Why Bad Executives Inevitably Fail

One way to be a failure as an executive, manager, or leader of any kind, is to fail to manage risk. You can get away with it, and even be viewed as a success, as long as your luck holds out, but it will catch up with you in the end. Was POTUS asleep during that class at Harvard B school?

In the software biz, you see this every day: decisions based on the assumption that you can't plan for something if you don't know whether of not it's going to happen. This is, IMPO, the primary reason that software ships late, or before it is finished.

I demand better from the executives who are (supposed to be) responsible for the lives of millions. When POTUS said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," this signaled a Category 5 bullshit storm. I believe the truth is that he didn't plan to do anything about the levees breaking because he didn't know if the levees were going to break. What he decided to do was wait and see what happened.

After all, how can his administration be held accountable when "Stuff happens?"

If you fail to mitigate easily anticipatable risks (e.g., a city below sea level hit by a hurricane might flood), you fucked up. This isn't politics -- this isn't about ideology, it's about incompetence.