Rhetorical skills vs. management skills?

[Amelia]

This criticism coming from the lips of Dee Dee Myers this morning was hilarious:
“He's a rhetorician and not a manager and a big city like New York requires really strong management skills as we saw in the current and previous mayor.”

Coz now Democrats value management skills over pretty speechifying. ROFLOL.

Myers: Clintons would want Weiner out - POLITICO.com

 

[boedicca]

It's highly likely that the Clintons would like Weiner to go away now so that his moral lapses aren't in the public awareness during the 2016 election cycle, where they would draw the inevitable comparisons to Bubba's.

 

[Amelia]

Exactly. That's what Myers would care about.

No way do I believe she has suddenly had a conversion to a belief that someone actually needs to have management experience before they take over a high executive office. If it weren't for the infidelity reflecting badly on Democrats in general and the Clintons in particular, Myers would say that Weiner's fearless advocacy for Democrat principles would more than qualify him for the office.

 

[Whereisup]

Out of an unfortunate source, you have brought forward a very good question, and I would like to thank you for that.

I don't think that it is possible for any politician to be a top level manager.

A top level manager must spend full time thinking about the problems of an organization or nation, and considering what to do.

A politician, on the other hand, is distracted by having to think about many things irrelevant to his or her managing job. A politician must take time to remember thousands of names of people important to her or him getting elected. A politician must also spend a lot of time with those people on election matters, etc. So, already, the politician doesn't have all that much time left to think about the problems of the nation or group.

Then, the politician is normally oriented towards finding a compromise solution which will be supported by enough groups. A compromise solution will usually be much less effective than a solution developed in terms of what the problem is and what could be done to solve it. So the best possible solution rarely even gets thought up, let alone put into place.

I don't have a good solution for this problem. We do absolutely need to be a democracy, so we need to elect people to office, even though the fact that they have to be elected makes them into bad managers.

In theory, the public could objectively look at the problems and give ideal solutions to the politicians so they could concentrate on being elected.

However, the public doesn't have time to do that job. For the public to be able to find the best possible solutions, many millions of adults in America would have to spend forty or more hours per week studying the problems in detail, and thinking up possible candidate solutions to solve them. Voters just don't have that much time to spend on such work, and even if no voters had jobs, so they could work full time finding the best possible solutions, many people might well wish to do other things with their time instead.

So again, I don't have a good solution to the problem.

Jim

 

[Amelia]

Interesting, Jim.

 

[Sunshine]

This criticism coming from the lips of Dee Dee Myers this morning was hilarious:
“He's a rhetorician and not a manager and a big city like New York requires really strong management skills as we saw in the current and previous mayor.”

Coz now Democrats value management skills over pretty speechifying. ROFLOL.

Myers: Clintons would want Weiner out - POLITICO.com

Better watch out. Next thing you know, they will be paying CEOs millions of dollars!

 

[peach174]

Myers said. “He's a rhetorician and not a manager and a big city like New York requires really strong management skills as we saw in the current and previous mayor.”

Well this is hilarious , like Amelia said,because President Obama doesn't have strong management skills either and he also is a rhetorician.
Political Dems have no values or morals.

 

[NightFox]

This criticism coming from the lips of Dee Dee Myers this morning was hilarious:
“He's a rhetorician and not a manager and a big city like New York requires really strong management skills as we saw in the current and previous mayor.”

Coz now Democrats value management skills over pretty speechifying. ROFLOL.

Myers: Clintons would want Weiner out - POLITICO.com

LOL, "pretty speechifying" ... that's a good one and it succinctly describes the beginning and the end of the skill set possessed by many politicians.

P.S. that is the cutest avatar I've ever seen.

 

[Amelia]

Myers said. “He's a rhetorician and not a manager and a big city like New York requires really strong management skills as we saw in the current and previous mayor.”

Well this is hilarious , like Amelia said,because President Obama doesn't have strong management skills either and he also is a rhetorician.
Political Dems have no values or morals.

Apparently running New York needs stronger management skills than running the US.

 

[blackhawk]

The problem with most politicians left or right is all they have done for most of their lives is be politicians they have never managed anything not even their own campaigns the idea they could effectively run a city, state, or the country is laughable. The politicians of today seem capable of doing exactly three things giving speeches, reciting talking points in interviews, and blaming the other party for the problems of the nation.

