Colin Powell Quotes
An organization that is not facing up to people who are not getting the job done, is going to have difficulties.
Powell, Colin. It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership. Harper, 2012.
This is true fir government even more so than business. Politicians tend to focus on policy making and having vision, but most policy visions fail for lack of execution.
Ironically it was the old Chinese culture of the Emperors where public official mistakes were generally paid for with the official’s life. However, there is a tendency the world over for the public to demand someone to be punished or fired. Often the easiest way for a politician with administrative responsibility to blunt that responsibility is to fire some subordinates or demote or otherwise punish them. In Taiwan they have a demerit system. The leader must take the responsibility for the failure. Many politicians (and business executives) observe that there are thousands of subordinates and that they cannot be held responsible for the errors that any of them make. While the do not want the responsibility, they are the first to claim the credit if anything goes right. If an employee should be fired, then do so, but as this quotation observes to meet out discipline in response to criticism is reprehensible.
Colin Luther Powell is an American politician, diplomat and retired four-star general who served as the 65th United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005. Powell was the first African-American Secretary of State. Prior to the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, Powell and his successor, Condoleezza Rice, were the highest-ranking African Americans in the history of the federal executive branch (by virtue of the Secretary of State standing fourth in the presidential line of succession). Powell served as the 16th United States National Security Advisor from 1987 to 1989 and as the 12th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993.
