The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush: 10 Common Sense Lessons from the Commander-in-Chief

335 Pages·2002·1.24 MB·English

by  Carolyn B. Thompson

The Leadership Genius
of George W. Bush
(cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:3)
10 Commonsense Lessons from
the Commander in Chief
C B. T
AROLYN HOMPSON
J W. W
AMES ARE
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Copyright © 2003 by Carolyn B. Thompson and James W. Ware. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or
otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States
Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization
through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.,
222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax [phone], or on the
web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to
the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ
07030, 201-748-6011, fax [phone], e-mail: [email protected].
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their
best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect
to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any
implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may
be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and
strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with
a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any
loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special,
incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services, or technical support, please
contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at 800-762-2974, outside
the United States at 317-572-3993 or fax [phone].
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in
print may not be available in electronic books.
For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
ISBN 0-471-42006-9
Printed in the United States of America.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Preface
(cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:3)
A
s longtime consultants in the area of leadership, we were fasci-
nated by George W. Bush. How does a guy who seems so much
like the neighbor next door succeed as the most powerful leader in
the world? People underestimate him, but time and again he rises to
the occasion. Yet his style of leadership seems to contradict almost
everything we thought we knew about leadership.
Our task in writing this book has been to discover the secret that
makes Bush a leadership genius. We examined his leadership style from
what we considered a fairly well-rounded perspective. Our research
team (the two authors) consists of one male, one female; one conser-
vative, one liberal; one traditional Christian, one nontraditional; one
more “right-brained” (creative and flexible), one more “left-brained”
(logical and organized). And yet we both came away with the same
admiration for Bush’s leadership abilities.
Jim Ware’s fascination with leadership dates back to his days as a
securities analyst, when he interviewed company leaders like Lee
Iacocca, Sam Walton, and Donald Rumsfeld. He and his colleagues
at Focus Consulting have developed various measurement tools
for diagnosing the effectiveness of leaders and the organizational cul-
tures that they shape. He is interested in comparing business and
political leadership. Do the same principles apply? Can successful
business leaders cross over into politics, and vice versa? The study of
George W. Bush was a perfect opportunity to examine these ques-
tions. Bush considers himself a business leader, schooled at Harvard
iii
iv PREFACE
and experienced as an entrepreneur. He clearly states that his approach
to managing a political administration is based on his business train-
ing. Therefore, Bush’s success in both business and now politics
provides a resoundingly positive answer to the question: Are the time-
less leadership principles applicable in all fields?
Carolyn Thompson gathers information, looks for trends, and turns
them into something easy to digest in her sleep. It all started when,
as a psychology major/history minor at Northwestern University, she
discovered that she could turn the minor into a major simply by tak-
ing two more classes. The advisor pointed out that the two majors—
history and psych—regularly produced authors of books about great
leaders in history. Those authors gathered volumes of information on
the leaders, analyzed their characteristics, culled the main principles,
and put them into a format that is easy for readers to apply. Carolyn
first used these skills not as an author but as the director of a human
resources department. Now she uses them in customized training,
focusing on how to meet organizations’ business objectives through
improvements in employee performance. Working with companies,
their leadership, and their employees has given Carolyn a unique
perspective on the subtle differences that often separate successful
enterprises from mediocre ones. These experiences have led to exten-
sive writing on the subjects of leadership and employee performance
improvement.
By poring over research documents, reading books, and through
experience, we have both discovered that leadership is core to a
company’s success. A plethora of books have been written on how to
lead and on specific kinds of leaders, from Colin Powell and other
military leaders to great business leaders such as Jack Welch. You won’t
find many, though, on great politicians who led entire countries to
success, such as Ronald Reagan. Is it that the leap is too great, mov-
ing from how these leadership skills are used in the political arena to
how they’d be effective in a business setting? Or is it strictly market-
ing—that is, most business people don’t see the applicability of what
they consider political principles to the skills needed in their businesses?
The reality is that all business is politics and all politics is business.
The only difference is where we get our operating capital from. The
Preface v
rest—negotiating one’s way through shifting alliances, hiring people,
gaining trust, being disciplined—is all the same. George W. Bush is
an easy first study because his career as a leader includes both the
business and political arenas. We learned an incredible amount that
we’ve already applied to our own businesses, and we know you too
will benefit from studying his tactics and applying them to yourself
and your organization.
CAROLYN B. THOMPSON
JAMES W. WARE
Frankfort, Illinois
Glenview, Illinois
November 2002

