The March 15 article “Be Afraid” in The New Republic paints a picture of a dysfunctional U.S. Department of Homeland Security that is putting the lives of Americans in jeopardy. The Bush administration has had trouble getting top talent to the cabinet agency, and a former administration official says, “I often felt like I was dealing with the B team or even the C team.” The agency also hasn’t been able to retain top management, according to the magazine. On top of these problems, some of the government agencies that merged to create the Homeland Security Department are squabbling, and employees have never strongly identified with the new organization. The Customs Service was forced to scrap its good computer system for the INS’s awful one. Morale is low, and “there is a real lack of identity, mission focus and direction.” The end result, according to the article, is that the country is vulnerable and the agency “is doing nothing to oversee critical facilities, like the hundreds of chemical plants nationwide–most of which still have little or no security.”
What Goldman Sachs Looks for in Leaders
The list below lists Goldman Sachs’ nine leadership principles. It took more than a year of work by the firm’s managing directors and senior leaders to create them.
1. Act with a Profound Sense of Integrity and Fairness.The daily stewardship and embodiment of these values–as highlighted in our Business Principles–is the primary responsibility of all leaders at Goldman Sachs. Integrity and fairness lie at the core of our firm’s heritage, our services to our clients and our cultural strength Leaders at all levels of the firm must uphold these values in their daily decisions and actions and instill them in their people as well.
2. Deliver Business Results Through Commercial Excellence and People Development. Commercial excellence is the lifeblood of the firm and a key source of leadership credibility. Outstanding leaders create profitability not only through business development and client service but also through recruiting, coaching, developing and retaining the best people. Leaders develop leaders, and leadership demands consistent and purposeful investment of time with our people.
3. Build Strong Client and Other External Relationships. The success of our firm depends on the quality of our relationships with a broad group of influential clients and leaders around the world. Our best leaders successfully develop long-term relationships across multiple cultures. They succeed through outstanding client service as well as playing leadership roles in external business and community groups.
4. Drive Teamwork Within and Between Businesses. Teamwork and dedication to the firm’s greatest good are competitive advantages. Leaders maintain a strong network of relationships across the firm. They cross-market the firm’s products and services and actively share ideas and talent across divisional, departmental, regional, and hierarchical boundaries.
5. Foster Learning, Innovation, and Change. Leaders welcome and drive change. They constantly extract the learning from their own failures and successes as well as those of others–both internal and external to Goldman Sachs. They build on our past success but also take the entrepreneurial risks necessary to innovate and grow our business.
6. Debate Freely, Decide Swiftly, and Commit. Leaders challenge the status quo and have the courage to express and allow disagreement. However, they drive issues toward decisions, and embrace decisions once they have been made.
7. Promote Meritocracy by Welcoming and Leveraging Differences. Our clients and employees comprise a heterogeneous group of successful, influential men and women from all cultures, races and ethnicities. Leaders create meritocracies that recognize and reward the diverse people and talents the firm requires to succeed around the world. They ensure that all employees have opportunities, free from artificial barriers, to rapidly advance to the utmost of their abilities.
8. Develop Strategy and Execute. Leaders develop and articulate a clear vision and strategy for their business and set concrete goals toward realizing their strategy. They move quickly, make tough decisions and show excellent judgement. Finally, they are relentless in prioritizing actions and executing to the highest standards.
9. Create Trust and Credibility Through Honest Communication. Our best leaders communicate fully, directly and candidly, and they follow with action. They are also good listeners. Above all, they recognize that the power of their personal example is greater than the power of their words.
SOURCE: Excerpted from Leading Organizational Learning: Harnessing the Power of Knowledge edited by Marshall Goldsmith, Howard Morgan and Alexander J. Ogg (March 2004; $39; Cloth) by permission of Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint.
Faced With a Shortage of Teachers, Texas is Relaxing its Standards
Texas needs 45,000 new teachers each year, but only 20,000 are getting teaching certificates annually, according to the Christian Science Monitor. The result is that the state may, like some other states, relax the rules on exactly who can teach.
Under Texas’ plan, which has not yet been finalized, college graduates can teach high school if they majored in the subject they’re planning on teaching, and if they’ve passed a subject-area exam and a certification test. They don’t need to have taken any education courses, according to the Monitor. For the first two years, teachers are matched with mentors.
Around the United States, school systems are coping with shortages of teachers, a problem expected to grow with the retirement of the baby boomers. States are providing recruiting and retention incentives for teachers, forgiving loans, appealing to older workers, and looking to other countries for potential teachers.
Trouble at Dow Jones
At the parent company of the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s, “grumbling about salary and benefits has increased to a dull roar over the last five years,” according to the New York Observer. The Observer reports that “for the first time in the company’s history, there is frank talk of the possibility of a newsroom strike.”
The contentious issues include Dow Jones’ effort to have employees pay more of the cost of health insurance.
Dow Jones’s labor-management issues could create retention problems before they create a strike. One reporter was asked by the Observer if a strike would ever happen at Dow Jones. “I don’t know if people here would go on strike,” the reporter said. “I think they’d go work for The (New York) Times before they did that. They already are.”
Dear Workforce How Do We Handle a Supervisor-Employee Romance?
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IRS Stepping Up Pension Audits
Large employers “should brace themselves” for possible IRS audits of pension plans, according to Business Insurance.
The U.S. government has made permanent a pension-auditing program that before was a limited pilot program. Six IRS audit teams–spread out in different parts of the country–will each examine 15 pension plans annually. Their focus will be on plans with 2,500 or more participants.
The IRS wants to make sure pension distributions are correctly calculated. It’s also looking at a long list of other items, including whether spousal consents are properly documented and if tax deductions correspond to what was contributed.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is telling employers to “beat the IRS to the punch” by making sure their plans comply with the law. Oftentimes a company’s plan literature is written in a way that’s consistent with the law but the plan’s operations do not conform to the well-written documents, an Aon consultant told Business Insurance.
Illinois Putting the Squeeze on Small Temp Firms
The state of Illinois is hoping to save millions of dollars by reducing the number of staffing agencies it uses to three.
This is a good thing for three large corporations–Volt, Kelly and Manpower. It is, however, leaving many small firms–many owned by minorities and women–out of luck, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The Tribune reports that the state “plans to have contracts worth $44 million with three firms–$35 million for Manpower Inc., $7 million for Volt Services Group and $2 million for Kelly Services Inc.–through the end of June 2007.”
It will save Illinois about $1 million in the current fiscal year.
California Companies May Bail Out of the State
Nearly 40 percent of companies in California are planning to move jobs out of state, according to the California Business Roundtable.
The analysis was conducted by Bain & Company, a consulting firm. Companies interviewed ranged from small businesses to large corporations with as much as $90 billion in revenue.
Bain reports that 27 percent of California jobs are in “mobile sectors,” such as software programming, that could be done elsewhere. California has already lost jobs in the movie business, with some jobs going to other states such as Texas, and other show-business jobs going to Canada and other countries.
Creating an Effective Ethics Program
This guide will take you through the process of determining your company’s values; developing a code of conduct; training; identifying risk areas and more.
Tycos Guide to Ethical Conduct
Thisdocument from Tyco covers appropriate and inappropriate actions related to:
Equal employment
Harassment
Substance abuse
Health and safety
Political involvement
Gifts
Fraud
Anti-trust issues
Confidential information and insider trading
The media
E-mail and the Internet
Recordkeeping
Telecommunications issues