There is an old saying, "When confused and in doubt...

...run in circles scream and shout!"

It appears that more and more people are living by this in today's world. It is indicative of the failure of leadership at all levels. Copious amounts of money have been spent on leadership training in the past decade and the return on investment has been dismal at best.

One has to look no further than Congress to see this phenomenon in action. Leadership is about inclusion of others, about providing vision and values in such a way the people enroll in the process and follow. It is not coercive in nature where you have to get some one to "buy into it". In congress, leadership seems to be all about personal power and control rather than about the needs of the stakeholders. When the Republicans won control of congress in 1994, they were initially effective under the guidance of Newt Gingrich. When he was removed from the picture, the vision was lost and the Republicans failed to provide effective leadership. The Democrats promised leadership in 2006, but provided more of the same. True leadership was non existent and personal power plays and greed took its place. Instead of leadership, they provided control and harsh treatment of anyone who stepped out of line.

Congress doesn't have a lock on this, look at the corporate world, it is dominated by mistrust and fear. Fear has such a grip on today's business world that people are paralyzed when it comes to solving problems and making decisions. People are afraid to make any decision that might be second guessed and cost them their jobs, therefore they put off making decisions hoping it will just go away. Management has become more and more reactionary and less and less innovative.

Business have lost sight of the basic fundamentals of management such as

• Planning
• Organization
• Control

These three fundamentals require managers to make commitments to performance where as leadership is quite abstract and they can avoid the commitment or at least define their result as they see fit in order to appear to meet objectives. Management has become all about image rather than about vision. Again look at the world of politicians, there are few visionaries in any of the three branches of the Federal Government. The White house seems stuck in a continual campaign mode where they can make promises but don't have to produce results. Congress is in an uncontrolled spending spree that threatens to bankrupt the country, and the judicial branch seems bent on deserting the US Constitution and rewriting it to suit themselves.

On the business side of things, large corporations are failing to produce the kind of results need for their ultimate survival. They, like Congress are ignoring large portions of their stakeholders and doing what they want, irrespective of what is best for the stakeholders.

Many businesses are under performing because they are unable to attach desired performance to real business needs. They are loosing sight of strategic goals and objectives and are simply confusing motion with progress. They are driving at a high rate of speed to get to the fire and drive right past it without even looking. In other words, they are focused on the route, not the goal.

Add to this an unprecedented government intervention and control, and you have a field ripe with the fear of decision making. This decision paralysis is especially found in the area of hiring and compensation. Faced with highly qualified people who can and have done the job they are trying to fill, they continue to search and make no decision. If someone is not in the position, they can not make the hiring team look bad. They will not be held responsible for a bad choice if they don't make one. Operations suffer because projects are not approved or consultants hired who could help the organization's overall performance because no one wants to "be responsible for spend the money".

With no vision and a lack of true leadership, performance is hampered, but even worse there are often no standards of performance with which to judge attainment of performance. Business can no longer afford to be mired in the old management paradigm of reaction to what occurred in the past. Management must adopt a paradigm of anticipation of circumstances and innovation applied to problem solving. This will never happen until management learns to make a decision and stick to it. Decisions won't come until management equally balances the four fundamentals of management in their day to day operations. Leadership, planning, organization, and control are essential to effective decision making and will reduced much of the decision paralysis that is rampant in American business today.