PROVIDENCE – Remember the Ford advertising campaign slogan from the 1980s? “Quality is Job 1?” [Those a bit older may recall the Zenith slogan, “The quality goes in before the name goes on,” immortalized in Tom Waits’ epic paean to ad slogans, “Step Right Up.”]

Rhode Island now has its own new civics marketing campaign, “Job One: Leadership,” thanks to The Providence Journal, the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University [funded by Alan Hassenfeld, the former CEO of Hasbro, Inc.], and Rhode Island PBS.

The campaign, unfortunately, promises about the same degree of credibility as the Ford or Zenith slogans had.

The underlying premise behind the campaign is that what Rhode Island lacks is effective leadership – elected officials who can get ideas implemented in challenging times, the mythical strong leader on a horse.

It projects and identifies the so-called “leadership” problem onto the voters – who they deem are in need of guidance to make better decisions that reflect the organizers’ bias. If only the voters were better educated, they would make a better decision, i.e., one that agreed with their definition of leadership. The voters – the engaged community – are seen as not being able to make good enough choices without such controlling guidance.

By definition, “Job One: Leadership” diminishes the role that individuals have in taking responsibility for their own lives, their own actions, and their own communities. If only we had more effective leaders, this kind of magical thinking goes, our problems would get solved.

In reality, “Job One: Leadership” is a response to the changing world of news and information in the digital world we live in. It is symptomatic of what happens when traditional power brokers – newspaper publishers, wealthy business leaders, aging bureaucrats, the folks who are used to pushing buttons and getting a response, to speaking and having their opinions valued and revered – attempt to reassert control over what they no longer control. Something is happening and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

What the polls don’t tell us
A recent telephone poll commissioned Fleming & Associates of 438 registered voters found, not surprisingly, that just 12 percent of the voters polled gave state elected leaders a good or excellent rating when it came to problem solving, while 85 percent said fair or poor.

When questioned, the pollster said that voters who responded were not asked what was the source of news and information, dismissing that kind of information as not relevant. “People self-select,” Joe Fleming told ConvergenceRI. “It’s what they want to tune into – talk radio, Fox, or MSNBC. An effective leader doesn’t dodge any of those outlets. He tries to communicate with all audiences.”

The maestro controlling the lights and sound behind the curtain is Gary Sasse, director of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership, the former Director of Administration for the Carcieri Administration and a vocal, persistent critic of Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee and his administration.

Sasse, who claimed that the effort would be non-partisan and that no candidates would be endorsed, is a frequent radio talk show guest on the Buddy Cianci show on WPRO, where he’s known as the “Money Man.” On air, however, Sasse has never been shy about dishing his partisan opinions.

The results of the poll were “dismal,” Sasse told The Providence Journal.

The “Job One: Leadership” plan – as illuminated in a front-page story in the March 4 edition of The Providence Journal – is to publish a “Voter’s Guide for Effective Leadership,” based on a series of questions put to the candidates running for office.

The guide is envisioned as a tool to measure the candidates’ leadership skills on the issues of problem solving, communication, responsiveness, fiscal management, conflict management, ability to lead, and integrity.

On the surface, it sounds much like identifying a candidate who will best adhere to some kind of scout-like political honor code: to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

“We must elect leaders who are guided by a moral compass, not by personal gain or partisan interests,” said Howard Sutton, the publisher of The Providence Journal, in a remarkable, self-serving statement. “We must elect leaders who have a vision, who can articulate that vision, and who can compel citizens to help achieve that vision.”

Whose moral compass? Sutton’s? [With the pending sale of The Providence Journal in April or May, Sutton may be long gone before any of this comes to fruition.]

The fact is that the qualities of leadership are often tested by managing crises that occur while on the job, and are unpredictable, not determined by answering questions beforehand.

Whose vision of leadership?
The underlying question is: whose vision of effective leadership is being promoted?

Sutton’s and Sasse’s premise is that Rhode Island needs a strong leader who exhibits “public leadership.” [And let’s not forget Alan Hassenfeld, the former CEO of Hasbro, Inc., who is underwriting the effort, and has never been shy about throwing his money around in political efforts branded as civic engagement. He was one of the deep pockets behind the front group on pension reform, EngageRI.]

In other words, in their not so humble opinion, Rhode Island currently lacks strong effective elected leadership, and they want to correct that, by providing the voting public with their civic guide for the perplexed, one they hope that will deliver unto Rhode Island a strong leader. Or, at least someone more to their personal liking.

