FWIW # 10 What's Wrong With Leadership October 2020

On October 15, 2020, Doug McMillon, the successful CEO of Wal-Mart, appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box at 7:05 a.m. He was being interviewed by Becky Quick about the findings of his Business Roundtable (BRT) committee focusing on racial and social inequality. A few minutes into the interview, he made a statement I want to highlight. This is not a direct quote, but does convey the meaning of what he said: The zip code of a person’s birth should not determine what opportunity they have in life. That one thought and statement epitomize what is wrong with today’s leadership in this country. Platitudes aren’t what is needed to get results.

From the United States’ beginning in the 1700s to today, yes, today, there has been no difference except in the quality of leadership: anyone, no matter their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, financial status, or physical ability, could and can achieve their own definition of success. The BRT CEO members’ appeasement of the “it’s not my fault” doctrine of victimization shines the racial and social inequality white-hot spotlight of blame on them. Systemic racism resides in the minds of those who espouse such. Every day, a diverse group of Americans who want to succeed get up and go out to achieve their definition of success.

Who are the BRT members? They are CEOs of major corporations. The organization is one of the biggest lobbyists in the country, not only in Washington but in all 50 states. When it was formed in the early 1970s, it stated a corporation was responsible to its shareholders. In 2019, it decided the corporation had a responsibility to its stakeholders, employees, community, etc. This applauded, seemingly major change in direction shouldn’t have even been adopted at all. If CEOs and management of major corporations in America haven’t understood that it is in their best interest to ensure the well-being of the corporations’ stakeholders, somewhere along the line, the CEOs’ training has been faulty. To give the current membership some credit, the past BRT leadership always addressed shareholder interest as profit. Why? Because their salaries went up if profits went up. Consequently, the BRT CEO members were major participants in and boosters of globalization, suppressing employee wages and benefits in this country and moving jobs and supply chain procurement away from America and toward developing countries that rely on what is practically slave labor. Forty years of increasing income and net worth inequality can be laid on the Business Roundtable for these CEOs to chew on. The problem is they still have it all wrong.

Public concern about the zip codes of birth poverty is a thinly veiled endorsement for the Obama/Biden federal government program that was just terminated. This program, planned and instituted under the Obama/Biden administration, was designed to eliminate single-family home zoning in the suburbs. The idea was to force integration of low-income housing within suburban communities now populated with single-family neighborhoods. Focus on the word force because the politicians know that without penalties, no community would stand for what the federal government had in mind. Penalties were steep.

If the BRT wants to distract attention from their responsibility for the racial and social income and net worth inequality, they may consider using their multitude of resources to tackle the real problems created by their globalization efforts. These CEOs lead organizations with world-class human resources, marketing, publicity, and management training programs. These departments are already set up to provide senior management with actionable ideas. BRT CEOs should consider using these resources toward more effective ends, like promoting education, lowering community crime rates, and improving living conditions.

Education

Since the BRT is concerned about birth zip codes, they can identify the educational assets within those zip codes. Using in-house analysts from among the BRT corporate members, they can assess the needs of the physical facilities. Working with education authorities at the state and local levels, a renovation plan for these facilities can be developed and implemented with both community dollars and corporate dollars. Money spent on these endeavors would be far more effective in showing the communities the commitment of the BRT to their consumers than mass media corporate advertising.

Since an educational building is only as good as its teachers, the BRT could supplement the salaries of teachers in these zip codes so teachers from all walks of life would want to work in these schools and live in these neighborhoods. These supplements can take the form of cash grants, payoffs of student loans, or a combination of both. Qualification exams for teachers to teach in these zip codes can be designed by the BRT human resource professionals to weed out teachers who are not excellent communicators and don’t have high proficiency in their field. BRT entry-level management personnel could be assigned the last two hours a day for two school years to go into these educational facilities and tutor students identified by the teachers as needing special help. What better way for management to learn empathy, kindness, communication skills, and goal-setting than to show future consumers and leaders who cares for them?

