A Crisis of Male Ambition? Part II

Yesterday, I posted on an article that I contend shows a disparity in mean male and female ambition.  I also noted one caveat using data from the Princeton University Committee on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership.  Yet, spinning a convincing narrative of the ambitious male is as commensurately difficult as spinning an explicative narrative of the unambitious male—the male on the opposite end of the bell curve.  One take is that American society failed to spin a compelling and inspirational narrative for young men to follow.  Most importantly, we do not ask young men to think of their lives in terms of generational advancement (beyond increasingly vacuous narratives, such as the ubiquitous “American dream”).  Such a successful narrative may proceed as follows: “Your father worked as a small businessman in small town America.  However, you now have the opportunity to run a global firm out of that town, or a larger city if you prefer, except you will have manufacturing plants in India, China, and Brazil, too.  The great opportunities of this global and interconnected world mean that you can be more prosperous than your father was, or have a more diverse, cosmopolitan, and compelling lifestyle.  Yet, you will need to work and plan for it.  You will need to cultivate a global vision.  You will require greater education, for instance, a degree in Industrial or Mechanical Engineering, and perhaps an MBA.  And, by the way, there is a broad framework of federal and private student loans to allow you to achieve these goals and become an effective businessman.”  Lacking such a narrative, young men risk missing the context of generational advancement and progress within which they ought to position their educational and vocational goals/ambitions. 

A Crisis of Male Ambition? Part I

This article in the New York Times caught my eye.  Shrinking unemployment numbers—now at 8.3% nationally—are a product of improved private sector hiring, but also of young people dropping out of the workforce in droves, some of them seeking refuge in graduate school.  Yet, women find themselves more likely to enroll in graduate school and certificate/training programs than are their male counterparts.  Are women more ambitious than their male counterparts of today? There exist now—for the first time in three decades—more young women in school than in the work force.  The article summarizes the trend as follows: “Though young women in their late teens and early 20’s view today’s economic lull as an opportunity to upgrade their skills, their male counterparts are more likely to take whatever job they can find.” 

Paul Johnson on Two Key Leadership Traits

Excellent. Would that today’s leaders read and mind his advice.

Leadership Across The Last 10 Years

Paul Johnson and Bill George both lament the state of leadership across the past decade. Mr. George deals exclusively with the failings of business leaders. Mr. Johnson examines leaders in several fields — politics, law, religion and business. Neither author addresses military leadership. Do they exclude military leadership because the military has enjoyed a decade of effective leadership, in their opinions?

Both articles observe a trend, but neither offers a root cause or a solution. Perhaps I will take a stab at one or both of those topics soon.

Review: Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Production of Henry V

Henry V is my favorite of Shakespeare’s works, so I was eager to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of it. Artistic Director Michael Kahn has paired Henry V with Richard II into ‘The Leadership Repertory,’ which I will further discuss later. The production engaged me from start to finish and did not disappoint.

Review: Adventures of a Bystander

As I have noted previously, the world could do without most business books – certainly the ones written today. However, we can find considerable business wisdom in some of the business books of the past, and even in many non-business books. Given this situation, I find it valuable to review books written long ago. This post contains the first, but readers will see many more books of the past reviewed on Capitolism in the future.

Peter Drucker wrote Adventures of a Bystander in the late-1970s as a sort of memoir. He figures not as the main character, but usually as an observer of others. This explains the title, and, to a certain extent, his life as well. Mr. Drucker rarely managed in organizations himself, or took action, or made business decisions. He keenly observed others doing those actions, and reflected profoundly on their successes, mistakes and failures. He states as much early in the book: “Bystanders reflect – and reflection is a prism rather than a mirror.”

Four for Thursday: Articles I’ve Read and You Should Too

Health care dominated the business news this week. Unemployment dropped a bit, and the debate over investing in gold continued. The articles in this week’s ‘Four for Thursday’ hit on leadership themes, doubts about any economic recovery and the efforts to create jobs in the country. Enjoy.

Do You Want to be a Leader?, by Preston Bottger and Jean-Louis Barsoux. Doctors Bottger and Barsoux ask some pointed questions of aspiring leaders.

Speech Fluff, Our Constitutional Moment and Faceless Leadership

Below are three of the articles I read this weekend.

Just the Facts, by Peggy Noonan. She makes a similar point to Edward Tufte’s about eliminating presentation fluff; she emphasizes removing fluff from speeches, at least in certain moments.

Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Interview with Seth Lipsky. Lipsky says the burgeoning role of government has people questioning the proper role of government in their lives.

The Cult of the Faceless Boss, which laments the demise of the flamboyant, visionary business leader. The article also raises other, implicit, questions:

• Must business leaders exhibit these traits to be successful?
• Or, is Jim Collins, who argues against these types of leadership traits in Good to Great and Built to Last, correct?
• Do visionary and flamboyant leadership traits always go together? Must they?
• Can different leadership styles be equally effective?
• Do different situations – cultures, companies, organizational ethos – demand different leadership styles?

Berlin

Today, the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, offers the opportunity to reflect on leadership and how leaders can affect history, people and events. One important realization: leadership is primarily a moral undertaking. Skills, personality, and technique recede as distant considerations when we consider truly momentous examples of leadership.