BRAZIl-Observations of a parent

I wonder how she was raised

One of my favorite stories is about a person who never admitted having made a mistake. He was once asked “Have you ever been wrong?” He answered, “Yes, once. In a discussion I once said ‘Perhaps I am wrong.’ As it turned out that statement was wrong! I was actually right!”

Dilma Rousseff’s parting shots yesterday were similar. She said to a large group of supporters: “I might have committed errors, but nocrimes!” She either still does not understand the nature of the crimes of which she is accused or cynically plays on the word “crimes” to mean violations of the penal code. 

Her “crimes” are “crimes of responsibility”. As President, she was responsible for exercising the office of President in a specific manner in accordance with the Constitution. The accusations relate to crimes of governance and of acting in a manner that was inappropriate to the Constitutional rules that apply to her office. She can also be impeached for violations of the penal code but those were not cited in the document forwarded to the Senate.

I have never met Dilma Rousseff personally but I have talked to some people who have. My personal impression as a parent is that she might have never heard the word “no” as she was growing up. Some children, when contradicted, will engage in terrible tantrums that can cause their parents to give in and let them have their way. Dilma’s reported responses to hearing the word “no” or facing disagreement seems similar to the “terrible tantrums” of those kinds of children. When adults they wind up berating subordinates, often in front of colleagues, and seek to interrupt, fire or ignore those who disagree with them.

Some years ago Fortune magazine published a regular feature on the 10 “toughest” CEOs in America. Some, according to their subordinates, were little more than petty tyrants and most of those so described were no longer CEOs some 6 to 12 months after the feature was published.

Such “managers” often wind up attracting the wrongkinds of subordinates. Those “knowledge workers” that are given such treatment will wind up leaving the organization. Those who remain are usually subservient sycophants. The enterprise suffers.

One of Peter Drucker’s basic rules of management is to hire people who are smarter than you are, especially in your weakest areas, and let them do their jobs. Autocratic “managers” tend to value obedience over competence and that appears to be one of Dilma’s major management flaws.

Even in the military, the most necessarilyautocratic organization I have ever known, a common soldier is free to disagree with an absurd or illegal order. To fail to do so can result in the court martial of the soldier.

As I observed a long time ago in this blog, one of the basic rules in any organization is that if something happened “on your watch”, you are responsible. If you are in command, you are required to know what is going on. It’s really that simple.

Dilma is reported to have governed by personal “whim” and not by the rules specified in the Constitution with regard to the responsibilities of the President. It’s also really that simple.

To refer, as she did, to her impeachment as a “farce” is totally out of place and constitutes little more than inflammatory rhetoric. 

It might have helped if she had read her “job description” before seeking the office or, alternatively, if she had learned the meaning of the word “no” in her formative years!