Herman Cain and the false premise of a CEO presidency

This piece is part of an On Leadership roundtable on Herman Cain and whether prior politicial experience is a prerequisite for being an effective president.

Ross Perot. Steve Forbes. Herman Cain.

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All three are corporate CEOs who ran for president. They mounted serious campaigns for the highest office in the land with just one prior political race (Cain’s failed 2004 Senate bid) among them.

The premise of each of their campaigns—and of all the other fantasy candidacies ranging from Donald Trump to Lee Iacocca—has been that politicians broke politics, and only a corporate leader has the management skills, financial acumen and decisiveness to right the ship of state.

Their case boils down to a basic leadership proposition that a CEO presidency would be the best model for breaking through beltway gridlock and securing America’s economic future. 

But is that true?

The entire leadership model of a successful CEO is vastly different from that of a successful president. As political commentator Bill Schneider has pointed out, corporations are designed to be more like benevolent dictatorships; in contrast, the presidency is the leadership of a large and unruly democracy.

This dictatorship vs. democracy distinction matters when it comes to three crucial aspects of leadership.

The first one is consensus. Like presidents, CEOs work tirelessly to build consensus—but inside their companies. This is a game changer. They hire and fire, promote and demote, give or withhold bonuses. They have far greater flexibility in how to structure work and to re-organize as needed. And most crucially, the interests of their employees directly align with the success of the company.

As president, Barack Obama must find consensus not with his employees but with his fiercest political opponents in Congress. And even his allies don’t work for him. When Democrats controlled both chambers, he had to mollify his own party. And because of the Senate’s modern use of the filibuster, the president usually needs a number of votes from Senate Republicans—the very group that hopes to turn the president out of the White House. In the House he generally needs to get the majority of an even more hostile group of Republicans, and this just to bring a bill to the floor. This makes consensus exceedingly elusive. A president faces the same dilemma in dealings outside the country, finding ways to work effectively with America’s “frienemies” like Pakistan, who remain both allies and potential adversaries.

Communication is the second key leadership area in which CEO experience and presidential experience diverge. CEOs and presidents engage very differently  with their principal audience: consumers and voters. As CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Cain communicated directly with his potential customers, with very little interference. Virtually the only product information his consumers received came directly from his company in the form of advertisements (remember “The pizza you can’t refuse?”). Of course industry competitors sometimes contradict your claims, but that’s minor static compared to the heat of a political battle. And while common in Washington, the instances are truly rare when a CEO loses complete control of his company’s message – usually because something has gone terribly wrong, such as with the Tylenol scare or the Gulf oil spill.