.

Takeaway 1:  There aren't many people who are in more demanding jobs than rear admirals and senior executives in the US Navy. By definition, these are busy people. And yet, the Navy has found that there is a high return on investment in taking these leaders off line for a week to support them in adjusting to their new roles. The Navy is apparently unique among the services in its inclusion of spouses in a program of this nature. They want the life partners of their top leaders to know and understand their spouses' roles.  They also want to let them know how much the Navy appreciates their leaders and their families.    That strikes me as an approach worth emulating for any organization interested in fully supporting its top leadership.

Takeaway 2:  I was really impressed that the third item of a week long agenda was an overview on fitness.  To be fully effective, leaders need to have a fighting chance of showing up at their best. The Navy understands that fitness is the foundation for that and has a team of personal trainers that work with their leaders on exercise planning, nutrition, stress management and a range of other health and wellness opportunities. They take a research based approach to fitness and have found that incorporating simple activities like walking (10,000 paces on the pedometer a day is the goal) has a greater long term positive impact than focused exercise programs (those are still important, by the way).

Takeaway 3:  Leaders set the tone and example. Thirty sailors from the Carl Vinson had the experience of a lifetime in the Marine Corps Marathon because their leader led by example.

Like I said earlier, it was an honor to be a witness to these lessons.The people of the Navy do amazing work. It's easy to see how their commitment to the total development of their leaders makes the difference.

The tough economic environment of the past year and a half has made organizational leadership an even more challenging job than usual. A recent article in HR Executive Online by Lin Grensing-Pophal reports on a somewhat surprising aspect of that leadership challenge.

Drawing on a recent study conducted by Watson-Wyatt and World at Work, Pophal notes that employee engagement levels during the recession have dropped by nine percent since last year. That's not so surprising given everything that's gone on in the past year. The news that leaders should pay extra attention to, however, is that the engagement of top performers is down by a whopping 25 percent.

The combination of economic uncertainty and the need to do more with less can take a toll on everyone. Of course, on both a short and long term basis, leaders need to pay particular attention to the high performers who can deliver results. Pophal offer some good suggestion in her article about how to do that including developmental assignments and flexible work arrangements.

She also mentions connection to the bigger picture as a key way to provide the intrinsic motivation that keeps the best engaged. As I've written here before, Bill Bridges' four P's communications model is one of the best frameworks I know of for making that connection. Like most good leadership tools, it's simple and easy to remember:

• Purpose: why are we here and what difference does that make?
• Picture: what will things look like when we're fully successful?
• Plan: how will we get to that picture of success?
• Part to Play: this is how what you do fits into the plan that creates the picture that fulfills the purpose.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to speak with leaders from GE Energy, the U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security, Booz Allen Hamilton and the U.S. Senate. One of the things that all of those leaders have in common is that they're working for organizations that make a difference. I actually think that most of us work for organizations that make a difference. Leaders often overlook the opportunity to connect people with the larger purpose of what their organizations do. If you're a leader who wants to keep your best people engaged, I encourage you to give that some thought. What can you say about how what they're doing makes a difference?

When faced with an intractable or complex problem, it's easy for leaders to get bogged down in the minutiae when trying to come up with a solution.  Another trap is to go binary - it's either this or it's that - too soon in the decision making process.  Rather than opening up options and possibilities, we sometimes try to solve complex problems by settling for the least painful of the most obvious options.

It's at times like this, that's it's helpful to have someone in the room who can step back, get up on the balcony and ask some questions that seem obvious in retrospect but maybe weren't asked because everyone else was too close to the situation at hand.

There was a great example of this in a recent Newsweek article by Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas on Vice President Joe Biden.  Here's an extended excerpt that paints the picture:

"Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, 'Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?' Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. 'And how much will we spend on Pakistan?' Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. 'Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?' The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region."

There are several things I find instructive in this story.  First, Biden is making his point based on facts that may have been lost in the discussion.  Second, he links those facts to a bigger picture.  Third, he uses those facts and that bigger picture to cause his colleagues to pull up and challenge their assumptions.

What obvious questions do you need to ask to help your team challenge their assumptions?  Are you even the best person to ask those questions or is that role better played by designating someone on your team to play the role of devil's advocate?  What are the pros and cons of either approach?

There's an old, old saying that, "A fish rots from the head down."  It dates in English from at least 1674 and has probably hung around all these years because it's true.  The Washington Redskins are one of the latest examples of the truth of this aphorism.

