President Barack Obama Discusses Healthcare

“We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it.”

--President Barack Obama, closing out his speech to the American people on healthcare reform and the need for change.

In his speech this week, President Obama was effective in presenting the facts and making a compelling case for healthcare reform. His appeal was bi-partisan in nature and was an attempt to repair the increasingly polarized political climate in Washington and throughout the country. He hopes to set aside party loyalties and post-election bitterness to do what is right for the country.

Leadership: Communicating a Vision and Defining a Result

“I am not planning based on a one-day market reaction. In fact, you can argue that a lot of the problems we’re in have to do with everybody planning based on one-day market reactions, or three-month market reactions, and as a consequence nobody was taking the long view.

“My job is to help the country take the long view — to make sure that not only are we getting out of this immediate fix, but we’re not repeating the same cycle of bubble and bust over and over again; that we’re not having the same energy conversation 30 years from now that we had 30 years ago; that we’re not talking about the state of our schools in the exact same ways we were talking about them in the 1980s; and that at some point we say, ‘You know what? If we’re spending more money per-capita on health care than any nation on earth, then you’d think everybody would have coverage and we would see lower costs for average consumers, and we’d have better outcomes.’ ”

--Barack Obama, 2/13/2009.

Charting a course that we can follow, President Obama continues to remain calm, thoughtful, and focused in the face of a crisis and partisan criticism. President Obama, despite a lack of support from Republican senators, is set a course to get his stimulus package passed so that the country can begin to dig itself out of a deep recession. His strong leadership continues to be a model for the future.

For more about leadership go to the Handbook of Leadership: http://www.squidoo.com/valdes3.

Barack Obama: Building TEAM USA

I have heard from many people, many of whom voted for John McCain (I do live in the red state of Georgia, you know), that are saying to Barack Obama some version of "I hope that you don't screw it up" or "I wonder if you are up for it." The real question is will we be willing to follow Barack Obama and get on the team.

If that is the task at hand (and there is little to suggest that it is not), then what Barack Obama has to do is show real leadership and succeed in building a great team. Not just an excellent Cabinet and group of advisors, but a team of involved citizens throughout our country.

So, what does Barack Obama have to do? What Inspiros International found several years ago is that great teams and organizations have these nine basic common characteristics in common:

1. An Icon: Barack is certainly that.

2. The Greatest Imaginable Challenge: pick 'em, the greatest global economic meltdown since the Great Depression, global warming, Al-Queda terrorism, the budget deficit, the trade deficit, health care costs and related issues, the energy crisis and our over-reliance on oil, the housing market, the US auto industry, etc.

3. Constant Renewal of the Challenge: the list of grade-A challenges will keep morphing and expanding, you can count on it. President-elect must keep us informed and in touch with reality. We must be willing to believe and hear him.

4. Continual Raising the Bar: Our president will have to understand that he must always be expecting more out of himself and those around him. We must be willing to respond in kind.

5. Passion: Unlike what George W. Bush did after 9/11, President-elect Obama must leverage the enthusiasm, the activism, sense of urgency and the energy that has been unleashed during this Presidential election campaign. We must keep it up.

6. Sense of Family: the sense of inclusion and global community that has brought Obama and the Democratic Party a historic victory, must continue be a high priority and a key component for this new administration to be successful. We must be willing to be part of a community, not a set of individuals with narrow selfish needs and interests.

7. Foster Innovation: with Obama's leadership and guidance, the US must regain its place as a center of innovation and cutting edge solutions that it has lost.

8. Commitment to Excellence: Barack must ensure that we regain our sense of pride and can-do resilience that has been missing for the last 8 years. We lift up our expectations and sense of trust.

9. Awareness of "The Zone:" President Obama must have an understanding that creating a performance zone, as in sports and athletics, is highly valuable. Creating a zone is to create the right organizational climate through establishing a sustainable culture of pride, excellence, innovation, success, and achievement in the community. The above mentioned important processes of inclusion and challenge must be maintained as well. He must lead by fostering an attitude of ownership, involvement and activism. The proper environment that promotes our core values, our ability of find meaning and purpose in our individual and, more importantly, our collective activities will keep alignment, motivation and self-initiative high. Creating a zone will allow us to regain our place in the eyes of the world community.

