…from Barbara Kellerman’s Political Animals blog…

When a health care provider or an attorney is negligent to an extent that deviates from accepted standards of professional practice, and when this negligence causes injury, there can be consequences. He or she can be sued for malpractice. Accountants and investment advisors can also be sued for malpractice, as can other professionals now held to a standard expected on the basis of their training and expertise. In light of this recent history, there is no reason to exempt leaders, people in positions of authority, from analogous accountability.

Leaders today are no better and no worse than before. It’s the nature of the human condition to have some superiors who are incompetent, callous, corrupt, or even evil. However, what has changed is the level of information. In the past leaders were remote from their followers - what exactly the former did for, or to, the latter was largely unknown. But in the 21st century information is copious and widely dispersed. As a result we can assess how leaders perform, especially those who are the most visible, at the top, either in business or government.

Some bad leaders remain elusive and outside the realm of malpractice. Moreover a distinction must be made between leaders who are elected and can be voted out of office, censured, or impeached, and those who are appointed. It is leaders who are appointed, especially in business, who tend to escape accountability, no matter the level of their performance. Leadership malpractice, then, should be applicable to people in positions of authority who are (or were) in some obvious way woefully bad, but who are not subject to meaningful checks and balances. Some executives are of course held accountable for poor performance: they are sued for breach of fiduciary duty. But most are not. Nor does this kind of arcane legal exercise constitute a simple signal that leaders who fall far short are subject to being punished.

Because it was generally known that things were going badly, in the first nine months of this year a record 1,132 CEOs quit or were shown the door. Overwhelmingly, though, even those who performed miserably left without suffering consequences of any kind; to the contrary, most left with their financial futures handsomely secured. While some of the nation’s most notorious corporate leaders are paying for their (criminal) sins by doing time in jail, what about the rest? What about whole casts of other characters whose abject failures are not criminal, but who nevertheless could reasonably be considered guilty of leadership malpractice? No insignificant number of top executives have been culpable of negligence, failures that caused injury to others. To take only a few glaring examples, top executives at A.I.G., Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, or for that matter at General Motors, all failed abysmally to protect employees and stockholders alike.

Consider the case of Rick Wagoner. For the last five years, he has been chairman and chief executive officer of General Motors. During this period he presided over an extreme example of short term profits being advantaged over long term interests, to the point where G.M. now claims that, absent an immediate federal bailout, it will be unable “to continue as a going concern.” Put another way, with Wagoner at the helm one of the greatest companies in the history of American business has been brought to its knees. This is not by any means to argue that the blame is entirely his, or that he in particular should be scapegoated for the calamity that has befallen Detroit. But it is to ask a hard question: should leaders like Wagoner be held in any way accountable, and if yes, exactly how? One possibility is to bring to the fore the concept of leadership liability - and by extension leadership malpractice. In cases of alleged negligence the medical and legal malpractice model, in which either there is a settlement or a trial in a civil court, could serve as precedent.

Since the 1970s, the number of malpractice suits against professionals has greatly increased. The reasons are several, including lawyers who profit from a litigious society. But the assumption underlying malpractice has the virtue of assuming that the experts on whom we rely should do no harm - a general obligation from which leaders ought not be exempt. Among other reasons, although advanced degrees in leadership are still rare, leadership is increasingly considered a profession. It is taught in professional schools, in schools of government and public administration, and in nearly all business schools. There are countless books on how to exercise good leadership, and countless courses and seminars, both in and out of the academy, in which leadership is taught. It’s time then to apply to leadership the same standard that we apply to other professions. Similarly, when this standard is not met, even minimally, it’s time to hold leaders accountable by suing them for malpractice.

Cuts in executive pay will not suffice to fix what’s broken. Nor for that matter would leadership malpractice be a magic bullet. But sending the signal that leaders, like other professionals, can be sued for negligence, would deter bad behavior.

…Click here for the rest of this post from Barbara Kellerman’s Political Animals blog at Harvard Business Online…

Shai Agassi, the founder and CEO of Better Place — an enterprise working to “build an electric car network, using technology available today” — travels to the Kennedy School on December 4th to speak with students, fellows, and leaders in social change about his current projects.



Seating is limited, but if you would like to attend please fill out this form to enter the lottery. If you’re unable to join us on the 4th, stay tuned to the CPL YouTube channel for video of the event.

This is the 2nd of a 5 part series on social enterprises by Pamela Hartigan, coauthor of The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World.



