American Dominance And Its Effect on Business Management

Looking through my traffic results, I see there is renewed interest in the school rankings for Online MBAs. That tells me it’s time to get back to work and prepare the 2012 list, but it also reminds me to discuss the importance of such schools. Obviously, people go to school to earn degrees that make them more desirable to employers, for better positions and higher pay, but the decision should also be made in recognition of becoming much more effective at our work.

I’ve been reading George Friedman’s work, “The Next 100 Years”, which includes his opinion that the United States will dominate the century, not only because of our military and geopolitical standing, but also because of our business. That’s important for us, because it means that even if you want to become effective in international business, you have to first master the fundamentals of American business. The Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, therefore, is not just a key to senior management posts, but is also a critical tool in helping your business gain long-term competitive advantage.

So, how does American dominance translate to your own career? First off, consider that (using Friedman’s data) the U.S. has about 4 percent of the world’s population, but creates 26 percent of all good and services, and 26 percent of the world’s GDP. The U.S. is far and away the world’s largest country for industrial production, is still one of the world’s largest energy producers, and is under-populated by global standards. Friedman says that an economy consists of land, labor, and capital, and on all three counts the U.S. is in very strong condition.

Now, it is true that the credit rating of the United States took a hit last year; as I work with credit analysis in my job, this is a point which must be counted with a lot of weight. But in context, always in context. The credit rating downgrade came from the behavior of the federal government, not the nation as a whole. When President Obama said the U.S. was and would always be a “triple-A” nation, he was correct – but he was also ducking the abysmal lack of responsibility by the federal government. The impact of the credit downgrade, then, comes in two parts. First, no matter how well an individual business is run, that business will be subject to penalties and disadvantages according to how it’s home country runs its policies and pays its own debts. That is tied to the second part; whenever a government messes up, the people will have to pay for the repairs and clean-up, and usually governments do this by punishing corporations, on the lie that penalizing large businesses which employ many people will somehow spare people the cost. History proves rather the opposite, but few politicians will ever admit this, especially since so few politicians have actually worked in or run a private-sector business. In short, success will always be desirable but great success will certainly make you a target for government powers seeking to get someone else to pay for their own blunders. As a result, major corporations will of necessity have to staff their teams with tax professionals able to address the sometimes ridiculous demands from government. This in no means that a company should evade taxes or seek to avoid paying an appropriate amount. In addition to the fact that government tax authorities have vast resources to pursue and punish cheats, the history of business also shows that paying too little also brings a cost in brand recognition and loss of goodwill. The point, though, is that paying too much in taxes does not improve the brand or make customers like you better; quite the opposite. Paying too much in taxes invariably forces a company to raise its prices, harming competitive advantage, and paying too much in taxes just makes your executives look stupid. Also, I should not need to mention that the government is far from eager to refund overpaid taxes, especially when a company does not realize its error.

Coming back to our own focus of interest, managers exist to get things done. Knowing that many companies are multi-national now, the globalization question is pertinent, but also must be folded into the acknowledgement of American dominance. By that I mean the understanding that American business practices are generally accepted worldwide as a standard, to the point that many elite businessmen come to U.S. universities and send their children here to learn business management. It means that Codes of Conduct and Mission Statements will generally have an American flavor to them, even in China and Russia, Brazil and India. It means that the exemplars of business excellence will continue to have names like Exxon Mobil, Kraft, and AT&T. Part of it comes from the long history of American business success, part from the dominance of U.S. business school doctrine, and part from the sheer optimism and energy of American strategy. For the foreseeable future, if you want to succeed globally, think American.

So how to do so as a manager? There are a lot of companies with poor management, for simple but foolish reasons. One example is the practice dubbed the Peter Principle, which promotes people who do a given job to a level above it, until they reach a level they cannot handle. The obvious correction for that is to peer-review managers and include regular training and refreshers for each tier of authority. Another common problem is allowing managers to build silos, preventing cooperation and also denying employees advancement opportunities through other departments and shutting down critical feedback for fear of losing image to executives. The correction there is a more active HR presence, especially by creating career paths for employees to encourage development and moral investment in the company future. Also, managers can help themselves by making sure their staff have access to opportunities. Rather than hurting the manager’s position, acting as mentor and providing support for promotion helps the manager nurture relationships outside his own group and department, not only be helping employees advance in the company, but also providing a talent resource for other managers. In this way the company thrives, inter-department cooperation is excellent, employees see proof of career opportunity and the manager who makes it happen gains trust and support from his team. A manager exists to make things work, and to do so more effectively. Sometimes that means seeking efficiency, but more often it means you need a leader with practical experience who knows from his own work what will and will not produce the desired results. Therefore, the goal should be to seek finding such people as managers, and to be such people ourselves.