Acknowledgments
(cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:3)
T
hanks to Pamela van Giessen, our editor, for presenting us with
the fantastic idea for this book in the first place, and for her ad-
vice and support during the writing.
Our next big thanks goes to George W. Bush himself. When we
say we enjoyed learning about him and applying his lessons to our
work, we mean it. He inspired us on days when we lost computer
files. He inspired our sense of family and the balance we needed to
have on those days when we were racing for a deadline. One of the
authors has been a daily exerciser for years, but under amazing dead-
line pressures has occasionally skipped the workout on a super-busy
day. Not so this summer. You just can’t write about the kind of dis-
cipline George exhibits and skip your exercise routine! The calming
yet energizing benefits of the discipline of exercise saved many a
frazzled day.
We really enjoyed reading the piles of books about Bush written by
others. Many of them made for entertaining reading. And where would
we have been without the Internet? Can one even do the kind of
research we needed to do without it anymore? Our eternal gratitude,
and that of our pocketbooks, goes to the staff of the Frankfort Public
Library, who saved us time and money by quickly finding a copy of
every book we asked for about or relating to George W.
Thanks to everyone at the White House for their help in getting us
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
to the right people; getting Eric Draper’s wonderfully inspiring photo;
and confirming the dates, names, and places in Bush’s life.
Lauren Topel was a last-minute lifesaver, making many, many
changes to be rushed into production. Thanks also to Debbie Daw,
who gave us countless ingenious ideas for dealing with Word when it
wouldn’t do what we needed it to. This easy-to-read format comes to
you courtesy of Brooke Graves (copy editor) and Jamie Temple (com-
positor). Thanks for your expert production.
Jim specially thanks his wife, Jane, for her patience while he disap-
peared to work on this book. He also thanks his partners at Focus
Consulting, Beth Michaels and Dale Primer, for their insights on lead-
ership. And Barry Rustin for a great photo despite difficult odds.
Carolyn specially thanks Patti Lowczyk, for keeping her work flow-
ing while she ran spell checks; Robin Pelfrey, for always asking how
the researching and writing were going; Lynn Hauser, for taking over
the job of editing Training Systems Inc.’s monthly e-zine, Recruit,
Inspire & Retain, one week before the book’s editing deadline; Don
Page, for his incredible excitement at the thought that she was in-
volved in writing a book on such a smart man in the first place; and
David and Jennifer Thompson, who have the most amazing amount
of trivia knowledge (when it couldn’t be found on the Internet, they
always had the information). Special, special thanks to Bill Kauzlarich,
who went it alone in a family crisis while she was rushing for the
deadline and because he just happens to be the love of her life. And
to Jim—for his constant faith in her, his constant praise, and his ex-
citement for the project; for asking her to work with him on this book;
and for long conversations that led to the descriptions you are about
to read of Bush’s unique combination of leadership actions.
Finally, of course, thanks to the One who makes all things possible
for us—God. For without that hourly guidance, we’d never have been
able to keep our focus.
C.B.T.
J.W.W.
Contents
(cid:1)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:2)(cid:3)
George W. Bush
The Making of the Leadership Genius
xiii
Introduction
1
Chapter 1
What Do You Stand For?
Identify Core Values
7
Chapter 2
Where Are You Going?
Inspire Through Vision
33
ix