Anyone who has worked in international development can probably expound on the importance of ensuring that the “beneficiaries” of development programs and projects are full partners in the design, planning, execution and evaluation of those initiatives. But in reality, this seldom happens. The vast majority of international development programs continue to be “delivered” to communities in a top-down fashion by governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, and NGOs.



There are many reasons for the dissonance between knowledge and practice in this regard. Primarily, they boil down to time and money, and both are tied to vested interests. Governments are usually elected for a set period and, to a greater or lesser degree, are pressed to “deliver” development so that ruling parties can maintain power. When new government takes over, it seldom picks up where the last administration left off. Rather, it announces a host of new initiatives. Even the more promising or already successful programs quickly fall out of fashion. Multilateral and bilateral agencies are reflections of governments, even further removed from the supposed beneficiaries of their largesse. Many tend to be inward-looking, concerned with internal politics and hierarchies, and their respective development missions often seem left to afterthought. NGOs are constrained by flavor-of-the-month donor whims, and fixed, usually short, project cycles. In addition, their endless need to raise funds leaves them precious little time to involve their “target” communities.



The reality is that the social and environmental problems we face can be successfully addressed only if men, women and their organizations at the grassroots are systematically supported to become the guardians of their own futures. This takes more time than is offered by one or two terms in government or at the helm of a multilateral or bilateral agency. It also involves abandoning the ego of expertise and “authority” that gets in the way of listening, learning, and following.



Social entrepreneurs and their organizations represent the “sustainable” component of development. They are in this for the long-haul, basically, their life-times. I have learned more in ten years from them about how “development” is “done” than I learned in twenty years of working in different development agencies, including with NGOs.



Social entrepreneurs share underlying core values that are independent of whether they work in renewable energy, microfinance, food security, health, education, fair trade or other arenas. Among those values is an unwavering belief in the innate capacity of all people to contribute meaningfully to economic and social development. Few development “professionals” that I have met are secure enough with themselves and their talents to step aside and let “the community” drive its own development process. On the other hand, I have not yet met a successful social entrepreneur who did not do exactly that.



In my first blog for this series I talked about Joe Madiath and Gram Vikas based in Orissa, India’s poorest state. It’s taken Joe and his colleagues thirty years to effect the incredible changes that have occurred in the communities where they work. It sounds like a long time—but we are talking about eroding centuries of cultural practices and religious beliefs that underpinned economic and social inequity. Thought of in that way, it seems like the change took place in a “New York minute.”



Or take another example also from India—that of Bunker Roy. Under his leadership, a group of students from top Indian universities set up what is now known as Barefoot College in 1972, in Tilonia, Rajasthan. Barefoot College identifies poor rural youth who have not been able to receive a formal education and trains them as “barefoot” doctors, teachers, engineers, architects, designers, metal workers, IT specialists and communicators.



The innovation lies in the method and approach to confidence-building. Barefoot College does not believe in educational degrees but in a hands-on approach. It challenges the notion that formal education is required to become a solar engineer, for instance. To date, Barefoot technologists have solar-electrified several thousand houses in eight Indian states and installed hand pumps in the Himalayas, a task which urban engineers had declared technically impossible. Barefoot water engineers have planned and implemented piped drinking water, and Barefoot architects and masons constructed the 30,000 square foot College out of low cost materials. The campus is the only fully-solar electrified College in India.



Barefoot’s approach is built around the concept of the village as a self-reliant unit in which each has a council where community issues are taken up and decided. On the first week of each month, the democratically elected village council reviews and evaluates the work carried out the previous month and organizes the agenda for the weeks ahead. Collective, transparent, and accountable decisions are at the core of village governance. When building a school or water harvesting structure, for example, costs are publicized for all to review, allowing villagers to assess the value of their work.



Both Gram Vikas and Barefoot College are testimony to the infinite capacity of poor men and women to identify and solve their own problems with their own skills, encouraging self-reliance and private initiative. But the transformational social change spearheaded by each of these social enterprises has taken thirty years in both cases. Sustainable development takes more time than one or two terms in political office, more time than the appointment of a CEO as head of a business corporation, or as steward of a multilateral institution. It is longer than the life span of most NGOs. And then there is the issue of the ego…





Pamela Hartigan is a Founding Partner and Director of Volans, Ltd. and served as the Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship from 2001 to 2008. Dr. Hartigan is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, holds Masters degrees in International Economics and Education and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. Her new book, The Power of Unreasonable People co-authored with John Elkington, was published in the Leadership for the Common Good Series. Currently, she is teaching a course on social entrepreneurship as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School.

…From David Gergen’s post on the AC 360 blog for CNN…

I went back to look at the last speech that Martin Luther King gave in 1968, the day before he was assassinated.

