Is Your Next Boss a Senator-to-be?

In the rise of business executives as battlers for political office, Kimberley Strassel writes in the Wall Street Journal (Why Business Bashing Has Flopped,) that anti-Washington candidates are perceived as preferable to anti-business policy makers.

Fiorina, once of HP, Whitman of eBay and other business alumni running for Congress are seen as evidence of hope for business-rational national leadership.

Two factors impress Strassel. One is that the business-base candidates are more or less united in free-market, pro-growth answers to economic distress.

The second is Strassel’s sense that business leaders can crack through bureaucracy and tackle what she sees as broken about government.

The highly regarded opinion writer quotes Grover Norquist, who runs a reduce-taxes advocacy in Washington, as asking “When Washington doesn’t work, what’s the alternative?” Norquist says it’s the infusion of “people with real-life experience”.

Strassel detects a voter-public ripe for representatives in government who are “real-world, creative business thinkers” – people who have survived and made their mark in the lanes, sometimes fast, sometimes drudging, of business.

I wonder if there’s not a third, supply-side factor.

Are more company execs and ex-execs becoming both more intrigued by and better prepared for political plunges as the result of their on-the-job experience?

People in heavily-regulated industries have always had an interest in somehow getting to the other side of the table, frustrated by government policy-makers and eager to knock sense into the heads of government regulators.

Arthur W. Page, in the crossfire of government and AT&T’s regulated utility, wandered into the policy field, encouraged business executives to express themselves in how government is run, and provided his extraordinary talent as thinker and writer at the highest levels of difficulty in the Harry S. Truman White House.

That was then. Strassel reminds that this is now, with politics in your face.

In a world totally connected, ostensibly transparent, where everybody knows everything already or soon will, 24/7, where business people know more about and have more interactions with government than ever before, it seems to be inevitable that a new kind of corporate executive is certain to emerge.

She or he will be ready for prime time in politics when they are in or have successfully moved past their prime in the C-suite.

And—here’s where you, executive communicator, coach of the 21ST Century C-suite, come into new prominence.

Seeking office requires a lot of the skills we teach. Tell the truth and back it up with specific examples. Aim communications at – and engage directly with – your critical stakeholders. Get yourself camera-ready, smile ineluctably, get tough, stay on point, take accountability, make commitments, show competence, show confidence, show you care and never let them see you sweat. Have a plan and work the plan. Oh, and remember to ask for the order.

So, communicators, coach your chieftains well. The values and skills they perfect in the C-suite may be their strengths as putative makers of public policy. Whether or not we who are in business approve of the stands taken or votes cast by ex-business politicians, the public perception of business is on the line. We are stakeholders in our future bosses’ political performance.