 

[Mac1958]

Out of an unfortunate source, you have brought forward a very good question, and I would like to thank you for that.

I don't think that it is possible for any politician to be a top level manager.

A top level manager must spend full time thinking about the problems of an organization or nation, and considering what to do.

A politician, on the other hand, is distracted by having to think about many things irrelevant to his or her managing job. A politician must take time to remember thousands of names of people important to her or him getting elected. A politician must also spend a lot of time with those people on election matters, etc. So, already, the politician doesn't have all that much time left to think about the problems of the nation or group.

Then, the politician is normally oriented towards finding a compromise solution which will be supported by enough groups. A compromise solution will usually be much less effective than a solution developed in terms of what the problem is and what could be done to solve it. So the best possible solution rarely even gets thought up, let alone put into place.

I don't have a good solution for this problem. We do absolutely need to be a democracy, so we need to elect people to office, even though the fact that they have to be elected makes them into bad managers.

In theory, the public could objectively look at the problems and give ideal solutions to the politicians so they could concentrate on being elected.

However, the public doesn't have time to do that job. For the public to be able to find the best possible solutions, many millions of adults in America would have to spend forty or more hours per week studying the problems in detail, and thinking up possible candidate solutions to solve them. Voters just don't have that much time to spend on such work, and even if no voters had jobs, so they could work full time finding the best possible solutions, many people might well wish to do other things with their time instead.

So again, I don't have a good solution to the problem.

Jim

Good stuff, Jim, welcome to the board.

The way I see it, the skillsets for successful politicians and competent managers simply don't intersect. And now that politics and elections have devolved to image-driven show business, that problem can only get worse.

Add to that the fact that they have to continually fundraise, kiss party leadership ass for plum committee assignments and play the song and dance routine for the media, expecting these people to be good managers or even good legislators is a bridge too far.

That's precisely why I cringe at those who place so much "faith" and "hope" in these people.

.

 

[Sunshine]

The problem with most politicians left or right is all they have done for most of their lives is be politicians they have never managed anything not even their own campaigns the idea they could effectively run a city, state, or the country is laughable. The politicians of today seem capable of doing exactly three things giving speeches, reciting talking points in interviews, and blaming the other party for the problems of the nation.

When someone comes along who HAS run a multimillion dollar company, the person is written off as too greedy to hold office. As if the pimp and ho currently in the White House are doing it for charity.

 

[NightFox]

The problem with most politicians left or right is all they have done for most of their lives is be politicians they have never managed anything not even their own campaigns the idea they could effectively run a city, state, or the country is laughable. The politicians of today seem capable of doing exactly three things giving speeches, reciting talking points in interviews, and blaming the other party for the problems of the nation.

When someone comes along who HAS run a multimillion dollar company, the person is written off as too greedy to hold office.

rules of the game:
Greed for money = bad
Greed for power = good
Greed for money & power = Today's Washington

 

[blackhawk]

The problem with most politicians left or right is all they have done for most of their lives is be politicians they have never managed anything not even their own campaigns the idea they could effectively run a city, state, or the country is laughable. The politicians of today seem capable of doing exactly three things giving speeches, reciting talking points in interviews, and blaming the other party for the problems of the nation.

When someone comes along who HAS run a multimillion dollar company, the person is written off as too greedy to hold office. As if the pimp and ho currently in the White House are doing it for charity.

Here is a little irony were 16 trillion plus in debt the left always says to deal with this we need more revenue so during the 2012 Presidential election what do they do vilify the man who spent most of his life showing he knew how to bring in large amounts of revenue.

 

[Whereisup]

The problem with most politicians left or right is all they have done for most of their lives is be politicians they have never managed anything not even their own campaigns the idea they could effectively run a city, state, or the country is laughable. The politicians of today seem capable of doing exactly three things giving speeches, reciting talking points in interviews, and blaming the other party for the problems of the nation.

When someone comes along who HAS run a multimillion dollar company, the person is written off as too greedy to hold office.

rules of the game:
Greed for money = bad
Greed for power = good
Greed for money & power = Today's Washington

There are always exceptions, but a problem with former CEOs is that their training and experience is in trying to promote their own company by driving out of business, or at least driving to a smaller market share, companies which compete with them. Running a city, state, or nation well, in contrast, involves optimizing things for all businesses and individuals at once. It is difficult to shift ingrained habits of coming up with one-sided strategies to new habits of coming up with two-sided, or more than two sided, strategies. That's not to say it can't be done, but it is difficult.

