“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, ‘You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free?
I was inspired recently by an article in Business Insider that profiled Peggy Cherng, one of the founders (with her husband Andrew) of the successful Panda Express restaurant chain. The article highlighted Cherng’s commitment to philanthropy–which I prefer to call by its more accessible name, “giving.” Giving is an essential part of accountable leadership, for the simple reason that it is part of the commitment that all accountable leaders make to develop and follow a
NOTE: I set up several calls recently with Sheriff Joel Richardson, a man I respect immensely, to discuss the difficult issues facing today’s law enforcement organizations. Joel leads the Randall County, Texas, Sheriff’s Department, which includes part of the city of Amarillo; he served for eight and a half years as the presiding officer for the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. Joel presents, in my view, a perfect example of what accountable leadership in law
But actions still speak louder than words! We live in a hyper-connected, hyper-informed era. Thanks to today’s round-the-clock media cycles, mobile devices, and social media platforms, you and I can set up news feeds that allow us to take in more news per day than ever before. That’s a good thing…right? Well — yes and no. The trouble is, lots and lots of the news we end up exposing ourselves to is bad. If we’re
Like just about everyone else I know, I have watched the news about the massive protests triggered by the death of George Floyd in Minnesota. As that incident and similar incidents have become topics of the national conversation, I have found myself confronting some major questions about accountability in the nation’s police departments. Recently, I had the opportunity to catch up with a good friend of mine, and a client, Sheriff Joel Richardson, to discuss
Let’s talk about accountability in law enforcement and community policing. A few years back, in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, I made a point of visiting Ferguson while the protests there were going on. I wanted to connect person-to-person with some of the people in the community there. One of the gentlemen I talked to was a teacher in one of the
The protests following the death of George Floyd, an African-American man killed by police during an arrest in Minneapolis in May, have led to a national moment of reckoning on the issue of police misconduct. Floyd’s death has also led to a moment of reckoning on the larger issue of discrimination in American society…and, I believe, to a moment of reckoning on the subject of accountable leadership.
How do you build an accountable corporate culture? Microsoft just gave us all a lesson. If you go to Microsoft’s website and take a look at their corporate values, you will come across this powerful sentence: We recognize privacy as a fundamental human right. Inspiring…but there is a potential problem. Just posting those words is not enough to build or sustain a corporate culture that features commitments that support this value. That takes more than
One of the critical commitments that accountable leaders take on is called IT’S ALL OF US. When you make this commitment, you accept that you do not succeed unless the other person succeeds — and you accept that if the other person fails, you fail. An organization built on this value treats its employees like family, and it doesn’t walk away from them in tough times. This connects to a related commitment, to STAND WITH
One powerful lesson that accountable leaders can take from the last few extraordinary months is that personal commitments matter. That may seem like an obvious point. It is not. It requires constant reinforcement, especially within leadership circles. You would be surprised how many leaders I run into who imagine that their commitments do not need to be personal. They say things like “I am committed to quality” or “I am committed to making this company
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