LEADERSHIP IS WHAT THIS NATION NEEDS.

Byline: Viggo Butler Local View

TODAY, May 19, is a unique day in recent history. As many days have passed since Sept. 11, 2001, as between from Pearl Harbor to the end of World War II in the Pacific on Aug. 14, 1945.

During the 1,346 days after Dec. 7, 1941, the United States went from a standing start to overwhelming victory against two enemies. It went from a peacetime economy to a prolific producer of war machines and, more importantly, back again so that domestic goods were ready for sale soon after the war ended. We built an armed force of millions, then disbanded it. We created countless new devices, technologies and management concepts.

In the same number of days since Sept. 11, we have created a Homeland Security department and an army of airport inspectors, plus purchased some new technologies for the war on terrorism - pilotless aircraft, sensor technology, etc. We have, to our credit, disrupted the terrorist capabilities in Afghanistan and fought the equivalent of the World War II invasion of Italy in Iraq.

But we can't get automated processing technology in place for airports or passports. We can't get cargo screened, and we seem befuddled by all sorts of challenges, from Social Security to education. Major businesses are losing their way in the marketplace and their boardrooms.

What is different from then to now? I submit it is how we manage and look at management.

The U.S. in the 1940s was a line-driven system. People in charge made decisions, others carried them out. People were responsible for their decisions, mistakes were made and corrected and people moved on to the next problem. Businesses (autos, radio, airlines, aircraft, etc.) were still being run by their founders or by the immediate successors who had developed the business. The number of generals in the Pentagon was far fewer than there are today, yet huge undertakings were developed and implemented.

In the middle of the 20th century, the Empire State Building was built in a year, as was the first Disneyland. Lawyers wrote up the details of an agreement - they didn't create agreements, and even for major contracts, they were only a few pages in length. MBAs (the key word is administration) were few and far between, and only had a staffing role to the responsible line executive.

Today we are a staff-driven society. Bureaucrats are everywhere in both government and business. Everything must be studied and reviewed. No one seems to be specifically responsible for any decision. Process is more important than product. The challenges of Sears, General Motors, the legacy airlines, NASA, the FAA, the CIA and any other enterprise of their size are a reflection on worrying more about what each department thinks about how it will be affected by change instead of how a change can be implemented quickly.

All of this comes down to the most significant aspect of today's society - lack of leadership.

In our history, leaders seemed to be everywhere. Creating, changing implementing. Today there are still a few around who point the way. The key to Southwest Airlines is leadership. Dell computers, the last decade's revitalization of IBM, and a few others show what leadership can do. The fact that these are easy to spot and make up a short list reflects how much we have changed.

Companies led by individuals with an easily communicated vision make a difference and are successful. However, this type of organization can fail if the vision is incorrect. And it is this fear of failure that now drives the process.

We train people to research, to analyze, to review with their team, to create a report, to develop risk avoidance - but we do not teach them how to make judgments or to lead. In politics, resistance to change is endemic. Nothing seems to work; most agree it doesn't work, but we dare not change it because the new idea may not work.

It appears that our society's desire to avoid risk and responsibility is incompatible with leadership. Can or should this be changed I leave to others to debate, but perhaps when a problem is recognized, we should do less studying and allow someone to lead us to a solution.