John McCain, Hero

Many on the Left have been attacking John McCain viciously. Not his Senate record or positions on the major issues so much, as they have been attacking him for his service in Vietnam. Given Barack Obama’s lack of significant accomplishment in anything other than selling books and making speeches, it is hardly surprising that he and his followers would regard McCain’s most distinctive service as a threat to Obama’s ambition. It is also apparent that most Obama supporters have no real idea of what McCain did as a Navy officer that sets him apart from so many of his fellow veterans. I have written before that I disagree with a number of McCain’s political positions, and I dislike the way he has treated fellow Republicans, especially President Bush. None of that, however, diminishes what John McCain accomplished as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

On October 26, 1967, Lieutenant Commander John McCain was shot down during his twenty-third mission in an A-4 Skyhawk bomber over Hanoi. Commander McCain was on that mission as part of his long service to the United States; he graduated from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1958, and remained on active duty despite having his plane literally shot out from under him in an accidental missile discharge from another plane on the deck of the USS Forrestal earlier that year.

The destruction of his jet caused McCain serious injuries. He broke bones in both arms, one leg, and landed in a lake. Once he reached shore, the already injured McCain was attacked and beaten by North Vietnamese soldiers, one using a rifle butt to dislocate hs shoulder while another bayonetted him. He was denied medical treatment for four days, during which time he was beaten and interrogated using real torture methods, not the stuff liberals like to call ‘torture’ now. McCain refused to give information beyond his name, rank, and serial number. It was only when the North Vietnamese realized that McCain’s father was a senior Admiral that he received medical treatment, and it was not much even there. No anesthesia or antibiotics were used, and the bones were not even set for another half-week.

Up to this point, John McCain’s story is that of an honorable man who suffered from conditions of war and cruel abuse. What follows is where we see his heroism.

The North Vietnamese understood that Commander McCain’s father was Admiral McCain, and from the beginning tried to use this for propaganda purposes. While men like John Kerry played the system in order to go home early from the war, Commander McCain repeatedly refused special treatment and offers to be set free ahead of men he knew had been longer in captivity. He also refused attempts by the North Vietnamese to use him in propaganda films, and for this was designated for “special treatment”, a regimen of regular torture and deprivation that killed most men who suffered it. In the first six weeks of his imprisonment, McCain lost 50 pounds and temporarily the use of his arms and legs; when he was finally allowed to share a cell with two other officers, his condition was so grave that they did not expect him to survive for more than a week. His fellow officers nursed McCain to somewhat better health, and for this were assigned to different quarters. McCain again refused to cooperate with the North Vietnamese and he was locked in a muddy room with no windows, a tin roof and only two holes drilled in to keep him from suffocating, and McCain was kept there for two years.

Unknown to the Communists, McCain had already started his work from the inside. He had memorized the names of all 335 men he knew to be prisoners in North Vietnam, and when Major Norris Overly, USAF, was released he carried McCain’s information with him. Even in prison, John McCain continued to serve his country.

In mid-1968, the North Vietnamese decided that if they released McCain, it would not only show them as merciful but suggest that American ‘elites’ expected to be treated better than ordinary soldiers. But Commander McCain consistently refused to play along, refusing to be released unless every man who had served as long as him was also released, and refusing on all occasions to say a single bad thing about the United States or the war effort. Despite his solitary confinement, McCain used a tap code to make contact with Ernie Brace, a civilian pilot shot down over Laos. Brace had been badly abused by the Communists and was in bad shape emotionally. McCain worked to restore Brace’s spirit and confidence, and in so doing bolstered his own.

In June of 1968, the Communists again tried to talk McCain into accepting special treatment, and in return McCain said he’d be glad to go – after all the men he knew had been waiting longer. They tried again in July, after Mccain’s father became CINCPAC. McCain again refused, for which he was beaten, his ribs cracked and one of his arms rebroken, and after which he was left bound between beating sessions for another four days. To shame him, the Communists left McCain naked and unfed.

McCain knew what could happen in the prisons, like Dick Stratton’s being burned with cigarettes and his fingernails being pulled out. He knew men who had been beaten to death, like Ed Atterberry. Punishment in a Communist prison was brutal and swift, yet even so McCain continued to resist his captors, tapping out communication and encouragement to other prisoners, as a true officer leads his men. Commander McCain was beaten for refusing to lie about conditions in the prison, for resisting the Communists’ propaganda programs, for communicating with other prisoners, and often for no reason other than he was a man they could not defeat, could never own. McCain refused to meet with antiwar delegations, refused to cooperate with nations like France who supported the Communists, and always - always - refused to accept anything that was not provided for all his fellow prisoners. McCain was tortured for holding church services, for praying, for singing the National Anthem, for refusing to admit “war crimes”, and for cheering when Nixon ordered the bombing of Hanoi. McCain was no Superman, he felt every burn and cut and bruise and scrape of bone and tearing of ligament. Yet over and over and over again, he chose to accept torture rather than put himself ahead of his fellow prisoners, or his country.

On March 14, 1973, John McCain was finally released by North Vietnam, as one of the final prisoners to return home. He faced months of surgery and physical therapy to rebuild his body, but his spirit was unbroken and his mission fulflled. Whatever one thinks of John McCain’s politics, he was and is a hero, and anyone who cannot admit that is a poor shell of a human being, too dismal to count as a true person, let alone an American.

Sources: Wikipedia, “John McCain: An American Odyssey” by Robert Timburg, US News & World Report (May 14 1973 issue)