ConvergenceRI attempted to dig deeper into the assumptions behind what Sasse meant by leadership, asking him in a recent interview: “What do you mean by effective leadership?”

“Effectiveness is defined by managing people,” Sasse answered, in didactic fashion. “A leader who communicates their goals and objectives, collaborating with stakeholders to get things done. [Effective leadership] is an ability to be a good fiscal manager, with ethical standards. [It’s taking] action to mobilize people, to get them to work together. [It’s] the confidence to take action and solve problems.”

It’s the ability to communicate the facts, Sasse continued, and engage the various stakeholders.

Wouldn’t that definition fit someone such as Gov. Lincoln Chafee? Or President Barack Obama? ConvergenceRI asked Sasse.

Sasse bristled at the suggestions, saying that the effort was not about personalities or candidates, but about leadership qualities, about the facts.

Hearing Sasse’s tone of voice, the reporter recalled W.H. Auden’s poem, “Law, Like Love,” and Auden’s portrait of how law was defined by the priest and judge:

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,

Expounding to an unpriestly people,

Law is the words in my priestly book,

Law is my pulpit and my steeple.


Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,

Speaking clearly and most severely,

Law is as I’ve told you before,

Law is as you know I suppose,

Law is but let me explain it once more,

Law is The Law.



Whose interpretation of the facts?
ConvergenceRI tried to probe further into what Sasse meant by the facts of leadership. The reporter told about hearing a story on the radio that morning about how an effort to present the facts to parents who had doubts about the safety of vaccines had provoked a counter-intuitive response. The parents acknowledged the facts about the safety of the vaccines, but that only made their beliefs in their doubts stronger: knowing the facts didn’t change their beliefs.

Could this effort boomerang? Could the effort to produce Sasse’s version of effective leadership result in the exact opposite?

The response was terse: “This is about leadership, about facts, not issues,” Sasse said. The survey focused on the characteristics of leadership to solve problems, and didn’t get into philosophy, he continued. “It’s about being a responsible steward of the public’s money and not to be [down in] a foxhole.”

ConvergenceRI tried a third time, from a more oblique entry point, to get at the underlying assumptions.

Yesterday, the reporter said, in response to the crisis in the Ukraine, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani compared President Obama to Vladimir Putin, saying that Putin was strong, decisive, and took action, compared to Obama. Of course, we’re talking about the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy. But, is that what you mean by strong, effective leadership?

This time, Sasse responded with a flash of anger. “Presidents Truman, Kennedy, President Nixon, they knew how to get things done in foreign policy,” he said.

Then, Sasse settled back on message. “The biggest obstacle, the biggest challenge that Rhode Island faces, is that we need effective leadership. Nothing will be solved unless there is leadership.”

What’s missing from the conversation?
More than just a relevant question of where people get their information as a social determinant of how they view their elected officials, the larger, more fundamental issue missing from the “Job One: Leadership” campaign is: who will control the news – and the flow of information – in our rapidly evolving digital world.

The conflict identified by Sasse, Sutton and Hassenfeld is not so much about effective leadership. Rather, it’s the fact that traditional media outlets and the business community no longer can control the flow of information.The buttons they are used to pushing don’t get the response they are used to engendering.

Speaking up, speaking out, being heard
AS220 and ConvergenceRI are planning a community forum on April 23, “Speaking up, speaking out and being heard in the digital world.” It will feature a number of journalists and community leaders discussing whose voices get heard, and the way we talk – or don’t talk – with each other in the mobile, digital world we live it. 

The conversation will address a number of issues:
• Are you for it, or against it? It’s easy to become victims of false dichotomies – us vs. them, young vs. old, tweeps vs. non-tweeps – tensions and divisions that the news media often seek to exploit to sell their news/ad products.
• What does it mean to belong to a community? Is it a Facebook group? Or a Linked In network? Is community a connection to a network of shared resources? Or a neighborhood of engaged people? Do face-to-face conversations – or interviews – still have as much currency as a tweet and a text?
• Who’s the audience? The struggle to be heard and to participate in decision-making is still very much about equity, justice, access, narrative and culture – who gets what, how and when.

At the root of the conversation are important economic, cultural and political challenges:

• What is an engaged community in a digital world?
• How has access to data becomes an issue of equity, changing the way decisions are made?
• How important is it to chase the ephemeral rabbit [and never catch it] on the 24/7 breaking news treadmill?
• What happens if you are just selling, not sharing, and talking, not listening?