PRESIDENT OBAMA’S REPORT CARD
We asked ten of the world’s most respected and admired professors of leadership to assess President Obama on three tenants of leadership: vision, execution, and results. His biggest fan: Warren Bennis at USC who gives the President straight As. His tougher critic? Harvard Business School’s Bill George who gives Obama a pair of Cs and a B-. Below are the grades and comments from all of the ten professors. We also asked these leadership gurus what advice they would give the President if he was a student in their classrooms (“If Obama Was In My Leadership Class…”)
| Professor | School | Vision | Execution | Results | Comment | |
| Deborah | Ancona | MIT | C+ | B | B | One would have given him A+s on Vision, execution and results for the election. He was the epitome of the vision of distributed leadership: yes WE can…we will make this happen. [Then] after energizing and inspiring this huge mass of people, he left everyone behind. |
| Susan | Ashford | Michigan | A- | B | B | He lacks Washington street smarts. A little bit is the people around him. A little bit is his inability to control the media. |
| Warren | Bennis | USC | A- | A | A | When he assumed office, he was facing probably the most difficult, complex, and long-range problems than any president in US history has ever faced. I’m amazed at what he’s accomplished. |
| Angel | Cabrera | Thunderbird | Incomplete* | C+ | B+ | He may have avoided a US depression and passed a health care bill, but he needs a broader coalition of support. |
| Bill | George | Harvard | C- | C | B- | I assumed, perhaps naively, that he’d give us a vision of where the country was going to go, and would set that out as a long-term plan. He chose not to do that, nor has he done so since. |
| Manfred | Kets De Vries | INSEAD | B- | C | A | He should be more combative, authoritative in dealing with his critics. |
| Jeff | Pfeffer | Stanford | A | C | C | Obama is too nice. Contrary to much conventional wisdom, compromise often doesn’t work–in the end, no one is happy. |
| Jeffrey | Sonnenfeld | Yale | B+ | B | B+ | There are no underlying economic signs that we’re approaching a cliff. Only fear is holding us back. He needs to bring confidence back to CEOs, risk-averse boards, and to employees. |
| Noel | Tichy | Michigan | B+ | B+ | B | At the end of the day, the wealth-producing engine of society is business. He needs them on board. |
| Mike | Useem | Wharton | A | A- | Incomplete* | In his first 18 months, he faced war, financial restoration and health care. On all three areas, he’s not been shy about making really big decisions. He’s been decisive. |
| Total Grades | B+ | B- | B | Final grades are the sum of all the grades given by the ten leadership experts. |
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