Obama and the Olympics: A Lesson on How to Not Set Your Leader Up to Fail in Public...

You're a manager in corporate America.  You know one of the things you have to do is protect your boss, right?

Of course you know that.  You've been around the block. Probably even seen some people fall out of favor for not taking care of the boss.  Maybe those same folks were even asked to leave, all for not protecting the big guy (or gal)...

Haven't Rahm Emanuel and David Axlerod (senior staff members to President Obama) been around the block as well?  If they have, there's NO WAY they let President Obama get on a plane to lobby for bringing the Olympics to Chicago. 

More from the LA Times on the managing up fiasco:

"In the run-up to the Olympics vote, the White House was getting a clear message from the architects of Chicago's bid: Balloting would be tight, and a personal visit to Copenhagen from President Obama just might lock in a victory.

Leaders of the Windy City's campaign to secure the 2016 Summer Games had done some nose-counting and were convinced that the International Olympic Committee might well anoint Chicago as host, according to White House officials interviewed Saturday."

For those of you keeping score at home, the nose counting was of very poor quality.  Chicago was eliminated in the first round, meaning it placed 4th out of 4 finalists, even though Obama took on a high profile lobbying role in Copenhagen. 

Want to see what having staff members around you who can't say no looks like when you're the CEO?  Or having staff members who won't tell YOU no?  Look no further than these quotes:

"The intelligence that we had from the U.S. Olympic Committee and Chicago bid team was that it was very close and therefore well worth our efforts," said Valerie Jarrett, a senior White House advisor. "The message was that . . . a personal appeal from the president would make a huge difference."

Earlier, the president had agreed to engage in some quiet lobbying. Working from the White House, he placed calls to half a dozen influential people, including IOC President Jacques Rogge. It quickly became clear that other heads of state were doing the same thing -- especially the president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Phone calls were the easy part. A knottier question was whether the president should travel to Denmark for Chicago's presentation Friday.  Within the White House, Jarrett relayed the argument that a presidential visit might make the difference. A close friend of the president from Chicago, she had been a strong proponent of the drive to deliver the Games."

It's a sad state of affairs regardless of your politics.  Let me be clear about the job of any senior staff member: You take care of the boss.  You don't push him to do things that are good for you or might otherwise put him in harm's way.  When he's got an idea that might make him look like a fool, you tell him how he might be perceived and are uber-direct with him.  If he doesn't listen, you lobby those around him (your peers) to talk to him as well.

You don't let him go to a beauty contest unless you're sure he's going to be a finalist.  You have to be sure, or he doesn't get on the plane.

It's amateur night in the inner circle.  Chicago told you a high profile trip might be the final push the effort needed?  Was that the effort to land in 3rd place and not be the first country eliminated?  What if I told you that making Glen Beck the Czar of Common Sense might raise your approval ratings?  Would you do that too, low level Obama staffers?

Of course not. Take note people, and take care of your boss.  Think through the "what ifs" and be 3 steps ahead of the game.  Understand the risks of your boss losing face.  I take no pride or satisfaction in this as a moderate Republican.  I'm an American first and foremost, and it's embarrassing.  President Obama deserves better - so does your boss.

Where were Axelrod and Emanuel (the inner circle for the President) when this was being pitched?  I'm a team player.  If they're the inner circle, I'd like them to sweat the small stuff, like the president's image, so I know they're capable of triangulating and making good decisions on the big stuff.  Like Iran with a bomb.

Next time you're wondering whether you should tell the boss that he might look like a fool for a decision a low level staffer is driving him on, I've got an easy image that should tell you to do the right thing: Obama in Copenhagen.

Take care of the boss.  It's the Capitalist way.

Comments

[Rob]

And they only spent $1 million of OURS to do it.

[Steve Meyer]

I couldn't agree with you more. In any team, you need to watch out for everyone else( coach, President Obama, your CEO) on that team, especially in a high profile event. This all goes back to developing an organizational culture of " no holds barred communication" and where you protect your teammates.