A greed for promoting all individuals and businesses in a nation would be a good greed.

Jim

 

[NightFox]

There are always exceptions, but a problem with former CEOs is that their training and experience is in trying to promote their own company by driving out of business, or at least driving to a smaller market share, companies which compete with them.

Sorry Jim, I'll have to disagree with that assertion, the role and methods of an effective CEO is one of a visionary entrepreneur whose function is to define the tension between the current state of the organization he/she leads against the state he/she wants it to be in (the vision). The effective CEO is therefore focused on the state of the market as it relates to (his organizations target) consumers and accompanying psychographics and how those factors play against his/her organizations business practices, product mix, costs, investment planning, culture and resource utilization. In effect he/she is concerned with optimizing these things to match market demand (or how he/she can create a demand), his/her competition will of course drive adjustments to the metrics by which those are measured (generally pushes them harder). Essentially the end goal of such people is to optimize their organizations (from a value proposition standpoint), driving their competition to lower share (or out of the market) by doing so is (if it happens) simply a side benefit.

A CEO lacking vision whose only object of study is what the competition is doing will be an ineffective CEO since he/she will be in a position of simply reacting instead leading. My conclusion therefore would have to be that the skill set possessed by a talented CEO is in theory perfectly suited to those required by a successful public sector chief executive, however I would hazard a guess that most talented CEO's would be uninterested in such positions simply because government bureaucracy is notoriously resistant to changes pursuant to increasing efficiency and quality and the only value proposition they offer is whatever is minimally required to maintain the jobs of the elected and bureacrats.

 

[Mac1958]

When someone comes along who HAS run a multimillion dollar company, the person is written off as too greedy to hold office.

rules of the game:
Greed for money = bad
Greed for power = good
Greed for money & power = Today's Washington

There are always exceptions, but a problem with former CEOs is that their training and experience is in trying to promote their own company by driving out of business, or at least driving to a smaller market share, companies which compete with them. Running a city, state, or nation well, in contrast, involves optimizing things for all businesses and individuals at once. It is difficult to shift ingrained habits of coming up with one-sided strategies to new habits of coming up with two-sided, or more than two sided, strategies. That's not to say it can't be done, but it is difficult.

A greed for promoting all individuals and businesses in a nation would be a good greed.

Jim

Dang Jim, another interesting post, cool.

I can see your point about whether a competitive nature is a good or a bad thing, and your last sentence would be the goal. And I'd think a former CEO would understand the value and importance of managing on a more macro level.

Further, I'd think the other fundamental skills of a CEO - overall leadership, management across channels, negotiation, big-picture thinking, delegation, promotion of the "product" - would be huge benefits for a constituency.

Now that I'm thinking this through a bit, a former CEO as President and a former Governor as VP would be my ideal combination (assuming they knew what the hell they were doing), because the former Governor would understand all the various intricacies of the political process and still have experience at many of the former CEO's responsibilities.

Just doing a little dreaming there.

.

 

[NightFox]

Now that I'm thinking this through a bit, a former CEO as President
.

Uh-huh, Picture Steve Jobs as POTUS, now picture President Steve Jobs jumping off the roof of the White House after two weeks in office drives him out of his mind because Federal Government operations & common practices are so antithetical to what is considered common sense, creativity and value added in the private sector.

IMHO the reason Presidents take so many vacations is because even career politicians whose minds have been warped by experience in the alternative reality of government need frequent breaks in something approximating the real world to maintain their sanity.

 

[Mac1958]

Now that I'm thinking this through a bit, a former CEO as President
.

Uh-huh, Picture Steve Jobs as POTUS, now picture President Steve Jobs jumping off the roof of the White House after two weeks in office drives him out of his mind because Federal Government operations & common practices are so antithetical to what is considered common sense, creativity and value added in the private sector.

IMHO the reason Presidents take so many vacations is because even career politicians whose minds have been warped by experience in the alternative reality of government need frequent breaks in something approximating the real world to maintain their sanity.

Okay, can't argue, and I'm sure as hell no fan of the federal bureaucracy, for the reasons you stated. A CEO would be in the freakin' Twilight Zone in DC, the way those goofballs behave.

So I'll add "intellectually and emotionally able to deal with the mountains of absurd DC horseshit" to the list of qualifications.



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