Obama, CEO

Obama has been President of the U.S. for over a year now and there are countless pundits commenting on every move he has made and analyzing what he has done wrong in utter detail.  Overall, he has done a good job as president, however, he has made a few key mistakes.

From a management perspective he made what can be considered one of the classic management blunders.  He took on more than could be accomplished with Healthcare, an area which has thwarted many before him, while letting his eye off of the ball in terms of the economy.  While Healthcare plays a vital role in the economy in many ways, he did not articulate how it tied in with the economy.

Many new managers as well as CEOs do not remember key lessons from economics, which in their case is the scarcity of their focus.  It is a reason many mergers and acquisitions fail - top management becomes too occupied with a new division or radical increase in their companies size that they are unable to focus on what has made them successful up to that point.  Obama, as was pointed out by his opponents, lacked management experience.  He did not run a city, as Guiliani proudly boasted, nor a State, as Romney mentioned, nor even the country as Hilary implied a few times.  While, it's hard to expect the President to magically create millions of jobs, at least the appearance of doing anything possible would have helped.  Instead, his administration expected unemployment to peak at around 8% instead of going past 10%.  Jobs, is where his focus should have been - or perhaps even better as Thomas Friedman argued, nation building, which would have not only included jobs but position America better for the future.

Obama was an extraordinarily accomplished campaigner - but he did promise more than he could deliver, which is a huge risk.  He promised change, a new way of operating and Washington and much more.  One year later, with countless Clinton nominee's in place, back room deals and a more dis-functional Congress than ever, we must question how much change he has brought.  While, this is no big surprise, it does damage his political capital, lowers his support from many Americans and limits what he can accomplish with Healthcare.  Even the best CEOs have made mistakes, so hopefully Obama can recover from them.