Since the NFL season began, I've thought of writing a post on what can be learned about how not to lead an organization from analyzing the Redskins' owner Dan Snyder.  After Sunday's 14 - 6 loss to the previously winless Kansas City Chiefs that included a safety in the closing minutes, the time finally seems right.  After all, the Redskins have lost to the 1 and 22 Detroit Lions and haven't beaten a team this year with a winning record.  As the Washington Post has reported, the team sues its fans who have fallen on hard times and can't honor their ticket contracts.  They have one of the most bloated payrolls in the NFL and week by week, publicly humiliate their head coach Jim Zorn (a classic example of what I refer to as an NGB - "nice guy, but...") by removing one more aspect of his duties.  (This week it was play calling.)

Seriously, if we can't learn something about how not to lead an organization from watching Dan Snyder then it's probably time to move onto another topic.  What are his secrets for leading a rotten organization?  Here are a few that catch my attention:

Live in the past:  The Redskins haven't won a Super Bowl since  1992 and have made the playoffs only three times in the 10 years that Snyder has owned the team.  And yet, they act as if they're perennial contenders for the Super Bowl.  The first step in dealing with reality is to live in it.

Manage things you don't know about:  By all accounts, Snyder has surrounded himself with front office personnel who are not up to the job of managing the football side of an NFL franchise.  The weak staff gives Snyder the latitude to become personally involved in football decisions that he doesn't have the experience to make.

Squeeze your customers until they bleed:  The Redskins charge a premium price for an inferior product.  They have long term fans whose loyalty and passion for the team dates back longer than the owner has been alive.  When some of those fans fell on hard times and couldn't honor their long term ticket contracts, the Redskins sued them and bankrupted them.  This is from a team who claims to have the longest waiting list for season tickets of any franchise in the NFL.

Chase after shiny objects:  One thing Redskins fans have come to count on is that the off season will bring a high priced player acquisition that will be a "game changer".  This year, it was a $100 million contract for tackle Albert Haynesworth.  In previous years it was Deion Sanders or Bruce Smith or somebody else.  Heck, even bringing back the great Joe Gibbs was part of this pattern.  The acquisitions don't pay off because there is no long term system or plan in place around which the entire team can gel.

Offend and insult people's intelligence:  As society has changed, there has been more and more discomfort and offense taken with the very name, Redskins.  As many commentators have pointed out, it's hard to come up with a team in another sport that is named after an offensive label for an entire ethnic group.  It's gotten to the point where the U.S. Supreme Court may agree to hear a suit from six Native American tribes on the team name. In the face of such criticism, Snyder talks about the honor and tradition of the Redskins. Please. Could it possibly be about the money wrapped up in the trademark?

Hire and fire rapidly:  How many head coaches has the team had since Snyder took over?  Let's see if I can name them all.  Norv, Robiskie (Don't remember him? Look it up.), Schottenheimer, Spurrier, Gibbs, Zorn.  That's six head coaches in 10 years.  How in the world can you build an organization when there is constant churn in the top operational job?

Embarrass your key people in public:  Let's say you're a young quarterback with some potential.  You've shown some promise at the end of the previous season and are learning.  And then in the offseason, your owner and EVP of football operations start publicly wooing number one QB draft picks and some veteran QB's without even talking with you about what they're thinking.  Would you feel supported as a leader of your team?  Would you feel confident in your position?  Would you feel wanted?  No, I didn't think so.  That's what it's been like for Washington QB Jason Campbell this year.   Let's not even get started on how his head coach has been treated.

Accept no accountability:  The silence from Dan Snyder and his EVP of football operations Vinny Cerrato as the team has gotten worse and worse has been deafening.  The two of them are the only constants over the 10 years of Washington's decline.  One might think they have some accountable role in the situation.

Make your organization an extension of your own ego:  This is what it probably all comes down to.  I remember when I was in my last corporate job, it looked like our parent company was probably going to be acquired.  A bunch of us on the senior team were sitting around talking about what was next and one of my colleagues who had been around the block a few times said to us, "Remember, whoever buys us is going to be thinking, 'If you guys are so smart, how come we bought you?'"  That's it in a nutshell with Dan Snyder.  If all of you are so smart, how come I own the team?  Until he gets his ego out of the way, there's no hope for the long suffering fans.

OK, that's my take.  What's yours?  If you follow the NFL, what have I gotten right or wrong here?  What are some of the leadership lessons you've learned along the way by watching someone else and saying, "Wow, I'm never going to do that?"