By Paul Johnson

538 words. Abstract: Executives at RadioShack are living a fairy tale. While the story starts with a résumé, it ends with a clever corporate twist, and includes an important leadership lesson.

It’s another scary failure of leadership. RadioShack’s president and CEO, David Edmondson, resigned Monday, February 20th, 2006, after the accuracy of his résumé became suspect. But that doesn’t scare me. What scares me is the "leadership" left at RadioShack.

The board of directors apparently needed a scapegoat to blame for the company’s performance troubles. The Friday before, RadioShack reported that 2005 Q4 earnings dropped 62%, and announced plans to close 400 to 700 stores as part of its turnaround plan. Share prices declined to a three-year low.

It reminds me of the fairy tale about The Three Little Pigs, but with a unique corporate twist.

This Tale is Twisted
RadioShack has the wolf howling at the door, threatening to blow their business over. The company finds itself in serious trouble, and you gotta be asking yourself: straw, sticks, or bricks? Sadly, their board’s behavior indicates that the Radio Shack is little more than a grass shack.

I’m not here to defend Mr. Edmondson. Perhaps he deserved to be fired. The financial numbers surely don’t support him. But why does the board need to hide behind his résumé? Could it be that the leadership doesn’t want to accept responsibility for having chosen him as CEO last May?

Maybe Mr. Edmondson lied on his résumé, and doesn’t really hold the two degrees he claims. If so, shame on him. However, that was 11 years ago. He has since no doubt passed many performance appraisals, earned positive performance reviews, and been awarded big raises and promotions. College degrees or not, he appears to have performed well enough to rise all the way to the CEO’s suite.

Apparently degrees weren’t terribly relevant at the time of hiring anyway. After all, at RadioShack I might expect to find electrical engineers. If RadioShack was a health care provider, it might be important that their leaders hold a bona fide medical degree. Mr Edmondson’s résumé claims degrees in theology and psychology; unless they hired him to be a chaplain or a counselor, I’m betting he didn’t have much chance to apply his majors on the job.

The Immoral of the Story
If things were going well at Radio Shack, it might be appropriate to investigate the résumé indiscretion. It would send a message that ethics and integrity are demanded from everyone in the organization. By bringing it up now, it throws the integrity and ethics of the board of directors into question. At RadioShack, it seems that when the going gets tough, the weak find a scapegoat.

I might favor firing Mr. Edmondson, but I certainly wouldn’t have included his résumé in my explanation. Leadership means accepting responsibility for a decision, and that includes the blame that goes with it. That’s how you build a house of brick.

So is RadioShack built of straw, sticks, or bricks? Apparently, the board of directors knows the scary truth. Unwilling to share in the responsibility for the company’s poor performance, they’re hoping to rewrite the ending of the story: throw a sacrificial CEO out the front door on some flimsy charge, and maybe the rest of the clan can sneak out the back door before the big bad wolf huffs and puffs and finishes blowing their shack down.

© 2006 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson of Shortcuts to Results educates, consults, and speaks on ways to achieve business breakthroughs using the Trouble Breaker™ Methodology.  Check out more shortcuts at http://ShortcutsToResults.com. Call Paul direct in Atlanta, Georgia, USA at (770) 271-7719.

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