[Tracy Tran]

I totally agree with you 100% in this post and let me add another. If Chicago wants the Olympics, have Chicago (or Illinois) athletes go on the trip. I was not upset about Obama and Oprah were going to Denmark, but if you can't bring a single athlete like a Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, or someone from the Cubs to Denmark to present, you don't stand a chance. Olympics is about sports first, politics second and the USOC blew it.

If no one from the USOC realize that, then there should be an overhaul.

[twitter.com/pcrerar]

I do think that the team let down their boss, but not in the way you describe.

The other three finalists also had heads of state present in Copenhagen, and having Obama there demonstrates respect for the Olympics as well as the global community. An Obama no-show would certainly have guaranteed a rejection for Chicago's bid.

The mistake was in the way the team managed expectations. They should have known that Chicago was a long shot and should have positioned the President's trip as a visit from a head of state, supporting his city and country, along with the rulers of the other 3 nations. Expectations of a win should have been played down.

Anyone remotely familiar with the Olympic bidding process knew Rio was a favorite because the Olympics had never been held in South America and the US Olympics committe has been in the dog house for some time now. Did Obama's team not know this or are they so dazzled by their own brilliance and by their leader to think they could achieve the impossible? They should use this defeat as a lesson in focusing on achievable goals and managing expectations.

[Greg Harris]

Kris--I wish the Packers offensive line had read your post before last night's game.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1393177416]

Sorry. No free passes today. Anyone who has learned anything about leadership knows that judgement and risk assessments are key attributes of any effective leader. If you take the patronizing view that most leaders are nothing more than figureheads, passively led by trusted councils, than this notion of bad advice from underlings might fly. But great leaders know that they take everyone they represent out on that same limb they are willing try. Worse still, there is a pattern of engagement in problems well below his position, as was true of the Cambridge cop and the cronie. These are attributes you would expect to see in a supervisor who was promoted too quickly. Unfortunately, his humilation was also our humilation. It may have been better to remain silent and be thought of as a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

[Scot Herrick]

And sometimes, leaders fight for what is worth fighting for. Certainly, an Olympics located in the States is worth advocating...just look at the economics of it all. There were a ton of jobs on the line right now to build what is needed for Olympics in Chicago-land; go ask Atlanta for a reference. And jobs are just part of it.

Besides, why wouldn't you advocate for your country for an Olympics? The fact that we didn't in the past was the rarity, not the commonplace. Other leaders in other countries believe in their country to go advocate for it -- win or lose -- because it is the right thing to do.

What this article is saying is that "unless it is locked to win," you shouldn't expose yourself for advocating a position. That's not leadership. It's not advocating for what is right. That position is totally safe -- and blame the staff if it isn't.

Taking care of the boss is using your judgment to advocate a position, having a decision made about the position, then supporting the position your boss takes the best possible way through your work. Not protecting the boss at all costs simply because the boss might not win.

[Roy]

While we can argue on the leadership question we have to recognise that it is the common expectation world-wide that what an US President personally advocates for he gets or quite nearly gets.

What happened here is that there appears (so the story has been told) to have been a total miscalculation, showing "hubris", etc. as some would suggest.

Unfortunately, there is little you can do to manage the expectation that was built up and will be built up when the US President goes to bat for something ... except if you have a lot of high profile "rejections" such as this one which will tame tings.

For me there is one possibility that comes to mind because I will not underestimate this White House. If we are to credit the Obama team for being as politically astute as they have proven to be, I think we cannot rule out that they had done their homework and had gotten a sense of where things were heading.

Is it possible that they found this out a bit late and after they had commited the next most high profile representative Michelle to the fight? And did they, having found this out late, decide that Obama could better weather the loss/negative press than could Michelle? or that he might be perceived as hanging his wife out to dry? The latter potentially very damaging , the former strategic as I think it's true (the Nobel Prize is upon us and things are looking good again).

This would change the leadership discussion.