{"id":1206,"date":"2014-06-02T10:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T09:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2014-06-06T15:05:55","modified_gmt":"2014-06-06T14:05:55","slug":"presidents-and-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2014\/06\/02\/presidents-and-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidents and Real Leadership [Updated]"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1208\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1208\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/Lech-Walesa_1438541c.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1208\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/Lech-Walesa_1438541c-300x187.jpg\" alt=\"telegraph.co.uk\" width=\"300\" height=\"187\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/Lech-Walesa_1438541c-300x187.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/Lech-Walesa_1438541c.jpg 460w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1208\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">telegraph.co.uk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Today\u00a0IESE starts\u00a0our amazing\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.iese.edu\/es\/executive-education\/fast-forward\/\">Fast Forward<\/a><\/strong> program and the opening keynote speech will be made by <strong>Lech Walesa<\/strong>, former president of Poland and the leader of Solidarity, the labor union which became a popular movement and brought about the fall of communism in Poland.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I remember following the events in Poland during the 1980s and 1990s from the comfort of my own life in Madrid, Massachusetts, and Barcelona and as a student of history I am looking forward to meeting history itself in the person of President Walesa.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1224\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1224\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/Mike-Rosenberg-and-Lech-Walesa.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1224 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/Mike-Rosenberg-and-Lech-Walesa.jpg\" alt=\"With President Walesa at IESE\" width=\"800\" height=\"564\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/Mike-Rosenberg-and-Lech-Walesa.jpg 800w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/Mike-Rosenberg-and-Lech-Walesa-300x211.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/Mike-Rosenberg-and-Lech-Walesa-624x439.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1224\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">With Nobel Prize and President Walesa at IESE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">U.S. President, <strong>Barak Obama<\/strong> will visit Warsaw later this week to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of communism and will, I believe, meet with Walesa even though such a meeting did not take place the last time Obama came to Warsaw in 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A few days ago, Walesa <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2014-05-29\/obama-leadership-has-failed-world-poland-s-walesa-says.html\">criticized<\/a> Obama for not providing sufficient leadership to the world and it will be interesting to see how the visit to Poland plays out.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Real Leadership in the White House and the Presidential Palace<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p2\">Part of what the Kennedy School\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2014\/05\/19\/global-change-agents\/#sthash.lgeWMyfv.dpbs\">Dean Williams<\/a> calls <strong><em>real leadership <\/em><\/strong>is getting\u00a0people to understand the changing world around them and I believe that President Obama is doing an extraordinary job in doing just that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Interestingly enough, he\u00a0was blasted by all sides for his speech at West Point last week which, in my view, was outstanding\u00a0and I, for one, am delighted that the President of the United States states\u00a0publicly\u00a0that \u201cthe world is changing\u201d and that leadership has more facets than sending in the Marines to every situation and conflict.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><iframe class='xavier' width='100%' height='400' frameborder='0' allow='fullscreen' allowfullscreen src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fG_hX_XM4Ks'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">President Walesa also showed <em>real leadership<\/em> when he made the tough decisions to support the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Balcerowicz_Plan\">Balcerowicz<\/a> Plan\u00a0to use \u201cshock therapy\u201d\u00a0on the Polish economy which, over the long term, produced outstanding results but at the cost of very high inflation, unemployment, and his own popularity.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>A new start for Ukraine?<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/2014\/05\/05\/the-russians-are-comming\/#sthash.skPJbePd.dpbs\">Four weeks ago<\/a>, I was convinced that a Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine was imminent and I am glad to see that I was wrong and that the mix of public statements, sanctions, and possible secret communications have, at least so far, proven sufficient to limit Russia\u2019s expansion to Crimea and allow the Ukrainian people to elect a new president and perhaps, if they manage to placate Putin and Gasprom, start a new chapter in Ukrainian history.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1209\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1209\" style=\"width: 192px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1209 \" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/petro-poroshenko-may-26-300x205.jpg\" alt=\"globalnews.ca\" width=\"192\" height=\"131\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/petro-poroshenko-may-26-300x205.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/petro-poroshenko-may-26-624x427.jpg 624w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/files\/2014\/06\/petro-poroshenko-may-26.jpg 720w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 192px) 100vw, 192px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1209\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">globalnews.ca<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>Petro Poreshenko<\/strong>, Ukraine\u2019s President elect has an enormous challenge facing him which was well described in the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/europe\/21603067-petro-poroshenko-has-been-elected-president-now-he-has-some-dreadful-problems-two-tone-election\">The Economist<\/a><\/em> last week. He has to somehow rebuild the countries political institutions, reign in powerful oligarchs, and fight Russia\u2019s proxies who are still casing havoc in the Eastern part of the country.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In his speech at West Point, president Obama recognized that Ukraine faced \u201cgrave challenges\u201d and that \u201cwe don\u2019t know how the situation will play out\u201d but what is clear to me is that President Poreshenko will need to show <em>real leadership<\/em> to move\u00a0his country forward.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span style=\"color: #993300;\">[Just a post script. In his remarks, Walesa pointed out that compared to Poland in 1989, he felt that Poreshenko has it relatively easy. Back then, the former Soviet Union had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in Poland and over 1 million int he countries surrounding it. He also felt that the former Ukrainian government was not prudent in its relations with Russia and that he advised the Ukrainians to go slowly and carefully.]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lech Walesa, who is speaking at IESE business school, like Barak Obama shows what the Kennedy School&#8217;s Dean Williams calls real leadership &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":788,"featured_media":1225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26749,40357],"tags":[82367,81914,82368,82365],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-globalization-and-related-topics","tag-barak-obama","tag-lech-walesa","tag-petro-poreshenko","tag-real-leadership"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1227,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/1227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/doing-business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}