Ultimately, it is as much our responsibility to follow as it is President-elect Obams responsibility to lead.

How Did Barack Obama Win?

A day after Barack Obama made history and took leadership of the free world, we must ask how did he do it? He basically embraced what all successful people do, The Peak Performance System:

1. Vision: Vision trumps everything. He wanted to bring people together and he did that by appealing to those that saw a larger mission in his campaign. "Yes we can" and "change the world" spoke to the world. "We are the United States of America" rang true. Obama catalyzed, inspired and created hope. That is the mark of a great vision.

2. Mental Mindset: Barack Obama maintained a positive, constructive, inclusive mindset throughout. His ability to be calm in times of chaos was reassuring to a majority of the America electorate.

3. Fast-forwarding: Obama was able to achieve maximum campaign flexibility by being able to anticipate. He identified barriers and found solutions. He saw the future, and used the internet and the social networking community as a tool to achieve his vision.

4. Game-plan: Obama successfully organized a great team and a great message, set a path, believed in it and did not waver. He organized a viral marketing machined based on people.

5. Deliberate practice: Obama made sure that his game-plan could be executed with practice, rehearsal, and tweaking.

6. Execution: He did not panic when things were not going his way and he stayed the course. Attacks on his religious beliefs and his associations with Rev. Wright and William Ayers did not change his strategy. He displayed a calm that made voters believe and want to belong.

7. Review: Barack Obama used his team to maintain a continuous feedback loop to learn minute-by-minute what was working and what wasn't. Obama refined and refined never losing sight of the vision.

Many people may conclude that this campaign broke new ground, but it also relied on the fundamental principles that all peak performers understand and use.

Listen to the Issues, Ignore the Media and the Hype

“Our nation is in trouble on two fronts. The American dream is under siege at home, and America’s leadership in the world has been weakened. Middle-class and low-income Americans are hurting — with incomes declining; job losses, poverty and inequality rising; mortgage foreclosures and credit card debt increasing; health care coverage disappearing; and a very big spike in the cost of food, utilities and gasoline.

“And our position in the world has been weakened by too much unilateralism and too little cooperation, by a perilous dependence on imported oil, by a refusal to lead on global warming, by a growing indebtedness and a dependence on foreign lenders, by a severely burdened military, by a backsliding on global nonproliferation and arms control agreements, and by a failure to consistently use the power of diplomacy, from the Middle East to Africa to Latin America to Central and Eastern Europe.”

--Bill Clinton.

Obama: Listening and Learning

"He listened more than he talked, which is always a good thing. He clearly sees himself as a clever synthesizer of other people's ideas. And I think that is an important skill in a president."

--Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.

"I don't think Senator Obama has an agenda for big business. He's trying to affect the overall economy, and he's got to find a way to help people who are worse off. I don't think he loses any sleep woryinig about how to craft a policy just for big business, not should he, and I say that as a former commerce secretary."

--William M. Daley, JPMorgan Chase.

Choosing a President

Thomas L. Friedman hits the nail on the head again. See his opinion piece in the New York Times for Sunday June 29, 2008.

"We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started. Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best. Nothing else matters."

Anxious in America

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/opinion/29friedman.html?th&emc=th

Thomas L. Friedman/The New York Times

Just a few months ago, the consensus view was that Barack Obama would need to choose a hard-core national-security type as his vice presidential running mate to compensate for his lack of foreign policy experience and that John McCain would need a running mate who was young and sprightly to compensate for his age. Come August, though, I predict both men will be looking for a financial wizard as their running mates to help them steer America out of what could become a serious economic tailspin.

I do not believe nation-building in Iraq is going to be the issue come November — whether things get better there or worse. If they get better, we’ll ignore Iraq more; if they get worse, the next president will be under pressure to get out quicker. I think nation-building in America is going to be the issue.