King said, “I just want to do God’s will. He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain and I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the promise land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight we as a people will get to the promise land.”

It seems to me that for an awful lot of people in this country, especially for African Americans, Barack Obama has said that he’s part of the Joshua generation. Martin Luther King was our Moses. We haven’t ended our prejudice, but there’s something about this evening and election that has made an awful lot of people feel this is the Joshua generation, we can do something we thought we could never reach 30, 40, 50 years ago.

…To comment on this post please visit the AC 360 blog…

…From David Gergen’s post on the AC 360 blog for CNN…

With victory almost in his grasp, the looming question for Barack Obama is whether he will squeak by or whether he can roll up the score. It will matter enormously to his leadership as President.

For Obama supporters, just climbing to the top of the mountain with 270 electoral votes has always seemed daunting enough. And they are right. After all, Democrats have seen triumphs slip away from them so often — they have lost 7 of the past 10 presidential elections — that they are extremely uneasy that the Republicans can pull an upset this time, too. It seems unlikely after a raft of national polls this weekend showed Obama with a national lead of around 7 points — and by some estimates in double digits. Still, there were also unsettling state polls last night by the Mason Dixon firm showing McCain closing in fast in North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and Missouri. Who can say for sure that Pennsylvania will remain blue. It ain’t over ’till it’s over.

But when the dust clears and if the Democrats have pulled it off, the Obama team will care a great deal about the size and breadth of victory. Much of his early presidency will hang in the balance.

There are three keys to watch on Tuesday night:

1. Percentage of the national vote. Right now, there is a solid prospect that Obama can rack up 51 percent or more of the total vote. If so, he would be the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a majority of the national vote (Carter had 50.1 percent) and only the second Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to claim a majority (Lyndon Johnson was the other). That historic standing would give Obama a fresh boost as the president-elect and would mean that he could run ahead of Members of Congress in their own states. In Washington, that gives a president extra power.

2. Number of red states won. In recent campaigns, Democratic presidential contenders have won mostly on the east and west coasts and the upper midwest. John Kerry only won 19 states plus the District of Columbia, and one could get on a plane at Dulles and fly to Los Angeles without flying over a state that the Democrats won.

Obama has had a vision since his convention speech in 2004 of Democrats becoming a national party, getting beyond the traditional red/blue divides. And he now has a good chance of doing it. If he can win a couple of southern states, plus two or three states from the Rocky Mountains, not to mention more Midwestern areas, he can claim a true national victory — and he would have the makings of a new, majority coalition for the Democrats, something they have lacked for decades.

3. The size of Democratic wins in the Senate and House. The Democrats were heading toward significant pick-ups with or without a presidential win, but if Obama racks up a convincing victory and is accompanied by nine or more new Democratic Senators and a couple of dozen new House members, that will give him muscle on Capitol Hill that few Presidents have enjoyed. I was working for Ronald Reagan in 1980 when he trounced Jimmy Carter and Republicans swept to 12 pick-ups in the Senate and 33 in the House. Reagan was much more respected — and effective — in working with Congress because of that thumping victory.

So, the eyes of the Obama team will be focused on getting to 270 electoral votes tomorrow night, but those who care about governing — and Obama cares more than most appreciate — will be watching, too, to see how big and broad a victory he can achieve. It could be an historic night in more ways than one.

…To comment on this post please visit the AC 360 blog…

This is the 1st of a 5 part series on social enterprises by Pamela Hartigan, coauthor of The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World.



For ten years, I had been promising Joe I would come to Gram Vikas. But it is quite a trek to get there from Delhi - a two hour plane ride to Bhubaneshwar, capital of Orissa, India’s poorest state – followed by a four hour nail-biting car trip down a two lane highway, dodging huge oncoming trucks, motorcycles and cows.



But two weeks ago, I finally made it. And what a treat it was. Reading about Gram Vikas (in Hindi, “village development”) and its accomplishments pales in comparison to actually visiting the villages that have benefitted from its catalytic role. Joe Madiath, founder of Gram Vikas (GV), and his colleagues have transformed these communities by sticking to the following two principles: understanding the importance of time and patience and leveraging assets. Let’s look at each in turn.



Importance of time and patience: The behavioral and social changes GV triggered in the 700-plus communities where it is present today did not happen overnight. This is a hard lesson to absorb for those of us habituated to “instant everything”. But social enterprises working at the community level such as GV must rely on a “trial and error” approach, and that takes time. This approach has been essential given that the communities where GV works are the most forgotten groups on the Indian sub-continent – primarily constituted by indigenous tribal peoples – or “Scheduled Tribes” as they are called – among them the “dalit” or “untouchables”- those below the lowest level of the Hindu caste system.



