What Good Management Looks Like

Everybody's already blogged about the leaked Rumsfeld memo, but here's my two cents. This memo is nothing to be ashamed of. It is exactly the kind of thing a good executive sends out to his people every once in a while. Amazingly enough, if you want to keep getting good ideas and focus from folks, you might want to ask the basic questions more than once and see if better answers have emerged. It's the management version of an examination of conscience. Are we really doing the job? The best way we can? What aren't we doing that we should? As long as people know the management really wants to hear the answers to those questions and will act upon them, it's entirely healthy and helpful to ask.

The memo has been spun as damaging, but actually is highly reassuring -- one more piece of proof that TPTB know what they're doing and are good at it. Typically, the media don't see it that way -- which is one more proof that the media are out of touch with normal life. Ignore 'em.