As I am enjoying my Gevalia Kaffe this morning, the notion of leadership is rambling around in my head. I was imagining how much different our attitudes would be during this crisis - and possibly our behaviors - with enlightened or maybe even competent leadership.
I am always reminded of the many examples of leadership displayed by Dwight D. Eisenhower, especially when he was the Supreme Allied Commander during WWII. One of my favorite quotes of his is, "You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.” I'm relatively sure had Twitter been around in those days, he might have said, "you don't lead by tweet," Imagine if we had leadership based on collaboration, shared ideas, and cooperation rather than blame and guilt. I don't believe you would have ever heard the statement, " I don't take responsibility at all." Really? As Winston Churchill said, " the price of greatness is responsibility." I may be delirious at times, but I try to imagine a leader saying something like, " The buck stops here, and I am responsible for providing the planning, direction, and execution to defeat this virus with the all the resources this country can muster."
I have always been told that one of the critical keys to success is good planning. By failing to plan you are planning to fail. Imagine back in 2018, if the president had said, "are we sure the Pandemic Planning staff is sufficiently staffed to effectively manage a future pandemic?" How much better would we have been than a reckless decision to disband a staff of experts who may have given us a running start in combating the pandemic. I can't help believing that this ill-conceived decision was a data starved one based on petty political considerations - not the mark of far sighted leadership.
Lastly, I want to circle back to Eisenhower. He knew the value of coalition building and had the patience to work within the constraints of a very complex system and manage the dynamics. We have a very complex (an understatement) system of government with 50 individual states of varying political persuasions and personalities who have to come together in a cohesive manner if we want to win this particular battle. I can't even imagine what the outcome would have been during WWII if Eisenhower told the ally countries that they are suppose to do it themselves. I don't think you would have ever heard him say, "We're the federal government. We're not supposed to be standing on street corners doing testing." Sure, we know the execution is decentralized, but the coordination of resources and urgency of the action and the command of the resources are best done if managed in a cohesive way with clear unambiguous instruction.
It is easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but when the game plan is a disaster it is hard to sit back and not ask yourself, what should we have done differently so the next time we do a better job. We are playing with people's lives - 59,000 so far.
I need another cup of joe while I dream about better times.