CEO POLITICIANS?

Last night's electoral primary battles in major states had 2 very important results: 1. It proved that my previous blog from September 30, 2009 was accurate in predicting that women will save the G.O.P. and 2. It set up the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, Carly Fiorina for a Senate seat run versus incumbent Barbara Boxer and the former CEO of EBay, Meg Whitman's to run the State of California as governor.

As the son of a Republican mother, I am proud to see 2 women running for major offices in a major state. While I disagree with most of their stances on issues, I disagree even more with CEO politicians.

Without a doubt, it takes incredible amount of intelligence and business acumen for both women to have obtained the CEO position of 2 of the world's leading technology companies. There accomplishments as business women are unparalleled. And both candidates are promising to bring a "business mentality" to the running California. But the skill sets required to successfully run a corporation and to govern a state are very different. Companies are run like dictatorships, while states are run by consensus.

As the CEO of a company, you hire a staff of trusted lieutenants who are experts in their respective divisions and as CEO you give them the task of making your "vision" for the company come to life. Yes, of course you have a Board of Directors that you report to, but as long as the Board is making money and the stock is going up, Boards don't directly mess with the specifics as to how a company is run. Look at BP CEO Tony Hayward. He's a huge liability for BP and should have been fired over a month ago. As of today BP has lost 50% of its value (a staggering $90 billion dollars), and the BP Board still hasn't woken up, fired Mr. Hayward and stopped the stock price from falling. Businesses, by necessity, are run like dictatorship. I'm the CEO and I say and you're the workers and you do.

However, a state is run by consensus. As Governor Schwarzenegger found out, once the movie star appeal wears off, you need to work WITH the California legislature to get laws passed in the state. As governor you simply cannot expound on your "vision" for the state and say to the Assembly, "Now go do it." The pushback can and is fierce by politicians who are under no pressure to comply with your vision while being told what to do. Oh, if only politics were that easy. As a politicians you have to execute the 3 "C's" of politics - Consensus, Compromise, and Convince.

What I am not hearing from either CEO candidate is that they look forward to working together with the California legislature to fix the states problems. Both Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina are busy attacking their incumbent rivals, but not telling me as a voter how they would would work together with the legislature to run the state.

As someone who runs his own department, I know that if work was a democracy, then our work would suffer. If we had to "vote" on who gets what project and break ties and use procedural rules, I doubt very much would get done. Unlike my present work situation, where I ask for buy in, but ultimately, I'm the boss and here's what needs to get done.

I also don't understand why anyone with as much money as Ms. Fiorina and Ms. Whitman would ever want to do with the low paying, press cringing political game, but I welcome the debate they bring to the world's 8th largest economy.