GV’s greatest success has been using sanitation and water as an entry point to kick start a series of behavioral, social and economic changes at the community level which have had a huge impact on people’s lives. But before it found the winning strategy, it took a failed attempt at setting up a dairy farm followed by a biogas initiative, which while successful, was limited in its impact because it did not improve the lives of the poorest. And so GV kept searching.



Leveraging Assets: As a result of its work in the villages, GV was acutely aware of the very high disease incidence, and knew that there was one major factor at fault - the lack of proper sanitation. Open defecation was the norm, contaminating water supply and creating a never ending cycle of diarrheal diseases and skin disorders. In addition, lack of access to water forced women and girls to walk long distances to fetch enough for household consumption – and kept girls out of school because they were needed at home for these sorts of chores. Malaria, endemic to the region, was exacerbated because of unprotected water sources.



The only way to ensure every single man, woman and child in the village was reached and their lives improved was through water and sanitation and so in 1992, GV initiated what was to become its winning strategy, focusing on these two basic needs. Today, those communities that have engaged in joint efforts with GV have reduced overall illness by 85% with an 88-90% reduction in incidence of diarrhea, jaundice and malaria. As importantly, 80% of girls are enrolled in school, and over 16,000 women have organized into self-help groups with access to microfinance.



The key element in GV’s approach here has been leverage. GV has instituted an “all-or-nothing” in-build financial sustainability approach into its model. Before any intervention in water supply and sanitation can happen in a community, there are some non-negotiable rules that must be agreed to by all community heads of households.

In addition to the reduction in disease, there are other transformational spin offs underway. The water and sanitation program has given the community an opportunity to manage their own resources through village committees. As a result of GV’s “all-or-nothing” approach, every family, including the dalits, has been required to come together to contribute financially and with labor, to the effort. Centuries’ old class, religious and gender divisions are rapidly eroding as a result. One of the most moving points in my trip took place in a village took where GV and the village had come together to install the toilets and pumped water. The village leaders were there, including women who before had not dared join such a gathering. And then the head of the village – a smiling young man who had been elected by the entire community – shared with me that he was a dalit – but thanks to the collective work GV had catalyzed, two years ago he had been elected as the Village President.



Joe and his colleagues at GV have ensured that others take the credit for the transformational changes that have been unleashed. GV has given center stage to the Government of India and the state and municipal governments, as well as to the communities. GV has had an uphill struggle to leverage government monies under the TSC (Total Sanitation Campaign). Joe’s main tactic has been what he calls “groveling” – and it has worked. Today the TSC contributed 80% of the costs of the water and sanitation program facilitated by GV.



GV has a staff of 500 spread throughout India, primarily in Orissa, and it has huge ambitions. By 2010 it aims to double the number of families with access to water and sanitation facilities, from 50,000 today to 100,000. Joe likes to say he has dealt with every sort of “shit” there is – but you can get him to tell that story. Meanwhile, never underestimate the power of a toilet.



Pamela Hartigan is a Founding Partner and Director of Volans, Ltd. and served as the Managing Director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship from 2001 to 2008. Dr. Hartigan is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, holds Masters degrees in International Economics and Education and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology. Her new book, The Power of Unreasonable People co-authored with John Elkington, was published in the Leadership for the Common Good Series. Currently, she is teaching a course on social entrepreneurship as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School.

…From Joseph Nye’s post on the The Huffington Post…

Is the current financial crisis an indicator of the long term decline of American power? When I wrote Bound to Lead in 1989, the conventional wisdom was that the United States (and its economy) were in decline. I did not believe it then, and do not believe it now. I was in Paris last week, and spoke with a prominent French economist. He urged that we pass the legislative package quickly because, in his words, ” you have a financial crisis, but the real American economy is still strong.” There has certainly been a lot of schadenfreude on the part of Putin, Chavez, and even Lula da Silva. Hugo Chavez skipped the opening of the UN to visit China saying that Beijing was now much more relevant than New York. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the crisis was a sign that America’s global economic leadership leadership was drawing to a close. Putin blamed non-Russian causes for Russia’s stock market collapse of more than 50%. But as noted in the New York Times after the failure of Congress to act last Monday, “In only a few days, Latin American leaders have gone from schadenfreude to fear.” New York and Washington are still more important than other capitals. Certainly, Wall Street and Washington have made a mess with their hubris and failure to regulate, and a painful recession is likely. They deserve the criticism they are receiving. However, assuming that we accept the pain of recovering from the bubble promptly (avoiding the Japanese trap of prolonged bailouts), and remain open to the rest of the world, the American economy still has impressive long term strengths that are reflected in our productivity. But we may pay a price for the recent debacle in our soft power. The seeming effectiveness of our capital market institutions provided an important source of attraction to the United States. Will we recover that or will it be a case of “once burned, twice shy?” Let’s hope that an Obama victory next month will start the recovery of both the economic and soft power that the Bush Administration has squandered over the past eight years.