It’s the state of America now that is the most gripping source of anxiety for Americans, not Al Qaeda or Iraq. Anyone who thinks they are going to win this election playing the Iraq or the terrorism card — one way or another — is, in my view, seriously deluded. Things have changed.

Up to now, the economic crisis we’ve been in has been largely a credit crisis in the capital markets, while consumer spending has kept reasonably steady, as have manufacturing and exports. But with banks still reluctant to lend even to healthy businesses, fuel and food prices soaring and home prices declining, this is starting to affect consumers, shrinking their wallets and crimping spending. Unemployment is already creeping up and manufacturing creeping down.

The straws in the wind are hard to ignore: If you visit any car dealership in America today you will see row after row of unsold S.U.V.’s. And if you own a gas guzzler already, good luck. On Thursday, The Palm Beach Post ran an article on your S.U.V. options: “Continue to spend upward of $100 for a fill-up. Sell or trade in the vehicle for a fraction of the original cost. Or hold out and park the truck in the driveway for occasional use in hopes the market will turn around.” Just be glad you don’t own a bus. Montgomery County, Md., where I live, just announced that more children were going to have to walk to school next year to save money on bus fuel.

On top of it all, our bank crisis is not over. Two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs analysts said that U.S. banks may need another $65 billion to cover more write-downs of bad mortgage-related instruments and potential new losses if consumer loans start to buckle. Since President Bush came to office, our national savings have gone from 6 percent of gross domestic product to 1 percent, and consumer debt has climbed from $8 trillion to $14 trillion.

My fellow Americans: We are a country in debt and in decline — not terminal, not irreversible, but in decline. Our political system seems incapable of producing long-range answers to big problems or big opportunities. We are the ones who need a better-functioning democracy — more than the Iraqis and Afghans. We are the ones in need of nation-building. It is our political system that is not working.

I continue to be appalled at the gap between what is clearly going to be the next great global industry — renewable energy and clean power — and the inability of Congress and the administration to put in place the bold policies we need to ensure that America leads that industry.

“America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so,” Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib noted last week. “A political system that expects failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else.”

We used to try harder and do better. After Sputnik, we came together as a nation and responded with a technology, infrastructure and education surge, notes Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. After the 1973 oil crisis, we came together and made dramatic improvements in energy efficiency. After Social Security became imperiled in the early 1980s, we came together and fixed it for that moment. “But today,” added Hormats, “the political system seems incapable of producing a critical mass to support any kind of serious long-term reform.”

If the old saying — that “as General Motors goes, so goes America” — is true, then folks, we’re in a lot of trouble. General Motors’s stock-market value now stands at just $6.47 billion, compared with Toyota’s $162.6 billion. On top of it, G.M. shares sank to a 34-year low last week.

That’s us. We’re at a 34-year low. And digging out of this hole is what the next election has to be about and is going to be about — even if it is interrupted by a terrorist attack or an outbreak of war or peace in Iraq. We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started. Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best. Nothing else matters.

June 29, 2008

"Fatigue makes cowards of us all." --George Patton

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/opinion/12collins.html?th&emc=th

This New York Times article (6/12/2008) by Gail Collins questions the judgement of Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama after the recent resignation of James Johnson. Johnson was the head of the VP candidate selection committee for Obama.

Collins criticized the appointment of a man who in the past selected two highly unsuccessful VP running mates (for Walter Mondale and John Kerry); headed up the Countrywide Financial Corp. and had a role in the subprime lending fiasco; was the former head of Fannie Mae (which was widely criticized for its questionnable accounting practices; and, who was involved in a number of controversial compensation package decision (including a $1.4 billion stock option package at UnitedHealth Group).

Collins suggests that Obama showed poor judgement because is tired and needs some rest after a gruelling primary campaign. At least, he got this one out of his system early, she said.

Should we forgive him and give him a Mulligan? Or, is this a preview of decision-making to come???