Get out of here with that bad news? No way.
Smart leaders want bad news fast
Chinese government chases BBC reporter out of the country: There is no surer sign that a regime is destined for failure than when it puts its energy into silencing bad or critical news rather than fixing it. That's exactly what China's government is doing by persecuting reporters and whistleblowers -- and it is a colossally self-defeating practice.
■ Good news can take its sweet time to bubble up, but able managers always want to get alerted to bad news as soon as possible. The sooner you know what's going wrong, the sooner you can fix it. And something is always going wrong somewhere inside a big organization, whether it's a government, a firm, or a non-governmental organization. The most important thing leadership can do about it is get the bad news fast.
■ We may complain a lot as Americans about the fact that our politicians never seem to "work together" to "solve problems", but that's driven in no small part because every vote has some marginal value, and politicians (and parties) have to compete to win those votes. Consequently, some contentiousness is baked into the cake. (That doesn't excuse incivility, of course, but voters are free to punish that, too.)
■ But the consequence of freedom within a democratic framework is that there is a built-in institutional incentive on the part of multiple groups to root out shortcomings, failures, wrongdoing, corruption, and other bad things. The Fourth Estate has that incentive. So does a loyal opposition. Civil-society groups that depend upon their reputations for fundraising purposes have those incentives, and so do institutions with interests in public policies (including religious groups).
■ Of course there's room for bipartisanship and problem solvers. America could do with less cynicism and more mutual trust and common facts. But we should never mistake our fundamentally messy, combative, and sometimes lumbering processes for getting things done for a bad thing. The complications, fighting, and naysaying are features, not bugs. Voters remain capable of rewarding the things they want at any time, and if we collectively really wanted more pragmatic, less ideological politics, then we would get them. But part of that requires sacrificing a little ideological commitment -- which, if the Chinese experience is any guide, wouldn't be a bad idea at all.