…To comment on this post please visit the The Huffington Post…

Tune in tonight at 11:30 p.m. to the Colbert Report on Comedy Central, as CPL director David Gergen joins host Stephen Colbert to discuss the 2008 campaign in the “truthiest” format on television.



Gergen’s last appearance on the show (back in 2006) explored his tendency toward moderate politics, in a manner the Colbert Report describes as having “the gravitas of Stone Phillips and the spirit of Captain America.” With an overabundance of headlines and less than 4 weeks to go in this historic presidential race, it’s all fair game.



UPDATE: This interview is now available on the Colbert Report website, click here to view.

…From David Gergen’s post on the AC 360 blog for CNN…

Republican conservatives should be happy tonight: the Sarah Palin who showed up for the debate was the same spirited, authentic woman when she was announced, not the one who sat down with Katie Couric.

While she made a few small mistakes and often avoided direct answers, she deserves credit for performing as well as she did in a moment of huge pressure.

Her problem was that the Joe Biden who showed up delivered the best debate performance of his life. He was extremely well informed, especially on foreign policy, and he argued his case with force and occasional eloquence. Like Palin, he didn’t make any big mistakes either — and importantly, he was never condescending toward her.

Overall, it seems to me that when the debate was over, Palin could hold her head high and will meet with large, boisterous crowds on the campaign trail again. She did herself and John McCain well among Republican partisans. But Biden was the superior debater and , I would imagine, will help to solidify the Democrats’ current lead. Over the next few weeks, McCain will have to take it away from Obama himself if he is to win.

If I had to give a score, it would be Palin A minus; Biden A plus.

Will very much look forward to hearing how voters respond — they are the ones rightly in charge.

…To comment on this post please visit the AC 360 blog…

…From David Gergen’s post on the AC 360 blog for CNN…

Yesterday’s stunning rejection by the House of Representatives of the financial rescue plan represents one of the clearest signs yet of the deepening leadership problem we are facing as a people.

The pleas of a President, Congressional leadership, the business community, the press — all were ignored and defied by a majority of Members in the House. The opposition was especially intense among House Republicans, even though the most urgent pleas came from fellow Republicans in the executive branch. Those who voting against a rescue, in my judgment, should be held accountable by voters at the polls this November if the country now endures greater hardships.

But we should recognize as well that the reason so many voted against the package was that the public has been against it — and in turn, the public has not been persuaded because it has lost trust in our national leadership. And THAT is a serious problem for a democracy — one that deserves more extensive debate about why the breakdown in trust and what can be done about it.

At Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership, which I have the privilege of directing, we have taken public surveys in each of the past three years measuring confidence in our nation’s leadership. Our surveys have been done in partnership with U.S. News & World Report as well as Yankelovich.

The results haven’t been pretty. In the fall of 2005, some 65% said we have a leadership crisis in the country. By 2006, the number had risen to 69%. And last fall, no less than 77% declared there was a crisis of leadership. Moreover, 79% said the United States would decline unless we get better leaders.

Please note that this survey did not reflect just an unhappiness with President George W. Bush. It was widespread across 12 different institutions and leadership groupings. Only the military and the medical profession were given relatively high marks this past fall. Strikingly for purposes of understanding these past few days, the institutions and groups with the lowest levels of confidence were smack in the middle of this financial meltdown. Four of the five lowest rated groups in the index were business, Congress, the executive branch, and the press. No wonder the “leaders” of these institutions had so much trouble persuading the general public about the seriousness of our financial mess.

What we see today then is a leadership vacuum. And in particular, we are experiencing an interregnum in Washington, a moment when the highest office in the land seems vacant and we are awaiting a new national leader.

But we cannot assume that a new president, whether Barack Obama or John McCain, can magically wave a wand and solve our problems. It is clear that we need to rebuild leadership in institutions and groups across the board. And unless we do so, America’s greatness as a nation will be severely challenged.

How should we renew and rebuild our national leadership? That, I hope, will be a conversation in which we can all engage in the days ahead. Your views would be welcome right now. Thank you.

…To comment on this post please visit the AC 360 blog…