State and local governments, as well as educational union leaders, will push back against these efforts. But guess what? The BRT is one of the largest lobbying organizations in the country. It’s already spending millions, if not billions, influencing elected and appointed officials every year. The BRT CEOs are professional publicity seekers. Complete transparency about these efforts, using corporate publicity departments, will allow the community to see who cares about them. If the citizens buy into the

efforts to improve their children’s futures, the politicians will either get on board or be removed. The BRT has the resources to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone and similar organizations working across the country if the BRT focuses on results rather than platitudes.

Community Crime

These challenged zip codes are crime ridden. Americans are killing each other and innocent children every week, not only in our cities, but in our suburbs and rural areas as well. Why? Two primary reasons: First and foremost is the disintegration of the family unit. The BRT can’t directly stop the crumbling family structure, but there is a lot they can do indirectly. Church pastors and congregations willing to get involved in their community can be supported by the BRT members in their efforts to identify families with poor adult leadership. Assisting the adults and children in understanding the resources available to them in the schools, other organizations such as Boys and Girls Clubs, and most importantly, the churches, will help identify and shrink the child population most vulnerable to crime. These churches and organizations should not receive blank checks without professionally structured accountability programs. This is not pie-in-the-sky thinking. The Robin Hood Foundation has done it for years in the New York City area.

The second problem in these birth zip codes is violent crime. People are killing each other. Why? A principal cause is essentially a business reason. The Chinese providers of drugs and the Mexican drug cartel distributors have outsourced the retail distribution of their poison to independent contractors across the country. These purveyors of death don’t care who deals in the street sales as long as product is sold. The street gangs’ competition for sales territories is what’s behind the violence in the cities. The tactics behind this business of poison are not unlike those taught in business textbooks, but there is one big difference. Legitimate businesses generally don’t have to deal with corrupt civic officials. The drug trade can’t survive without corrupt officials in Washington and at all civic authority levels across the country. Residents and community leaders of these crime-ridden zip codes know who the drug dealers are. As BRT resources work with these families and community leaders, not only the drug dealers but their corrupt enablers in civic positions will be identified and can be removed.

Drug dealers engage potential users and underlings as children, early in their lives. This chain of co-opting can be broken through the churches and community leaders in two ways. First, every zip code has former residents, media and sports stars, professionals, entrepreneurs, artists, and tradesmen who can be held up as examples of the opportunities available to those who work hard and want to succeed. Second, showing the futility of a criminal life can be demonstrated by removing the criminals from the neighborhood. Allowing individuals to believe they have no choice in life but to be a victim is not only wrong, it is a lie in America.

Living Conditions

Each of these birth zip codes has low-income housing controlled by either government housing authorities or private owners, who may operate under federal housing regulations. BRT CEO members could start with government-owned and -operated buildings. Housing authorities are usually the organizations in charge and are responsible to the local elected officials. Complete transparency showing the improvements under way with the residents can and will overcome the potential negative pushback by these agencies. Building by forming a partnership between BRT CEOs, their corporate resources, and the government agencies can steadily bring these buildings up to standards and keep them there so anyone would be willing to live in them. Undesirable tenants can be shown how to live properly or moved out. Private owners have facility standards under federal regulations and will have competitive pressure as the government homes in the zip code are improved. If the private owners fail to meet the standards, the use of eminent domain is an alternative. Improved neighborhoods will also attract and keep more young residents willing to stay in the area.

Are these potential solutions easy? No, but the problem has festered for 40 years thanks to the BRT and its globalist political friends in both parties. BRT money can’t be the only way its leaders try to soothe their guilty consciences. There are far more resources they can apply to the problem. Their management talent, their ability to solve problems, their contacts in all communities and at all political levels, and, more than anything else, their economic clout in the communities they serve are better than checks. It won’t be easy. The political pushback will be significant until, and unless, the BRT CEO members communicate directly with their communities, at all wealth and income levels, bypassing the obstructionist politicians who fear their control over a community will disappear.

Mr. McMillon and his associates need to rethink their approach. Perhaps they need to remember that successful people focus on pleasant results, while unsuccessful people focus on pleasant platitudes.

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