How CEOs Would Handle Rove (BusinessWeek)

[tuvor]

JULY 18, 2005

NEWS ANALYSIS
By Francesca Di Meglio

How CEOs Would Handle Rove
The first MBA President gets advice from B-school experts on how to manage the controversy surrounding the leak of a CIA agent's identity

Much has been made of the fact that George W. Bush is the first U.S. President to hold an MBA (Harvard Business School, class of '75). So how's this for a B-school management problem: You're the CEO. One of your most trusted and powerful subordinates has been implicated in an internal probe of leaking highly sensitive corporate secrets to the media.

This isn't culled from the textbooks: Bush's right-hand man, White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, has been publicly identified as someone who talked to a reporter about a CIA agent. The leak of that covert agent's identity is now the focus of a Special Prosecutor's criminal probe. After the White House and Rove initially claimed the latter had no involvement in the episode, the President's aide now says through his lawyer that he did talk to one reporter about the CIA agent but never revealed her identity.

NIXON ADMINISTRATION COMPARISONS. Perhaps it's time for the President to return to some crisis-management lessons he learned in B-school. Already, the White House appears to be breaking a cardinal rule, some B-school experts say. For starters, top management should find out exactly what happened and disclose as much information as possible, says Michael Useem, director of the Center for Leadership & Change Management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

The idea is to get all damaging evidence out as quickly as possible, so the public -- and especially the media -- can parse the details and move on. It's what the Clinton White House tried to do with the pesky Whitewater scandal, with limited success.

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jul2005/bs20050718_6852.htm

[RPM]

1. b-school is such bullshit

75% common sense; 25% statistics

Makes sense why so many MBAs are such total idiots.

[Dover]

2. Lol! Comparing Dubya to a CEO....a broken model from the get-go

Why not figure a more realistic scenario? For instance, what are the CEOs that are the real power behind this administration saying?
Meeting behind closed doors, no doubt, and considering their options.
What maniacal plot are they hatching?

Without Rove, and with an ailing Cheney...what have they got? Dimson?

[ShockediSay]

4. HEY!

I mean the people we're talking about here, are a C student and a college dropout joined at the hip who probably never won an honest election together in their lives....

Come to think of it, this is the US National Leadership - scary, isn't it?

[Dover]

5. shockedIsay!

Welcome to the Underground!

Scary yes........but likely just a bad cosmic joke.

[Child_Of_Isis]

3. Say it ain't so...

"Presidents have immediate access to polling to determine the impact and reward of disclosing information, political supporters who can speak on their behalf, and the abilities to impose political pressure on detractors as well as create other White House news every day to shift the headlines away from the Rove controversy. CEOs don't enjoy such perquisites. "